Robert Orange Part 6

"No! no! I couldn't."

He sat down to the table, however, and watched them eat. First the burlesque was discussed, then the actresses, the dresses, the dancing.

"Russia is the place for dancing," said Reckage, "I a.s.sure you. There was a dancer at Petersburg.... Something-or-other-_ewski_ was her name, and a fellow shot himself while I was there on her account. An awful fool. I can tell you who painted her portrait. A Frenchman called Carolus-Duran. I believe he has a career before him. What is your opinion of French art?"

Rennes had studied in Paris and was well acquainted with the artist in question. They talked about the exhibitions of the year and the prices paid at a recent sale of pictures.

"Old Garrow has some fine pictures," said Reckage. "I would give a good deal for his Ghirlandajo. Do you know it? And then that n.o.ble Tintoret?

There are so many persons whose position in life compels them to encourage art without having any real enjoyment of it. Garrow is one of those persons. But his daughter, Lady Sara, has a touch of genius. She's a musician. You have heard her play, haven't you, Robert?"

"Yes."

Robert had, at that instant, observed upon the mantelpiece a letter addressed to himself. It was from Brigit. He grew pale, and retired, with the little envelope lightly written on, to a far corner of the room. For some moments he could not break the seal. The sight of her writing filled him with a kind of agony--something beyond his control, beyond his comprehension. What did it mean--this tightening of the heart, this touch of fear, and love, and fear again, so deep that the whole web of life trembled and its strings grew confused one with another, and all was anguish, darkness, self-renunciation, and a wild, a dreadful mystery of human influence? At last he opened the letter.

"MY DEAREST," it began, "I can never say all that I wish to say, because when I am with you I forget everything and watch your face.

When I am away from you I forget your face, and I long to see it again in order that I may remember it more perfectly! It is so hard not to think of you too often. But I have had a great deal of sorrow, and everything I have in the world--except you--is a grief.

I know that we are not born to be happy, and so, I wonder, have we stolen our happiness? If it is a gift--I know not what to do with it. I cannot speak a happy language: the atmosphere is strange and frightens me. Dear Robert, I am terrified, uncertain, but when we meet to-morrow you will give me courage. And then, as we shall not part again, I need never again be, as I am now, too anxious. Your BRIGIT."

Reckage's voice broke in again.

"I do wish you would try this rum omelette. It is capital."

Orange laughed, but left the room. Rennes remarked that he had a powerful face.

"Yes. He has a strong character. And he would never deceive another. But he deceives himself hourly--daily."

"In what way?" asked Rennes.

"He doesn't know," said Reckage, "what a devilish fine chap he is! I wish to G.o.d that I could prevent this marriage."

"Why?"

"I say nothing against Mrs. Parflete. She's a high-cla.s.s woman and so on. Awfully beautiful, too. As clever as they make 'em, and not a breath against her. All the same, I am not very sweet on love matches for men of Orange's calibre. They never answer--never."

"I don't agree with you there," replied the artist, "because I believe that a love match--even when it dissolves, as it may, into a mistake--is the best thing that can happen to any man."

After this they discussed bindings. Lord Reckage was the first amateur authority on the subject.

CHAPTER VI

At five the next morning Robert was writing letters. Then, as soon as the gates of Hyde Park were open, he walked out. The recurrence of familiar sentiments on the essentials that make up the condition known as happiness would neither convince, nor inspire, the powers of an imagination which, with all its richness, was, apart from the purely artistic faculty, a.n.a.lytical and foreboding. Self-doubt, however, has no part in pa.s.sion. Of the many miseries it may bring, this, perhaps the worst of human woes, can never be in its train. Men in love--and women also--may distrust all things and all creatures, but their own emotion, like the storm, proves the reality of its force by the mischief it wreaks. Robert's spirit, borne along by this vehemence of feeling, caught the keen sweetness of the early air, not yet infected by the day's traffic. His melancholy--the inevitable melancholy produced by sustained thought on any subject, whether sublime or simple--was dispelled. The Park, which was empty but for a few men on their way to work, and runners anxious to keep in training, had its great trees still beautiful from the lingering glance of summer; the wide and misty stretches of grey gra.s.s were fresh in dew; the softness and haze--without the gloom--of autumn were in the atmosphere. The pride of love requited and the instincts of youth could not resist these spells of nature. Robert remembered only that it was his wedding-day: that every throb of his pulse and every second of time brought him nearer to the supreme joy of his life and the supreme moment. He had never used his nerves with bliss and tears, and he did not belong to the large army of young gentlemen who own themselves proudly

"Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd....

Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day."

