Spring Days — Chapter 13

London: Vizetelly & Co.,1 August 1888, pages 307-325, 5,445 words

CHAPTER XIII

"I wonder what she means. Poor girl, she has lost her sweetheart. If I were to lose Maggie. I’m afraid I’ve missed all the trains. A quarter to ten! the eleven o’clock does not stop at Southwick except on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Cab.”

About four in the afternoon he left off painting, and went to Brighton for a couple of hours. The little journey broke up the day, he bought the evening papers, and it was pleasant to glance from the news to those who passed, and to look upon the sunny and hazy sea. He liked to go to Mutton’s, and regretted Lizzie was not there, instead of behind a bar serving whisky and beer. But he went to the bar. It was a German establishment, decorated with the mythological art of Munich, and enlivened with a discordant band. The different rooms were fitted with bars of various importance. Lizzie was engaged at the largest — that nearest the entrance. At half-past five this bar was thronged with all classes. Beer and whisky were drunk hurriedly, with a look of trains on the face. The quietest time was from half-past three to half-past four, during these hours the dining-room was alone in the presence of the awful goddesses and a couple of drowsy waiters. Most of the girls were out, some two or three read faded novels in the sloppy twilight; a group of four or five men who had lingered from half-hour to half-hour turned their backs, and talked among themselves; sometimes a couple would condescendingly address Lizzie, and tease her with rude remarks; or else Frank found her having a little private chat with an old gentleman, a youth, or, may be, the waiter.

Lizzie had her bar manners and her town manners, and she slipped on the former as she would an article of clothing, when she lifted the slab and passed behind. They consisted principally of cordial smiles, personal observations, and a look of vacancy which she assumed when the conversation became coarse. From behind the bar she spoke authoritatively, she was secure, it was different — it was behind the bar; and she spoke with a cheek and a raciness that at other times were quite foreign to her. "I will not sleep with you to-night if you don’t behave yourself," so Frank once heard her answer a swaggering young man. She spoke out loud, evidently regarding her words merely in the light of gentle repartee. What she heard and said in the bar remained not a moment on her mind, she appeared to accept it all as part of the business of the place, and when Frank was annoyed she only laughed.

"Men will talk improper, what does it matter; one doesn’t pay attention to their nonsense, and it is only in the bar. Never mind all that, tell me what you have been doing. You didn’t come into Brighton yesterday, I suppose?”

"No, I had to go to the Manor House.”

“And how is she, the only one; are you as much in love with her as ever.”

“I suppose I am; I have begun a portrait of her."

"What, another! you never finish anything. I sha’n’t have that when I come and sit for you. I shall make you finish my portrait.”

“Ah, yes; when you come and sit. But, joking apart, when will you come? I should so like to show you my studio. It really looks very nice now. I brought a beautiful old Italian cabinet from London. When will you come?”

"I have no time.”

"Why not come next Sunday; it is your Sunday off.”

"What would Maggie say if she found me there? She’d have my eyes out.”

"If she did find it out she’d know you came to sit; but as a matter of fact she’d know nothing about it. You come and lunch with me about twelve — they’re all in church about that time.”

"And you never go to church, you wicked boy. I don’t know that I dare trust myself with you.”

A scruple jarred the even strain of his desire to paint Lizzie’s portrait, but his scruple vanished in one of her sweet sunny smiles, and he gave her all information about the train she would have to take to reach Southwick by twelve o’clock.

He ordered some delicacies in the way of potted meats, and there was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. She was surprised, and she expressed her surprise thus:

"Do you always keep your champagne in ice? We never do in the bar. When the gentlemen want ice they have a piece to put in their wine."

