Part 33 (1/2)
”Of course I'm glad to see you.”
”Then why don't you kiss me?” she said, jumping on his knees and throwing her arms about his neck.
”What a wicked little girl you are!”
”Wicked! It is you who make me wicked, my own darling Mike. I ran away from home for you, all for you; I should have done it for n.o.body else.... I ran away the day--the day before yesterday. My aunt was annoying me for going out in the lane with some young fellows. I said nothing for a long time. At last I jumps up, and I says that I would stand it no longer; I told her straight; I says you'll never see me again, never no more; I'll go away to London to some one who is awfully nice. And of course I meant you, my own darling Mike.” And the room rang with girlish laughter.
”But where are you staying?” said Mike, seriously alarmed.
”Where am I staying? I'm staying with a young lady friend of mine who lives in Drury Lane, so I'm not far from you. You can come and see me,” she said, and her face lit with laughter. ”We are rather hard up. If you could lend me a sovereign I should be so much obliged.”
”Yes, I'll lend you a sovereign, ten if you like; but I hope you'll go back to your aunt. I know the world better than you, my dear little Flossy, and I tell you that Drury Lane is no place for you.”
”I couldn't go back to aunt; she wouldn't take me back; besides, I want to remain in London for the present.”
Before she left Mike filled the astonished child's hands with money, and as she paused beneath his window he threw some flowers towards her, and listened to her laughter ringing through the pale morning.
Now the night was a fading thing, and the town and Thames lay in the faint blue glamour of the dawn. Another day had begun, and the rattle of a morning cart was heard. Mike shut the window, hesitating between throwing himself out of it, and going to bed.
”As long as I can remember, I have had these fits of depression, but now they never leave me; I seem more than ever incapable of shaking them off.”
Then he thought of the wickedness he had done, not of the wickedness of his life--that seemed to him unlimited,--but of the wickedness accomplished within the last few hours, and he wondered if he had done worse in cheating the young man at cards or giving the money he had won to Flossy. ”Having tasted of money, she will do anything to obtain more. I suppose she is hopelessly lost, and will go from bad to worse. But really I don't see that I am wholly responsible. I advised her to go home, I could do no more. But I will get her aunt's address and write to her. Or I will inform some of the philanthropic people.”
A few days after, he came in contact with some. Their fervour awakened some faint interest in him, and now, as weary of playing at Mephistopheles as he was of playing at Faust, he followed the occupation of his new friends. But his attempts at reformation were vain, they wore out the soul, and left it only more hopeless than before; and he remembered John Norton's words, that faith is a gift from G.o.d which we must cherish, or He will take it from us utterly; and sighing, Mike recognized the great truth underlying a primitive mode of expression. He had drifted too far into the salt sea of unfaith and cynicism, ever to gain again the fair if illusive sh.o.r.es of aspiration--maybe illusive, but no more illusive than the cruel sea that swung him like a wreck in its current, feeding upon him as the sea feeds. Nor could he make surrender of his pa.s.sion of life, saying--
”I see into the heart of things, I know the truth, and in the calm possession of knowledge am able to divest myself of my wretched individuality, and so free myself of all evils, seeking in absorption, rather than by violent ends, to rid myself of consciousness.”
But this, the religion of the truly wise, born in the sublime East, could find no roothold in Mike Fletcher--that type and epitome of Western grossness and l.u.s.t of life. Religions being a synthesis of moral aspirations, developed through centuries, are mischievous and untrue except in the circ.u.mstances and climates in which they have grown up, and native races are decimated equally by the importation of a religion or a disease. True it is that Christianity was a product of the East, but it was an accidental and inferior offshoot from the original religion of the race, not adapted to their needs, and fitted only for exportation. And now, tainted and poisoned by a thousand years of habitation in the West, Christianity returns to the East, virulent and baneful as small-pox, a distinctly demoralizing influence, having power only to change excellent Buddhists into prost.i.tutes and thieves. And in such a way, according to the same laws, Mike had observed, since he had adopted pessimism, certain unmistakable signs in himself of moral degeneracy.
