Robert and Brigit were silent with happiness on their way to Southampton. Side by side they watched the country through the carriage windows. There had been a fog in London when they left, and the sun, at intervals, shone out like a live coal among dying embers. All was obscured; the foot-passengers and passing vehicles seemed black straying shadows in the atmosphere. But the express emerged at last from the clinging darkness into autumnal fields, some brown after the harvest, others studded with hay-ricks. At one point in the landscape they noticed a flock of sheep drinking at a stream. The boy who guarded them waved his cap at the train, and this little signal, coming, as it were, from human nature, gave them a reassurance of the day's reality. Near Bishopstoke the clouds were white and dense, but, rippling in places, they disclosed blue stretches of the heaven which, in their masses, they concealed. Southampton began with small houses. One had a tattered garden, where a stone copy of the Medicean Venus stood on a patch of squalid turf near a clothes' line and against an ivy-grown wall. Then the green sands were reached. The sea, like liquid granite, sparkled in the distance. Rows of dull dwellings, shops, public-houses, and hotels came next. The train, with a shriek, rushed into the station. It was still too early for lunch, so they walked down to the pier, where they saw several yachts and pleasure-boats at anchor in the harbour, and the New Forest greenly outlined in the distance. These were the things which engraved themselves on Brigit's mind. The impressibility of youth is retentive for outward objects, but the inner mood--the sensation and idea which make the mental state--lives unconsciously, and is recognised only in the long process of time. Brigit could have described the scene, but her emotions did not seem to her, emotions. Absorbed by them, and in them, she neither abandoned herself to the hour nor asked herself what the hour held.
She and the hour were one--a single note; and the joy she felt at being with Robert, leaning on his arm and hearing his voice, was so simple that, even if a psychologist of the deepest experience had been able to probe into the workings of her mind, he would have found nothing there to analyse. Hers was a child's affection--the first love of a heart still immature, and not yet made suspicious of itself by contact with others less innocent. Parflete had been too worldly-wise not to guard and value--at its true price--a disposition so graceful in its very essence. She had a knowledge of affairs beyond her years, yet her own instincts, her education, her few friendships, had kept her curiously ignorant of evil, of much also that is neither good nor evil, but merely human. The sombre sentimentality which lurks in most young girls of seventeen was not in her character at all, and in its stead she possessed the gaiety and carelessness of feeling which belongs to imaginative rather than to sensuous natures. A boy-like spirit showed itself in all her words, movements, moods; her womanhood still slept, and thus, while her intelligence made her an unusual companion and her beauty presented a constant appeal to all that is romantic, it was inevitable that melancholy and reserve should enter largely into the passionate love which Robert felt for her. He told himself that he would not have her different. The glance of her eyes, which stirred him strangely to the very depths of his being, never varied in its sweetness nor its calm. When her lightest touch could sway his body and spirit, she, unconscious of her power, would press his hand against her cheek and talk about the geraniums in the convent garden or the chances of the Carlist war. It was all wonderful. It had seemed perfect. And yet--and yet. She was not cold, but was she unearthly? Was she, perhaps, some straying angel--some fervid, bright spirit, flame-coloured and intangible, a being of the elfin race? As they stood together looking at the distant coastline a depression which he could neither fathom nor control came over him. His bride seemed so much younger than he had ever realised.
She cared for him--how could he doubt it? But was the indefinable, indispensable feeling absent?
"Do you remember our journey from Catesby?" she asked suddenly. "I slept. Wasn't I dull? Did you mind?"
No one could see them. He stooped and kissed her fragrant, animated face. "I wish," said he, "I wish that you were not quite such a child."
