Robert Orange
little, the sense of the actual bodily existence of the woman herself.
It is true that he thought of her always as some one modestly beautiful,
of childish form, with a face like a water-nymph's--imperious, magical,
elusive, yet, whenever he found himself in her presence, she seemed
further away than when they were, in fact, apart. The kiss he had given
her on the day of their betrothal had been as strange, indefinable, and
irrealisable as the passing of one hour into the next. There had been
the time before he kissed her, there was the time afterwards, but the
transition had been so swift, and so little recognised, so inevitable,
that while it drew both their lives down deep into the wild, pitiless
surge of human feeling, she still remained more dearly and completely
his by intuition than when he held her--a true woman--in his arms. The
moral training of a lifetime, the unceasing, daily discipline of a mind
indulgent to others, but most severe with itself, had given him a
self-mastery in impulse and desire which, although the aspect of affairs
had changed, he could not easily, or even willingly, relax. His soul
drew back from its new privileges, sweet as they were--and he was too
honest to deny their overpowering sweetness--they seemed like the
desecration of a most sacred thought. Vainly he reasoned, vainly he
admitted the folly of such scruples. They remained. Asceticism is a
faithful quality. It is won by slow and painful stages, with bitter
distress and mortifying tears, but once really gained, the losing is
even harder than the struggle for its acquisition.
And so the young man found himself in that hard position when judgment
and prejudice stand opposed so utterly that victory either way must mean
a lasting regret. Perhaps he was not the first bridegroom who felt
loath, on the eve of his marriage, to change the delicate, almost
ethereal tenderness of betrothed lovers for the close and intimate
association of husband and wife. The one relationship has something in
it immaterial, exquisite, and unearthly, a bond invisible and yet as
potent as the winds we cannot see and the melodies we only hear. The
other, with its profound appeals to mortality, its demands upon all that
is strongest in affection and eternal in courage, its irreparableness,
suffering, and constancy, might, indeed, have the grandeur of all human
tragedy, and the dignity of a holy state; but that it could ever be so
beautiful as the love which is a silent influence was to Robert then, at
least, an inconceivable idea. He felt upon him and around him, in his
flesh and in his spirit, in the air and in the whole world, the
all-enveloping shadow of remorse. The dormant possibilities of his own
fanatical nature rose up before him--pale, inarticulate fiercenesses
crushed so long, and now trembling eagerly under his breath at the
prospect of a little more liberty in loving. A suspicion that already he
loved perhaps too well and far too passionately thrilled through his
conscience, and tortured a heart to whom thought was a refuge and
feeling a martyrdom.
Reckage, watching Robert from a corner of the room, grew irritated at
the silence, and wondered, with a cruel and jealous curiosity, what was
passing in his mind. He wondered whether he was praying. An impulse,
which had something in it of brute fury, urged him to tear open that
still face and drag the thoughts behind it to the light. Why was it
that one could never, by any sense, enter into another's spirit?
The same torturing mystery had often disturbed him during the
half-hours--outwardly placid and commonplace--which he spent, out of
etiquette, with his future bride. She, too, retired behind the veil of
her countenance to live a hidden life that he could never hope to join.
How lonely was companionship in these conditions, and how desolate
marriage!
He could not resist the temptation to break in, with a touch of crude
satire, upon his friend's solitude.
"What is the matter?" he exclaimed, "are you hungry?"
"No," said Robert, so well accustomed to such violent jars that they
could no longer disturb him; "I was only thinking...."
"About what?"
"All sorts of things."
Reckage turned pale from dissatisfied inquisitiveness.
"I think, too," he answered, "but I can throw out a word now and again."
Then, making the remark that he was not dressed for dinner, he left the
room.
CHAPTER V
The dinner, in the ordering of which the host had expended all his
gastronomical knowledge and much anxiety, seemed long. Orange found
himself opposite the famous portrait of "Edwyn, Lord Reckage of
Almouth," which represents that nobleman elaborately dressed, reclining
on a grassy bank by a spring of water, with a wooded landscape, a
sunrise, and a squire holding two horses in the distance. Robert
studied, and remembered always, every detail of that singular
composition. The warrior's shield, with its motto "_Magica sympathia_,"
his fat white hands, velvet breeches, steel cuirass, and stiff lace
collar remained for days a grotesque image before his mind. He traced,
too, a certain resemblance between Reckage and that ancestor--they both
wore pointed red beards, both were fair of skin, both had a dreaming
violence in their blue eyes.
"You must have some pheasant," said his lordship, at last. "You are
eating nothing. And that Burgundy, you know, is unique of its kind. It
was a present from the Emperor of the French to mamma. Her people were
civil to him when he was regarded as a sort of adventurer. And he never
forgot it. He's a very decent fellow. I dined with him at the
Tuileries--did I mention it?"
Robert replied that he fancied he had heard of the occurrence.
"Well," continued his friend, "I might have enjoyed that experience, but
I was feeling depressed at the time; a lot of the depression went under
the influence of frivolous talk, military music, and champagne. Yet, all
the same, do these things really count for much? I felt just as wretched
afterwards."