This view of heroism was not possible to him, and he was too strong in mind and body to pretend to it. The two things which affect a career most profoundly are religion, or the lack of it, and marriage--or not marrying; for these things only penetrate to the soul and make what may be called its perpetual atmosphere. The Catholic Faith, which ignores no single possibility in human feeling and no possible flight in human idealism, produces in those who hold it truly a freshness of heart very hard to be understood by the dispa.s.sionate critic who weighs character by the newest laws of his favourite degenerate, but never by the primeval tests of G.o.d. Robert, therefore, was thinking of his bride's face, the pure curves of her mouth, her sapphirine eyes, her pretty hands, her golden hair, the nose which others found fault with, which he, nevertheless, thought wholly delightful. He wondered what she would say and how she would look when they met. Would she be pale? Would she be frightened? There had always been a certain agony in every former meeting because of the farewell which had to follow. With all his habits of self-control, he had never been able to feel quite sure that the word too much would not be said, that the glance too long would not be given.

Her own simplicity, he told himself, had saved him from disaster. She showed her affection so fearlessly--with such tender and discerning trust--that his worst struggles were in solitude--not in her presence at all. It was when he was away from her immediate peaceful influence that the fever, the restlessness, the torments and the desperation (has not old Burton summed up for us the whole situation and all the symptoms in his "_Anatomy_"?) had to be endured and conquered. These trials now--for even a sense of humour could not make them less than trials--were ended.

The tragi-comic labour of walking too much and riding too much, working and smoking too much, thinking and sleeping too little--the whole dreary business, in fact, of stifling any absorbing idea or ruling pa.s.sion, would be no more.

When he returned to Almouth House, Reckage was already dressed for his official duties as "best man." He felt an unwonted and genuine excitement about Robert's marriage. He put aside the languor, _ennui_, and depression which he felt too easily on most occasions, and, that day at least, he was, as his own servant expressed it, "nervous and cut-up."

"I shall miss the swimming, the boxing, the fencing, and the pistol practice," he complained, referring to diversions in which Orange was an expert and himself the bored but dutiful partic.i.p.ant. "They nearly always drop these things when they marry." The loss he really feared was the moral support and affection of his former secretary--advantages which a selfish nature is slow to appreciate, yet most tenacious of when once convinced of their use. The nuptial ma.s.s had been fixed for eight o'clock, the wedding party were to breakfast at Almouth House afterwards, then the bride and groom were to leave by the mail for Southampton _en route_ for Miraflores in Northern France. The two young men drove together to the chapel attached to the Alberian Emba.s.sy. Not a word pa.s.sed between them, but Reckage, under his eyelids, examined every detail of his friend's attire. He wondered at its satisfactoriness on the whole, inasmuch as Orange had not seen fit to consult him on the point. The church was small and grey and sombre; the flowers on the altar (sent by his lordship) were all white; their perfume filled the building.

"They look very nice," said Reckage, "and in excellent taste. Some of these old pictures on the wall are uncommonly good, and I particularly like that bronze crucifix. Ten to one if it isn't genuine eleventh century. I will ask the old fellow afterwards. He's a dear. His Latin is lovely. It's an artistic pleasure to hear him read the Gospel. I looked in the other morning, just to get the run, as it were, of the place. By Jove! Here they are."

Pensee Fitz Rewes came first--very graceful in lavender silk, and accompanied by her little boy, who showed by an unconscious anxiety of expression that he felt instinctively his mother's air of contentment was a.s.sumed. Then Baron Zeuill, with Brigit on his arm, followed. The Baron looked grave--too grave for the happy circ.u.mstances. Brigit seemed as pale as the lilies on the altar; she was less beautiful but more ethereal than usual. There was something frail, transparent, unsubstantial about her that day which Robert had never noticed before.

Had the many emotional strains of the last year tried her delicate youth beyond endurance? She seemed very childish, too, and immature. She took Orange's hand when he met her, held it closely, and watched the others with a kind of wonder most pitiful to witness--as though she had suffered too much from her contact with life and could no more. Her eyes seemed darker than the sapphires to which Robert had so often compared them: this effect, he told himself, was due to the strong contrast given by the pallor of her face. It was quite clear, however, that she was not under the influence then of any dominant thought. Her nerves and senses were strained to that extreme tension resembling apathy, until the vibration given by some touch or tone sets the whole system trembling with all the spiritual and bodily forces which make the mystery of human life. She spoke her responses, signed the register, and walked out from the church on Robert's arm without a single change of countenance or token of feeling. As they drove away from the church, she flushed a little and drew far back, with a new timidity, into her corner. One look she gave of perfect love and confidence. She pressed his hand and held it, for a moment, against her cheek. But neither of them spoke. And indeed, what was there to be said? The identification of their two minds had been full and absolute from the moment of their first encounter long ago in Chambord. The accidental differences of s.e.x and age, training, accomplishments, and education had not affected--and could not affect--a sympathy in temperament which depended--not on the similarity of opinions--but on a similarity of moral fibre. Many forms can be cut, by the same hand, from the same piece of marble, and although one may be a grotesque and the other a cross, one a pursuing G.o.ddess and the other an angel for a tomb, the same substance, light, touch, and colour will be characteristic of all four. Marriage, at best, could but give a certain crude emphasis to the strange spiritual bond which united these two beings. Practical as they both were in the common affairs of life, they shrank from anything which would promise to materialise the subtleties of the mind. Some thoughts, they felt, were as impalpable as sounds, and, just as music ceases to be divine when it is poured out of some mechanical contrivance, so the mysteries of the human soul become mere bodily conditions--more or less humiliating--when demonstrated, catalogued, and legalised. There is nothing modern nor uncommon in this especial disposition. One may describe it as ascetic, anaemic, sentimental, hysterical, neurotic; but the men and women who possess this fragile organism show, as a rule, powers of endurance and a strength of will by no means characteristic of the average sanguine and sensual creature who eats, drinks, fights, loves, and does his best in a world which he calls vile, yet would not renounce for all the ecstasies of Paradise.

