They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall,
They fall like dew, and make no noise at all:
So silently they one to th' other come
As colors steal into the pear or plum;
And air-like, leave no pression to be seen
Where'er they met, or parting place has been.
ROBERT HERRICK.--_My Lovers how They Come and Part_.
CONCERNING CORINNA
The matter hinges entirely upon whether or not Robert Herrick was
insane. Sir Thomas Browne always preferred to think that he was;
whereas Philip Borsdale perversely considered the answer to be
optional. Perversely, Sir Thomas protested, because he said that to
believe in Herrick's sanity was not conducive to your own.
This much is certain: the old clergyman, a man of few friends and no
intimates, enjoyed in Devon, thanks to his time-hallowed reputation for
singularity, a certain immunity. In and about Dean Prior, for
instance, it was conceded in 1674 that it was unusual for a divine of
the Church of England to make a black pig--and a pig of peculiarly
diabolical ugliness, at that--his ordinary associate; but Dean Prior
had come long ago to accept the grisly brute as a concomitant of Dr.
Herrick's presence almost as inevitable as his shadow. It was no crime
to be fond of dumb animals, not even of one so inordinately
unprepossessing; and you allowed for eccentricities, in any event, in
dealing with a poet.
For Totnes, Buckfastleigh, Dean Prior--all that part of Devon, in
fact--complacently basked in the reflected glory of Robert Herrick.
People came from a long distance, now that the Parliamentary Wars were
over, in order just to see the writer of the _Hesperides_ and the
_Noble Numbers_. And such enthusiasts found in Robert Herrick a
hideous dreamy man, who, without ever perpetrating any actual
discourtesy, always managed to dismiss them, somehow, with a sense of
having been rebuffed.
Sir Thomas Browne, that ardent amateur of the curious, came into Devon,
however, without the risk of incurring any such fate, inasmuch as the
knight traveled westward simply to discuss with Master Philip Borsdale
the recent doings of Cardinal Alioneri. Now, Philip Borsdale, as Sir
Thomas knew, had been employed by Herrick in various transactions here
irrelevant. In consequence, Sir Thomas Browne was not greatly
surprised when, on his arrival at Buckfastleigh, Borsdale's
body-servant told him that Master Borsdale had left instructions for
Sir Thomas to follow him to Dean Prior. Browne complied, because his
business with Borsdale was of importance.
Philip Borsdale was lounging in Dr. Herrick's chair, intent upon a
lengthy manuscript, alone and to all appearances quite at home. The
state of the room Sir Thomas found extraordinary; but he had graver
matters to discuss; and he explained the results of his mission without
extraneous comment.
"Yes, you have managed it to admiration," said Philip Borsdale, when
the knight had made an end. Borsdale leaned back and laughed,
purringly, for the outcome of this affair of the Cardinal and the Wax
Image meant much to him from a pecuniary standpoint. "Yet it is odd a
prince of any church which has done so much toward the discomfiture of
sorcery should have entertained such ideas. It is also odd to note the
series of coincidences which appears to have attended this Alioneri's
practises."
"I noticed that," said Sir Thomas. After a while he said: "You think,
then, that they must have been coincidences?"
"MUST is a word which intelligent people do not outwear by too constant
usage."
And "Oh----?" said the knight, and said that alone, because he was
familiar with the sparkle now in Borsdale's eyes, and knew it heralded
an adventure for an amateur of the curious.
"I am not committing myself, mark you, Sir Thomas, to any statement
whatever, beyond the observation that these coincidences were
noticeable. I add, with superficial irrelevance, that Dr. Herrick
disappeared last night."
"I am not surprised," said Sir Thomas, drily. "No possible antics
would astonish me on the part of that unvenerable madman. When I was
last in Totnes, he broke down in the midst of a sermon, and flung the
manuscript of it at his congregation, and cursed them roundly for not
paying closer attention. Such was never my ideal of absolute decorum
in the pulpit. Moreover, it is unusual for a minister of the Church of
England to be accompanied everywhere by a pig with whom he discusses
the affairs of the parish precisely as if the pig were a human being."
"The pig--he whimsically called the pig Corinna, sir, in honor of that
imaginary mistress to whom he addressed so many verses--why, the pig
also has disappeared. Oh, but of course that at least is simply a
coincidence. . . . I grant you it was an uncanny beast. And I grant
you that Dr. Herrick was a dubious ornament to his calling. Of that I
am doubly certain to-day," said Borsdale, and he waved his hand
comprehensively, "in view of the state in which--you see--he left this
room. Yes, he was quietly writing here at eleven o'clock last night
when old Prudence Baldwin, his housekeeper, last saw him. Afterward
Dr. Herrick appears to have diverted himself by taking away the mats
and chalking geometrical designs upon the floor, as well as by burning
some sort of incense in this brasier."
