Memoirs of My Dead Life Part 18

"Is it then incurable?"

"There is no such thing as cure.... We cannot create, we can only stimulate an existent force, and every time we stimulate we weaken, and so on until exhaustion. Our drugs merely precipitate the end."

"Then there is no hope?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Can she live for five years?"

"I should think it extremely improbable."

"What length of life do you give her?"

"You are asking too much.... I should say about a year."

The doctor pa.s.sed up the leafy avenue. I remained looking at the silly sheep, seeing in all the green landscape only a dark, narrow s.p.a.ce.

That day I saw her for the last time. She was sitting on a low chair, very ill indeed, and the voice, weak, but still young and pure, said: "Is that you, Kant? Come round here and let me look at you." Amid my work in London, I used to receive letters from my friends, letters telling me of the march of the disease, and with each letter death grew more and more realisable until her death seemed to stand in person before me. It could not be much longer delayed, and the letter came which told me that "Mother was not expected to live through the winter." Soon after came another letter: "Mother will not live another month"; and this was followed by a telegram: "Mother is dying; come at once."

It was a bleak and gusty afternoon in the depth of winter, and the Sunday train stopped at every station, and the journey dragged its jogging length of four hours out to the weary end. The little station shivered by an icy sea, and going up the lane the wind rattled and beat my face like an iron. I hurried, looking through the trees for the lights that would shine across the park if she were not dead, and welcome indeed to my eyes were the gleaming yellow squares. Slipping in the back way, and meeting the butler in the pa.s.sage, I said: "How is she?"

"Very bad indeed, sir."

She did not die that night, nor the next, nor yet the next; and as we waited for death, slow but sure of foot, to come and take what remained of her from us, I thought often of the degradation that these lingering deaths impose upon the watchers, and how they force into disgraceful prominence all that is animal in us. For, however great our grief may be, we must eat and drink, and must even talk of other things than the beloved one whom we are about to lose; for we may not escape from our shameful nature. And, eating and drinking, we commented on the news that came hourly from the sickroom: "Mother will not live the week." A few days after, "Mother will hardly get over Sunday"; and the following week, "Mother will not pa.s.s the night."

Lunch was the meal that shocked me most, and I often thought, "She is dying upstairs while we are eating jam tarts."

One day I had to ride over the downs for some letters, and when, on my return, I walked in from the stables, I met her son. He was in tears, and sobbing he said: "My dear old chap, it is all over; she is gone."

I took his hand and burst into tears. Then one of her daughters came downstairs and I was told how she had pa.s.sed away. A few hours before she died she had asked for a silk thread; for thirty years, before sleeping, she always pa.s.sed one between her beautiful teeth. Her poor arms were shrunken to the very bone and were not larger than a little child's. Haggard and over-worn, she was lifted up, and the silk was given to her and the gla.s.s was held before her; but her eyes were glazed with death, and she fell back exhausted. Then her breathing grew thicker, and at last and quite suddenly, she realised that she was about to die; and looking round wildly, not seeing those who were collected about her bed, she said, "Oh, to die when so much remains undone! How will they get on without me!"

I helped to write the letters, so melancholy, so conventional, and expressing so little of our grief, and the while the girls sat weaving wreaths for the dead, and at every hour wreaths and letters of sympathy arrived. The girls went upstairs where the dead lay, and when they returned they told me how beautiful their mother looked. And during those dreadful days, how many times did I refuse to look on her dead! My memory of her was an intensely living thing, and I could not be persuaded to sacrifice it. We thought the day would never come, but it came. There was a copious lunch, cigars were smoked, the crops, the price of lambs, and the hunting, which the frost had much interfered with, were alluded to furtively, and the conversation was interspersed with references to the excellent qualities of the deceased. I remember the weather was beautiful, full of pure sunlight, with the colour of the coming spring in the face of the heavens. And the funeral procession wound along the barren sea road, the lily-covered coffin on a trolley drawn by the estate labourers. That day every slightest line and every colour of that bitter, barren coast impressed themselves on my mind, and I saw more distinctly than I had ever done before the old church with red-brown roofs and square dogmatic tower, the forlorn village, the grey undulations of the dreary hills, whose ring of trees showed aloft like a plume. In the church the faces of the girls were discomposed with grief, and they wept hysterically in each other's arms. The querulous voice of the organ, the hideous hymn, and the grating voice of the aged parson standing in white surplice on the altar-steps! Dear heart! I saw thee in thy garden while others looked unto that sunless hole, while old men, white-haired and tottering, impelled by senile curiosity, pressed forward and looked down into that comfortless hole.

