The Dark Flower

It was on the Tuesday, after the close of the last Newmarket meeting, and just getting dusk, when Life opened the door and walked in. She wore a dark-red dress, a new one, and surely her face – her figure – were very different from what he had remembered! They had quickened and become poignant. She was no longer a child – that was at once plain. Cheeks, mouth, neck, waist – all seemed fined, shaped; the crinkly, light-brown hair was coiled up now under a velvet cap; only the great grey eyes seemed quite the same. And at sight of her his heart gave a sort of dive and flight, as if all its vague and wistful sensations had found their goal.

Then, in sudden agitation, he realized that his last moment with this girl – now a child no longer – had been a secret moment of warmth and of emotion; a moment which to her might have meant, in her might have bred, feelings that he had no inkling of. He tried to ignore that fighting and diving of his heart, held out his hand, and murmured:

“Ah, Nell! Back at last! You’ve grown.” Then, with a sensation of every limb gone weak, he felt her arms round his neck, and herself pressed against him. There was time for the thought to flash through him: This is terrible! He gave her a little convulsive squeeze – could a man do less? – then just managed to push her gently away, trying with all his might to think: She’s a child! It’s nothing more than after Carmen! She doesn’t know what I am feeling! But he was conscious of a mad desire to clutch her to him. The touch of her had demolished all his vagueness, made things only too plain, set him on fire.

He said uncertainly:

“Come to the fire, my child, and tell me all about it.”

If he did not keep to the notion that she was just a child, his head would go. Perdita – ‘the lost one’! A good name for her, indeed, as she stood there, her eyes shining in the firelight – more mesmeric than ever they had been! And, to get away from the lure of those eyes, he bent down and raked the grate, saying:

“Have you seen Sylvia?” But he knew that she had not, even before she gave that impatient shrug. Then he pulled himself together, and said:

“What has happened to you, child?”

“I’m not a child.”

“No, we’ve both grown older. I was forty-seven the other day.”

She caught his hand – Heavens! how supple she was! – and murmured:

“You’re not old a bit; you’re quite young.” At his wits’ end, with his heart thumping, but still keeping his eyes away from her, he said:

“Where is Oliver?”

She dropped his hand at that.

“Oliver? I hate him!”

Afraid to trust himself near her, he had begun walking up and down. And she stood, following him with her gaze – the firelight playing on her red frock. What extraordinary stillness! What power she had developed in these few months! Had he let her see that he felt that power? And had all this come of one little moment in a dark corridor, of one flower pressed into his hand? Why had he not spoken to her roughly then – told her she was a romantic little fool? God knew what thoughts she had been feeding on! But who could have supposed – who dreamed – ? And again he fixed his mind resolutely on that thought: She’s a child – only a child!

“Come!” he said: “tell me all about your time in Ireland?”

“Oh! it was just dull – it’s all been dull away from you.”

It came out without hesitancy or shame, and he could only murmur:

“Ah! you’ve missed your drawing!”

“Yes. Can I come to-morrow?”

That was the moment to have said: No! You are a foolish child, and I an elderly idiot! But he had neither courage nor clearness of mind enough; nor – the desire. And, without answering, he went towards the door to turn up the light.

“Oh, no! please don’t! It’s so nice like this!”

The shadowy room, the bluish dusk painted on all the windows, the fitful shining of the fire, the pallor and darkness of the dim casts and bronzes, and that one glowing figure there before the hearth! And her voice, a little piteous, went on:

“Aren’t you glad I’m back? I can’t see you properly out there.”

He went back into the glow, and she gave a little sigh of satisfaction. Then her calm young voice said, ever so distinctly:

“Oliver wants me to marry him, and I won’t, of course.”

He dared not say: Why not? He dared not say anything. It was too dangerous. And then followed those amazing words: “You know why, don’t you? Of course you do.”

It was ridiculous, almost shameful to understand their meaning. And he stood, staring in front of him, without a word; humility, dismay, pride, and a sort of mad exultation, all mixed and seething within him in the queerest pudding of emotion. But all he said was:

“Come, my child; we’re neither of us quite ourselves to-night. Let’s go to the drawing-room.”