"But such avocations, Philip, are not necessarily indicative of sanity.
No, it is not, upon the whole, an inevitable manner for an elderly
parson to while away an evening."
"Oh, but that was only a part, sir. He also left the clothes he was
wearing--in a rather peculiarly constructed heap, as you can see.
Among them, by the way, I found this flattened and corroded bullet.
That puzzled me. I think I understand it now." Thus Borsdale, as he
composedly smoked his churchwarden. "In short, the whole affair is as
mysterious----"
Here Sir Thomas raised his hand. "Spare me the simile. I detect a
vista of curious perils such as infinitely outshines verbal brilliancy.
You need my aid in some insane attempt." He considered. He said: "So!
you have been retained?"
"I have been asked to help him. Of course I did not know of what he
meant to try. In short, Dr. Herrick left this manuscript, as well as
certain instructions for me. The last are--well! unusual."
"Ah, yes! You hearten me. I have long had my suspicions as to this
Herrick, though. . . . And what are we to do?"
"I really cannot inform you, sir. I doubt if I could explain in any
workaday English even what we will attempt to do," said Philip
Borsdale. "I do say this: You believe the business which we have
settled, involving as it does the lives of thousands of men and women,
to be of importance. I swear to you that, as set against what we will
essay, all we have done is trivial. As pitted against the business we
will attempt to-night, our previous achievements are suggestive of the
evolutions of two sand-fleas beside the ocean. The prize at which this
adventure aims is so stupendous that I cannot name it."
"Oh, but you must, Philip. I am no more afraid of the local
constabulary than I am of the local notions as to what respectability
entails. I may confess, however, that I am afraid of wagering against
unknown odds."
Borsdale reflected. Then he said, with deliberation: "Dr. Herrick's
was, when you come to think of it, an unusual life. He is--or perhaps
I ought to say he was--upward of eighty-three. He has lived here for
over a half-century, and during that time he has never attempted to
make either a friend or an enemy. He was--indifferent, let us say.
Talking to Dr. Herrick was, somehow, like talking to a man in a
fog. . . . Meanwhile, he wrote his verses to imaginary women--to
Corinna and Julia, to Myrha, Electra and Perilla--those lovely, shadow
women who never, in so far as we know, had any real existence----"
Sir Thomas smiled. "Of course. They are mere figments of the poet,
pegs to hang rhymes on. And yet--let us go on. I know that Herrick
never willingly so much as spoke with a woman."
"Not in so far as we know, I said." And Borsdale paused. "Then, too,
he wrote such dainty, merry poems about the fairies. Yes, it was all
of fifty years ago that Dr. Herrick first appeared in print with his
_Description of the King and Queen of the Fairies_. The thought seems
always to have haunted him."
The knight's face changed, a little by a little. "I have long been an
amateur of the curious," he said, strangely quiet. "I do not think
that anything you may say will surprise me inordinately."
"He had found in every country in the world traditions of a race who
were human--yet more than human. That is the most exact fashion in
which I can express his beginnings. On every side he found the notion
of a race who can impinge on mortal life and partake of it--but always
without exercising the last reach of their endowments. Oh, the
tradition exists everywhere, whether you call these occasional
interlopers fauns, fairies, gnomes, ondines, incubi, or demons. They
could, according to these fables, temporarily restrict themselves into
our life, just as a swimmer may elect to use only one arm--or, a more
fitting comparison, become apparent to our human senses in the fashion
of a cube which can obtrude only one of its six surfaces into a plane.
You follow me, of course, sir?--to the triangles and circles and
hexagons this cube would seem to be an ordinary square. Conceiving
such a race to exist, we might talk with them, might jostle them in the
streets, might even intermarry with them, sir--and always see in them
only human beings, and solely because of our senses' limitations."
"I comprehend. These are exactly the speculations that would appeal to
an unbalanced mind--is that not your thought, Philip?"
"Why, there is nothing particularly insane, Sir Thomas, in desiring to
explore in fields beyond those which our senses make perceptible. It
is very certain these fields exist; and the question of their extent I
take to be both interesting and important."
Then Sir Thomas said: "Like any other rational man, I have
occasionally thought of this endeavor at which you hint. We exist--you
and I and all the others--in what we glibly call the universe. All
that we know of it is through what we entitle our five senses, which,
when provoked to action, will cause a chemical change in a few ounces
of spongy matter packed in our skulls. There are no grounds for
believing that this particular method of communication is adequate, or
even that the agents which produce it are veracious. Meanwhile, we are
in touch with what exists through our five senses only. It may be that
they lie to us. There is, at least, no reason for assuming them to be
infallible."