The crowd quickly dispersed; the relatives and the friends of the deceased, as they returned home, sought those who were most agreeable and sympathetic, and matters of private interest were discussed. Those who had come from a distance consulted their watches, and an apology to life was implicit in their looks, and the time they had surrendered to something outside of life evidently struck them as being strangely disproportionate. The sunlight laughed along the sea, and the young corn was thick in the fields; leaves were beginning in the branches, larks rose higher and higher, disappearing in the pale air, and, as we approached the plantations, the amorous cawing of the rooks sounded pleasantly in the ear. The appearance of death in the springtime, at the moment when the world renews its life, touched my soul with that anguish which the familiar spectacle has always and will never fail to cause as long as a human heart beats beneath the heavens. And, dropping behind the chattering crowd that in mourning-weed wended its way through the sad spring landscape, I thought of her whom I had loved so long and should never see again. I thought of memory as a shrine where we can worship without shame, of friendship, and of the pure escapement it offers us from our natural instincts; I remembered that there is love other than that which the young man offers to her he would take to wife, and I knew how much more intense and strangely personal was my love of her than the love which that day I saw the world offering to its creatures.

CHAPTER XI

BRING IN THE LAMP

For many days there has not been a wind in the trees, and the landscape reminds me of a somnambulist--the same silence, the same mystery, the same awe. The thick foliage of the ash never stirs; even the fingery leaves hanging out from the topmost twigs are still. The hawthorns growing out of a tumbled wall are turning yellow and brown, the hollyhocks are over, the chrysanthemums are beginning. Last night a faint pink sky melted into the solemn blue of midnight. There were few stars; Jupiter, wearisomely brilliant, sailed overhead; red Mars hung above the horizon under a round, decorative moon.... The last days of September! and every day the light dies a few minutes earlier.

At half-past five one perceives a chilliness about one's feet; no doubt there is a touch of frost in the air; that is why the leaves hang so plaintively. There is certainly a touch of frost in the air, and one is tempted to put a match to the fire. It is difficult to say whether one feels cold or whether one desires the company of the blaze. Tea is over, the dusk gathers, and the brute Despondency lurks in the corners. At the close of day, when one's work is over, benumbing thoughts arise in the study and in the studio. Think of a painter of architecture finishing the thirty-sixth pillar (there are forty-three). The dusk has interrupted his labour, and an ache begins in his heart as he rises from the easel. Be his talent great or little, he must ask himself who will care should he leave the last seven pillars unfinished? Think of the writer of stories! Two, three, or four more stories are required to make up a requisite number of pages. The dusk has interrupted his labour, and he rises from his writing-table asking who will care whether the last stories are written or left unwritten? If he write them his ideas will flicker green for a brief springtime, they will enjoy a little summer; when his garden is fading in the autumn his leaves will be well-nigh forgotten; winter will overtake them sooner than it overtakes his garden, perhaps. The flowers he deemed immortal are more mortal than the rose. "Why," he asks, "should any one be interested in my stories any more than in the thousand and one stories published this year?

Mine are among the number of trivial things that compose the tedium which we call life." His thoughts will flit back over the past, and his own life will seem hardly more real than the day's work on the easel if he be a painter, on the secretaire if he be a writer. He will seem to himself like a horse going round and round a well. But the horse is pumping water--water is necessary; but art, even if his work is good enough to be called art, is not, so far as he knows, necessary to any one. Whosoever he may be, proof is not wanting that the world can do well without his work. But however sure he may feel that that is so, and in the hours I describe it seems sure indeed, he will have to continue his labour. Man was born to labour, as the oldest texts say; he must continue to drive his furrow to the end of the field, otherwise he would lie down and die of sheer boredom, or go mad. He asks himself why he became a maker of idols. "An idol-maker, an idol-maker," he cries, "who can find no worshippers for his wares!