He had now exhausted all Nature's remedies, save one--Drink, and he could not drink. Drink has often rescued men, in straits of mental prostration, from the charcoal-pan, the pistol, and the river. But Mike could not drink, and Nature sought in vain to re-adjust again, and balance anew, forces which seemed now irretrievably disarranged.
All the old agencies were exhausted, and the new force, which chance, co-operating with natural disposition, had introduced, was dominant in him. Against it women were now powerless, and he turned aside from offered love.
It is probable that the indirect influences to which we have been subjected before birth outweigh the few direct influences received by contagion with present life. But the direct influences, slight as they may be, are worth considering, they being the only ones of which we have any exact knowledge, even if in so doing we exaggerate them; and in striving to arrive at a just estimation of the forces that had brought about his present mind, Mike was in the habit of giving prominence to the thought of the demoralizing influence of the introduction of Eastern pessimism into a distinctly Western nature.
He remembered very well indeed the shock he had received when he had heard John say for the first time that it was better that human life should cease.
”For man's history, what is it but the history of crime? Man's life, what is it but a disgraceful episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets? Let us be thankful that time shall obliterate the abominable, and that once again the world shall roll pure through the silence of the universe.”
So John had once spoken, creating consternation in Mike's soul, casting poison upon it. But John had buried himself in Catholicism for refuge from this awful creed, leaving Mike to perish in it. Then Mike wondered if he should have lived and died a simple, honourable, G.o.d-fearing man, if he had not been taken out of the life he was born in, if he had married in Ireland, for instance, and driven cattle to market, as did his ancestors.
One day hearing the organ singing a sweet anthem, he stayed to listen. It being midsummer, the doors of the church were open, the window was in his view, and the congregation came streaming out into the suns.h.i.+ne of the courts, some straying hither and thither, taking note of the various monuments. In such occupation he spoke to one whom he recognized at once as a respectable shop-girl. He took her out to dinner, dazzled and delighted her with a present of jewelry, enchanted her with a.s.surances of his love. But when her manner insinuated an inclination to yield, he lost interest, and wrote saying he was forced to leave town. Soon after, he wrote to a certain actress proposing to write a play for her. The proposal was not made with a view to deceiving her, but rather in the intention of securing their liaison against caprice, by involving in it various mutual advantages. For three weeks they saw each other frequently; he wondered if he loved her, he dreamed of investing his talents in her interest, and so rebuilding the falling edifice of his life.
”I could crush an affection out of my heart as easily as I could kill a fly,” she said.
”Ah!” he said, ”my heart is as empty as a desert, and no affection shall enter there again.”
An appointment was made to go out to supper, but he wrote saying he was leaving town to be married. Nor was his letter a lie. After long hesitations he had decided on this step, and it seemed to him clear that no one would suit him so well as Mrs. Byril. By marrying an old mistress, he would save himself from all the boredom of a honeymoon.
And sitting in the drawing-room, in the various pauses between numerous licentious stories, they discussed their matrimonial project.
Dear Emily, who said she suffered from loneliness and fear of the future as acutely as he, was anxious to force the matter forward. But her eagerness begot reluctance in Mike, and at the end of a week, he felt that he would sooner take his razor and slice his head off, than live under the same roof with her.
In Regent Street one evening he met Frank Escott. After a few preliminary observations Mike asked him if he had heard lately from Lord Mount Rorke. Frank said that he had not seen him. All was over between them, but his uncle had, however, arranged to allow him two hundred a year. He was living at Mortlake, ”a nice little house; our neighbour on the left is a city clerk at a salary of seventy pounds a year, on the right is a chemist's shop; a very nice woman is the chemist's wife; my wife and the chemist's wife are fast friends. We go over and have tea with them, and they come and have tea with us.