Part 4 (2/2)
Lily did not cry. Her indignation was vented in broken phrases, the meaning of which she did not seem to realize, and so jarred and shaken were her nerves that without being aware of it her talk branched into observations on her mother, her home life, the convent, and the disappointments of childhood. So incoherently did she speak that for a moment Mike feared her brain was affected, and his efforts to lead her to speak of the present were fruitless. But suddenly, waxing calm, her inner nature s.h.i.+ning through the eyes like light through porcelain, she said--
”I was wrong to come here, but I imagined men different. We know so little of the world in the convent.... Ah, I should have stayed there. It may be but a poor delusion, but it is better than such wickedness.”
”But I love you.”
”Love me! ... You say you have sought love; we find love in contemplation and desire of higher things. I am wanting in experience, but I know that love lives in thought, and not in violent pa.s.sion; I know that a look from the loved one on entering a room, a touch of a hand at most will suffice, and I should have been satisfied to have seen your windows, and I should have gone away, my heart stored with impressions of you, and I should have been happy for weeks in the secret possession of such memories. So I have always understood love; so we understood love in the convent.”
They were standing face to face in the faint twilight and scent of the bedroom. Through the gauze blind the river floated past, decorative and grand; the great hay-boats rose above the wharfs and steamers; one lay in the sun's silver casting a black shadow; a barge rowed by one man drifted round and round in the tide.
”When I knelt in the choir I lifted my heart to the saint I loved.
How far was He from me? Millions of miles!--and yet He was very near.
I dreamed of meeting Him in heaven, of seeing Him come robed in white with a palm in His hand, and then in a little darkness and dimness I felt Him take me to His breast. I loved to read of the miracles He performed, and one night I dreamed I saw Him in my cell--or was it you?”
All anger was gone from her face, and it reflected the play of her fancy. ”I used to pray to you to come down and speak to me.”
”And now,” said Mike, smiling, ”now that I have come to you, now that I call you, now that I hold my arms to you--you the bride-elect--now that the hour has come, shall I not possess you?”
”Do you think you can gain love by clasping me to your bosom? My love, though separated from me by a million miles, is nearer to me than yours has ever been.”
”Did you not speak of me as the lover of your prayer, and you said that in ecstasy the nuns--and indeed it must be so--exchange a gibbeted saint for some ideal man? Give yourself; make this afternoon memorable.”
”No; good-bye! Remember your promises. Come; I am going.”
”I must not lose you,” he cried, drunk with her beauty and doubly drunk with her sensuous idealism. ”May I not even kiss you?”
”Well, if you like--once, just here,” she said, pointing where white melted to faint rose.
Mastered, he followed her down the long stairs; but when they pa.s.sed into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably. The river was now tinted with setting light, the bal.u.s.trade of Waterloo Bridge showed like lace-work, the gla.s.s roofing of Charing Cross station was golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splas.h.i.+ng of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The ”Citizen” pa.s.sed! She was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. Then the eye separated them. An old lady making her way down the deck, a young man in gray clothes, a red soldier leaning over the rail, the captain walking on the bridge.
Mike called a hansom; a few seconds more and she would pa.s.s from him into London. He saw the horse's hooves, saw the cab appear and disappear behind other cabs; it turned a corner, and she was gone.
CHAPTER III
Seven hours had elapsed since he had parted from Lily Young, and these seven hours he had spent in restaurants and music-halls, seeking in dissipation surcease of sorrow and disappointment. He had dined at Lubi's, and had gone on with Lord Muchross and Lord Snowdown to the Royal, and they had returned in many hansoms and with many courtesans to drink at Lubi's. But his heart was not in gaiety, and feeling he could neither break a hat joyously nor allow his own to be broken good-humouredly, nor even sympathize with d.i.c.ky, the driver, who had not been sober since Monday, he turned and left the place.
”This is why fellows marry,” he said, when he returned home, and sat smoking in the shadows--he had lighted only one lamp--depressed by the loneliness of the apartment. And more than an hour pa.s.sed before he heard Frank's steps. Frank was in evening dress; he opened his cigarette-case, lighted a cigarette, and sat down willing to be amused. Mike told him the entire story with gestures and descriptive touches; on the right was the bed with its curtains hanging superbly, on the left the great hay-boats filling the window; and by insisting on the cruelest aspects, he succeeded in rendering it almost unbearable. But Frank had dined well, and as Lizzie had promised to come to breakfast he was in excellent humour, and on the whole relished the tale. He was duly impressed and interested by the subtlety of the fancy which made Lily tell how she used to identify her ideal lover while praying to Him, Him with the human ideal which had led her from the cloister, and which she had come to seek in the world. He was especially struck with, and he admired the conclusion of, the story, for Mike had invented a dramatic and effective ending.
”Well-nigh mad, drunk with her beauty and the sensuous charm of her imagination, I threw my arms about her. I felt her limbs against mine, and I said, 'I am mad for you; give yourself to me, and make this afternoon memorable.' There was a faint smile of reply in her eyes. They laughed gently, and she said, 'Well, perhaps I do love you a little.'”
Frank was deeply impressed by Mike's tact and judgement, and they talked of women, discussing each shade of feminine morality through the smoke of innumerable cigarettes; and after each epigram they looked in each other's eyes astonished at their genius and originality. Then Mike spoke of the paper and the articles that would have to be written on the morrow. He promised to get to work early, and they said good-night.
When Frank left Southwick two years ago and pursued Lizzie Baker to London, he had found her in straitened circ.u.mstances and unable to obtain employment. The first night he took her out to dinner and bought her a hat, on the second he bought her a gown, and soon after she became his mistress. Henceforth his days were devoted to her; they were seen together in all popular restaurants, and in the theatres. One day she went to see some relations, and Frank had to dine alone. He turned into Lubini's, but to his annoyance the only table available was one which stood next where Mike Fletcher was dining. ”That fellow dining here,” thought Frank, ”when he ought to be digging potatoes in Ireland.” But the accident of the waiter seeking for a newspaper forced him to say a few words, and Mike talked so agreeably that at the end of dinner they went out together and walked up and down, talking on journalism and women.
Suddenly the last strand of Frank's repugnance to make a friend of Mike broke, and he asked him to come up to his rooms and have a drink. They remained talking till daybreak, and separated as friends in the light of the empty town. Next day they dined together, and a few days after Frank and Lizzie breakfasted with Mike at his lodgings. But during the next month they saw very little of him, and this pause in the course of dining and journalistic discussion, indicating, as Frank thought it did, a coolness on Mike's part, determined the relation of these two men. When they ran against each other in the corridor of a theatre, Frank eagerly b.u.t.ton-holed Mike, and asked him why he had not been to dine at Lubini's, and not suspecting that he dined there only when he was in funds, was surprised at his evasive answers. Mistress and lover were equally anxious to know why they had not been able to find him in any of the usual haunts; he urged a press of work, but it transpired he was hara.s.sed by creditors, and was looking out for rooms. Frank told him he was thinking of moving into the Temple.
”Lucky fellow! I wish I could afford to live there.”
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