The afternoon in the studio was an echo of the afternoon in the woods; and he thrilled when she took off her hat, and the shadow of her abundant hair floated over the damask of her cheek. And when about five o’clock his drawing went wrong and his colour became muddy, fears of interruption grew intense, and as he painted in and blotted out, striving to catch the movement of the neck and shoulders, he dreaded each passing footstep. The pleasure of the day was gone. What should he do if he suddenly heard the chattering voices of Sally or Maggie, or, worse still, of both? Might he not leave the door unanswered, and pretending he was out, let them bang away? No, impossible to keep Tris from barking. So he had begun to regret his temerity, and it was with a sense of relief that he heard her say she was tired, and must think of going. ‘Now I would give a sovereign if I could get her to the station without being seen,’ he thought, and he put away his palette. He opened the door and hoped for luck, but at that moment Sally came towards him. Should he attempt to pass as if he had not seen her? He raised his hat, and then he hesitated as if he were going to speak. But he only offended Lizzie, who declared he was ashamed of her. Half an hour afterwards he returned across the green. He met Maggie waiting for him. She told him she knew all about it, that no explanation was necessary; and she broke off her engagement.

Sally then and afterwards repelled with indignation all accusations of tale-bearing, but her version of what she had and had not told Maggie was never judged to be wholly satisfactory. Frank suspected that she had availed herself of the occasion to revenge herself on her sister for some late or former treasons, the memory of which still rankled. And looking up at the skylight, whence he could see the changing tints, he said, "So she has broken off her engagement, she will never forgive me, and she hopes she will never see me again. Those were her words. How excited she was; she will think better of it. I will go there this evening and try and coax her. She’ll forgive me. If we were married to-morrow, I must have a model. It is only a lovers’ quarrel; it would be absurd to think of it in any other light. But what was I saying? If we were married we shouldn’t have more than a thousand a year to live on at the outside — that is to say, if Mount Rorke and Brookes come to terms, which is not very likely, they might make up a thousand a year between them, that would not be enough for two, and I should have to work; and I couldn’t work without a model. The thing is absurd! she’ll have to learn that a model is absolutely necessary; we were bound to have a row over that model question, so it might as well come off now as later on, and we shall understand each other better when this has blown over. There is nothing, and never has been anything, between me and Lizzie — my conscience is clear on that score.

"How pretty she looked to-day; that pale brown hair, so soft and so full of colour. To-day was an unlucky day; I began by being unfortunate with my painting; I never made a worse drawing in my life, and the worst of it was that I did not see that my drawing was wrong until I had begun to paint. It won’t be dark for another hour. I may as well try to get things into their places. Damn Sally, what a mischievous, spiteful beast she is; I don’t believe a word she says.”

Frank threw down his palette, and his thoughts strayed into sounds. The bow and his fingers strayed into the well-known phrases — the waltz in "Faust," and thence to the duet in “Mireille," and, looking at his painting, he sang, "O Magalie, ma bien aimée, fuyons tous deux sous la ramée”; but the melodies touched him not, were puerile in comparison with the vigour and fierceness of his pain. The thought that his life was maimed crushed upon him. Why had he been such a fool? He had ruined himself, and for what?

Ah! what folly. A remembrance of Maggie’s gracefulness came, dazzling and straining his imagination, and in sharp revulsion of desire he assailed Lizzie with angry and contemptuous memory. She was always in low company — was never happy out of it; it was part of her. How this man liked six dashes of bitters in his sherry, and the other would not drink whisky except in a thin glass.

As he was leaving the studio he received a letter from Maggie, and when he thought of the circumstances in which it was written, he grew genuinely alarmed. For there was no forgetting the seriousness of the letter, and she stated her reasons for the step she was taking without undue emphasis. In its severity and quiet determination the letter did not seem like her, and he suspected forgery, sisterly advice, paternal influence — a family conspiracy. There was but one thing to do. He looked through the various furniture for his hat; and with his head full of citations from the lives of artists illustrative of their conduct, he went to her. But Maggie would not see him.

"Miss Brookes," the servant said, "is in her room and cannot see you, sir.”