"But reflection plows a deeper furrow, Sir Thomas. Even in the
exercise of any one of these five senses it is certain that we are
excelled by what we vaingloriously call the lower forms of life. A dog
has powers of scent we cannot reach to, birds hear the crawling of a
worm, insects distinguish those rays in the spectrum which lie beyond
violet and red, and are invisible to us; and snails and fish and
ants--perhaps all other living creatures, indeed--have senses which man
does not share at all, and has no name for. Granted that we human
beings alone possess the power of reasoning, the fact remains that we
invariably start with false premises, and always pass our judgments
when biased at the best by incomplete reports of everything in the
universe, and very possibly by reports which lie flat-footedly."
You saw that Browne was troubled. Now he rose. "Nothing will come of
this. I do not touch upon the desirability of conquering those fields
at which we dare only to hint. No, I am not afraid. I dare assist you
in doing anything Dr. Herrick asks, because I know that nothing will
come of such endeavors. Much is permitted us--'but of the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, to us who are
no more than human, Ye shall not eat of it.'"
"Yet Dr. Herrick, as many other men have done, thought otherwise. I,
too, will venture a quotation. 'Didst thou never see a lark in a cage?
Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of
grass, and the heavens o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only
gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison.'
Many years ago that lamentation was familiar. What wonder, then, that
Dr. Herrick should have dared to repeat it yesterday? And what wonder
if he tried to free the prisoner?"
"Such freedom is forbidden," Sir Thomas stubbornly replied. "I have
long known that Herrick was formerly in correspondence with John
Heydon, and Robert Flood, and others of the Illuminated, as they call
themselves. There are many of this sect in England, as we all know;
and we hear much silly chatter of Elixirs and Philosopher's Stones in
connection with them. But I happen to know somewhat of their real aims
and tenets. I do not care to know any more than I do. If it be true
that all of which man is conscious is just a portion of a curtain, and
that the actual universe in nothing resembles our notion of it, I am
willing to believe this curtain was placed there for some righteous and
wise reason. They tell me the curtain may be lifted. Whether this be
true or no, I must for my own sanity's sake insist it can never be
lifted."
"But what if it were not forbidden? For Dr. Herrick asserts he has
already demonstrated that."
Sir Thomas interrupted, with odd quickness. "True, we must bear it in
mind the man never married--Did he, by any chance, possess a crystal of
Venice glass three inches square?"
And Borsdale gaped. "I found it with his manuscript. But he said
nothing of it. . . . How could you guess?"
Sir Thomas reflectively scraped the edge of the glass with his
finger-nail. "You would be none the happier for knowing, Philip. Yes,
that is a blood-stain here. I see. And Herrick, so far as we know,
had never in his life loved any woman. He is the only poet in history
who never demonstrably loved any woman. I think you had better read me
his manuscript, Philip."
This Philip Borsdale did.
Then Sir Thomas said, as quiet epilogue: "This, if it be true, would
explain much as to that lovely land of eternal spring and daffodils and
friendly girls, of which his verses make us free. It would even
explain Corinna and Herrick's rapt living without any human ties. For
all poets since the time of AEschylus, who could not write until he was
too drunken to walk, have been most readily seduced by whatever
stimulus most tended to heighten their imaginings; so that for the sake
of a song's perfection they have freely resorted to divers artificial
inspirations, and very often without evincing any undue
squeamishness. . . . I spoke of AEschylus. I am sorry, Philip, that
you are not familiar with ancient Greek life. There is so much I could
tell you of, in that event, of the quaint cult of Kore, or Pherephatta,
and of the swine of Eubouleus, and of certain ambiguous maidens, whom
those old Grecians fabled--oh, very ignorantly fabled, my lad, of
course--to rule in a more quietly lit and more tranquil world than we
blunder about. I think I could explain much which now seems
mysterious--yes, and the daffodils, also, that Herrick wrote of so
constantly. But it is better not to talk of these sinister delusions
of heathenry." Sir Thomas shrugged. "For my reward would be to have
you think me mad. I prefer to iterate the verdict of all logical
people, and formally to register my opinion that Robert Herrick was
indisputably a lunatic."
Borsdale did not seem perturbed. "I think the record of his
experiments is true, in any event. You will concede that their results
were startling? And what if his deductions be the truth? what if our
limited senses have reported to us so very little of the universe, and
even that little untruthfully?" He laughed and drummed impatiently
upon the table. "At least, he tells us that the boy returned. I
fervently believe that in this matter Dr. Herrick was capable of any
crime except falsehood. Oh, no I depend on it, he also will return."