The glimpse he had obtained that afternoon of Sara de Treverell--Sara
flushed with agitation, very bright in her glance, exceedingly subtle in
her smile, had stirred a great tenderness he had once felt for that
young lady. The news, too, that she had been chosen as a bride by the
prudent, rich, and most important Duke of Marshire made his lordship
feel that perhaps he had committed a blunder in not having secured her,
during her first season, for himself. He feared that he had lost an
opportunity; and this reflection, while it lowered temporarily his
self-esteem, placed Sara on a dangerous eminence. She would be a
duchess--one of the great duchesses. Little Sara!
"She was looking extraordinarily handsome," he exclaimed. "Of course she
means to take him. But she liked me at one time. I am speaking of Sara
de Treverell. Marshire is by way of being a stick. Who could have
imagined him going in for a high-spirited, brilliant girl like Sara?"
Formerly he had always spoken of Sara as a clever little devil, but
Robert showed no surprise at the new adjective.
"Brilliant!" repeated his lordship. "Don't you agree?"
"Absolutely. She is the most brilliant girl in London."
"But heartless," said his lordship pathetically; "she hasn't one bit of
heart."
"There I don't agree with you. Of course she is strange and rather
wild."
"_Tete-montee._ And then the Asiatic streak!"
"True. The fiercest wind cannot take the angles out of the bough of a
tree an inch thick. You may break it, but you cannot destroy its angles.
That is so, no doubt, with one's racial tendencies. The girl is wilful
and romantic. It will be very bad for them both if there is no love on
her side. She is capable, I should say, of very deep affection."
"She did like me," said his lordship, with emphasis and
satisfaction--"she really did. And I wouldn't encourage it. I had no
notion then of marrying. Her singularity, too, made me cautious. I
couldn't believe in her. She talked like an actress in a play. I felt
that she was not the woman for me. Essentially she thought as I did,
and seemed to comprehend my embarrassment. The worst of it is now--I may
have been wrong."
"I doubt it. You may be sure, on the whole, that your instincts were
right."
"Still, there is a distinct misgiving. I was drawn toward her, and, when
I made up my mind to put an end to the matter, our friendship was
severely strained. But it was not broken. Something I saw in her face
to-day makes me sure that it was not broken."
While he was speaking the servant entered with a salver, and on the
salver was a note. The address showed Sara's large, defiant
hand-writing. Reckage, who had a touch of superstition in his nature,
changed colour and even hesitated before he broke the seal. The
coincidence seemed extraordinary and fatal. What did it mean? He read
the letter with an irresistible feeling of proud delight.
"20A, ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, W.
"MY DEAR BEAUCLERK,--Will you lunch with us to-morrow at two o'clock?
Papa has invited a friend--a dreadful, boring friend--who has been
absent from England for five years. Do you know the man? Sir Piers
Harding? But I want some one to encourage me. You? Do!
"Yours sincerely,
"S. L. V. DE TREVERELL.
"P.S.--I am so happy about you and Agnes. Be kind to her always? Won't
you?"
All his life he had found a difficulty in understanding women--the
significance of their words, the precise translation of their glances,
and their motives generally. He had nourished his experience on French
novels; he had corrected it by various friendships; he had crowned it
with the confession that one could never tell what the sex meant one way
or the other. But this fact remained--he was a coxcomb, and, whenever he
owned himself puzzled, it was on a single ground only--how seriously was
the lady at stake affected by his charms? Feeling, as he did, the
infinite inequality that existed between men, and conscious of his own
reputation as a leader among them, it was not in his conscience to
encourage any woman whom he did not find especially attractive or
useful. Why spoil her chances? Why make her discontented with the
average male creature? Had Sara written to him in ordinary
circumstances, inviting him, after some months of mutual coldness, to
lunch, he would have replied, with sorrowful dignity, that it was wiser
to leave things as they were. But the case had altered. The future
Duchess of Marshire was a personage. He made no secret of his admiration
for all people of high rank. They represented influence and traditions;
what was more, they could exercise a certain power, and introduce, when
necessary, the ideas upon which fresh traditions could be based. A
friend like Sara de Treverell with her new honours made life itself
more rich to him. When he remembered that she was young, handsome,
enthusiastic, and impulsive, his pleasure thrilled into something of
genuine passion. He told himself that he had always been fond of the
girl; that hundreds of times he had felt the hardness of his scrupulous
position where she was concerned. If he had been asked what especially
he conceived his own duty to be now, he would have said that it was not
for him to hang back when she showed a coming spirit. But this was not
all. He was a gamester; he was ambitious.
"This is very odd," said he, reading Sara's note for the second time,
"very odd. There's no harm in showing it to you, because there is
nothing in it."
He gave it to his friend, and ate, pleasantly, while Orange glanced down
the page. His soul's wish was to be left alone. The effort of forcing
himself--not to affect but honestly to feel--an interest in Reckage's
conversation had proved successful. He had indeed put aside his own
thoughts, and followed, with the exaggerated earnestness of a mind