The feeling of solitariness weighed upon his soul with a crushing weight unknown until that day--the day of days, his wedding day. Heretofore he had craved for solitude because it had been full of her imagined companionship. Now that she actually lived and talked by his side, the fancied image of her paled, vanished. The real creature was adorable, but, for some reason, maddening, and not, at all events, the being of his fancy. Their old relations--ethereal and exquisite, no doubt--now seemed an empty mockery, self-deluding foolishness. He coloured at the remembrance of all that Disraeli had hinted, and Reckage had brutally declared, on the large topic of idealism in passion. A man, in spite of all determinations to be uncomplaining, knows the How much and How little that he may demand, merely as a man, from any given advantage or disadvantage in existence. Robert, hating himself, condemning himself, was conscious, in spite of himself, that Brigit's affection for him was not love in the full human sense of the word. He had exchanged an ordinary self-restraint for an impossibly false position. She could inspire his life, but could she enter into it, be it, live it with him daily? Would there not have to be great reservations, half statements, and, worst of all, a subtle kind of hypocrisy? He reproached himself for selfishness, yet the fear came and it remained. He had captured the rainbow and married the goddess. Were there not many legends illustrating this folly?--stories of men who had married divinities and perished, not because the divinities were at fault, but because mortals must wed with mortals. The sight of his wife's beauty caused a sudden, violent irritation. He wished she had none, for then, perhaps, he thought he would have been satisfied, more than content, in the placid consideration of her charms of character. He found himself reduced to the absurd predicament of deciding to banish her from his thoughts--a last sophism which showed him, all too clearly, how wretched he was. Their silence, which had been due in the first instance to the sufficient delight of being in each other's company, became that long pause which arises from an unutterable embarrassment. Brigit felt by instinct some change in Robert's mood, but as she could not account for it then, her sympathy failed. The keen salt air filled her with its own free buoyancy; her delicate skin flushed in the wind; she forgot the nervous strain of the morning, the awfulness of the grey chapel, the new state of things, griefs that were past, responsibilities that were to come. She turned to Orange as a child would turn to its inseparable comrade, and clapped her hands with amusement at an organ-grinder with a monkey and a dog whom she noticed sitting at the end of the pier, waiting, apparently, for one of the excursion steamers bound for the Isle of Wight.
"Pennies for the monkey, Robert," she cried; "a lot of pennies! And then we must have our lunch. May I have some chicken and one of those very droll, very stupid, English rice puddings? Please let me have one.... And may I kiss the dog? It is a nice little dog--quite as nice as Pensee's Fidelio. Now I am going to talk to the monkey."
She ran toward the little animal, who was shivering, pathetic and grotesque, in a military cap and red petticoat trimmed with yellow braid. The dog, which was a young pug with excellent points, gave Brigit, after many entreaties, his paw. She addressed the monkey in Italian, and laughed till she cried at its absurdities. Robert looked on, consumed by a sensation which he recognised, with much shame, as jealousy. He thought the pug dull and the monkey revolting. Yet she kissed one, and showered heavenly smiles on both.
"I did not know that you were so fond of animals," he said, as they walked to the hotel for lunch.
"I am not," she answered frankly, "as a rule. But when I am with you I feel so happy that I want to kiss everything--the ground, and the trees, and chairs, and poodle dogs, and the whole world!"
"Then why not--me?"
She looked at him, blushed a little, and waited some moments before she replied.
"I don't know," she said at last. "It must be because I am not in the habit of doing so. I am not accustomed to you yet. I keep thinking 'I shall wake up in a minute and he will be miles away.' Can't you understand? So I am pretending to myself all the time that you are not really here."
"I see."
"No, dearest, you don't quite understand; and you are a little disappointed in me because I seem--I must seem--rather flippant. I daren't be serious--I daren't. I daren't believe that I am your wife."
"But why not?"
She shook her head, and her whole face became clouded by the old, terrible, unnatural sadness which he knew so much better than her laughter.
"I am not used to joy," she said. "Perhaps, if we ever get to Heaven, our first impulse will be to run back again to Purgatory, where we are more at home!"
"You have too much wit, darling, to be happy anywhere!"
"No! no! I don't ask to be conventionally happy, but I want you always. That is all ... you, always, on any terms--on a rag-heap, in a storm, with jackals howling at us!"
"What a picture!"
"My idea of unalloyed bliss, or, at least, the only one I have ever permitted myself. I can even believe that might be realised." A smile hovered again about her lips, but she looked steadily ahead, as though she were still resolved not to reassure herself, by any too-frequent glances, of his much-loved presence.
The peculiar tenderness of her voice was in itself a charm against ill-humour. A rush of bitter self-reproach told Robert that his dissatisfaction had been the inevitable result of too many blessings on a base nature. He tried to speak; he watched instead, with a desperate, eager gaze, the play of her expressive features.
