The Tragic Comedians: A Study in a Well-known Story Part 11

Love and man sometimes meet for n.o.ble concord; the strings of the hungry instrument are not all so rough that Love's touch on them is indistinguishable from the rattling of the wheels within; certain herald harmonies have been heard. But Love, which purifies and enlarges us, and sets free the soul, Love visiting a fleshly frame must have time and s.p.a.ce, and some help of circ.u.mstance, to give the world a.s.surance that the man is a temple fit for the rites. Out of romances, he is not melodiously composed. And in a giant are various giants to be slain, or thoroughly subdued, ere this divinity is taken for leader. It is not done by miracle.

As it happened cruelly for Alvan, the woman who had become the radiant indistinct in his desiring mind was one whom he knew to be of a shivery stedfastness. His plucking her from another was neither wonderful nor indefensible; they two were suited as no other two could be; the handsome boy who had gone through a form of plighting with her was her slave, and she required for her mate a master: she felt it and she sided to him quite naturally, moved by the sacred direction of the acknowledgement of a mutual fitness. Twice, however, she had relapsed on the occasions of his absence, and owning his power over her when they were together again, she sowed the fatal conviction that he held her at present, and that she was a woman only to be held at present, by the palpable grasp of his physical influence. Partly it was correct, not entirely, seeing that she kept the impression of a belief in him even when she drifted away through sheer weakness, but it was the single positive view he had of her, and it was fatal, for it begat a devil of impatience.

'They are undermining her now--now--now!'

He started himself into busy frenzies to reach to her, already indifferent to the means, and waxing increasingly reckless as he fed on his agitation. Some faith in her, even the little she deserved, would have arrested him: unhappily he had less than she, who had enough to nurse the dim sense of his fixity, and sank from him only in her heart's faintness, but he, when no longer flattered by the evidence of his mastery, took her for sand. Why, then, had he let her out of his grasp?

The horrid echoed interrogation flashed a hideous view of the woman. But how had he come to be guilty of it? he asked himself again; and, without answering him, his counsellors to that poor wisdom set to work to complete it: Giant Vanity urged Giant Energy to make use of Giant Duplicity. He wrote to Clotilde, with one voice quoting the law in their favour, with another commanding her to break it. He gathered and drilled a legion of spies, and showered his gold in bribes and plots to get the letter to her, to get an interview--one human word between them.

CHAPTER X

His friend Colonel von Tresten was beside him when he received the enemy's counter-stroke. Count Walburg and his companion brought a letter from Clotilde--no reply; a letter renouncing him.

Briefly, in cold words befitting the act, she stated that the past must be dead between them; for the future she belonged to her parents; she had left the city. She knew not where he might be, her letter concluded, but henceforward he should know that they were strangers.

Alvan held out the deadly paper when he had read the contents; he smote a forefinger on it and crumpled it in his hand. That was the dumb oration of a man shocked by the outrage upon pa.s.sionate feeling to the state of brute. His fist, outstretched to the length of his arm, shook the reptile letter under a terrible frown.

Tresten saw that he supposed himself to be perfectly master of his acts because he had not spoken, and had managed to preserve the ordinary courtesies.

'You have done your commission,' the colonel said to Count Walburg, whose companion was not disposed to go without obtaining satisfactory a.s.surances, and pressed for them.

Alvan fastened on him. 'You adopt the responsibility of this?' He displayed the letter.

'I do.'

'It lies.'

Tresten remarked to Count Walburg: 'These visits are provocations.'

'They are not so intended,' said the count, bowing pacifically. His friend was not a man of the sword, and was not under the obligation to accept an insult. They left the letter to do its work.

Big natures in their fits of explosiveness must be taken by flying shots, as dwarfs peep on a monster, or the Scythian attacked a phalanx.

Were we to hear all the roarings of the shirted Heracles, a world of comfortable little ones would doubt the unselfishness of his love of Dejaneira. Yes, really; they would think it was not a chivalrous love: they would consider that he thought of himself too much. They would doubt, too, of his being a gentleman! Partial glimpses of him, one may fear, will be discomposing to simple natures. There was a short black eruption. Alvan controlled it, to ask hastily what the baroness thought and what she had heard of Clotilde. Tresten made sign that it was nothing of the best.