IX

Back in the darkness and solitude of the studio, when she was gone, he sat down before the fire, his senses in a whirl. Why was he not just an ordinary animal of a man that could enjoy what the gods had sent? It was as if on a November day someone had pulled aside the sober curtains of the sky and there in a chink had been April standing – thick white blossom, a purple cloud, a rainbow, grass vivid green, light flaring from one knew not where, and such a tingling passion of life on it all as made the heart stand still! This, then, was the marvellous, enchanting, maddening end of all that year of restlessness and wanting! This bit of Spring suddenly given to him in the midst of Autumn. Her lips, her eyes, her hair; her touching confidence; above all – quite unbelievable – her love. Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy. But on the wings of fancy this child would fly far, too far – all wistfulness and warmth beneath that light veneer of absurd composure.

To live again – to plunge back into youth and beauty – to feel Spring once more – to lose the sense of all being over, save just the sober jogtrot of domestic bliss; to know, actually to know, ecstasy again, in the love of a girl; to rediscover all that youth yearns for, and feels, and hopes, and dreads, and loves. It was a prospect to turn the head even of a decent man…

By just closing his eyes he could see her standing there with the firelight glow on her red frock; could feel again that marvellous thrill when she pressed herself against him in the half-innocent, seducing moment when she first came in; could feel again her eyes drawing – drawing him! She was a witch, a grey-eyed, brown-haired witch – even unto her love of red. She had the witch’s power of lighting fever in the veins. And he simply wondered at himself, that he had not, as she stood there in the firelight, knelt, and put his arms round her and pressed his face against her waist. Why had he not? But he did not want to think; the moment thought began he knew he must be torn this way and that, tossed here and there between reason and desire, pity and passion. Every sense struggled to keep him wrapped in the warmth and intoxication of this discovery that he, in the full of Autumn, had awakened love in Spring. It was amazing that she could have this feeling; yet there was no mistake. Her manner to Sylvia just now had been almost dangerously changed; there had been a queer cold impatience in her look, frightening from one who but three months ago had been so affectionate. And, going away, she had whispered, with that old trembling-up at him, as if offering to be kissed: “I may come, mayn’t I? And don’t be angry with me, please; I can’t help it.” A monstrous thing at his age to let a young girl love him – compromise her future! A monstrous thing by all the canons of virtue and gentility! And yet – what future? – with that nature – those eyes – that origin – with that father, and that home? But he would not – simply must not think!

Nevertheless, he showed the signs of thought, and badly; for after dinner Sylvia, putting her hand on his forehead, said:

“You’re working too hard, Mark. You don’t go out enough.”

He held those fingers fast. Sylvia! No, indeed he must not think! But he took advantage of her words, and said that he would go out and get some air.

He walked at a great pace – to keep thought away – till he reached the river close to Westminster, and, moved by sudden impulse, seeking perhaps an antidote, turned down into that little street under the big Wren church, where he had never been since the summer night when he lost what was then more to him than life. There SHE had lived; there was the house – those windows which he had stolen past and gazed at with such distress and longing. Who lived there now? Once more he seemed to see that face out of the past, the dark hair, and dark soft eyes, and sweet gravity; and it did not reproach him. For this new feeling was not a love like that had been. Only once could a man feel the love that passed all things, the love before which the world was but a spark in a draught of wind; the love that, whatever dishonour, grief, and unrest it might come through, alone had in it the heart of peace and joy and honour. Fate had torn that love from him, nipped it off as a sharp wind nips off a perfect flower. This new feeling was but a fever, a passionate fancy, a grasping once more at Youth and Warmth. Ah, well! but it was real enough! And, in one of those moments when a man stands outside himself, seems to be lifted away and see his own life twirling, Lennan had a vision of a shadow driven here and there; a straw going round and round; a midge in the grip of a mad wind. Where was the home of this mighty secret feeling that sprang so suddenly out of the dark, and caught you by the throat? Why did it come now and not then, for this one and not that other? What did man know of it, save that it made him spin and hover – like a moth intoxicated by a light, or a bee by some dark sweet flower; save that it made of him a distraught, humble, eager puppet of its fancy? Had it not once already driven him even to the edge of death; and must it now come on him again with its sweet madness, its drugging scent? What was it? Why was it? Why these passionate obsessions that could not decently be satisfied? Had civilization so outstripped man that his nature was cramped into shoes too small – like the feet of a Chinese woman? What was it? Why was it?

