On her side also, Sanchia sincerely liked her old protectress, and found Charles Street agree with her. There was a primordial air about it, which made habits seem like laws of Nature; an absence of fuss which soothed her nerves, and did much better than slay her monsters for her, when it exposed them for no monsters at all, but simple, everyday, rather tiresome concomitants of our makeshift existence.
"You will, of course, marry Nevile Ingram,"--thus Lady Maria disposed of the most dread of all monsters--"because it is, on the whole, more agreeable to avoid scandal, and because it is certainly more decent to pay one"s bills. Long credit is a mistake; but you found it a convenience, I suppose; and now you are in funds, you will, of course, get out of debt.
If only that you may run into it again at need, you will draw a cheque.
Now, you had eight years of it at Wanless, you tell me? Very well, my dear, that must be written off Society"s books. Meanwhile, the more you see of amusing, emanc.i.p.ated people like Alexis Morosine the better."
This man was understood to be a Pole in exile, though his t.i.tle to that distinction could only have been on the side of the distaff, since his father"s descent from a ducal family of Venice was not denied; but neither nationality nor expatriation was very obvious upon him. At first sight you would have supposed him a sallow Englishman, spare of flesh and too narrow in the chest; you might have put down his dead complexion and his leanness to India or Jamaica, and been inclined to attribute his dry cynicism to the same superfervent experience. But presently you would be alive to his hungry mind, to his hungry, raging air, his restless habit and large way of looking at circ.u.mstance--as if by no possibility could it be any concern of his. And then the trick he had of considering our people as Europeans, of dividing the races of the world by continents rather than kingdoms; and that other of judging all cases, including yours and his own, upon their merits--such traits, to an experienced mind, would have established him for a foreigner, one of a people who had had too much elbowing for breath to have time or s.p.a.ce for prejudice or minute cla.s.sification. Superficially, to be sure, he was English enough--from his speech to his tailoring; and his phlegm (of which we boast) was una.s.sailable. n.o.body knew much of his history; Bill Chevenix used to say that he was born whole, and thirty, out of an egg dropped upon our coasts by a migratory roc; that he stepped out, exquisitely dressed, and ordered a whisky and Apollinaris at the nearest buffet. This, said Chevenix, was his ordinary breakfast. When Sanchia objected that he might have stepped out in the afternoon, he replied that it also formed his usual tea, and, so far as he knew, was the staple of all his meals. "And cigarettes," he added. "But he would have had those with him. I bet you what you like he came out smoking."
It was certain that he had been to Eton and to Oxford, and was member of two good clubs. He was extremely rich, and he was by profession, said Chevenix, a prince. He had no territory, and was not apparently scheming to get any, either of his own or other people"s. n.o.body at the Foreign Office believed that he corresponded with any intransigent; he used to go there often and exchange urbane gossip with under-secretaries. He lodged in Duke Street, gave dinner-parties at the Bachelors, had a large visiting-list, and was, as they say, always "about." One saw him everywhere--in the city, in Mayfair drawing-rooms, at Kensington tea- parties, and at Lambeth Palace. Chevenix swore that he had met him at a Church Congress--and the only answer to that was that if Chevenix had truly been there to see, Morosine might well have been there to be seen.
But this catholicity of experience was characteristic of the man; his attraction to the nice observer lay precisely in that, that he was a nomad, unappeased and unappeasable, ranging hungrily. There was a probability, too, that below a surface exquisitely calm there lurked corrosive tooth and claw. Here are sufficient elements of danger to draw any woman; so Sanchia found herself presently drawn.
He came to Charles Street one evening late in November, to what Lady Maria called a little party. There was an autumn session that year, and London full. To her little party, then, came a solid wedge of three hundred people into rooms capable of holding with comfort fifty.
Chevenix was by Sanchia"s side at the top of the stair, chatting pleasantly about every new-comer, when he suddenly stopped. "Hulloa," he said, "here"s Morosine, as smooth as a gla.s.s stiletto. He"ll amuse you.
I"ll introduce him."
