‘You have enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I brought you.’
‘I’ve felt something I don’t understand,’ Van Torp answered gravely.
She liked the reply for its simplicity. She had perhaps expected that he would summon up his most picturesque language to tell her how much pleasure the music had given him, or that he would perhaps laugh at himself for having been moved; but instead, he only told her that he did not understand what he had felt; and they walked on without another word.
‘Go and get something to eat,’ she said when they reached the hotel, ‘and I’ll meet you here in half an hour. I don’t care to talk either.’
He only nodded, and lifted his hat as she went up the steps; but instead of going to eat, he sat down on a bench outside, and waited for her there, reflecting on the nature of his new experience.
Like most successful men, he looked on all theories as trash, good enough to amuse clever idlers, but never to be taken into consideration in real life. He never asked about the principle on which any invention was founded; his first and only question was, ‘Will it work?’
Considering himself as the raw material, and the theatre he had just left as the mill, he was forced to admit that Parsifal ‘worked.’
‘It works all right,’ he inwardly soliloquised. ‘If that’s what it claims to do, it does it.’
When he had reached this business-like conclusion, his large lips parted a little, and as his breath passed between his closed teeth, it made soft little hissing sounds that had a suggestion of music in them, though they were not really whistled notes; his sandy lashes half veiled his eyes and he saw again what he had lately seen: the King borne down to the bath that would never heal his wound, and the dead swan, and the wondering Maiden-Man brought to answer for his bow-shot, the wild Witch-Girl crouching by the giant trees, and the long way that led upward through the forest, and upward ever, to the Hall of the Knights, and last of all, the mysterious Sangreal itself, glowing divinely in the midst.
He did not really understand what he had seen and saw again as he half closed his eyes. That was the reason why he accepted it passively, as he accepted elemental things. If he could by any means have told himself what illusion it was all intended to produce upon his sight and hearing, he would have pulled the trick to pieces, mentally, in a moment, and what remained would have been the merely pleasant recollection of something very well done, but not in itself different from other operas or plays he had heard and seen elsewhere, nothing more than an ‘improvement on Lohengrin,’ as he would probably have called it.
But this was something not ‘more,’ but quite of another kind, and it affected him as the play of nature’s forces sometimes did; it was like the brooding of the sea, the rising gale, the fury of the storm, like the leaden stillness before the earthquake, the awful heave of the earth, the stupendous crash of the doomed city, the long rolling rumble of falling walls and tumbling houses, big with sudden death; or again, it was like sad gleams of autumn sunshine, and the cold cathedral light of primeval forests in winter, and then it was the spring stirring in all things, the rising pulse of mating nature, the burst of May-bloom, the huge glow of the earth basking in the full summer sun.
He did not know, and no one knew, what nature meant by those things. How could nature’s meaning be put into words? And so he did not understand what he had felt, nor could he see that it might have significance. What was the ‘interpretation’ of a storm, of an earthquake, or of winter and summer? God, perhaps; perhaps just ‘nature.’ He did not know. Margaret had told him the story of the opera in the evening; he had followed it easily enough and could not forget it. It was a sort of religious fairy-tale, he thought, and he was ready to believe that Wagner had made a good poem of it, even a great poem. But it was not the story that could be told, which had moved him; it was nothing so easily defined as a poem, or a drama, or a piece of music. A far more cultivated man than he could ever become might sit through the performance and feel little or nothing, of that he was sure; just as he could have carried beautiful Lady Maud in his arms without feeling that she was a woman for him, whereas the slightest touch of Margaret Donne, the mere fact of being near her, made the blood beat in his throat.
That was only a way of putting it, for there was no sex in the music he had just heard. He had sat so close to Margaret that their arms constantly touched, yet he had forgotten that she was there. If the music had been Tristan and Isolde he could not have been unaware of her, for a moment, for that is the supreme sex-music of Wagner’s art. But this was different, altogether different, though it was even stronger than that.
