Part 28 (2/2)

”And you have let Mrs. Ralph and Rosalie know of my summer holiday and given them to understand that I am a monster of depravity. I am exceedingly obliged to you. I have just met Rosalie in the street, and she shrank from me as if I were the reincarnation of original sin.”

”I have no doubt that in her innocent mind you are,” replied my Aunt Jessica.

The indulgent smile wherewith she used to humour my eccentricities had gone, and her face was hard and unpitying.

”I am glad I have such charitable-minded relations,” said I.

”I am a woman of the world,” my aunt retorted, ”but I think that when such things are flaunted in the face of society they become immoral.”

I rose. ”Do evil by stealth--as much as you like,” said I, ”but blush to find it fame.”

With a gesture my aunt a.s.sented to the proposition.

”On the other hand,” said I, heatedly, ”I have been doing a certain amount of good both by stealth and openly, and I naturally blush with indignation to find it accounted infamous.”

I looked narrowly into my aunt's eyes and I read in them entire disbelief in my protest. I swear, if I had proved my innocence beyond the shadow of doubt, that woman would have been grievously disappointed.

”Good-bye,” said I.

She shook hands frigidly and turned to ring the bell. A moment later--I really believe she was moved by a kindly impulse--she intercepted me at the door.

”I know you are odd and quixotic, Marcus,” she said in a softer tone. ”I hope you will do nothing rash.”

”What do you mean?” I asked in a white heat of unreasonable rage.

”I hope you won't try to repair things by marrying this--young person.”

”To make an honest woman of her, do you mean?” I asked grimly.

”Yes,” said my aunt.

Then suddenly the Devil leaped into me and stirred all the elements of unrest, anger, and longing together in a cauldron which I suppose was my heart. The result was explosion. I made a step forward with raised hands and my aunt recoiled in alarm.

”By heaven!” I cried, ”I would give the soul out of my body to marry her!”

And I stumbled out of the house like a blind man.

From that moment of dazzling revelation till now I have nursed this infinite desire. To say that I love Carlotta is to express Niagara in terms of a fountain. I crave her with everything vital in heart and brain. She is an obsession. The scent of her hair is in my nostrils, the cooing dove-notes of her voice murmur in my ears, I shut my eyes and feel the rose-petals of her lips on my cheek, the witchery of her movements dances before my eyes.

I cannot live without her. Until to-day the house was desolate enough--a ghostly sh.e.l.l of a habitation. Henceforward, without her my very life will be void. My heart has been crying for her these two weeks and I knew it not. Now I know. I could stand on my balcony and lift up my hands toward the south where she abides, and lift up my voice, and cry for her pa.s.sionately aloud. There is no infernal foolishness in the world that I could not commit tonight. The maddest dingo dog, if he could appreciate my state of being, would learn points in insanity.

It is two o'clock. I must go to sleep. I take from my shelves Epictetus, who might be expected to throw cold water on the most burning fever of the mind. I have not read far before I come across this consolatory apophthegm: ”The contest is unequal between a charming girl and a beginner in philosophy.” He is mocking me, the cold-blooded pedagogue! I throw his book across the room. But he is right. I am but a beginner in philosophy. No armour wherein my reason can invest me is of avail against Carlotta. I have no strength to smite. I am helpless.

But by heaven! Am I mad? Is not this on the contrary the sanest hour of my existence? I have lived like an automaton for forty years, and I suddenly awake to find myself a man. I don't care whether I sleep or not. I feel gloriously, exultingly young. I am but twenty. As I have never lived, I have never grown old. Life translates itself into music--a wild ”Invitation to the Waltz” by some Archangel Weber. I laugh out loud. Polyphemus, who has been regarding me with his one bantering eye from Carlotta's corner on the sofa, leaps to the ground and grotesquely curvets round the room in a series of impish hops. Heigh, old boy? Do the pulsations of the music throb in your veins, too? Come along and let us make a night of it. To the Devil with sleep. We'll go together down to the cellar and find a bottle of Pommery, and we will drink to Life and Youth and Love and the Splendour and the Joy thereof.

He utters a little cry of delight and frisks around me. In the blackness of the cellar his one eye gleams like a star and he purrs unutterable rapture. My hand pa.s.sed over his back produces a shower of sparks.

We return up the silent stairs, I carry a bottle of Pommery and a milkjug--for you shall revel, too, Polyphemus; and as I have forgotten to bring a saucer, you shall drink, as no cat has drunk before, from an old precious platter bearing the arms of the Estes of Ferrara--over which Lucrezia Borgia laughed when the world was young. It is a pity cats don't drink champagne. I would have made you to-night as drunk as Bacchus. We drink, and in the stillness the glouglou of his tongue forms a ba.s.s to the elfin notes of the Pommery in the soda-water tumbler.

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