Sanchia followed the leading of his eyes. She saw a tall and slim young man, inordinately thin, slightly bald, with a moustache like a rake, and heavy-browed, mournful eyes, pushing his way slowly upstairs. Without effort, his hands behind his back, working from the shoulders, he made room for himself, but so quietly that n.o.body seemed to observe how aggressively he was at it. Occasionally some ousted dowager turned redly upon him, or it might be some pushing gentleman smothered an oath as he faced the attack. But Morosine"s mournful eyes gazed calmly their fill, seemed to be communing beyond the surging guests, beyond the wall, with the eternal stars, and, without faltering, the narrow frame glided forward into the s.p.a.ce which indignation had cleared. Sanchia, above him, and out of the game, was highly amused.
"He"s very selfish, your friend. He takes care of himself; but no one seems to know it."
Chevenix chuckled. "That"s the beauty of Alexis. But, as he asks, whom else should he take care of? It"s not queer if the Poles have learned that lesson."
"Oh," said Sanchia. "Is he a Pole?" Jack Senhouse had been in Poland.
"Half of him is hungry Pole. The other part is bad Italian--pampered Italian, fed for generations on oil and polenta. He"s always dining out, but he eats nothing because the Pole is feeding on the Venetian all day."
Then he told her about the miraculous birth, the whisky and Apollinaris, and concluded, "Oh, he"ll amuse you vastly. Stay where you are. I"ll net him at the top."
Presently after she saw the process. It consisted in violent effort on Chevenix"s part, languid attention from the other. Morosine dreamed over the speaker as if he were a lost soul. Then, his consideration being caught, he looked about him, and presently fixed upon her his melancholy eyes. She felt a little shiver, the sensation of goose-flesh in the spine --not unpleasantly. It was as if a light wind had ruffled her blood.
Shortly afterwards Morosine was bowing before her. In this, perhaps, he betrayed himself; his hat covered his heart, he inclined from the hips, and his head bent with his body. An Englishman bows with the head only, and does not nowadays carry his hat upstairs.
He began to talk quietly and at once, and maintained a perfectly even flow of comment, reflection, anecdote, reminiscence, and sudden, flashing turns of inference. He seemed always to be searching after general principles, cosmic laws, and to be always jumping at them, testing them, finding them not comprehensive enough, and letting them drift behind him as he pursued his search. She remarked on this afterwards to Lady Maria, who said that principles were the last thing to interest Morosine. He had none! at all, said Lady Maria, unless his own immediate gratification was a principle; and perhaps with men you might almost say that it was.
Chevenix remained, chuckling and interjecting here and there an exclamation, just (as he told her later) to "start the chap on his meander," and presently betook himself elsewhere. It was then to be observed that Morosine allowed himself to drift into the discussion of matters not usually subjects of ordinary conversation; but he did so without consciousness, and therefore without offence. Sanchia neither disapproved nor felt uncomfortable. They were, moreover, interesting, and rather material.
It began with Poland, a country which, the less it existed politically, he said, was the better to live in, and be of. We live by our emotions, the beasts by their appet.i.tes--a material distinction. Now, the condition of the Poles was perfectly adapted to the quickening of the emotional parts.
Shorten time, you make love a precious ecstasy; restrict liberty, freedom is a l.u.s.t--none the worse for being lawful. No Pole knows how long he may have to live: Russia or phthisis will have him late or soon. What he pursues, then, must be fleeting--imagine with what rapture he takes it to his breast! with what frenzy he guards it, never knowing when it will be required of him again. Feverish? (This was upon a remark from her.) Yes, and why not? Are not dreams more vivid than waking life? Can you gallop your material horse as your courser of the mind? Better to burn than to rust. That"s the secret of life--which all the laws of bureaucrats are directed to destroy. The establishments want to see us as fixed as themselves. They are tentacled, stationary creatures, feeding at ease.
They would have us handy of access, falsely secure, so that they can fasten on us one by one and suck our juices. But the world is changing, thrones and churches are slackening in their hold. Men are discovering how short a time they have to live, and that eternity is more than questionable. A mild Epicureanism is gaining ground. Instincts founded on the patriarchal system must give way to that. "Have you ever considered,"
he asked abruptly, "that the flocks and herds of the Semitic patriarch are the sole cause of the moral code which we still profess? Thou shalt not steal. Why not? Because you injure the patriarch. Not murder? You might attack one of his family. You have the habit in England of tracing prejudices to the Feudal System: believe me, there is hardly anything in Europe so modern. I should date at 4000 B.C. nearly all our present conventions, from the British Sunday to the law of conspiracy. So long as you say that property is sacred, you uplift the Patriarch and lose sight of the man."
