Desperate Remedies
to hold your parasol,’ he continued, and arose to perform the operation,
necessarily leaning closely against her, to guard against the risk
of capsizing the boat as he reached his hands astern. His warm breath
touched and crept round her face like a caress; but he was apparently
only concerned with his task. She looked guilty of something when he
seated himself. He read in her face what that something was--she had
experienced a pleasure from his touch. But he flung a practical glance
over his shoulder, seized the oars, and they sped in a straight line
towards the shore.
Cytherea saw that he noted in her face what had passed in her heart,
and that noting it, he continued as decided as before. She was inwardly
distressed. She had not meant him to translate her words about returning
home so literally at the first; she had not intended him to learn her
secret; but more than all she was not able to endure the perception of
his learning it and continuing unmoved.
There was nothing but misery to come now. They would step ashore; he
would say good-night, go to London to-morrow, and the miserable She
would lose him for ever. She did not quite suppose what was the fact,
that a parallel thought was simultaneously passing through his mind.
They were now within ten yards, now within five; he was only now waiting
for a ‘smooth’ to bring the boat in. Sweet, sweet Love must not be
slain thus, was the fair maid’s reasoning. She was equal to the
occasion--ladies are--and delivered the god--
‘Do you want very much to land, Mr. Springrove?’ she said, letting her
young violet eyes pine at him a very, very little.
‘I? Not at all,’ said he, looking an astonishment at her inquiry which a
slight twinkle of his eye half belied. ‘But you do?’
‘I think that now we have come out, and it is such a pleasant evening,’
she said gently and sweetly, ‘I should like a little longer row if you
don’t mind? I’ll try to steer better than before if it makes it easier
for you. I’ll try very hard.’
It was the turn of his face to tell a tale now. He looked, ‘We
understand each other--ah, we do, darling!’ turned the boat, and pulled
back into the Bay once more.
‘Now steer wherever you will,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Never mind the
directness of the course--wherever you will.’
‘Shall it be Creston Shore?’ she said, pointing to a stretch of beach
northward from Budmouth Esplanade.
‘Creston Shore certainly,’ he responded, grasping the sculls. She took
the strings daintily, and they wound away to the left.
For a long time nothing was audible in the boat but the regular dip
of the oars, and their movement in the rowlocks. Springrove at length
spoke.
‘I must go away to-morrow,’ he said tentatively.
‘Yes,’ she replied faintly.
‘To endeavour to advance a little in my profession in London.’
‘Yes,’ she said again, with the same preoccupied softness.
‘But I shan’t advance.’
‘Why not? Architecture is a bewitching profession. They say that an
architect’s work is another man’s play.’
‘Yes. But worldly advantage from an art doesn’t depend upon mastering
it. I used to think it did; but it doesn’t. Those who get rich need have
no skill at all as artists.’
‘What need they have?’
‘A certain kind of energy which men with any fondness for art possess
very seldom indeed--an earnestness in making acquaintances, and a love
for using them. They give their whole attention to the art of
dining out, after mastering a few rudimentary facts to serve up in
conversation. Now after saying that, do I seem a man likely to make a
name?’
‘You seem a man likely to make a mistake.’
‘What’s that?’
‘To give too much room to the latent feeling which is rather common
in these days among the unappreciated, that because some remarkably
successful men are fools, all remarkably unsuccessful men are geniuses.’
‘Pretty subtle for a young lady,’ he said slowly. ‘From that remark I
should fancy you had bought experience.’
She passed over the idea. ‘Do try to succeed,’ she said, with wistful
thoughtfulness, leaving her eyes on him.
Springrove flushed a little at the earnestness of her words, and mused.
‘Then, like Cato the Censor, I shall do what I despise, to be in the
fashion,’ he said at last... ‘Well, when I found all this out that I
was speaking of, what ever do you think I did? From having already
loved verse passionately, I went on to read it continually; then I went
rhyming myself. If anything on earth ruins a man for useful occupation,
and for content with reasonable success in a profession or trade, it is
the habit of writing verses on emotional subjects, which had much better
be left to die from want of nourishment.’
‘Do you write poems now?’ she said.
‘None. Poetical days are getting past with me, according to the usual
rule. Writing rhymes is a stage people of my sort pass through, as they
pass through the stage of shaving for a beard, or thinking they are
ill-used, or saying there’s nothing in the world worth living for.’
‘Then the difference between a common man and a recognized poet is, that
one has been deluded, and cured of his delusion, and the other continues
deluded all his days.’
‘Well, there’s just enough truth in what you say, to make the remark
unbearable. However, it doesn’t matter to me now that I “meditate the
thankless Muse” no longer, but....’ He paused, as if endeavouring to
think what better thing he did.
Cytherea’s mind ran on to the succeeding lines of the poem, and their
startling harmony with the present situation suggested the fancy that he
was ‘sporting’ with her, and brought an awkward contemplativeness to her
face.
Springrove guessed her thoughts, and in answer to them simply said
‘Yes.’ Then they were silent again.
‘If I had known an Amaryllis was coming here, I should not have made
arrangements for leaving,’ he resumed.