And faster than ever he walked away.

Pall Mall brought him back to that counterfeit presentment of the real – reality. There, in St. James’s Street, was Johnny Dromore’s Club; and, again moved by impulse, he pushed open its swing door. No need to ask; for there was Dromore in the hall, on his way from dinner to the card-room. The glossy tan of hard exercise and good living lay on his cheeks as thick as clouted cream. His eyes had the peculiar shine of superabundant vigour; a certain sub-festive air in face and voice and movements suggested that he was going to make a night of it. And the sardonic thought flashed through Lennan: Shall I tell him?

“Hallo, old chap! Awfully glad to see you! What you doin’ with yourself? Workin’ hard? How’s your wife? You been away? Been doin’ anything great?” And then the question that would have given him his chance, if he had liked to be so cruel:

“Seen Nell?”

“Yes, she came round this afternoon.”

“What d’you think of her? Comin’ on nicely, isn’t she?”

That old query, half furtive and half proud, as much as to say: ‘I know she’s not in the stud-book, but, d – n it, I sired her!’ And then the old sudden gloom, which lasted but a second, and gave way again to chaff.

Lennan stayed very few minutes. Never had he felt farther from his old school-chum.

No. Whatever happened, Johnny Dromore must be left out. It was a position he had earned with his goggling eyes, and his astute philosophy; from it he should not be disturbed.

He passed along the railings of the Green Park. On the cold air of this last October night a thin haze hung, and the acrid fragrance from little bonfires of fallen leaves. What was there about that scent of burned-leaf smoke that had always moved him so? Symbol of parting! – that most mournful thing in all the world. For what would even death be, but for parting? Sweet, long sleep, or new adventure. But, if a man loved others – to leave them, or be left! Ah! and it was not death only that brought partings!

He came to the opening of the street where Dromore lived. She would be there, sitting by the fire in the big chair, playing with her kitten, thinking, dreaming, and – alone! He passed on at such a pace that people stared; till, turning the last corner for home, he ran almost into the arms of Oliver Dromore.

The young man was walking with unaccustomed indecision, his fur coat open, his opera-hat pushed up on his crisp hair. Dark under the eyes, he had not the proper gloss of a Dromore at this season of the year.

“Mr. Lennan! I’ve just been round to you.”

And Lennan answered dazedly:

“Will you come in, or shall I walk your way a bit?”

“I’d rather – out here, if you don’t mind.”

So in silence they went back into the Square. And Oliver said:

“Let’s get over by the rails.”

They crossed to the railings of the Square’s dark garden, where nobody was passing. And with every step Lennan’s humiliation grew. There was something false and undignified in walking with this young man who had once treated him as a father confessor to his love for Nell. And suddenly he perceived that they had made a complete circuit of the Square garden without speaking a single word.

“Yes?” he said.

Oliver turned his face away.

“You remember what I told you in the summer. Well, it’s worse now. I’ve been going a mucker lately in all sorts of ways to try and get rid of it. But it’s all no good. She’s got me!”

And Lennan thought: You’re not alone in that! But he kept silence. His chief dread was of saying something that he would remember afterwards as the words of Judas.

Then Oliver suddenly burst out:

“Why can’t she care? I suppose I’m nothing much, but she’s known me all her life, and she used to like me. There’s something – I can’t make out. Could you do anything for me with her?”

Lennan pointed across the street.

“In every other one of those houses, Oliver,” he said, “there’s probably some creature who can’t make out why another creature doesn’t care. Passion comes when it will, goes when it will; and we poor devils have no say in it.”

“What do you advise me, then?”

Lennan had an almost overwhelming impulse to turn on his heel and leave the young man standing there. But he forced himself to look at his face, which even then had its attraction – perhaps more so than ever, so pallid and desperate it was. And he said slowly, staring mentally at every word:

“I’m not up to giving you advice. The only thing I might say is: One does not press oneself where one isn’t wanted; all the same – who knows? So long as she feels you’re there, waiting, she might turn to you at any moment. The more chivalrous you are, Oliver, the more patiently you wait, the better chance you have.”