Sanchia, reminded of Senhouse--a Senhouse with his tongue dipped in vinegar--objected that society may have demanded some of these laws in defiance of the engrossing patriarch; but Morosine shook his head.
"Society is the patriarch"s weapon. Society is a syndicate of patriarchs who cannot live unless all men are enslaved. Man is not by nature gregarious; he"s solitary, like all the n.o.bler beasts. Wolves and dogs hunt in herds, but not the great cats; oxen and buffaloes, but not elephants; rooks, but not eagles; bream, never salmon. And the time is not so very far when man will discover why it is that he is herded and marshalled hither and thither by police, legislatures, and monstrous a.s.semblies called armies or fleets. He has but to know it to abolish these things; they fade like dreams in the morning. But hitherto everything has been banded to make his sleep secure--his religion, his cupidity, his timidity, his affections. Religion tells him it is wrong to love without the Church; patriotism, that it is glorious to bleed in making other men bleed; timidity, that property keeps the wolf from the door; appet.i.te, that under cover of the law you may devour your neighbour and fear no indigestion. Finally, there are the affections of a man which have been so guided that they see the aged more venerable than the young, the old thing more sacred than the new "Woodman, spare that tree," they cry: "it dates from at least 2000 B.C." Because old wine is good, they argue, old laws must needs be. As well might a man say, Because I relish old wine, I will love only old women. And so we go on!" He shrugged and broke off--to talk shrewdly of books. They got to Leopardi, from him to Dante; he heard of her studies at the British Museum, and hoped he might meet her there. She reads there often? Mostly in the afternoons? The light was bad: he usually devoted his mornings to what work he had there. He was studying Persian, he said, but fitfully, as the mood took him.
So far he had scarcely looked at her, but had talked out his monologue as if he had been alone, clasping one thin ankle, staring wide-eyed over the heads of guests, occasionally, when he was vehement, throwing his head up, shooting his words at the ceiling as if they had been Greek fire. Now, as he got up to leave her, his eyes dwelt earnestly on her. "It will be a pleasure, to which I shall aspire--that of meeting you again. There or elsewhere."
She thanked him as she gave him her hand. Excitement made her eyes bright, mantled her cheeks. She felt that she was communing with Senhouse at third hand.
"Then--it is understood--we meet again," he concluded. He bowed over her hand, on a second thought kissed her fingers, then left her immediately and went downstairs. He paid no farewell to Lady Maria; was ascertained to have left the house at once.
VII
Morosine had been called emanc.i.p.ated by Lady Maria, who after a week or so found it proper to explain that he was by no means so free from chains as he appeared. Sanchia, she thought, was seeing a good deal of him. "He"s the victim, like the rest of us, of his const.i.tution. His, as you may see, is deplorable. Weak heart, they say--but it may be lungs. I never heard of a Pole who could live in any climate, least of any his own. As for his mind, that follows his wasted body; it"s hectic. He affects a detachment which he will never have. It"s a pose. He is exceedingly sentimental, has an imagination which--if you could follow it--might alarm you. I have no doubt at all but that, in imagination, he has you safe in some island of Cythera or another, and has slain every other male inhabitant of it lest some one of them should happen to look at your footprints in the sand.
Jealous! He would sicken at the word--not because he would be ashamed, but because it would conjure up the vision of some satyr-shape, and haunt him day and night. He has no need to study Persian poetry, I a.s.sure you. He has rose-gardens enough and to spare; for, if you are inclined to be flattered at my suggestion of Cythera, I hasten to a.s.sure you that yours is not the only island of his dominion. Bless you, he"ll have an archipelago. But I have no fear for you; you can afford a sentimental education."
Sanchia did not tell her old friend how far that education was proceeding --not because she was afraid, still less because she was ashamed, but in obedience to her nature, which was extremely reserved. She spoke of herself and her affairs with difficulty--never unless she was forced. But it had become a custom just now--in the dull days on either side of Christmas--to look for Morosine in the reading-room about noon, to stroll the galleries for half-an-hour, to receive and to agree to a lightly- offered proposition that they should lunch together, and (it might well be) to accept his escort homewards. This, I say, had become the rule of three days in the week, more or less. And it"s not to be supposed that so clear-sighted a young lady could see so much of so keen-sighted a man without a good deal of self-communing.