The carriage wheels rolled on--as swift and noiseless as the sand in an hour-gla.s.s. Why was the road so short? Why could they not be carried thus for ever, tranquil with happiness, wanting nothing, seeking nothing, bound no-whither? Foolish questions and a foolish longing: yet happiness consists in being able to formulate wishes with the serene knowledge that a better wisdom directs their fulfilment. Neither pa.s.sers-by nor other vehicles, neither houses nor streets caught the entranced attention of these young lovers. The delight of being purely self-absorbed is very great and intoxicating to those who are constantly--either by desire or the force of circ.u.mstances--unselfish. A faint flush swept into Brigit's face under the effect of an experience so novel. Their twofold consciousness had all the pathos of self-effacement, and all the thrill of satisfied egoism. Such instants cannot last, and they are shortest when one's habits of thought are antagonistic to such luxury. Brigit sighed deeply, and roused herself with a painful sense that the minute she wilfully cut short had been the sweetest in her life.

"Pensee," she said, "has been so kind to me. She gave me her room at Wight House last night. She had the little dressing-room just off it.

Did you notice her dress? She was very anxious that you should like it."

"She seemed all right," said Robert; "and wasn't Reckage splendid?"

Having spoilt their perfect moment, they became as mere mortals, more at ease in this planet, where complete joy has an unfamiliar mien. Brigit's actual physical beauty returned. The sunshine stole in at the open window and lit up her golden hair, which was half hidden by a hat with white plumes. She looked down at her hand with its new wedding ring, and was pleasantly aware of Robert's admiration.

"I am so glad," she exclaimed, "that you think my hand is nice. Because I have given it to you for all time. And if you are ever tired, or discouraged, or unhappy, or lonely, and you want me, I shall come to you."

"But you will be with me now always."

"Yes," she answered. "Yes, Robert, always."

They had now reached Almouth House. Her little foot, with its arched instep, seemed too slight and delicate for the pavement. Robert knew that her arm rested upon his, because he felt it trembling. They crossed the threshold together. The doors closed after them.

"And he never once kissed her on the way from church!" exclaimed the footman.

But the coachman did not think this very peculiar. "I don't hold with kissing," said he; "to my mind there's nothing in it. Kissing is for boys and gals--not for men and wives."

Baron Zeuill was unable to join them all at breakfast, but Pensee, and Reckage, and David Rennes (who had been especially invited the night before because he had proved so entertaining), did more than their duty as friends by talking feverishly, eating immoderately, and affecting the conventional joyousness universally thought proper at such times. Pensee ventured to make a reference to the forthcoming marriage of the "best man," and expressed the faltering hope that "dear Agnes would be as happy as dear Brigit." Reckage scowled. Rennes was seized with a fit of coughing. It was the one unlucky hit in the whole conversation, and it was soon forgotten by every one present except Orange, who remembered it frequently in later days. At last the hour for departure came.

Pensee, weeping, kissed Brigit on both cheeks, looked into her grave eyes long and lovingly, put her arms around the slight, girlish form with that exquisite, indefinable tenderness, unconscious, unpremeditated, and protective, which married women show toward very youthful brides. Robert handed his wife into the brougham, the order was given "To Waterloo," the horses started, rice and slippers were thrown.

"They go into the world for the first time," exclaimed Rennes.

Then Pensee was a.s.sisted into the barouche, and drove homewards.

"We shall meet again," she said, as she parted from Reckage; "we meet at Sara's at lunch."

The two men were thus left alone. They decided to smoke, for they were both a little affected by the pathos of the situation.

"Explain Robert," said his lordship, as they returned to the dining-room, "explain that kind of love. You are an artist."

"Well, it isn't my way," rejoined the other, with a forced laugh, "but there are many manifestations of personal magnetism."