'See! my girl has hundreds of enemies, and I, only I, know her and can defend her--weak, base shallow trickster, traitress that she is!' cried Alvan, and came down in a thundershower upon her: 'Yesterday--the day before--when? just now, here, in this room; gave herself--and now!'

He bent, and immediately straightening his back, addressed Colonel von Tresten as her calumniator, 'Say your worst of her, and I say I will make of that girl the peerless woman of earth! I! in earnest! it's no dream. She can be made.... O G.o.d! the beast has turned tail! I knew she could. There 's three of beast to one of G.o.ddess in her, and set her alone, and let her be hunted and I not by, beast it is with her!

cowardly skulking beast--the n.o.blest and very bravest under my wing!

Incomprehensible to you, Tresten? But who understands women! You hate her. Do not. She 's a riddle, but no worse than the rest of the tangle.

She gives me up? Pooh! She writes it. She writes anything. And that vilest, I say, I will make more enviable, more Clotilde! he thundered her signature in an amazement, broken suddenly by the sight of her putting her name to the letter. She had done that, written her name to the renunciation of him! No individual could bear the sight of such a crime, and no suffering man could be appeased by a single victim to atone for it. Her s.e.x must be slaughtered; he raged against the woman; she became that ancient poisonous thing, the woman; his fury would not distinguish her as Clotilde, though the name had started him, and it was his knowledge of the particular sinner which drew down his curses on the s.e.x. He twisted his body, hugging at his breast as if he had her letter sticking in his ribs. The letter was up against his ribs, and he thumped it, crushed it, patted it; he kissed it, and flung it, stamped on it, and was foul-mouthed. Seeing it at his feet, he bent to it like a man snapped in two, lamenting, bewailing himself, recovering sight of her fragmentarily. It stuck in his ribs, and in scorn of the writer, and sceptical of her penning it, he tugged to pull it out, and broke the shaft, but left the rankling arrow-head:--she had traced the lines, and though tyranny racked her to do that thing, his agony followed her hand over the paper to her name, which fixed and bit in him like the deadly-toothed arrow-head called asp, and there was no uprooting it.

The thing lived; her deed was the woman; there was no separating them: witness it in love murdered.

O that woman! She has murdered love. She has blotted love completely out. She is the arch-thief and a.s.sa.s.sin of mankind--the female Apollyon.

He lost sight of her in the prodigious iniquity covering her s.e.x with a cowl of night, and it was what women are, what women will do, the one and all alike simpering simulacra that men find them to be, soulless, clogs on us, bloodsuckers! until a feature of the particular sinner peeped out on him, and brought the fresh agony of a reminder of his great-heartedness. 'For that woman--Tresten, you know me--I would have sacrificed for that woman fortune and life, my hope, my duty, my immortality. She knew it, and she--look!' he unwrinkled the letter carefully for it to be legible, and clenched it in a ball.' Signs her name, signs her name, her name!--G.o.d of heaven! it would be incredible in a holy chronicle--signs her name to the infamous harlotry! See: "Clotilde von Rudiger." It's her writing; that's her signature: "Clotilde" in full. You'd hardly fancy that, now? But look!' the colonel's eyelids were blinking, and Alvan dinted his finger-nail under her name: 'there it is: Clotilde: signed shamelessly. Just as she might have written to one of her friends about bonnets, and b.a.l.l.s, and books!

Henceforward strangers, she and I?'

His laughter, even to Tresten, a man of camps, sounded profane as a yell beneath a cathedral dome. 'Why, the woman has been in my hands--I released her, spared her, drilled brain and blood, ransacked all the code, to do her homage and honour in every mortal way; and we two strangers! Do you hear that, Tresten? Why, if you had seen her!--she was lost, and I, this man she now pierces with ice, kept h.e.l.l down under bolt and bar-worse, I believe, broke a good woman's heart! that never a breath should rise that could accuse her on suspicion, or in malice, or by accident, justly, or with a shadow of truth. "I think it best for us both." So she thinks for me! She not only decides, she thinks; she is the active principle; 'tis mine to submit.--A certain presumption was in that girl always. Ha! do you hear me? Her letter may sting, it shall not dupe. Strangers? Poor fool! You see plainly she was nailed down to write the thing. This letter is a flat lie. She can lie--Oh! born to the art!

born to it!--lies like a Saint tricking Satan! But she says she has left the city. Now to find her!'

