Part 9 (1/2)
Midnight: the house seems alive in the silence: night is on the world.
The twilight sheds on the walking birds, on the falling petals, and in the rich shadow the candle burns brightly. The great bridal bed yawns, the lace pillows lie wide, the curtains hang dreamily in the hallowed light. John leans over his drawings. Once again he takes up the architect's notes.
”_The interior would be so constructed as to make it impossible to carry up the central tower. The outer walls would not be strong enough to take the large gables and roof. Although the chapel could be done easily, the ambulatory would be of no use, as it would lead probably from the kitchen offices._
”_Would have to reduce work on front facade to putting in new arched entrance. b.u.t.tresses would take the place of columns_.
”_The bow-window could remain_.
”_The roof to be heightened somewhat. The front projection would throw the front rooms into almost total darkness_.”
”But why not a light timber lantern tower?” thought John. ”Yes, that would get over the difficulty. Now if we could only manage to keep my front ... if my design for the front cannot be preserved, I might as well abandon the whole thing! And then?”
And then life seemed to him void of meaning and light. He might as well settle down and marry....
His face contracted in an expression of anger. He rose from the table, and he looked round the room. Its appearance was singularly jarring, shattering as it did his dream of the cloister, and up-building in fancy the horrid fabric of marriage and domesticity. The room seemed to him a symbol--with the great bed, voluptuous, the corpulent arm-chair, the toilet-table shapeless with muslin--of the hideous laws of the world and the flesh, ever at variance and at war, and ever defeating the indomitable aspirations of the soul. John ordered his room to be changed; and, in the face of much opposition from his mother, who declared that he would never be able to sleep there, and would lose his health, he selected a narrow room at the end of the pa.s.sage. He would have no carpet. He placed a small iron bed against the wall; two plain chairs, a screen to keep off the draught from the door, a basin-stand such as you might find in a s.h.i.+p's cabin, and a prie-dieu, were all the furniture he permitted himself.
”Oh, what a relief!” he murmured. ”Now there is line, there is definite shape. That formless upholstery frets my eye as false notes grate on my ear;” and, becoming suddenly conscious of the presence of G.o.d, he fell on his knees and prayed. He prayed that he might be guided aright in his undertaking, and that, if it were conducive to the greater honour and glory of G.o.d, he might be permitted to found a monastery, and that he might be given strength to surmount all difficulties.
Next morning, calm in mind, and happier, he went downstairs to the drawing-room, a small book in his hand, an historical work of great importance by the Venerable Bede, int.i.tled _Vita beatorum abbatum Wiremuthensium, et Girvensiuem, Benedicti Ceolfridi, Easteriwini, Sigfridi atque Hoetberti_. But he could not keep his attention fixed on the book, it appeared to him dreary and stupid. His thoughts wandered.
He thought of Kitty--of how beautiful she looked on the background of red geraniums, with the soft yellow cat on her shoulder, and he wondered which of the four great painters, Manet, Degas, Monet, or Renoir would have best rendered the brightness and lightness, the intense colour vitality of that motive for a picture. He thought of her young eyes, of the pale hands, of the sudden, sharp laugh; and finally he took up one of her novels, ”Red as a Rose is She.” He read it, and found it very entertaining.
But the evening post brought him a letter from the architect's head clerk, saying that Mr ---- was ill, had not been to the office for the last three or four days, and would not be able to go down to Suss.e.x again before the end of the month. Very much annoyed, John spent the evening thinking whom he could consult on the practicability of his last design for the front, and next, morning he was surprised at not seeing Kitty at breakfast.
”Where is Kitty?” he asked abruptly.
”She is not feeling well; she has a headache, and will not be down to-day.”
At the end of a long silence, John said:
”I think I will go into Brighton.... I must really see an architect.”
”Oh, John, dear, you are not really determined to pull the house down?”
”There is no use, mother dear, in our discussing that subject; each and all of us must do the best we can with life. And the best we can do is to try and gain heaven.”
”Breaking your mother's heart, and making yourself ridiculous before the whole county, is not the way to gain heaven.”
”Oh, if you are going to talk like that....”
John went into the drawing-room to continue his reading, but the Latin bored him even more than it had done yesterday. He took up the novel, but its enchantment was gone, and it appeared to him in its tawdry, original vulgarity. He got on a horse and rode towards the downs, and went up the steep ascents at a gallop. He stood amid the gorse at the top and viewed the great girdle of blue encircling sea, and the long string of coast towns lying below him, and far away. Lunch was on the table when he returned. After lunch, hara.s.sed by an obsession of architectural plans, he went out to sketch. But it rained, and resisting his mother's invitation to change his clothes, he sat down before the fire, damp without, and feverishly irritable within. He vacillated an hour between his translation of St Fortunatus' hymn, _Quem terra, pontus aethera_, and ”Red as a Rose is She,” which, although he thought it as reprehensible for moral as for literary reasons, he was fain to follow out to the vulgar end. But he could interest himself in neither hymn nor novel. For the authenticity of the former he now cared not a jot, and he threw the book aside vowing that its hoydenish heroine was unbearable and he would read no more.
”I never knew a more horrible place to live in than Suss.e.x. Either of two things: I must alter the architecture of this house, or I must return to Stanton College.”
”Don't talk nonsense, do you think I don't know you? you are boring yourself because Kitty is upstairs in bed, and cannot walk about with you.”
”I do not know how you contrive, mother, always to say the most disagreeable possible things; the marvellous way in which you pick out what will, at the moment, wound me most is truly wonderful. I compliment you on your skill, but I confess I am at a loss to understand why you should, as if by right, expect me to remain here to serve continuously as a target for the arrows of your scorn.”
John walked out of the room. During dinner mother and son spoke very little, and he retired early, about ten o'clock, to his room. He was in high dudgeon, but the white walls, the prie-dieu, the straight, narrow bed were pleasant to see. His room was the first agreeable impression of the day. He picked up a drawing from the table, it seemed to him awkward and slovenly. He sharpened his pencil, cleared his crow-quill pens, got out his tracing-paper, and sat down to execute a better. But he had not finished his outline sketch before he leaned back in his chair, and as if overcome by the insidious warmth of the fire, lapsed into fire-light att.i.tudes and meditations.
He looked a little backwards into the blaze; he nibbled his pencil point. Wavering light and wavering shade followed fast over the Roman profile, followed and flowed fitfully--fitfully as his thoughts. Now his thought followed out architectural dreams, and now he thought of himself, of his unhappy youth, of how he had been misunderstood, of his solitary life; a bitter, unsatisfactory life, and yet a life not wanting in an ideal--a glorious ideal. He thought how his projects had always met with failure, with disapproval, above all failure ... and yet, and yet he felt, he almost knew there was something great and n.o.ble in him.