"You imagine Herrick will break down the door between this world and
that other inconceivable world which all of us have dreamed of! To me,
my lad, it seems as if this Herrick aimed dangerously near to
repetition of the Primal Sin, for all that he handles it like a problem
in mechanical mathematics. The poet writes as if he were instructing a
dame's school as to the advisability of becoming omnipotent."
"Well, well! I am not defending Dr. Herrick in anything save his desire
to know the truth. In this respect at least, he has proven himself to
be both admirable and fearless. And at worst, he only strives to do
what Jacob did at Peniel," said Philip Borsdale, lightly. "The
patriarch, as I recall, was blessed for acting as he did. The legend
is not irrelevant, I think."
They passed into the adjoining room.
Thus the two men came into a high-ceiled apartment, cylindrical in
shape, with plastered walls painted green everywhere save for the
quaint embellishment of a large oval, wherein a woman, having an
eagle's beak, grasped in one hand a serpent and in the other a knife.
Sir Thomas Browne seemed to recognize this curious design, and gave an
ominous nod.
Borsdale said: "You see Dr. Herrick had prepared everything. And much
of what we are about to do is merely symbolical, of course. Most
people undervalue symbols. They do not seem to understand that there
could never have been any conceivable need of inventing a periphrasis
for what did not exist."
Sir Thomas Browne regarded Borsdale for a while intently. Then the
knight gave his habitual shrugging gesture. "You are braver than I,
Philip, because you are more ignorant than I. I have been too long an
amateur of the curious. Sometimes in over-credulous moments I have
almost believed that in sober verity there are reasoning beings who are
not human--beings that for their own dark purposes seek union with us.
Indeed, I went into Pomerania once to talk with John Dietrick of
Ramdin. He told me one of those relations whose truth we dread, a tale
which I did not dare, I tell you candidly, even to discuss in my
_Vulgar Errors_. Then there is Helgi Thorison's history, and that of
Leonard of Basle also. Oh, there are more recorded stories of this
nature than you dream of, Philip. We have only the choice between
believing that all these men were madmen, and believing that ordinary
human life is led by a drugged animal who drowses through a purblind
existence among merciful veils. And these female creatures--these
Corinnas, Perillas, Myrhas, and Electras--can it be possible that they
are always striving, for their own strange ends, to rouse the sleeping
animal and break the kindly veils?--and are they permitted to use such
amiable enticements as Herrick describes? Oh, no, all this is just a
madman's dream, dear lad, and we must not dare to consider it
seriously, lest we become no more sane than he."
"But you will aid me?" Borsdale said.
"Yes, I will aid you, Philip, for in Herrick's case I take it that the
mischief is consummated already; and we, I think, risk nothing worse
than death. But you will need another knife a little later--a knife
that will be clean."
"I had forgotten." Borsdale withdrew, and presently returned with a
bone-handled knife. And then he made a light. "Are you quite ready,
sir?"
Sir Thomas Browne, that aging amateur of the curious, could not resist
a laugh.
And then they sat about proceedings of which, for obvious reasons, the
details are best left unrecorded. It was not an unconscionable while
before they seemed to be aware of unusual phenomena. But as Sir Thomas
always pointed out, in subsequent discussions, these were quite
possibly the fruitage of excited imagination.
"Now, Philip!--now, give me the knife!" cried Sir Thomas Browne. He
knew for the first time, despite many previous mischancy happenings,
what real terror was.
The room was thick with blinding smoke by this, so that Borsdale could
see nothing save his co-partner in this adventure. Both men were
shaken by what had occurred before. Borsdale incuriously perceived
that old Sir Thomas rose, tense as a cat about to pounce, and that he
caught the unstained knife from Borsdale's hand, and flung it like a
javelin into the vapor which encompassed them. This gesture stirred
the smoke so that Borsdale could see the knife quiver and fall, and
note the tiny triangle of unbared plaster it had cut in the painted
woman's breast. Within the same instant he had perceived a naked man
who staggered.
"_Iz adu kronyeshnago_----!" The intruder's thin, shrill wail was that
of a frightened child. The man strode forward, choked, seemed to grope
his way. His face was not good to look at. Horror gripped and tore at
every member of the cadaverous old body, as a high wind tugs at a flag.
The two witnesses of Herrick's agony did not stir during the instant
wherein the frenzied man stooped, moving stiffly like an ill-made toy,
and took up the knife.
"Oh, yes, I knew what he was about to do," said Sir Thomas Browne
afterward, in his quiet fashion. "I did not try to stop him. If
Herrick had been my dearest friend, I would not have interfered. I had
seen his face, you comprehend. Yes, it was kinder to let him die. It
was curious, though, as he stood there hacking his chest, how at each
stab he deliberately twisted the knife. I suppose the pain distracted
his mind from what he was remembering. I should have forewarned
Borsdale of this possible outcome at the very first, I suppose. But,
then, which one of us is always wise?"