Her capacity for silent meditation, during which she would sit before her fire, gazing far, smiling at her thoughts, into the glowing coals, had never left her. But there was a slight difference to be noted. She could not think of Ingram--the past, the present, or any future Ingram--without contraction of the brows. Smooth-browed she thought of Morosine.
He interested her greatly; she was conscious of anxiety to learn his opinion, of a wave of warm feeling when she awaited it. She credited him with insight, had a notion, for instance, that she could discuss her own affairs without any preliminary apology. He took so much for granted-- surely he would take her youth into full account. She had never said to him a word of herself as yet; but there had been times when she had felt near it--had seen herself rowing a boat, as it were, within range of a weir, been conscious of effort to keep a straight course, and of the fruitlessness of effort. There had been moments when she had been tempted to throw down her oars with a sigh--by no means of despair. Morosine seemed to her so extraordinarily reasonable, so ready, with well-known laws, to account for unheard of vagaries, that it would have been real luxury to her to find herself and her escapade the mere creatures of some such law. To be discovered normal: what a relief from strain!
Lady Maria, it seems, charged him with Oriental apt.i.tudes. Sanchia gave that judgment careful attention, studied her friend in the light of it, weighed every word of his to her, watched him closely in company when he could not be aware of it. She decided against the opinion. His manners with women were his manners with men, those of urbane indifference to s.e.x.
To s.e.x! To much more than that. He was, in fact, outwardly polite to the point of formality; but his att.i.tude of mind towards the person he happened to be with seemed to her--when she examined it closely--to be sublimely insulting. No created thing, with the pa.s.sions and affections common to his kind, ought to take up such a position with his fellow- creature--that which says, "I infer your existence from my sensations: apart from them, I cannot bring myself to believe in it." She was aware that he must needs regard her from this stand-point, and the knowledge piqued her. If she did not exist for him, why did he seek her out? If she did, why did he pretend she did not? Or was Lady Maria right? Were his sensations awake, and had they fired his imagination, to carry her to Cythera, and keep her hidden there? These questions amused her, and she made no attempt to answer them. Amus.e.m.e.nt might cease that way: she indulged herself and left her questions open. One thing may be added.
Morosine no longer reminded her of Senhouse. Quite otherwise--for of Senhouse just now she dared not think.
Her friend Bill Chevenix gave her no warnings. Even when she sounded for them, he gave none. "I like Alexis," he said once. "He"s not so original as he makes out, but there"s enough to give him a relish. A handy chap, too, in a dozen ways--he"ll model you in wax, or draw you in pastels, or sing about you on the guitar, or whistle you off on the piano; but he"s not strong, isn"t Alexis. The one thing he can do--no, there are two. He can ride anything, and he can use a revolver. I saw him empty the ten of hearts once: very pretty. I dare say, if he was put to it, he could use an iron to some purpose; but we don"t stick each other here, so he"d be out of practice. I rather wish we did, you know. It"s far more gentlemanly than laying for a chap outside his club with a hunting-crop, and getting summoned for a.s.sault at Vine Street. Not a bit more vicious, barring the Ten Commandments."
"Prince Morosine doesn"t believe in them," Sanchia said. "He"s vowed to abolish them."
"So he may tell you, my dear. Don"t you believe it. So long as they are good form they will be Alexis" form. He"d sooner die than covet his neighbour"s wife." She reserved this for consideration. Meantime, she saw more of Morosine than of any other man, and got through January very well by his help.
She particularly liked his company in galleries, because, though he never allowed himself raptures--of which she, too, was incapable--he was always seeking the roots of rapture. Sanchia had a fund of enthusiasm for art all the richer, perhaps, for being denied expression. It was comfortable to have that securely based.
"Do you ever consider," he asked her once, when they stood before the great group of the Pediment, "why it is that these things are so beautiful; why, although they are bare of colour and all that stands for life to us in art, they are more than life? It"s because they point to a state of being exquisitely conform to the laws of being. Such a perfect conformity soothes us into believing that while we witness it we are of it--ourselves conforming. These splendid creatures here, so superbly static--idle, you might say (only they wouldn"t understand you), indulging their strength--are strong and able precisely because they have submitted themselves---"
"Unlike the Poles?" She reminded him of their first conversation, and saw that he remembered it. He bowed to her.