"I wonder," she said, "what our life is to be? Not that I wish to pry into the future, but, for some reason, I can never feel settled. Every morning is a surprise. I think, too, about your character ... your career. Have I helped you, or have I been a hindrance? I am perverse, capricious--not an angel. No human influence can help me very much. I must depend on the discipline of God. Oh, if I could know all that He wants me to do!"
"Most of us have that desire, Brigit. At least it is better to be damned, in the world's opinion, trying to do the will of God than saved--doing nothing! One has to take a good many chances--even the chance of displeasing Him--if it comes to a crisis."
"Many people would call that reckless."
"Let them call it anything," said the young man; "names do not matter. The ghastly, unspeakable dread is to be timorous, halting, the creature of indecision."
"We are too much alike," she sighed. "Oh, Robert, if we did not suffer horribly within ourselves when we do wrong, I believe we should both defy every law in the world! I am a born rebel."
More than a note of her mother's insolence was in the speech, but the whole spirit of the dead actress seemed to possess Brigit for that moment. Her being rippled, as it were, with the new disturbance, just as a pond will tremble to its edges at the mere dip of a swallow's wing. The artistic hatred of all restraint and the wild desire of liberty were the imperious passions of her heart--more vehement than any other feeling--even her love for Orange.
"I could fight," she said, "a visible devil, but this struggle with moods and tastes is deadening."
"What are the moods and tastes?" he asked.
"I cannot describe them well. But music calls me; I hear it trilling, and sobbing, and whispering everywhere; and sometimes it is so loud and so beautiful that I wonder why every one else doesn't stop to listen. They never do. So I sing back my answer. It is silent singing. You would only wonder why I was so quiet all at once."
"But I have heard you sing."
"Not with my real voice, Robert. It is stronger than it used to be." She checked herself and hesitated, stopped by a sudden scruple--a sort of delicacy. She thought nothing at all of her beauty and never of her fortune; but in giving Robert her voice, and the nameless ambitions which enveloped it, she was conscious that she had made, in some way, a renunciation.
"Say what you were going to say, dearest?"
"I cannot forget," she exclaimed desperately, "that mama was an actress. And I remember some of the nights at the theatre.... I liked the theatre.... I believe I could act.... I have learned the whole of Phedre and the whole of Juliet. That is why I live."
This avowal of her secret over-ruling instinct set free the sanguine strength which circumstances had imprisoned, but could not destroy, in her character. The constant effort of hiding from all observation the irrepressible yearnings of a talent that would not be denied, had given her that quality of mysteriousness, of dreamy habits of thought, of languor, which, even to Robert, had looked as though she might find this earth too rough to live on. But the despair which comes from fighting, unsuccessfully, the world, is not that appearance of weakness which is the result of fighting--more or less effectively--one's own energy. In this latter issue the beaten foe joins forces obediently enough with the conqueror, till at last the opposing elements are directed, whether for good or evil, by one will.
"So you want to go on the stage," said Orange quietly.
She turned to him and saw, with anguish, the deep amazement his words had not expressed.
"No," she said, "no. I have you instead. I want to devote myself to you--to exist for you."
"Oh, don't you see, my dear child, that this is a kind of--of pity--of anything you like, except the one thing----"
"I adore you, Robert. Oh, I can't get at what I want to say! Any talk about love always sounds very stilted or hollow. I only know that I want to live intensely in all that concerns you; that just to think of you makes me perfectly happy. When I said that learning Phedre and Juliet was the reason I lived, I was thinking of the time when I had no right to think of you. Of course I loved you always, from the beginning. It began at Chambord when I first met you. I very seldom say these things, and it is better that they should remain unsaid for the most part. But you must never doubt me, and I feel to-day, in spite of all we know about each other and all we have suffered, that you are doubting me now. You fear I don't know my own mind. Isn't this the trouble?"
The intuition which comes to men and women through suffering has always the certain sharpness of a surgeon's knife. It may be a reassurance to have the inmost thought plucked at by some loving spirit, and yet it is seldom that the touch can be given without inflicting agony. Orange could not reply at once. In his resolve to be unselfish--to put aside that personal equation which was nothing less than his whole nature--he had to steel his heart to her, contradicting painfully, by curt, unfelt phrases, the promptings of a soul turned in upon itself, desolate and confused.
"I have been selfish and thoughtless," he said abruptly; "a missed vocation is irreplaceable and it is also indestructible. You hear the echo of the call as long as you live--perhaps afterwards. At your age you could feel, but you could not wholly understand your talents. If you had told me all this before----"
She laughed with real joyousness and clung more closely to his arm.