So this adventure came to nothing. For its significance, if any,
hinged upon Robert Herrick's sanity, which was at best a disputable
quantity. Grant him insane, and the whole business, as Sir Thomas was
at large pains to point out, dwindles at once into the irresponsible
vagaries of a madman.
"And all the while, for what we know, he had been hiding somewhere in
the house. We never searched it. Oh, yes, there is no doubt he was
insane," said Sir Thomas, comfortably.
"Faith! what he moaned was gibberish, of course----"
"Oddly enough, his words were intelligible. They meant in Russian 'Out
of the lowest hell.'"
"But, why, in God's name, Russian?"
"I am sure I do not know," Sir Thomas replied; and he did not appear at
all to regret his ignorance.
But Borsdale meditated, disappointedly. "Oh, yes, the outcome is
ambiguous, Sir Thomas, in every way. I think we may safely take it as
a warning, in any event, that this world of ours, whatever its
deficiencies, was meant to be inhabited by men and women only."
"Now I," was Sir Thomas's verdict, "prefer to take it as a warning that
insane people ought to be restrained."
"Ah, well, insanity is only one of the many forms of being abnormal.
Yes, I think it proves that all abnormal people ought to be restrained.
Perhaps it proves that they are very potently restrained," said Philip
Borsdale, perversely.
Perversely, Sir Thomas always steadfastly protested, because he said
that to believe in Herrick's sanity was not conducive to your own.
So Sir Thomas shrugged, and went toward the open window. Without the
road was a dazzling gray under the noon sun, for the sky was cloudless.
The ordered trees were rustling pleasantly, very brave in their
autumnal liveries. Under a maple across the way some seven laborers
were joking lazily as they ate their dinner. A wagon lumbered by, the
driver whistling. In front of the house a woman had stopped to
rearrange the pink cap of the baby she was carrying. The child had
just reached up fat and uncertain little arms to kiss her. Nothing
that Browne saw was out of ordinary, kindly human life.
"Well, after all," said Sir Thomas, upon a sudden, "for one, I think it
is an endurable world, just as it stands."
And Borsdale looked up from a letter he had been reading. It was from
a woman who has no concern with this tale, and its contents were of no
importance to any one save Borsdale.
"Now, do you know," said Philip Borsdale, "I am beginning to think you
the most sensible man of my acquaintance! Oh, yes, beyond doubt it is
an endurable sun-nurtured world--just as it stands. It makes it doubly
odd that Dr. Herrick should have chosen always to
'Write of groves, and twilights, and to sing
The court of Mab, and of the Fairy King,
And write of Hell.'"
Sir Thomas touched his arm, protestingly. "Ah, but you have forgotten
what follows, Philip--
'I sing, and ever shall,
Of Heaven,--and hope to have it after all.'"
"Well! I cry Amen," said Borsdale. "But I wish I could forget the old
man's face."
"Oh, and I also," Sir Thomas said. "And I cry Amen with far more
heartiness, my lad, because I, too, once dreamed of--of Corinna, shall
we say?"
OLIVIA'S POTTAGE
"_Mr. Wycherley was naturally modest until King Charles' court, that
late disgrace to our times, corrupted him. He then gave himself up to
all sorts of extravagances and to the wildest frolics that a wanton wit
could devise. . . . Never was so much ill-nature in a pen as in his,
joined with so much good nature as was in himself, even to excess; for
he was bountiful, even to run himself into difficulties, and charitable
even to a fault. It was not that he was free from the failings of
humanity, but he had the tenderness of it, too, which made everybody
excuse whom everybody loved; and even the asperity of his verses seems
to have been forgiven._"
I the Plain Dealer am to act to-day.
* * * * * *
Now, you shrewd judges, who the boxes sway,
Leading the ladies' hearts and sense astray,
And for their sakes, see all and hear no play;
Correct your cravats, foretops, lock behind:
The dress and breeding of the play ne'er mind;
For the coarse dauber of the coming scenes
To follow life and nature only means,
Displays you as you are, makes his fine woman
A mercenary jilt and true to no man,
Shows men of wit and pleasure of the age
Are as dull rogues as ever cumber'd stage.
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY.--_Prologue to The Plain Dealer_.
OLIVIA'S POTTAGE
It was in the May of 1680 that Mr. William Wycherley went into the
country to marry the famed heiress, Mistress Araminta Vining, as he had
previously settled with her father, and found her to his vast relief a
very personable girl. She had in consequence a host of admirers,
pre-eminent among whom was young Robert Minifie of Milanor. Mr.