Better the sailor before the mast or the soldier in the field." His thoughts break away, and he begins to dream of a life of action. It would be a fine thing, he thinks, to start away in a ship for South America, where there are forests and mountain ranges almost unknown.

He has read of the wild shepherds of the Pampas. So inured are they to horseback that they cannot walk a mile without resting; and sitting by the fire at the end of the autumn day, he can see them galloping through the long gra.s.s of the Pampas, whirling three b.a.l.l.s attached by leather thongs. The weapon is called the bolus, and flying through the air it encircles the legs of the guana, bringing it to the earth. But if he went to America, would he find content in a hunter's life? Can the artist put by his dreams and find content in the hunter's life?

His dreams would follow him, and sitting by the camp-fire in the evening he would begin to think how he might paint the shadows or tell of the uncouth life of those who sat around him eating of jerked meat.

No, there is nothing for him but to follow the furrow; he will have to write stories till his brain fades or death intervenes. And what story shall he write to complete his book, since it must be completed, it forming part of the procession of things? The best part of story-writing is the seeking for the subject. Now there is a sound of church bells in the still air, beautiful sounds of peace and long tradition, and he likes to listen, thinking of the hymns and the homely sermons of the good minister. Shall he get up and go? Perhaps the service would soothe his despondency; but there is not courage enough in his heart. He can do no more than strike a match; the fire lights up. It is one of those autumn afternoons with just that touch of frost in the air which makes a fire welcome, and as he crouches in his arm-chair the warmth soothes the spirit and flesh, and in the doze of the flesh the spirit awakes. What--is the story coming now? Yes; it is forming independently of his will, and he says, "Let it take shape." And the scene that rises up in his mind is a ball-room; he sees women all arow, delicate necks and arms of young girls, and young men in black collected about the doorways. Some couples are moving to the rhythm of a languorous waltz, a French imitation of Strauss, a waltz never played now, forgotten perhaps by everybody but him--a waltz he heard twenty long years ago. That waltz has lain ever since forgotten in his brain, but now he hears it all; never before was he able to remember that _coda_, and it comes with a scent of violets in it--the perfume of a little blond woman who dreams as she dances with the young man blond as herself. Let it be that the choice was made by her rather than by him, and let her wear _crepe de chime_, with perhaps a touch of white somewhere, and a white frill about her neck. Let her be a widow whose husband died six months after marriage, six months ago. Let her have come from some distant part of the world, from America--Baltimore will do as well as any other, perhaps better, for the dreamer by the fire has no faintest notion whether Baltimore lies in the middle of a plain or surrounded by mountains, whether it be built of marble or brick or stone. Let her come from Baltimore, from some prettily named street--Cathedral Street--there must be a Cathedral Street in Baltimore. The sound of the church bells in the air no doubt led the dreamer to choose Cathedral Street for her to live in.... The dance would have to be an informal one, some little dance that she might come to though her husband was dead only six months. Coming from America, she would be dancing the sliding Boston step, and the two together would pa.s.s between the different groups sliding forward and back, avoiding the dancer here, and reappearing from behind a group of French men and women b.u.mping up and down, hammering the floor, the men holding the women as if they were guitars. An American widow dances, her hand upon her partner's shoulder, fitting herself into him, finding a nook between his arm and side, and her head is leaned upon his shoulder.

