The Price of Things Part 26

"Because she has written to me, and I am going down to see her--"

"Then you know how she is?"

"I guess. Look here, Denzil, do try and be frank with me. You are acquainted with me and know whether I am to be trusted or not. You are aware that I love her with the spirit. You and the worthy husband are off to be killed, and yet just because you are so d.a.m.ned reserved English, you can't bring yourself to do the sensible thing and tell me all about it so that if you go to glory I could look after her rights and--the child's--and take care of her. It is you who are a fool really, not I!

Because I get a little drunk with my moods and talk about suicide, that is froth, but I should not bottle up a confidence because it's 'not the thing' to talk about a woman--even though it's for her benefit and protection to do so. I've more common sense. Some difficult questions might crop up later with Ferdinand Ardayre, and I want to have the real truth made plain to myself so that I can crush him. If you've some cards up your sleeve that I don't know of, I can't defend Amaryllis so well."

Denzil put down his knife and fork for a moment; he realised the truth of what his friend said, but it was very difficult for him to speak all the same.

"Tell me what you know, Stepan, and I'll see what I can do. It is not because I don't trust you, but it is against everything in me to talk."

"Convention again, and selfishness. You are thinking more about the Englishman's point of view than the good of the woman you love--because I feel partly from her letter that you do love her and that she loves you--and I surmise that the child is yours, not John's, though how this miracle has been accomplished, since it was clear that you had never seen her until the night at the Carlton, I don't pretend to guess!"

Denzil drank down his champagne, and then he made Verisschenzko understand in a few words--the Russian's imagination filled in the details.

He lit a cigarette between the course and puffed rings of smoke.

"So poor John devised this plan, and yet he loves her--he must indeed be obsessed by the family!"

"He is--he is a frightfully reserved person too, and I am sure has frozen Amaryllis from the first day."

"My idea was always for this, directly I went to Ardayre. I felt that mysterious pull of the family there in that glorious house. I thought she would probably simplify things by just taking you for a lover, when you met, as you are her counterpart--a perfect mate for her. I had even made up my mind to suggest this to her, and influence her as much as I could to this end--but lo! the husband takes the matter out of our hands and devises a really unique accomplishment of our wishes. Gosh! Denzil! it's John who's got the common sense and the genius, not we!"

"Yes, he has--so far, but he did not reckon with human emotion. He might have known that directly I should see Amaryllis I should fall in love with her, and he ought to have understood that that extraordinary thing, nature, might make her draw to me afterwards. Now the situation is tragic, however you look at it. John will have the h.e.l.l of a life if he comes back; he can't help feeling jealous every time he sees the child, and the tension between him and Amaryllis, now that she knows, will be great. Amaryllis is wretched--she is pa.s.sionate and vivid as a humming bird. Every hair of her darling head is living and quivering with human power for joy and union, and she will lead the famished life of a nun! I absolutely worship her. I am frantically in love, so my outlook, if I come back is not gay either. I wonder if we did well, after all, John and I, and if the family makes all this suffering worth while? Perhaps it would have been better to leave it to fate!" Denzil sighed and forgot to notice a dish the waiter was handing.

"It is perfectly certain," and Verisschenzko grew contemplative, "that the result of deliberately turning the current of events like that must have some momentous consequence. Mind you, I think you were right. I should have advised it as I have told you, because of that swine of a Turk, Ferdinand--but it may have deranged some plan of the Cosmos, and if so some of you will have to pay for it. I hate that it should be my lady Amaryllis. All her sorrow comes from your dramatically honourable promise. You can't make love to her now--because a man who is a gentleman does not break his word. Now if my plan had been followed, you would not have had this limitation and you could have had some joy--but who knows! A false position is a gall in any case, and it would have soiled my star, which now shines purely. So perhaps all is for the best.

But have you a.n.a.lysed, now that we are on the subject, what it is 'being in love,' old boy?"

"It is divine--and it is h.e.l.l--"

"All that! Amaryllis is the exact opposite to Harietta Boleski--in this, that she attracts as strongly as Harietta could ever do physically, and will be no disappointment in soul in the _entre actes_. _Being in love_ is a physical state of exaltation; _loving_ is the merging of spirit which in its white heat has glorified the physical instinct for re-creation into a G.o.dlike beat.i.tude not of earth. A man could be in love with Harietta, he could never love her. A man could always love Amaryllis, so much that he would not be aware that half his joy was because he was _in love_ with her also."

"You know, Stepan, men, women and every one talk a lot of nonsense about other interests in life mattering more, and there being other kinds of really better happiness, but it is pure rot; if one is honest one owns that there is no real happiness but in the satisfaction of love. Every other kind is second best. It is jolly good often, but only a _pis aller_ in comparison to the real thing.

"And when people deny this, believing they are speaking honestly, it is simply because the real thing has not come their way, or they are too brutalised by transient indulgences to be able to feel exaltation.