He forgot to look at his watch. Margaret came out of the hotel, expecting to find him waiting for her within the hall, and prepared to be annoyed with him for taking so long over a meal. She stood on the step and looked about, and saw him sitting on the bench at a little distance. He raised his eyes as she came towards him and then rose quickly.
‘Is it time?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Did you get anything decent to eat?’
‘Yes,’ he answered vaguely. ‘That is, now I think of it, I forgot about dinner. It doesn’t matter.’
She looked at his hard face curiously and saw a dead blank, the blank that had sometimes frightened her by its possibilities, when the eyes alone came suddenly to life.
‘Won’t you go in and get a biscuit, or a sandwich?’ she asked after a moment.
‘Oh, no, thanks. I’m used to skipping meals when I’m interested in things. Let’s go, if you’re ready.’
‘I believe you are one of nature’s Wagnerites,’ Margaret said, as they drove up the hill again, and she smiled at the idea.
‘Well,’ he answered slowly, ‘there’s one thing, if you don’t mind my telling you. It’s rather personal. Perhaps I’d better not.’
The Primadonna was silent for a few moments, and did not look at him.
‘Tell me,’ she said suddenly.
‘It’s this. I don’t know how long the performance lasted, but while it was going on I forgot you were close beside me. You might just as well not have been there. It’s the first time since I ever knew you that I’ve been near you without thinking about you all the time, and I hadn’t realised it till I was sitting here by myself. I hope you don’t mind my telling you?’
‘It only makes me more glad that I brought you,’ Margaret said quietly.
‘Thank you,’ he answered; but he was quite sure that the same thing could not happen again during the Second Part.
Nevertheless, it happened. For a little while, they were man and woman, sitting side by side and very near, two in a silent multitude of other men and women; but before long he was quite motionless, his eyes were fixed again and he had forgotten her. She saw it and wondered, for she knew how her presence moved him, and as his hands lay folded on his knee, a mischievous girlish impulse almost made her, the great artist, forget that she was listening to the greatest music in the world and nearly made her lay her hand on his, just to see what he would do. She was ashamed of it, and a little disgusted with herself. The part of her that was Margaret Donne felt the disgust; the part that was Cordova felt the shame, and each side of her nature was restrained at a critical moment. Yet when the ‘Good Friday’ music began, she was thinking of Van Torp and he was unconscious of her presence.
It could not last, and soon she, too, was taken up into the artificial paradise of the master-musician and borne along in the gale of golden wings, and there was no passing of time till the very end; and the people rose in silence and went out under the summer stars; and all those whom nature had gifted to hear rightly, took with them memories that years would scarcely dim.
The two walked slowly back to the town as the crowd scattered on foot and in carriages. It was warm, and there was no moon, and one could smell the dust, for many people were moving in the same direction, though some stopped at almost every house and went in, and most of them were beginning to talk in quiet tones.
&
nbsp; Margaret stepped aside from the road and entered a narrow lane, and Van Torp followed her in silence.
‘This leads out to the fields,’ she said. ‘I must breathe the fresh air. Do you mind?’
‘On the contrary.’
“She was aware of his slight change of position without turning her eyes.”
He said nothing more, and she did not speak, but walked on without haste, dilating her nostrils to the sweet smell of grass that reached her already. In a little while they had left the houses behind them, and they came to a gate that led into a field.
Van Torp was going to undo the fastening, for there was no lock.
‘No,’ she said, ‘we won’t go through. I love to lean on a gate.’
She rested her crossed arms on the upper rail and Van Torp did the same, careful that his elbow should not touch hers, and they both stared into the dim, sweet-scented meadow. He felt her presence now and it almost hurt him; he could hear his slow pulse in his ears, hard and regular. She did not speak, but the night was so still that he could hear her breathing, and at last he could not bear the warm silence any longer.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked, trying to speak lightly.
She waited, or hesitated, before she answered him.
‘You,’ she said, after a time.