"Let me finish. These existences, emanations, essences, what you will, are submiss, not to man, but to Nature. They are as pa.s.sive as Earth herself, and as immune. They derive their strength from her. That"s our only reasonable service." Whether he intended it or not, the effect of this kind of talk was to make her view submission to the world"s voice as a reasonable service.
It was not so odd as it may seem that her intimates had always been men.
That reticence of hers which repelled her own s.e.x was precisely that in her which attracted, by provoking, the other. After her dumb childhood, to which she never looked back, came her opening girlhood, and on the threshold of that stood Jack Senhouse, the loyal servitor, the one man who had loved her without an ounce of self-seeking. Then came Nevile Ingram, and swallowed her up for a while, and when he had tired of her she was once more without a friend. To Chevenix afterwards, rather than to Mrs.
Devereux, she had struggled to utter herself. That cry of distress, "he wants me, to ravage me," would never have been made by her to a woman. She would have died of it sooner. And now came the Pole, Morosine, and by taking for granted (as even Lady Maria could not have done) much that could not have been explained, put her at her ease. She found him a Jack without the spirit--without the divine spark. She could never have loved him, though she liked him well, and she had no idea that he thought of nothing but the greatness of his reward when, after patient toiling, she might fall into his arms. Every nerve in her body was now strung up to obedience to Jack"s idea of her. She saw, as clearly as if it was printed, her fate before her. She was to put herself under the law. Jack should not have loved in vain her "dear obsequious head." Nevile would come back and require her. For Jack"s sake, who had seen her too n.o.ble to be touched by sin, she would dip herself deep in sin.
Morosine, who frankly desired her to be the wife of a man she did not love in order that she might the more easily find consolation in himself afterwards, had the wit to see that she needed some of his sophistry, though not enough to know exactly why. It was perfectly true. Her churchgoing was an ointment. It could soothe but not heal her. Sanchia had a mind. To do wrong by the world because it had seemed right to her was not to be remedied by doing a right by it now, which to her reasoning would glare before her as a monstrous sin. She forgot that Senhouse had also taught her that the great sin of all was insincerity. She could not have afforded to remember that. All her present desire was to be, as nearly as she might, what she had been when Jack had seen her first, what he had found excellent in her and love-worthy--pious, bowing her head in a fair place, obsequious, obedient to the law. He had loved her, of course, whatever she did--outraging the law as well as keeping it, loving Nevile, letting himself go away. She could not remember that. He had loved her meek; she would be meek. That was what her heart told her; and Morosine, to serve his own ends, lulled her head with his sophisticated anodynes, and sent her brain to sleep.
That he should know her story, as he obviously did, was not so disconcerting to her as it would have been to most young women. Taciturn as she was, it was not by reason of timidity, but rather that her own motives seemed too clear to her to be worth stating. She was, perhaps, rather given to a.s.sume her prerogative right to be different. Her first thought, therefore, was that she was saved the trouble of explaining herself, and her second that it was satisfactory to have a friend who understood her without explanations.
As for Morosine, he may or may not have felt that he had broken the ice; he pushed forward, at any rate, as if he had clear water in front of him.
Sanchia felt, when she next met him, that their acquaintance had entered on a new phase.
Then suddenly, before she knew where she was, her fate was upon her.
It was in the Park on a fine Sunday forenoon in February. She was with Lady Maria, and had met with Melusine and Gerald Scales. Morosine also, seeing her and meeting her eyes, instantly left his companion and came to greet her, hat in hand. He addressed himself to her exclusively, having saluted Lady Maria; but she named her sister, and he saluted her too.
Gerald Scales, bronzed, plump, and very full in the eye, having looked the newcomer over, decided against him, and gave him a shoulder. "Foreign beggar," was the conclusion he came to, which does credit to his perspicacity, because the Pole had a very English appearance, and Scales himself the look of a Jew.
When they turned to walk, Morosine took the side next Sanchia, and though he talked to both ladies, so contrived that she should read more in what he said than her sister. He did it deftly, but continuously. Sanchia was entertained, slightly excited, and ended by taking part in the game of skill. It is impossible to say by how much this sort of thing increased the intimacy already established between the pair. It was by so much, at least, that when Melusine joined her husband, by dropping behind and waiting for him to come up with, the old lady, it came as no sort of shock to Sanchia that he took up the talk where he had ended it in the gallery.