Wycherley, a noted stickler for etiquette, decorously made bold to
question Mr. Minifie's taste in a dispute concerning waistcoats. A
duel was decorously arranged and these two met upon the narrow beach of
Teviot Bay.
Theirs was a spirited encounter, lasting for ten energetic minutes.
Then Wycherley pinked Mr. Minifie in the shoulder, just as the
dramatist, a favorite pupil of Gerard's, had planned to do; and the
four gentlemen parted with every imaginable courtesy, since the wounded
man and the two seconds were to return by boat to Mr. Minifie's house
at Milanor.
More lately Wycherley walked in the direction of Ouseley Manor,
whistling _Love's a Toy_. Honor was satisfied, and, happily, as he
reflected, at no expense of life. He was a kindly hearted fop, and
more than once had killed his man with perfectly sincere regret. But
in putting on his coat--it was the black camlet coat with silver
buttons--he had overlooked his sleevelinks; and he did not recognize,
for twenty-four eventful hours, the full importance of his carelessness.
In the heart of Figgis Wood, the incomparable Countess of Drogheda,
aunt to Mr. Wycherley's betrothed, and a noted leader of fashion, had
presently paused at sight of him--laughing a little--and with one tiny
hand had made as though to thrust back the staghound which accompanied
her. "Your humble servant, Mr. Swashbuckler," she said; and then: "But
oh! you have not hurt the lad?" she demanded, with a tincture of
anxiety.
"Nay, after a short but brilliant engagement," Wycherley returned, "Mr.
Minifie was very harmlessly perforated; and in consequence I look to be
married on Thursday, after all."
"Let me die but Cupid never meets with anything save inhospitality in
this gross world!" cried Lady Drogheda. "For the boy is heels over
head in love with Araminta,--oh, a second Almanzor! And my niece does
not precisely hate him either, let me tell you, William, for all your
month's assault of essences and perfumed gloves and apricot paste and
other small artillery of courtship. La, my dear, was it only a month
ago we settled your future over a couple of Naples biscuit and a bottle
of Rhenish?" She walked beside him now, and the progress of these
exquisites was leisurely. There were many trees at hand so huge as to
necessitate a considerable detour.
"Egad, it is a month and three days over," Wycherley retorted, "since
you suggested your respected brother-in-law was ready to pay my debts
in full, upon condition I retaliated by making your adorable niece
Mistress Wycherley. Well, I stand to-day indebted to him for an
advance of L1500 and am no more afraid of bailiffs. We have performed
a very creditable stroke of business; and the day after to-morrow you
will have fairly earned your L500 for arranging the marriage. Faith,
and in earnest of this, I already begin to view you through appropriate
lenses as undoubtedly the most desirable aunt in the universe."
Nor was there any unconscionable stretching of the phrase. Through the
quiet forest, untouched as yet by any fidgeting culture, and much as it
was when John Lackland wooed Hawisa under, its venerable oaks, old even
then, the little widow moved like a light flame. She was clothed
throughout in scarlet, after her high-hearted style of dress, and
carried a tall staff of ebony; and the gold head of it was farther from
the dead leaves than was her mischievous countenance. The big
staghound lounged beside her. She pleased the eye, at least, did this
heartless, merry and selfish Olivia, whom Wycherley had so ruthlessly
depicted in his _Plain Dealer_. To the last detail Wycherley found
her, as he phrased it, "_mignonne et piquante_," and he told her so.
Lady Drogheda observed, "Fiddle-de-dee!" Lady Drogheda continued:
"Yes, I am a fool, of course, but then I still remember Bessington, and
the boy that went mad there----"
"Because of a surfeit of those dreams 'such as the poets know when they
are young.' Sweet chuck, beat not the bones of the buried; when he
breathed he was a likely lad," Mr. Wycherley declared, with signal
gravity.
"Oh, la, la!" she flouted him. "Well, in any event you were the first
gentleman in England to wear a neckcloth of Flanders lace."
"And you were the first person of quality to eat cheesecakes in Spring
Garden," he not half so mirthfully retorted. "So we have not entirely
failed in life, it may be, after all."
She made of him a quite irrelevant demand: "D'ye fancy Esau was
contented, William?"
"I fancy he was fond of pottage, madam; and that, as I remember, he got
his pottage. Come, now, a tangible bowl of pottage, piping hot, is not
to be despised in such a hazardous world as ours is."
She was silent for a lengthy while. "Lord, Lord, how musty all that
brave, sweet nonsense seems!" she said, and almost sighed. "Eh, well!
_le vin est tire, et il faut le boire_."
"My adorable aunt! Let us put it a thought less dumpishly; and render
thanks because our pottage smokes upon the table, and we are blessed
with excellent appetites."