Now whatever love he had known of her rushed to his head, and he realised the life that had slipped from him like a crystal, and lay shattered. "She will never be mine, she will never be my wife," he muttered as he passed into the town, and the roofs and masts now passing into the shadow only relieved on a vanishing touch of colour, seemed in his stress of mind as a shadow or a seeming. Over the shingle bank the sea faded, a thin illusion, dim and promiseful of peace. The night and the sea, those perfect images of oblivion and rest, resuscitated a yearning for death and weariness of life in him as they have done, and will never cease to do when man is tense with too great happiness or grief. Love and death, ideas apparently wide asunder, must follow and overlap, neither seems complete without a suggestion of the other. Never has man clasped a beloved mistress to his breast, and not thought of death. Let this moment be our last is the cry of all who have loved, whose sense has been racked with love. We have attained our desire. I hold you. You are mine. I am yours. So let us die and save ourselves from life that must surely separate us, that will poison the delicious draught. O, delicious draught, let thy sweetness always remain unimpaired. The life-suffering of a hundred thousand years is in his veins. He knows that life has no durable joys for giving, and in moments of great happiness or great despair he utters his instinctive appeal to death to save him from the cruelty of life. The life-suffering of twenty thousand years in his veins, the knowledge that lies below the light of consciousness quickens and cries not for the day but for the night; the unformed soul of man that floats shapeless, but living in the thither side of consciousness, may be revealed in tones; and as the darkness and the sea filled Frank’s soul, he, the lightest and most life-loving of men, was filled for once with a sense of the failure of life, and, as his sorrowing thoughts drifted, he remembered when he had stood here with her in hearing of the rising tide, and all his pleading and passion came back to him; and as his thoughts travelled they entered into transitory memories of the tones that plumb the depths and touch the shadow heart of the unconscious, where the light of thought is not, and love and death are undistinguishable. The lovers have drunk of the magic philtre, their bowels are full of love; their brains are aflame with love; they have striven, they have resisted, they are now weary and flesh-sore. They are alone — alone and facing the beautiful night. Too weary are they of the day that separates them, and they are fearful of life that will punish them for too great happiness. “Descend upon us, night of love, give me forgetfulness of life, gather me to thy breast, take me across this universe. Already the last lights are retiring; that which we thought we saw, remembrances and images of things, the remains of illusion, august presentiments of the holy darkness, extinguish all in taking us across the world. As soon as the sun has set in our breasts, the stars of happiness shall spread their laughing light. The world and paling fascination, the world that the moon lights with her deceitful beams, the false spectre that the day places before me; it is I who am the world. Live holy love, august offspring of voluptuousness, delicious desire of eternal sleep, without form and unawakening.”

Faint and intermittent memories of the music came to him as he stood on the lock, his thoughts fixed on the contemplation of his misfortunes. He started on hearing himself called. Turning he saw Willy.

"What are you doing?”

"I don’t know. Maggie has broken off her engagement; she will never speak to me again, she hopes we may never meet.”

"I don’t understand. When did she break off her engagement?”

Frank told his story, and they walked across the green towards the studio.

"Oh, you don’t care. I don’t believe you are listening to me.”

"I am listening. You never think any one understands what is said to them if they do not instantly jump and call the stars to witness.”

“I suppose I am like that — excitable — the difference between the Celt and the Saxon; and yet I don’t know, your sisters are quite as excitable as I am.”

“They take after their mother; I am more like my father."

"It wouldn’t be a bad character for a play — a man who never would believe what you said, unless you threw up your arms and called on the stars.”

"He can’t be very bad if he can think about plays," thought Willy.