Such levity, superimposed on the notion of ‘sport’, was intolerable to
Cytherea; for a woman seems never to see any but the serious side of her
attachment, though the most devoted lover has all the time a vague and
dim perception that he is losing his old dignity and frittering away his
time.
‘But will you not try again to get on in your profession? Try once
more; do try once more,’ she murmured. ‘I am going to try again. I have
advertised for something to do.’
‘Of course I will,’ he said, with an eager gesture and smile. ‘But we
must remember that the fame of Christopher Wren himself depended upon
the accident of a fire in Pudding Lane. My successes seem to come very
slowly. I often think, that before I am ready to live, it will be time
for me to die. However, I am trying--not for fame now, but for an easy
life of reasonable comfort.’
It is a melancholy truth for the middle classes, that in proportion
as they develop, by the study of poetry and art, their capacity for
conjugal love of the highest and purest kind, they limit the possibility
of their being able to exercise it--the very act putting out of their
power the attainment of means sufficient for marriage. The man who works
up a good income has had no time to learn love to its solemn extreme;
the man who has learnt that has had no time to get rich.
‘And if you should fail--utterly fail to get that reasonable wealth,’
she said earnestly, ‘don’t be perturbed. The truly great stand upon no
middle ledge; they are either famous or unknown.’
‘Unknown,’ he said, ‘if their ideas have been allowed to flow with
a sympathetic breadth. Famous only if they have been convergent and
exclusive.’
‘Yes; and I am afraid from that, that my remark was but discouragement,
wearing the dress of comfort. Perhaps I was not quite right in--’
‘It depends entirely upon what is meant by being truly great. But the
long and the short of the matter is, that men must stick to a thing if
they want to succeed in it--not giving way to over-much admiration
for the flowers they see growing in other people’s borders; which I am
afraid has been my case.’ He looked into the far distance and paused.
Adherence to a course with persistence sufficient to ensure success is
possible to widely appreciative minds only when there is also found
in them a power--commonplace in its nature, but rare in such
combination--the power of assuming to conviction that in the outlying
paths which appear so much more brilliant than their own, there are
bitternesses equally great--unperceived simply on account of their
remoteness.
They were opposite Ringsworth Shore. The cliffs here were formed of
strata completely contrasting with those of the further side of the Bay,
whilst in and beneath the water hard boulders had taken the place of
sand and shingle, between which, however, the sea glided noiselessly,
without breaking the crest of a single wave, so strikingly calm was the
air. The breeze had entirely died away, leaving the water of that rare
glassy smoothness which is unmarked even by the small dimples of the
least aerial movement. Purples and blues of divers shades were reflected
from this mirror accordingly as each undulation sloped east or west.
They could see the rocky bottom some twenty feet beneath them,
luxuriant with weeds of various growths, and dotted with pulpy creatures
reflecting a silvery and spangled radiance upwards to their eyes.
At length she looked at him to learn the effect of her words of
encouragement. He had let the oars drift alongside, and the boat had
come to a standstill. Everything on earth seemed taking a contemplative
rest, as if waiting to hear the avowal of something from his lips. At
that instant he appeared to break a resolution hitherto zealously kept.
Leaving his seat amidships he came and gently edged himself down beside
her upon the narrow seat at the stern.
She breathed more quickly and warmly: he took her right hand in his own
right: it was not withdrawn. He put his left hand behind her neck till
it came round upon her left cheek: it was not thrust away. Lightly
pressing her, he brought her face and mouth towards his own; when, at
this the very brink, some unaccountable thought or spell within him
suddenly made him halt--even now, and as it seemed as much to himself as
to her, he timidly whispered ‘May I?’
Her endeavour was to say No, so denuded of its flesh and sinews that its
nature would hardly be recognized, or in other words a No from so near
the affirmative frontier as to be affected with the Yes accent. It was
thus a whispered No, drawn out to nearly a quarter of a minute’s length,
the O making itself audible as a sound like the spring coo of a pigeon
on unusually friendly terms with its mate. Though conscious of her
success in producing the kind of word she had wished to produce, she at
the same time trembled in suspense as to how it would be taken. But the
time available for doubt was so short as to admit of scarcely more than
half a pulsation: pressing closer he kissed her. Then he kissed her
again with a longer kiss.
It was the supremely happy moment of their experience. The ‘bloom’ and
the ‘purple light’ were strong on the lineaments of both. Their hearts
could hardly believe the evidence of their lips.
‘I love you, and you love me, Cytherea!’ he whispered.
She did not deny it; and all seemed well. The gentle sounds around them
from the hills, the plains, the distant town, the adjacent shore, the
water heaving at their side, the kiss, and the long kiss, were all ‘many
a voice of one delight,’ and in unison with each other.
But his mind flew back to the same unpleasant thought which had been
connected with the resolution he had broken a minute or two earlier. ‘I
could be a slave at my profession to win you, Cytherea; I would work at
the meanest, honest trade to be near you--much less claim you as mine; I
would--anything. But I have not told you all; it is not this; you don’t