"So that in a month we will be back again in the playhouses and Hyde
Park and Mulberry Garden, or nodding to each other in the New
Exchange,--you with your debts paid, and I with my L500----?" She
paused to pat the staghound's head. "Lord Remon came this afternoon,"
said Lady Drogheda, and with averted eyes.
"I do not approve of Remon," he announced. "Nay, madam, even a Siren
ought to spare her kin and show some mercy toward the more
stagnant-blooded fish."
And Lady Drogheda shrugged. "He is very wealthy, and I am lamentably
poor. One must not seek noon at fourteen o'clock or clamor for better
bread than was ever made from wheat."
Mr. Wycherley laughed, after a pregnant silence.
"By heavens, madam, you are in the right! So I shall walk no more in
Figgis Wood, for its old magic breeds too many day-dreams. Besides, we
have been serious for half-an-hour. Now, then, let us discuss
theology, dear aunt, or millinery, or metaphysics, or the King's new
statue at Windsor, or, if you will, the last Spring Garden scandal. Or
let us count the leaves upon this tree; and afterward I will enumerate
my reasons for believing yonder crescent moon to be the paring of the
Angel Gabriel's left thumb-nail."
She was a woman of eloquent silences when there was any need of them;
and thus the fop and the coquette traversed the remainder of that
solemn wood without any further speech. Modish people would have
esteemed them unwontedly glum.
Wycherley discovered in a while the absence of his sleeve-links, and
was properly vexed by the loss of these not unhandsome trinkets, the
gifts of Lady Castlemaine in the old days when Mr. Wycherley was the
King's successful rival for her favors. But Wycherley knew the tide
filled Teviot Bay and wondering fishes were at liberty to muzzle the
toys, by this, and merely shrugged at his mishap, midcourse in toilet.
Mr. Wycherley, upon mature deliberation, wore the green suit with
yellow ribbons, since there was a ball that night in honor of his
nearing marriage, and a confluence of gentry to attend it. Miss Vining
and he walked through a minuet to some applause; the two were heartily
acclaimed a striking couple, and congratulations beat about their ears
as thick as sugar-plums in a carnival. And at nine you might have
found the handsome dramatist alone upon the East Terrace of Ouseley,
pacing to and fro in the moonlight, and complacently reflecting upon
his quite indisputable and, past doubt, unmerited good fortune.
There was never any night in June which nature planned the more
adroitly. Soft and warm and windless, lit by a vainglorious moon and
every star that ever shone, the beauty of this world caressed and
heartened its beholder like a gallant music. Our universe, Mr.
Wycherley conceded willingly, was excellent and kindly, and the Arbiter
of it too generous; for here was he, the wastrel, like the third prince
at the end of a fairy-tale, the master of a handsome wife, and a fine
house and fortune. Somewhere, he knew, young Minifie, with his arm in
a sling, was pleading with Mistress Araminta for the last time; and
this reflection did not greatly trouble Mr. Wycherley, since
incommunicably it tickled his vanity. He was chuckling when he came to
the open window.
Within a woman was singing, to the tinkling accompaniment of a spinet,
for the delectation of Lord Remon. She was not uncomely, and the hard,
lean, stingy countenance of the attendant nobleman was almost genial.
Wycherley understood with a great rending shock, as though the thought
were novel, that Olivia, Lady Drogheda, designed to marry this man, who
grinned within finger's reach--or, rather, to ally herself with Remon's
inordinate wealth,--and without any heralding a brutal rage and hatred
of all created things possessed the involuntary eavesdropper.
She looked up into Remon's face and, laughing with such bright and
elfin mirth as never any other woman showed, thought Wycherley, she
broke into another song. She would have spared Mr. Wycherley that had
she but known him to be within earshot. . . . Oh, it was only Lady
Drogheda who sang, he knew,--the seasoned gamester and coquette, the
veteran of London and of Cheltenham,--but the woman had no right to
charm this haggler with a voice that was not hers. For it was the
voice of another Olivia, who was not a fine and urban lady, and who
lived nowhere any longer; it was the voice of a soft-handed, tender,
jeering girl, whom he alone remembered; and a sick, illimitable rage
grilled in each vein of him as liltingly she sang, for Remon, the old
and foolish song which Wycherley had made in her praise very long ago,
and of which he might not ever forget the most trivial word.
Men, even beaux, are strangely constituted; and so it needed only
this--the sudden stark brute jealousy of one male animal for another.
That was the clumsy hand which now unlocked the dyke; and like a flood,
tall and resistless, came the recollection of their far-off past and of
its least dear trifle, of all the aspirations and absurdities and
splendors of their common youth, and found him in its path, a painted
fellow, a spendthrift king of the mode, a most notable authority upon
the set of a peruke, a penniless, spent connoisseur of stockings,
essences and cosmetics.