"Tell me, Willy, you won’t offend me; tell me exactly what you think, did I do anything wrong? I swear to you there is nothing between me and Lizzie. I believe she is over head and ears in love with some fellow who has treated her very badly. She never would tell me who he was. In fact, she told me she had left London so that she might get over it. There would be no use my humbugging you, and I swear there is not and never was anything between me and Lizzie Baker. I never expected to see her again. It is very strange how people meet. I have told you all about it. When I go to Brighton I must go somewhere to get a drink, and I really don’t see there is any harm in going to the Tivoli; it didn’t occur to me to think I should avoid the place merely because she was serving there. I have often been there, I don’t deny it. Do you see there is any harm in my going there?”

"I don’t like giving an opinion unless I am fully acquainted with the facts; but it seems to me that you might have gone to the Tivoli to have a drink without asking her to your studio.”

"Stay a bit, we’ll speak of that presently. I am now telling you how I see Lizzie when I go to Brighton. I often go to Brighton by the four o’clock train, I often go to the Tivoli, and when she is not talking to some one else I talk to her about things in general; but I swear I have never been out with her, that I never saw her except in the bar, and yet Maggie accuses me of keeping a woman in Brighton, and won’t hear what I have to say in my defence. This is what she says: ‘I have it on unquestionable authority that you have been keeping this woman since you returned from Ireland, perhaps before, and that you go in by the four o’clock train almost daily to see her.’ Now I ask you if it is fair to make such accusations — such utterly false and baseless accusations — and then to refuse to hear what a fellow has to say in his defence? By Jove! if I caught the fellow who has been telling lies about me, I’d let him have it. Some of those Southdown Road people have been writing to her, that’s about the long and short of it.

“As for having asked her to come to the studio, I assure you my intentions were quite innocent. Perhaps you won’t understand what I mean; you don’t care for painting, but very often an artist has a longing to paint a certain face, and the desire completely masters him. Well, I had a longing of this kind to paint Lizzie; hers is just the kind of head that suits me — she offered to give me a sitting, I did not see much harm in accepting, and as I could not paint her in the bar-room, I asked her to the studio. But as for making out there was anything wrong — I assure you she is not that sort of girl. If we were married (I mean Maggie and I) I would have to have models; we’ll have to come to an understanding on that point. Now what I want you to do is to explain to Maggie that there is nothing wrong between me and Lizzie, you can tell her there is nothing; — I swear there is nothing; and then you had better explain that an artist must have models to work from.”

"Don’t ask me. I wish you wouldn’t ask me. I make a rule never to interfere in my sisters’ affairs. I did once, you remember, and I thought I should never hear the end of it.”

"I think you might do this for me.”

"Don’t ask me. I wish you wouldn’t, my dear fellow. I am an exceedingly nervous chap, and I have had nothing but bad luck all my life.”

"You think of nothing but yourself. You certainly are the most selfish fellow I ever met. You take no interest in any affairs but your own.”

Willy made no answer. He sat stroking his moustache softly with his short, fat hand. After a long silence, he said:

"Tell me, Frank, are you really in love with my sister, or is it only imagination? I know people often think they are in love when their fancy is only a little excited. Very little will pass for being in love, but the real thing is very different from such fancies.”

“I assure you I never loved any one like Maggie. Yes, I am sure I love her.”

“You may be in love, I don’t say you aren’t; but I am sure there’s no more common mistake than to fancy one’s self in love because one’s imagination is a bit excited. When you do fall in love, you find out your mistake.”

"You think no one was ever in love but yourself. Do you remember when you took me to see her, when we heard her sing ‘Love was false as he was fair, and I loved him far too well’?”

Frank knew no more of the story than that Willy had loved this actress vainly. On occasions Willy had alluded to her, but he had never shown signs of wishing to confide.

“Yes, I remember. How I loved that woman, and what a wreck it has made of my life. I daresay you often think-me dull, I can quite understand your thinking me narrow-minded, selfish, and incapable of taking interest in other people’s affairs: losing her took the soul out of my life. Now nothing really amuses me, now nothing really interests me. I often think if I were to die, it would be a happy release.”

"You never told me anything about it before; wouldn’t she marry you?”