He began marching about the room with great strides. 'I 'll have the whole Continent up; her keepers shall have no rest; I 'll have them by the Law Courts; and by stratagem, and, if law and cunning fail, force.

I have sworn it. I have done all that honour can ask of a man; more than any man, to my knowledge, would have done, and now it's war. I declare war on them. They will have it! I mean to take that girl from them--s.n.a.t.c.h or catch! The girl is my girl, and if there are laws against my having my own, to powder with the laws! Well, and do you suppose me likely to be beaten? Then Cicero was a fiction, and Caesar a people's legend. Not if they are history, and eloquence and commandership have power over the blood and souls of men. First, I write to her!'

His friend suggested that he knew not where she was. But already the pen was at work, the brain pouring as from a pitcher.

Writing was blood-letting, and the interminable pages drained him of his fever. As he wrote, she grew more radiant, more indistinct, more fiercely desired. The concentration of his active mind directed his whole being on the track of Clotilde, idealizing her beyond human. That last day when he had seen her appeared to him as the day of days. That day was Clotilde herself, she in person; he saw it as the woman, and saw himself translucent in the great luminousness; and behind it all was dark, as in front. That one day was the sun of his life. It had been a day of rain, and he beheld it in memory just as it had been, with the dark threaded air, the dripping streets; and he glorified it past all daily radiance. His letter was a burning hymn to the day. His moral grandeur on the day made him live as part of the splendour. Was it possible for the woman who had seen him then to be faithless to him? The swift deduction from his own feelings cleansed her of a suspicion to the contrary, and he became lighthearted. He hummed an air when he had finished his letter to her.

Councils with his adherents and couriers were held, and some were despatched to watch the house and slip the letter to her maid; others were told off to bribe and hound their way on the track of Clotilde. His gold rained into their hands with the directions.

Colonel von Tresten was the friend of his attachment to the baroness; a friend of both, and a warm one. Men coming into contact with Alvan took their shape of friend or enemy sharply, for he was friend or enemy of no dubious feature, devoted to them he loved, and a battery on them he opposed. The colonel had been the confidant of the baroness's grief over this love-pa.s.sion of Alvan's, and her resignation. He shared her doubts of Clotilde's n.o.bility of character: the reports were not favourable to the young lady. But the baroness and he were of one opinion, that Alvan in love was not likely to be governable by prudent counsel. He dropped a word of the whispers of Clotilde's volatility.

Alvan nodded his perfect a.s.sent. 'She is that, she is anything you like; you cannot exaggerate her for good or evil. She is matchless, colour her as you please.' Adopting the tone of argument, he said: 'She writes that letter. Well? It is her writing, and the moment, I am sure of it as hers, I would not have it unwritten. I love it!' He looked maddish with his love of the horrible thing, and resumed soberly: 'The point is, that she has the charm for me. She is plastic in my hands. Other men would waste the treasure. I make of her what I will, and she knows it, and knows that she hangs on me to flourish worthily. I breathe the very soul of the woman into her. As for that letter of hers--' it burnt him this time to speak of the letter: 'she may write and write! She's weak, thin, a reed; she--let her be! Say of her when she plays beast--she is absent from Alvan! I can forgive. The letter's nothing; it means nothing--except "Thou fool, Alvan, to let me go." Yes, that! Her people are acting tyrant with her--as legally they have no right to do in this country, and I shall prove it to them. When I have gained admission to her--and I soon shall: it can't be refused: I am off to the head of her father's office to-morrow, and I have only to represent the state of affairs to the Minister in my language to obtain his authority to demand admission to her:--then, friend, you will see! I lift my finger, and you will see! At my request she went back to her mother. I have but to beckon.'