"So here's to love!" and Denzil emptied his gla.s.s. "The supreme G.o.d--"

_"Ainsi soit il,"_ and Stepan drank in response. "Our toast before has always been to the Ardayre son, and now we drink to what I hope has been his creator!"

They were silent for some moments, and then Verisschenzko went on:

"When the state of being in love is waning, affection often remains, but then one is at the mercy of a new emotion. I'd be nervous if a woman who had loved me subsided into feeling affection!"

"Then define loving?"

"Loving throbs with delight in the flesh; it thrills the spirit with reverence. It glorifies into beauty commonplace things. It draws nearer in sickness and sorrow, and is not the sport of change. When a woman loves truly she has the pa.s.sion of the mistress, the selfless tenderness of the mother, the dignity and devotion of the wife. She is all fire and snow, all will and frankness, all pa.s.sion and reserve, she is authoritative and obedient--queen and child."

"And a man?"

"He ceases to be a brute and becomes a G.o.d."

"Can it last, I wonder?" and again Denzil sighed.

"It could if people were not such fools--they nearly always deliberately destroy the loved one's emotion by senseless stupidity--in not grasping the fact that no fire burns without fuel. They disillusionise each other.

The joy once secured, they take no pains to keep it. A woman will do things when the lover is an acknowledged possession, which she would not have dreamed of doing while desiring to attract the man--and a man likewise--neither realising that the whole state of being in love is an intoxication of the senses, and that the senses are very easily wearied or affronted."

"Stepan--what am I going to do about Amaryllis? If I come back, it will be h.e.l.l--a continual longing and aching, and I want to accomplish something in life; it was never my plan to have the whole thing held and bounded by pa.s.sion for a woman. A hopeless pa.s.sion I can understand facing and crushing, but one which you know that the woman returns, and that it is only the law and promises you have made which separate you, is the most awful torment." He covered his eyes with his hand for a moment.

His face was stern. "And her life too--how sickening. You say you are going down to Ardayre to see Amaryllis--you will tell me how you find her. I have not written--I am trying not to feel."

"Are you interested about the coming child? I am never quite certain how much it matters to a man, whether we deceive ourselves and feel sentiment simply because we love the woman, whether the emotion is half vanity, or whether there is something in the actual state called parenthood? How do you feel?"

Denzil thought of his musings upon this subject after he had seen Amaryllis at the Carlton.

"It is hard to describe," he answered now, "it is all so interwoven with love for Amaryllis that I cannot distinguish which is which, or how I feel about the state in the abstract. Women have these mysterious emotions, I believe, but I do not think that they come to the average man, but if he loves it seems a fulfilment."

"I have two children scattered in Russia, begotten before I had begun to think of things and their meanings. I have them finely educated--I loathe them. I sicken at the memory of the mothers; I am ashamed when I see in them some chance physical likeness to myself. But how will you feel presently when you see the child, adoring the mother as you do? What will it say to you, looking at you with your own eyes, perhaps? You'll long to have some hand in the training of it. You'll desire to watch the budding brain and the expanding soul. You'll be drawn closer and closer to Amaryllis--it will all pull you with an invisible nature chain--"

"I know it,--that is the tragedy of the whole thing. Those delights will be John's--and I hate to think that Amaryllis will be alone for all these months--and yet I believe I would prefer that to her being with John. I am jealous when I remember that he has rights denied to me--so what must he feel, poor devil, when he remembers about me?"

"It is quite a peculiar situation. I wonder what the years will develop it into."

"If the child is a girl, the whole thing is in vain."

"It won't be a girl--you will see I am right. When will you and John get leave, do you suppose?"

"I don't know, but about Christmas, perhaps, if we are alive--"

"Do you want to see her again, then?"

"I long always to see her--but by Christmas--it would be nearly five months. I don't think I could keep my word and not make love to her--if I saw her--then."

"You will wish to hear about her--?"

"Always."

After this they were both silent while the cheese was being removed.

Verisschenzko was thinking profoundly. Here was a study worthy of his highest intuitive faculties. What possible solution could the future hold? Only one--that of death for either of the men concerned. Well, death was busy with England's best--it was no unlikely possibility--and as he looked at Denzil he felt a stab of pain. Nothing more splendid and living and strong could be imagined than his six foot one of manhood, crowned with the health of his twenty-nine years.

"I hope to G.o.d he comes through," he prayed. And then he became cynical, as was his habit, when he found himself moved.

"I am on the track of Harietta, Denzil. She has a new lover--Ferdinand Ardayre."

"What a combination!"

"Yes, but who the officer was at the Ardayre ball I cannot yet trace.

Stanisla.s.s is quite a _gaga_--he spends his time packed off to play piquet at the St. James'--he has no _bosse des cartes_,--it is his burdensome duty."

"He does not feel the war?"