"I never knew her. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her, and my love swallowed up everything else. Then I wasn’t wrapt up in account-books, although I was always a precise and methodical sort of chap; I was young enough then, now I am an older man than my father. Some fellows have all the luck; everything succeeds with them, every one loves them, men and women, they get all they ask for and more, others get nothing. No matter what I tried to do, something went wrong and I was baulked. I set my heart on that girl, she was the one thing I wanted. I saw her play the same piece fifty times. I knew my passion was hopeless, but I couldn’t resist it. Had I known her I might have won her, but there were no means; I never saw her but once off the stage, and that was but a moment. I often sent her presents, sometimes jewellery, sometimes fans or flowers, anything and everything I thought she would like. I sent her a beautiful locket; I paid fifty pounds for it.

"Did she accept your presents?”

"I sent them anonymously.”

"Why did you not try to make her acquaintances?"

"I knew nobody in the theatrical world, I was not good at making acquaintances. You might have done it. I am a timid man.”

"Did you make no attempt? You might have written."

“At last I did write.”

"What did you write?”

"I tried to tell her the exact truth. I told her that I had refrained from writing to her for three years. That I quite understood the folly and the presumption of the effort; but I felt now, as drowning men that clutch at straws, that I must make my condition known to her. I told her I loved her truly and honourably, that my position and fortune would have entitled me to aspire to her hand if fate had been kind enough to allow me to know her. It was a very difficult letter to write, and I just tried to make myself clear. I told her I knew no one in the theatrical world, and that waiting and hoping for some chance to bring us together would only result in misery long drawn out; that I had some faint hope that this letter might lead her to consider that there might be an exception to the rule that a young lady should not stop to speak to a young man she didn’t know. I remember I said ‘when men are in deadly earnest, truth seems to shine between the lines they write. I know I am in earnest, and may say that all I hold dear and precious in life is set in the hope that this letter may not appear to you in the light of one of those foolish and wicked letters which I believe men often write to actresses, and of which I suppose you have been the recipient.’ Then I said that I would be at the stage door on the following night, and that I hoped she would allow me to speak a few words to her.”

"And did she?”

“I could not speak to her; I lost all courage in that moment. She walked close by me.”

“You mean to say you did not speak to her after writing that letter?”

"Call me a fool, an idiot, what you will; I could not do it. I can only compare my feeling to what Livingstone says he felt when he found himself face to face with a lion. He stood staring in the lion’s eyes, unable to move.”

"She must have thought your letter a practical joke, I wonder what she did think.”

"I wrote explaining the unfortunate circumstances as well as I could, and telling her I would come the following night.”

"Did you go?”

"Yes.”

"Did you speak to her?”

"Yes.”

"And she wouldn’t speak?”

"She passed on with her maid, and that was the end, so far as I am concerned. A year or two after she married a stockbroker. I believe she didn’t care for him at all. Then she died. She was buried in Kensal Green. Whenever I am in London I go and see her grave.”

"This is awfully sad.”

"Yes; it ruined my life. I never had any luck. Things always went wrong with me.”

"I should like to see those letters.”

"I haven’t got copies. I didn’t keep a letter-book in those days.”

There were tears in Frank’s eyes. The story seemed to him infinitely pathetic, and he would have dearly loved to see with his eyes and hold in his hands those slight records of a love-ruined life. Yes, surely as “Lucy Gray" and “We are Seven " are symbols of grief in the death of children, this story of the stage door — so artless, so assoiled of all taint of vulgarity — seems to epitomise, and to come to us as a symbol of the one flutter of the soul’s wings in a meagre and material nature, one whose claim upon our sympathy is felt only in the uniting sense that all evident hopelessness must bring. And then those letters — the one saving sign of soul in the man — that they should have perished, when the thousands of vain expenses and sterile records of ineffectual calculations stood bound and numbered in so many volumes!

