The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne Part 27

"My dear," I answered, "do not let us discuss such gruesome things on an afternoon like this."

"You would like better for me to go on playing at being your Turkish wife?"

"Infinitely," said I.

Alas! The day is sped. I have asked the fleeting moment to tarry, and it laughed, and shook its gossamer wings at me, and flew by on its mad race into eternity.

As we lay, a cicada set up its shrilling quite close to us. I slipped my head from Carlotta's lap and idly parted the rank gra.s.s in search of the noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate pa.s.sionately. On the top of a blade of gra.s.s sat a brown little Juliet--a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied, she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set up a louder note some yards away and, without a nod or a sign, Juliet skipped off into s.p.a.ce, leaving the most disconsolate little Romeo of a gra.s.shopper you ever beheld. He gave vent to a dismal failure of a vibration and hopped to the foot of the faithless lady's bower.

Carlotta broke into a merry laugh and clapped her hands.

"I am so glad."

"She is the most graceless hussy imaginable," I cried. "There was he grinding his heart out for her, and just because a more brazen-throated scoundrel came upon the scene she must needs leave our poor friend in the lurch. She has no more heart than my boot, and she will come to a bad end."

"But he was such a fool," retorted my sage damsel, with a flash of laughter in her dark eyes. "If he wanted her, why didn't he go up and take her?"

"Because he is a gentleman, a cicada of fine and delicate feeling."

"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta. "He was a fool. It served him right. She grew tired of waiting."

"You believe, then," said I, "in marriage by capture?"

I explained and discoursed to her of the matrimonial habits of the Tartar tribes.

"Yes," said Carlotta. "That is sense. And it must be such fun for the girl. All that, what you call it?--wooing?--is waste of time. I like things to happen, quick, quick, one after the other--or else--"

"Or else what?"

"To do nothing, nothing but lie in the sun, like this afternoon."

"Yes," said I dreamily, after I had again thrown myself by her side.

"Like this afternoon."

I sit at my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond; and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has recurred all the evening.

But why should I be mad? For filling my soul with G.o.d's utmost glory of earth and sea and sky? For filling my heart with purest pleasure in the intimate companionship of fresh and fragrant maidenhood? For giving myself up for once to a dream of sense clouded by never a thought that was not serenely fair?

For feeling young again?

I shall read myself to sleep with _La Dame de Monsoreau_, which I have procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse Karr--(the literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the G.o.dfather of my landlady)--and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre. By this, if by nothing else, I recognise the beneficence of the high G.o.ds--they have given us tired men Dumas.

CHAPTER XIII

September 30th.

Something is wrong with Antoinette. The dinner she served up this evening was all but uneatable. Something is wrong with Stenson, who has taken to playing his lugubrious hymn-tunes on the concertina while I am in the house; I won't have it. Something is wrong with the cat. He wanders round the house like a lost soul, sniffing at everything. This evening he actually jumped onto the dinner-table, looked at me out of his one eye, in which all the desolation of two was concentrated, and miaowed heart-rendingly in my face. Something is wrong with the house, with my pens which will not write, with my books which have the air of dry bones in a charnel-house, with the MS. of my History of Renaissance Morals, which stands on the writing-table like a dusty monument to the futility of human endeavour. Something is wrong with me.

Something, too, is wrong with Judith, who has just returned from her stay with the Willoughbys. I have been to see her this evening and found her of uncertain temper, and inclined to be contradictious. She accused me of being dull. I answered that the autumn world outside was drenched with miserable rain. How could man be sprightly under such conditions?

"In this room," said Judith, "with its bright fire and drawn curtains there is no miserable rain, and no autumn save in our hearts."

"Why in our hearts?" I asked.

"How you peg one down to precision," said Judith, testily. "I wish I were a Roman Catholic."

"Why?"

"I could go into a convent."

"You had much better go to Delphine Carrere," said I.

"I have only been back a day, and you want to get rid of me already?"

she cried, using her woman's swift logic of unreason.

"I want you to be happy and contented, my dear Judith."

"H'm," she said.

Her slipper dangling as usual from the tip of her foot fell to the ground. I declare I was only half conscious of the accident as my mind was deep in other things.

"You don't even pick up my slipper," she said.

"Ten thousand pardons," I exclaimed, springing forward. But she had antic.i.p.ated my intention. We remained staring into the fire and saying nothing. As she professed to be tired I went away early.

At the front door of the mansions, finding I had left my umbrella behind, I remounted the stairs, and rang Judith's bell. After a while I saw her figure through the ground-gla.s.s panel approach the door, but before she opened it, she turned out the light in the pa.s.sage.

"Marcus!" she cried, rather excitedly; and in the dimness of the threshold her eyes looked strangely accusative of tears. "You have come back!"

"Yes," said I, "for my umbrella."

She looked at me for a moment, laughed, clapped her hands to her throat, turned away sharply, caught up my umbrella, and putting it into my hands and thrusting me back shut the door in my face. In great astonishment I went downstairs again. What is wrong with Judith? She said this evening that all men are cruel. Now, I am a man. Therefore I am cruel. A perfect syllogism. But how have I been cruel?

I walked home. There is nothing so consoling to the depressed man as the unmitigated misery of a walk through the London rain. One is not mocked by any fact.i.tious gaiety. The mind is in harmony with the sodden universe. It is well to have everything in the world wrong at one and the same time.

I have changed my drenched garments for dressing-gown and slippers. I find on my writing-table a letter addressed in a round childish hand.

It is from Carlotta, who for the last fortnight has been staying in Cornwall with the McMurrays. I have known few fortnights so long. In a ridiculous schoolboy way I have been counting the days to her return--the day after to-morrow.