He got but little rest this night.
There were too many plaintive memories which tediously plucked him
back, with feeble and innumerable hands, as often as he trod upon the
threshold of sleep. Then too, there were so many dreams, half-waking,
and not only of Olivia Chichele, naive and frank in divers rural
circumstances, but rather of Olivia, Lady Drogheda, that perfect piece
of artifice; of how exquisite she was! how swift and volatile in every
movement! how airily indomitable, and how mendacious to the tips of her
polished finger-nails! and how she always seemed to flit about this
world as joyously, alertly, and as colorfully as some ornate and tiny
bird of the tropics!
But presently parochial birds were wrangling underneath the dramatist's
window, while he tossed and assured himself that he was sleepier than
any saint who ever snored in Ephesus; and presently one hand of
Moncrieff was drawing the bed-curtains, while the other carefully
balanced a mug of shaving-water.
Wycherley did not see her all that morning, for Lady Drogheda was
fatigued, or so a lackey informed him, and as yet kept her chamber.
His Araminta he found deplorably sullen. So the dramatist devoted the
better part of this day to a refitting of his wedding-suit, just come
from London; for Moncrieff, an invaluable man, had adjudged the pockets
to be placed too high; and, be the punishment deserved or no, Mr.
Wycherley had never heard that any victim of law appeared the more
admirable upon his scaffold for being slovenly in his attire.
Thus it was as late as five in the afternoon that, wearing the
peach-colored suit trimmed with scarlet ribbon, and a new French
beaver, the exquisite came upon Lady Drogheda walking in the gardens
with only an appropriate peacock for company. She was so beautiful and
brilliant and so little--so like a famous gem too suddenly disclosed,
and therefore oddly disparate in all these qualities, that his decorous
pleasant voice might quite permissibly have shaken a trifle (as indeed
it did), when Mr. Wycherley implored Lady Drogheda to walk with him to
Teviot Bay, on the off-chance of recovering his sleeve-links.
And there they did find one of the trinkets, but the tide had swept
away the other, or else the sand had buried it. So they rested there
upon the rocks, after an unavailing search, and talked of many trifles,
amid surroundings oddly incongruous.
For this Teviot Bay is a primeval place, a deep-cut, narrow notch in
the tip of Carnrick, and is walled by cliffs so high and so precipitous
that they exclude a view of anything except the ocean. The bay opens
due west; and its white barriers were now developing a violet tinge,
for this was on a sullen afternoon, and the sea was ruffled by spiteful
gusts. Wycherley could find no color anywhere save in this glowing,
tiny and exquisite woman; and everywhere was a gigantic peace, vexed
only when high overhead a sea-fowl jeered at these modish persons, as
he flapped toward an impregnable nest.
"And by this hour to-morrow," thought Mr. Wycherley, "I shall be
chained to that good, strapping, wholesome Juno of a girl!"
So he fell presently into a silence, staring at the vacant west, which
was like a huge and sickly pearl, not thinking of anything at all, but
longing poignantly for something which was very beautiful and strange
and quite unattainable, with precisely that anguish he had sometimes
known in awaking from a dream of which he could remember nothing save
its piercing loveliness.
"And thus ends the last day of our bachelorhood!" said Lady Drogheda,
upon a sudden. "You have played long enough--La, William, you have led
the fashion for ten years, you have written four merry comedies, and
you have laughed as much as any man alive, but you have pulled down all
that nature raised in you, I think. Was it worth while?"
"Faith, but nature's monuments are no longer the last cry in
architecture," he replied; "and I believe that _The Plain Dealer_ and
_The Country Wife_ will hold their own."
"And you wrote them when you were just a boy! Ah, yes, you might have
been our English Moliere, my dear. And, instead, you have elected to
become an authority upon cravats and waistcoats."
"Eh, madam"--he smiled--"there was a time when I too was foolishly
intent to divert the leisure hours of posterity. But reflection
assured me that posterity had, thus far, done very little to place me
under that or any other obligation. Ah, no! Youth, health and--though
I say it--a modicum of intelligence are loaned to most of us for a
while, and for a terribly brief while. They are but loans, and Time is
waiting greedily to snatch them from us. For the perturbed usurer
knows that he is lending us, perforce, three priceless possessions, and
that till our lease runs out we are free to dispose of them as we
elect. Now, had I jealously devoted my allotment of these treasures
toward securing for my impressions of the universe a place in yet
unprinted libraries, I would have made an investment from which I could
not possibly have derived any pleasure, and which would have been to
other people of rather dubious benefit. In consequence, I chose a wiser and devouter course." |
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