"I didn't tell you," she exclaimed, "because you would have said just what you are saying now. You are the one. All the rest is a means of forgetting you. It is something resembling happiness to be alone in the turmoil of the world with one unspoilt illusion. This illusion in my case is a little idea that I could be a great actress--perhaps! Don't look grave, Robert. It makes you sad when I talk this way."
"Those who can be disillusioned have no convictions. Disillusion is the failure of a half-belief. I learnt that long ago. But I hate the very word in your mouth. Woe to us both if we cannot be resolute now. I could have waited--had I seen any reason to wait. Time could make no difference in my love. As it is, I have stolen you from yourself. But now I have stolen you I will keep you. I cannot--cannot give you back again to anything or anybody."
He spoke with that almost mocking tenderness which dissembles its passion. At the practical difficulty which now confronted him, all that was merely romantic and speculative in his soul took flight, as birds that are frightened from a quiet orchard by the yelp of dogs. He became aware that he was bitterly independent of the joys he had once found in the mere spectacle of the exterior world--the play of light and shade, the changing visions of the sky, the charm of the earth. His own thoughts were now the sole realities, and the dulness which suddenly came over his vision for outward things seemed to render it the more acute and concentrated for the things of the mind. As distant hills and tree tops show most distinctly before a storm, so every possibility which can arise from a conflict of duties stood out with a decisive clearness for his consideration. He had married in haste a child-bride. There was no blinking the fact. She had the strenuous religious fibre, and with it real Bohemian blood. She was also at the yielding age, when a dominant influence could do much to divert or modify every natural trait. He could not doubt that he had this power over her then. How far, and to what purpose, should he exert it? For himself he wished to discourage any hankering on her part for public life, and, most of all, public life behind the footlights, under an artificial sky. No one knew better than he that there are certain things of love, of nobility, of temperament, of pride, in certain lives which the world at large would rather calumniate than comprehend. People in general clung to their opinions not because they were true, but because they were their own, and among pretty general opinions--particularly in the year 1869--there was a strong prejudice against handsome young women who went on the stage. It was not in him to consider--even as an egoistic reflection to be put aside--how far Brigit's project, carried into action, could effect his own political career. His apprehensions were all for her and her own content.
"Promise me," he said, "that you will always tell me when the acting mood comes over you. Never fight it, never try to resist it, give it the liberty to die, but also the right to live. There is an old Hindoo proverb: 'Find the flower which can bloom in the silence that follows--not that which precedes--the storm.' This applies perfectly to a talent or a vocation. If the mood is there, in spite of fatigue, or discouragement, or other claims--happiness for that matter--you may depend that it is the ruling motive of your life and not to be vanquished. You must follow the bent or you will suffer--suffer till you die of it."
"How? in what way?"
"Either in your vanity or your conscience; either by the world's judgment on your conduct or by your own estimate of your conduct. You have no vanity, so the world doesn't count. But you have a conscience, and that counts for all!"
He had not calculated, and he could not have foreseen, the effect of his words. Her eyes filled with tears.
"My dearest," she said, "don't you see how trivial everything is to me in comparison with you? But I dare not love you so much as I can! So I encourage other enthusiasms--out of fear. Sometimes it seems as though the extraordinary, impossible ideal would be to have you with me for ever, and be an actress as well. But that is out of the question. And if I had my choice--if I could be as great as Rachel or Mrs. Siddons, or live with you on my dear rag-heap, with the jackals howling--do you think that I would hesitate, that I could hesitate?"
"If I believed you I should be a dreadful coxcomb!"
"Risk the coxcomb," she said. "I can!"
A clanging bell and the noise of traffic on the quay recalled them to the moment. They had barely time to reach the steamer and get on board. A strong, cold breeze was blowing; the sun shone full on the sea, which, near the horizon, was as green as the sky on a summer evening. But clouds were gathering in the north-west, and the peculiar brightness which presages rain lent a fugitive brilliancy to the atmosphere. The town and its spires glittered; the water, frothing round the paddle-wheels, sent its shining spray upon the brown boards of the wharf. Brigit kissed her hands toward France.
"Soon," she exclaimed, "soon I can kiss its ground. How I love my country and the place where you lived, Robert, as a boy!"