He moved involuntarily, and then drew a little further away from her, as he might have withdrawn a foot from the edge of a precipice, out of common caution. She was aware of his slight change of position without turning her eyes.
‘What made you say what you did to Mrs. Rushmore yesterday afternoon?’ she asked.
‘About you?’
‘Yes.’
‘She asked me, point-blank, what I thought of Logotheti,’ Van Torp answered. ‘I told her that I couldn’t give her an unbiassed opinion of the man you meant to marry, because I had always hoped to marry you myself.’
‘Oh — was that the way it happened?’
‘Mrs. Rushmore could hardly have misunderstood me,’ said Van Torp, gathering the reins of himself, so to say, for anything that might happen.
‘No. But it sounds differently when you say it yourself.’
‘That was just what I said, anyhow,’ answered Van Torp. ‘I didn’t think she’d go and tell you right away, but since she has, I don’t regret having said that much.’
‘It was straightforward, at all events — if it was all true!’ There was the faintest laugh in her tone as she spoke the last words.
‘It’s true, right enough, though I didn’t expect that I should be talking to you about this sort of thing to-night.’
‘The effect on Mrs. Rushmore was extraordinary, positively fulminating,’ Margaret said more lightly. ‘She says I ought to break off my engagement at once, and marry you! Fancy!’
‘That’s very kind of her, I’m sure,’ observed Mr. Van Torp.
‘I don’t think so. I like it less and less, the more I think of it.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, but I suppose it’s natural, since you’ve concluded to marry him, and it can’t be helped. I wasn’t going to say anything against him, and I wouldn’t say anything for him, so there was nothing to do but to explain, which I did. I’m sorry you think I did wrong, but I should give the same answer again.’
‘Mrs. Rushmore thinks that Konstantin is a designing foreigner because he’s a Greek man of business, and that you are perfection because you are an American business man.’
‘If I’m perfection, that’s not the real reason,’ said Van Torp, snatching at his first chance to steer out of the serious current; but Margaret did not laugh.
‘You are not perfection, nor I either,’ she answered gravely. ‘You are famous in your way, and people call me celebrated in mine; but so far as the rest is concerned we are just two ordinary human beings, and if we are going to be friends we must understand each other from the first, as far as we can.’
‘I’ll try to do my share,’ said Van Torp, taking her tone.
‘Very well. I’ll do mine. I began by thinking you were amusing, when I first met you. Then you frightened me last winter, and I hated you. Not only that, I loathed you — there’s no word strong enough for what I felt. When I saw you in the audience, you almost paralysed my voice.’
‘I didn’t know it had been as bad as that,’ said Mr. Van Torp quietly.
‘Yes. It was worse than I can make you understand. And last spring, when you were in so much trouble, I believed every word that was said against you, even that you had murdered your partner’s daughter in cold blood to get rid of her, though that looked as incredible to sensible people as it really was. It was only when I saw how Lady Maud believed in you that I began to waver, and then I understood.’
‘I’m glad you did.’
‘So am I. But she is such a good woman herself that nobody can be really bad in whom she believes. And now I’m changed still more. I like you, and I’m sure that we shall be friends, if you will make me one promise and keep it.’
‘What is it?’
‘That you will give up all idea of ever marrying me, no matter what happens, even if I broke — —’
‘It’s no use to go on,’ interrupted Van Torp, ‘for I can’t promise anything like that. Maybe you don’t realise what you’re asking, but it’s the impossible. That’s all.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ Margaret tried to laugh lightly, but it was a failure.
‘No, it’s very far from nonsense,’ he replied, almost sternly. ‘Since you’ve spoken first, I’m going to tell you several things. One is, that I accepted the syndicate’s offer for the Nickel Trust so as to be free to take any chance that might turn up. It had been open some time, but I accepted it on the day I heard of your engagement. That’s a big thing. Another is, that I played a regular trick on Logotheti so as to come and see you here. I deliberately asked him to dine with me last night in London. I went right home, wrote a note to him, antedated for yesterday afternoon, to put him off, and I left it to be sent at the right hour. Then I drove to the station, and here I am. You may call that pretty sharp practice, but I believe all’s fair in love and war, and I want you to understand that I think so. There’s one thing more. I won’t give up the hope of making you marry me while you’re alive and I am, not if you’re an old woman, and I’ll put up all I have in the game, including my own life and other people’s, if it comes to that. Amen.’