Oliver took those words of little comfort without flinching. “I see,” he said. “Thanks! But, my God! it’s hard. I never could wait.” And with that epigram on himself, holding out his hand, he turned away.

Lennan went slowly home, trying to gauge exactly how anyone who knew all would judge him. It was a little difficult in this affair to keep a shred of dignity.

Sylvia had not gone up, and he saw her looking at him anxiously. The one strange comfort in all this was that his feeling for her, at any rate, had not changed. It seemed even to have deepened – to be more real to him.

How could he help staying awake that night? How could he help thinking, then? And long time he lay, staring at the dark.

As if thinking were any good for fever in the veins!

X

Passion never plays the game. It, at all events, is free from self-consciousness, and pride; from dignity, nerves, scruples, cant, moralities; from hypocrisies, and wisdom, and fears for pocket, and position in this world and the next. Well did the old painters limn it as an arrow or a wind! If it had not been as swift and darting, Earth must long ago have drifted through space untenanted – to let…

After that fevered night Lennan went to his studio at the usual hour and naturally did not do a stroke of work. He was even obliged to send away his model. The fellow had been his hairdresser, but, getting ill, and falling on dark days, one morning had come to the studio, to ask with manifest shame if his head were any good. After having tested his capacity for standing still, and giving him some introductions, Lennan had noted him down: “Five feet nine, good hair, lean face, something tortured and pathetic. Give him a turn if possible.” The turn had come, and the poor man was posing in a painful attitude, talking, whenever permitted, of the way things had treated him, and the delights of cutting hair. This morning he took his departure with the simple pleasure of one fully paid for services not rendered.

And so, walking up and down, up and down, the sculptor waited for Nell’s knock. What would happen now? Thinking had made nothing clear. Here was offered what every warm-blooded man whose Spring is past desires – youth and beauty, and in that youth a renewal of his own; what all men save hypocrites and Englishmen would even admit that they desired. And it was offered to one who had neither religious nor moral scruples, as they are commonly understood. In theory he could accept. In practice he did not as yet know what he could do. One thing only he had discovered during the night’s reflections: That those who scouted belief in the principle of Liberty made no greater mistake than to suppose that Liberty was dangerous because it made a man a libertine. To those with any decency, the creed of Freedom was – of all – the most enchaining. Easy enough to break chains imposed by others, fling his cap over the windmill, and cry for the moment at least: I am unfettered, free! Hard, indeed, to say the same to his own unfettered Self! Yes, his own Self was in the judgment-seat; by his own verdict and decision he must abide. And though he ached for the sight of her, and his will seemed paralyzed – many times already he had thought: It won’t do! God help me!

Then twelve o’clock had come, and she had not. Would ‘The Girl on the Magpie Horse’ be all he would see of her to-day – that unsatisfying work, so cold, and devoid of witchery? Better have tried to paint her – with a red flower in her hair, a pout on her lips, and her eyes fey, or languorous. Goya could have painted her!

And then, just as he had given her up, she came.

After taking one look at his face, she slipped in ever so quietly, like a very good child… Marvellous the instinct and finesse of the young when they are women!.. Not a vestige in her of yesterday’s seductive power; not a sign that there had been a yesterday at all – just confiding, like a daughter. Sitting there, telling him about Ireland, showing him the little batch of drawings she had done while she was away. Had she brought them because she knew they would make him feel sorry for her? What could have been less dangerous, more appealing to the protective and paternal side of him than she was that morning; as if she only wanted what her father and her home could not give her – only wanted to be a sort of daughter to him!

She went away demurely, as she had come, refusing to stay to lunch, manifestly avoiding Sylvia. Only then he realized that she must have taken alarm from the look of strain on his face, been afraid that he would send her away; only then perceived that, with her appeal to his protection, she had been binding him closer, making it harder for him to break away and hurt her. And the fevered aching began again – worse than ever – the moment he lost sight of her. And more than ever he felt in the grip of something beyond his power to fight against; something that, however he swerved, and backed, and broke away, would close in on him, find means to bind him again hand and foot.