She follows his every step; when he reverses there is never a hitch or jolt; they are always going to the same rhythm. How delicious are these moments of s.e.x and rhythm, and how intense if the woman should take a little handkerchief edged with black and thrust it into her dancer's cuff with some little murmur implying that she wishes him to keep it. To whomsoever these things happen life becomes a song. A little event of this kind lifts one out of the humdrum of material existence. I suppose the cause of our extraordinary happiness is that one is again, as it were, marching in step; one has dropped into the Great Procession and is actively doing the great Work. There is no denying it, that in these moments of s.e.x one does feel more conscious than at any other time of rhythm, and, after all, rhythm is joy. It is rhythm that makes music, that makes poetry, that makes pictures; what we are all after is rhythm, and the whole of the young man's life is going to a tune as he walks home, to the same tune as the stars are going over his head. All things are singing together. And he sings as he pa.s.ses the _concierge's_ lodge, pitying the poor couple asleep--what do they know of love? Humble beasts unable to experience the joy of rhythm. Exalted he goes upstairs; he is on rhythm bent, words follow ideas, rhymes follow words, and he sits down at his writing-table and drawing forth a sheet of paper he writes. A song moves within him, a fragrant song of blond hair and perfume--the handkerchief inspires him, and he must get the rondel perfect: a rondel, or something like a rondel, which he will read to her tomorrow, for she has appointed to meet him--where? No better place for lovers than the garden of L'eglise de la Trinite. His night pa.s.ses in shallow sleep; but his wakings are delicious, for at every awaking he perceives a faint odour of violets. He dreams of blond hair and how carefully he will dress himself in the morning! Would she like him better in his yellow or his grey trousers? Or should he wear a violet or a grey necktie? These are the questions that are important; and what more important questions are there for a young man of twenty-five going to meet a delicious little Dresden figure with blond hair and forget-me-not eyes in the garden of L'eglise de la Trinite? He knows she will come, only he hopes not to be kept too long waiting, and at ten o'clock he is there for sure, walking up and down watching the nursemaids and the perambulators drawn up in the shade. On another occasion he might have looked at the nursemaids, but this day the prettiest is plain-featured; they are but the ordinary bread of existence; to-day he is going to partake of more extraordinary fare.

He hopes so, at least, and the twenty years that have gone by have done nothing to obliterate the moment when he saw her walk across the gravelled s.p.a.ce, a dainty little woman with blond hair, dressed in black, coming to her appointment. The dreamer sees her and her lover going together out of the garden. He follows them down the street, hearing them talking, trying to decide where they shall go to breakfast. To take her to a Parisian restaurant would be a common pleasure. He is bent on taking her to the country. Both want to sit on the warm gra.s.s and kiss each other peradventure. All souls dream of the country when they are in love; and she would hear him tell her that he loves her under the shade of trees. She is Chloe, and he is whomsoever was Chloe's lover. Whither are they going? Are they going to Bougeval? Many things may be said in its favour, but he has been there; and he has been to Meudon; he would go with her to some place where he has never been before, and where perchance he will never be again. Vincennes? The name is a pretty one, and it lures him. And they go there, arriving about eleven o'clock, a little early for breakfast.

The sun is shining, the sky is blue, white clouds are unfolding--like gay pennants they seem to him. He is glad the sun is shining--all is omen, all is oracle, the clouds are the love pennants of the sky. What a chatter of thoughts and images are going on in his brain, perchance in hers, too! Moreover, there is her poem in his pocket--he must read it to her, and that she may hear it they sit upon the gra.s.s. Twenty years ago there was some rough gra.s.s facing the villas, and some trees and bushes, with here and there a bench for lovers to sit upon--for all kinds of people to sit upon, but lovers think that this world is made only for lovers. Only love is of serious account, and the object of all music and poetry, of pictures and sculpture, is to incite love, to praise love, to make love seem the only serious occupation.

Vincennes, its trees and its white clouds lifting themselves in the blue sky, were regarded that day by these lovers as a very suitable setting for their gallantries. The dear little woman sits--the dreamer can see her on the warm gra.s.s--hidden as well as she can hide herself behind some bushes, the black crepe dress hiding her feet or pretending to hide them. White stockings were the fashion; she wears white stockings, and how pretty and charming they look in the little black shoes! The younger generation now only knows black stockings; the charms of white are only known to the middle-aged. But the young man must read her his poem. He wants her to hear it because the poem pleases him, and because he feels that his poem will aid him to her affections. And when she asks him if he has thought of her during the night, he has to answer that her violet-scented handkerchief awoke him many times, that the wakings were delicious. What time did he go to bed? Very late; he had sat up writing a poem to her telling of the beauty of her blond hair.

"Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair.

May flowers are not more sweet Than the shower of loosened hair That will fall around my feet.

Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair.

"The golden curls they paint, Round the forehead of a saint, Ne'er glittered half so bright As thy enchanted hair, Full of shadow, full of light.

Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair.

"Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair, And weave a web of gold Of thy enchanted hair, Till all be in its hold.

Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair."

"Do let me see your poem.... It is charming. But what do you mean by 'enchanted hair'? Is it that my hair has enchanted you? 'And weave a web of gold.'... 'Unwreath'--do you mean unloose my hair?"

"Dames, tressez vos cheveux blonds Qui sont si lourds et si longs.

"How well it goes with French!"

"I don't understand French, but I like your poem in English. Do you know, I like it very much!"

It is easy to obtain appreciation for poetry in such circ.u.mstances.

Horace's best ode would not please a young woman as much as the mediocre verses of the young man she is in love with. It is well that it should be so, and this is the dreamer's criticism of life as he sits lost in shadow, lit up here and there by the blaze. He remembers the warmth of the gra.s.s and the scanty bushes; there was hardly sufficient cover that spring day for lovers in Vincennes, and he tries to remember if he put his hand on her white ankle while she was reading the poem. So far as he can remember he did, and she checked him and was rather cross, declaring just like the puss-cat that he must not do such things, that she would not have come out with him had she thought he was going to misbehave himself in that way. But she is not really angry with him. How can she be? Was it not he who wrote that her hair was enchanted? And what concern is it of hers that the phrase was borrowed from another poet? Her concern is that he should think her hair enchanted, and her hands go up to it. The young man prays to unloose it, to let it fall about her shoulders. He must be paid for his poem, and the only payment he will accept is to see her hair unwreathed.

"But I cannot undo my hair on the common. Is there no other payment?"

and she leans a little forward, her eyes fixed upon him. The dreamer can see her eyes, clear young eyes, but he cannot remember her mouth, how full the lips were or how thin; ah, but he remembers kissing her!

On such a day a young man kisses his young woman, and it may be doubted if the young woman would ever go out with him again if he refrained, the circ.u.mstances being as I describe. But the lovers of Vincennes have to be careful. The lady with the enchanted hair has just spied a middle-aged gentleman with his two sons sitting on a bench at a little distance.

"Do be quiet, I beg of you. I a.s.sure you, he saw us."

"If he did it would matter little; he would remember his young days, before his children were born. Moreover, he looks kindly disposed."

Later on the lovers address themselves to him, for time wears away even with lovers, and the desire of breakfast has come upon them both.

The kindly disposed gentleman tells them the way to the restaurant. He insists even on walking part of the way with them, and they learn from him that the restaurant has only just been opened for the season; the season is not yet fairly begun, but no doubt they will be able to get something to eat, an omelette and a cutlet.

Now the accomplished story-teller would look forward to this restaurant; already his thoughts would fix themselves on a _cabinet particulier_, and his fancy, if he were a naturalistic writer, would rejoice in recording the fact that the mirror was scrawled over with names of lovers, and he would select the ugliest names. But, dear reader, if you are expecting a _cabinet particulier_ in this story, and an amorous encounter to take place therein, turn the page at once--you will be disappointed if you do not; this story contains nothing that will shock your--shall I say your "prudish susceptibilities"? When the auburn-haired poet and the corn-coloured American lunched at Vincennes they chose a table by the window in the great long _salle_ lined with tables, and they were attended by an army of waiters weary of their leisure.

There was a lake at Vincennes then, I am sure, with an island upon it and tall saplings, through which the morning sun was shining. The eyes of the lovers admired the scene, and they admired too the pretty reflections, and the swans moving about the island. The accomplished story-teller cries, "But if there is to be no scene in the restaurant, how is the story to finish?" Why should stories finish? And would a sensual _denouement_ be a better end than, let us say, that the lovers are caught in a shower as they leave the restaurant? Such an accident might have happened: nothing is more likely than a shower at the end of April or the beginning of May, and I can imagine the lovers of Vincennes rushing into one of the _concierge's_ lodges at the gates of the villas.

"For a few minutes," they say; "the rain will be over soon."

But they are not long there when a servant appears carrying three umbrellas; she gives one to Marie, one to me; she keeps one for herself.

"But who is she? You told me you knew no one at Vincennes."

"No more I do."

"But you must know the people who live here; the servant says that Monsieur (meaning her master) knows Monsieur (meaning you)."