Margaret bent her head a little and was silent.
‘Now you know why I won’t promise what you asked,’ said Van Torp in conclusion.
He had not raised his voice; he had not laid a heavy stress on half his words, as he often did in common conversation; there had been nothing dramatic in his tone; but Margaret had understood well enough that it was the plain statement of a man who meant to succeed, and whose strength and resources were far beyond those of ordinary suitors. She was not exactly frightened; indeed, since her dislike for him had melted away, it was impossible not to feel a womanly satisfaction in the magnitude of her conquest; but she also felt instinctively that serious trouble and danger were not far off.
‘You have no right to speak like that,’ she said rather weakly, after a moment.
‘Perhaps not. I don’t know. But I consider that you have a right to know the truth, and that’s enough for me. It’s not as if I’d made up my mind to steal your ewe-lamb from you and put myself in its place. Logotheti is not any sort of a ewe-lamb. He’s a man, he’s got plenty of strength and determination, he’s got plenty of money — even what I choose to call plenty. He says he cares for you. All right. So do I. He says he’ll marry you. I say that I will. All right again. You’re the prize put up for the best of two fighting men. You’re not the first woman in history who’s been fought for, but, by all that’s holy, there never was one better worth it, not Helen of Troy herself!’
The last few words came with a sort of stormy rush, and he turned round suddenly, and stood with his back against the gate, thrusting his hands deep into his coat-pockets, perh
aps with the idea of keeping them quiet; but he did not come any nearer to her, and she felt she was perfectly safe, and that a much deeper and more lasting power had hold of him than any mere passionate longing to take her in his arms and press his iron lips on hers against her will. She began to understand why he was what he was, at an age when many successful men are still fighting for final success. He was a crown-grasper, like John the Smith. Beside him Logotheti was but a gifted favourite of fortune. He spoke of Helen, but if he was comparing his rival with Paris he himself was more like an Ajax than like good King Menelaus.
Margaret was not angry; she was hardly displeased, but she was really at a loss what to say, and she said the first sensible thing that suggested itself and that was approximately true.
‘I’m sorry you have told me all this. We might have spent these next two days very pleasantly together. Oh, I’m not pretending what I don’t feel! It’s impossible for a woman like me, who can still be free, not to be flattered when such a man as you cares for her in earnest, and says the things you have. But, on the other hand, I’m engaged to be married to another man, and it would not be loyal of me to let you make love to me.’
‘I don’t mean to,’ said Van Torp stoutly. ‘It won’t be necessary. If I never spoke again you wouldn’t forget what I’ve told you — ever! Why should I say it again? I don’t want to, until you can say as much to me. If it’s time to go, hitch the lead to my collar and take me home! I’ll follow you as quietly as a spaniel, anywhere!’
‘And what would happen if I told you not to follow me, but to go home and lie down in your kennel?’ She laughed low as she moved away from the gate.
‘I’m not sure,’ answered Van Torp. ‘Don’t.’
The last word was not spoken at all with an accent of warning, but it was not said in a begging tone either. Margaret’s short laugh followed it instantly. He took the cue she offered, and went on speaking in his ordinary manner.
‘I’m not a bad dog if you don’t bully me, and if you feed me at regular hours and take me for a walk now and then. I don’t pretend I’m cut out for a French pet, because I’m not. I’m too big for a lap-dog, and too fond of sport for the drawing-room, I suppose. A good useful dog generally is, isn’t he? Maybe I’m a little quarrelsome with other dogs, but then, they needn’t come bothering around!’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1239