"Until she married I hoped against hope; it was always a sort of sad pleasure to go to the theatre to see her, although that once perfect pleasure was spoilt by my failure to make her acquaintance. I used to live at the Manor House for two or three months at a time, saving up my money so as to be able to make her some nice present. I wished her to remember me, although she would not speak to me. No one came to the Manor House; there was nothing to do except to read the paper and smoke my pipe. I was sick of my life, and I counted the days that would have to pass till I saw her again — only thirty more days, only nineteen days, only one more week — so I used to count, marking off each day in an almanac, until one day I read the announcement of her marriage; then I knew all hope was at an end. I went mad that night, and I rushed out of the house, and I should have drowned myself had I not fainted. When I came to, I was weak and delirious, and I wandered a long way along the beach, not knowing where I was going. Some fishermen brought me home. My sisters were at school at the time. I believe I was very near dying. I fainted three times one afternoon. I used to lie on the sofa and cry for hours.

"The world is very hard on men who make bad marriages, but the world doesn’t know what a man suffers who has a heart to give away and bestows it wholly, unreservedly and vainly on one woman. Some have only one heart to give, and when they have given that they have given everything, and are left defenceless to bear the bitterness of the world. — They meet some woman in the streets who is kind; they must end their misery somehow, and they marry. I do not regret my marriage. My missus has been a very good little woman to me. I only tell you this because I do not wish you in a fit of dejection to marry Lizzie Baker.”

"Marry Lizzie Baker! I am not in love with her. She is a pretty girl, and I think I should once have liked to have had her, but that’s all. But tell me more about yourself. I am most interested.”

"There is nothing more to say. Let’s talk of something else. I have some news. I am going in for breeding race-horses.”

"What do you mean?”

"What I say. I have calculated it all out, and I find I shall make from 15 to 20 per cent, on my money.”

"By breeding race-horses! And where are you going to breed them?”

"You know those stables on the Portslade Road where the veterinary surgeon used to live? I am going to take that place. The rent is £300 a-year; there are fifty acres of pasture, and stabling for thirty horses. The dwelling-house is not a very aristocratic-looking place, but it will do for the present; when I begin to make money I shall go in for alterations. You can’t do everything at once.”

"You do astonish me. And where are you going to get the money to do all this? You will require at least £20,000 capital.”

“More than that. You would not be able to work a place like that under £25,000," Willy replied sententiously. “I have got about eight thousand left of my own, and I came in for a legacy of three thousand at the beginning of this year, — an aunt of mine left me the money; and my father has agreed to let me have fourteen thousand on condition of my abandoning all further claim upon him. The bulk of his fortune will now be divided among my sisters. Berkins advised him to accept my offer.”

"I should think so indeed; your father is worth ten thousand a year.”

"No, nothing like that. His business has been going down for years past. Last year he lost heavily again; if it weren’t for his investments he wouldn’t be able to go on with it. The business is done for; I knew that long ago. My father and I could never agree about how the accounts should be kept. That head clerk of his is an awful duffer.”

"Yes, but what are you going to do with the shop?”

“The shop was the origin of it all. If it hadn’t been for the shop I dare say I never should have thought of the race-horses. My father and I could never work together. I offered to buy his surplus fruit and vegetables, and, without absolutely binding myself to deal with no one else, I had assured him of my chief custom. Naturally I expected something in return — I expected him to let me have peaches in April and strawberries in March. You cannot do this without using a good deal of heating power. I spoke to the gardener several times. Often when I went into the houses I found the pipes nearly cold. I got tired of this, and I paid a man out of my own pocket to keep the furnaces properly stoked, and, would you believe it, my father actually raised objections — objected to my paying a man to look after his glass-houses as they should be looked after. He said he would not order in any more coke, that I’d have to get along with what there was in the garden; he said he wished the shop at the devil. I saw it was hopeless. You cannot help my father, and he won’t help himself, so I threw the whole thing up.”