In the afternoon Dromore’s confidential man brought him a note. The fellow, with his cast-down eyes, and his well-parted hair, seemed to Lennan to be saying: “Yes, sir – it is quite natural that you should take the note out of eyeshot, sir – BUT I KNOW; fortunately, there is no necessity for alarm – I am strictly confidential.”

And this was what the note contained:

“You promised to ride with me once – you DID promise, and you never have. Do please ride with me to-morrow; then you will get what you want for the statuette instead of being so cross with it. You can have Dad’s horse – he has gone to Newmarket again, and I’m so lonely. Please – to-morrow, at half-past two – starting from here. – NELL.”

To hesitate in view of those confidential eyes was not possible; it must be ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; and if ‘No,’ it would only mean that she would come in the morning instead. So he said:

“Just say ‘All right!’”

“Very good, sir.” Then from the door: “Mr. Dromore will be away till Saturday, sir.”

Now, why had the fellow said that? Curious how this desperate secret feeling of his own made him see sinister meaning in this servant, in Oliver’s visit of last night – in everything. It was vile – this suspiciousness! He could feel, almost see, himself deteriorating already, with this furtive feeling in his soul. It would soon be written on his face! But what was the use of troubling? What would come, would – one way or the other.

And suddenly he remembered with a shock that it was the first of November – Sylvia’s birthday! He had never before forgotten it. In the disturbance of that discovery he was very near to going and pouring out to her the whole story of his feelings. A charming birthday present, that would make! Taking his hat, instead, he dashed round to the nearest flower shop. A Frenchwoman kept it.

What had she?

What did Monsieur desire? “Des oeillets rouges? J’en ai de bien beaux ce soir.”

No – not those. White flowers!

“Une belle azalee?”

Yes, that would do – to be sent at once – at once!

Next door was a jeweller’s. He had never really known if Sylvia cared for jewels, since one day he happened to remark that they were vulgar. And feeling that he had fallen low indeed, to be trying to atone with some miserable gewgaw for never having thought of her all day, because he had been thinking of another, he went in and bought the only ornament whose ingredients did not make his gorge rise, two small pear-shaped black pearls, one at each end of a fine platinum chain. Coming out with it, he noticed over the street, in a clear sky fast deepening to indigo, the thinnest slip of a new moon, like a bright swallow, with wings bent back, flying towards the ground. That meant – fine weather! If it could only be fine weather in his heart! And in order that the azalea might arrive first, he walked up and down the Square which he and Oliver had patrolled the night before.

When he went in, Sylvia was just placing the white azalea in the window of the drawing-room; and stealing up behind her he clasped the little necklet round her throat. She turned round and clung to him. He could feel that she was greatly moved. And remorse stirred and stirred in him that he was betraying her with his kiss.

But, even while he kissed her, he was hardening his heart.

XI

Next day, still following the lead of her words about fresh air and his tired look, he told her that he was going to ride, and did not say with whom. After applauding his resolution, she was silent for a little – then asked:

“Why don’t you ride with Nell?”

He had already so lost his dignity, that he hardly felt disgraced in answering:

“It might bore her!”

“Oh, no; it wouldn’t bore her.”

Had she meant anything by that? And feeling as if he were fencing with his own soul, he said:

“Very well, I will.”

He had perceived suddenly that he did not know his wife, having always till now believed that it was she who did not quite know him.

If she had not been out at lunch-time, he would have lunched out himself – afraid of his own face. For feverishness in sick persons mounts steadily with the approach of a certain hour. And surely his face, to anyone who could have seen him being conveyed to Piccadilly, would have suggested a fevered invalid rather than a healthy, middle-aged sculptor in a cab.

The horses were before the door – the little magpie horse, and a thoroughbred bay mare, weeded from Dromore’s racing stable. Nell, too, was standing ready, her cheeks very pink, and her eyes very bright. She did not wait for him to mount her, but took the aid of the confidential man. What was it that made her look so perfect on that little horse – shape of limb, or something soft and fiery in her spirit that the little creature knew of?