He had cooled to the happy a.s.surance of his authority over her, all the giants of his system being well in action, and when that is the case with a big nature it is at rest, or such is the condition of repose granted it in life.

On the morrow he was off to batter at doors which would have expected rather the summons of an armed mob at his heels than the strange cry of the Radical man maltreated by love.

CHAPTER XI

The story of Clotilde's departure from the city, like that of Alvan's, communicated to her by her maid, was an antic.i.p.ation of the truth, disseminated by her parents. She was removed when the swarm of spies and secret letter-bearers were attaining a position of dignity through the rumour of legal gentlemen about to direct the movements of the besieging army.

A stir seemed to her to prognosticate a rescue and she went not unwillingly. To be in motion, to see roadside faces, p.r.i.c.ked her senses with some hope. She had gained the peace she needed, and in that state her heart began to be agitated by a fresh awakening, luxurious at first rather than troublesome. She had sunk so low that the light of Alvan seemed too distant for a positive expectation of him; but few approached her whom she did not fancy under strange disguises: the gentlemen were servants, the blouses were gentlemen; she looked wistfully at old women bearing baskets, for the forbidden fruit to peep out in the form of an envelope. All pa.s.sed her blankly, noticing her eyes.

The journey was short; she was taken to a place a little beyond the head of the lake, and there, though she had liberty to breathe the air, fast fixed within the walls of a daily sameness that became gradually the hum of voices accusing Alvan of one in excess of the many sins laid against him by his enemies. Was he not possibly an empty pretender to power--a mere great talker?

Her bit of liberty increased her chafing at the deadly monotony of this existence, and envenomed the accusation by seeming to push her forth quite half way to meet him, if he would but come or show sign! She impetuously vindicated him from the charge of crediting the sincerity of any words she might have committed to paper at the despotic dictation of her father. Oh, no; Alvan could not be guilty of such folly as that; he could not; it would be to suppose him unacquainted with her, ignorant of the nature of women. He would know that she wrote the words--why? She could not perfectly recollect how she had come to write them, and found it easier to extinguish the act of having written them at all, which was done by the angry recurrence to his failure to intervene now when the drama cried for his G.o.dlike appearance. Perhaps he was really unacquainted with her thought her stronger than she was! The idea reflected a shadow on his intelligence. She was not in a situation that could bear of her blaming herself.

While she was thus devoured by the legions of her enfeebled wits, Clotilde was a.s.siduously courted by her family, and her father from time to time brought pen and paper for her to write anew from his dictation.

He was pleased to hail her as his fair secretary, and when the letters were unimportant she wrote flowingly, happy to be praised. They were occasionally addressed to friends; she discovered herself writing one to the professor, in which he was about to be informed that she had resolved to banish Alvan from her mind for ever. She stopped; her heart stopped; the pen fell from her hand, in loathing. Her father warily bade her proceed. She could not; she signified it choking. Only a few days before she had written to the professor exultingly of her engagement.

She refused to belie herself in such a manner; retrospectively her rapid contradictions appeared impossible; the picture of her was not human, and she gave out a negative of her whole frame convulsed, whereat the General was not slow to remind her of the scourgings she had undergone by a sudden burst of his wrath. He knew the proper physic. 'You girls want the lesson we read to skittish recruits; you shall have it. Write: "He is now as nothing to me." You shall write that you hate him, if you hesitate! Why, you unreasonable s.l.u.t, you have given him up; you have told him you have given him up, and what objection can you have to telling others now you have done it?'

'I was forced to it, body and soul!' cried Clotilde, sobbing and bursting into desperation out of a weak show of petulance that she had put on to propitiate him. 'If I have to tell, I will tell how it was.

For that my heart is unchanged, and Alvan is, and will be, my lord, all the world may see. I would rather write that I hate him.'

'You write, the man is now as nothing to me!' said her father, dashing his finger in a fiery zig-zag along the line for her pen to follow. 'Or else, my girl, you've been playing us a pretty farce!' He strung himself for a mad gallop of wrath, gave her a shudder, and relapsed. 'No, no, you're wiser, you're a better girl than that. Write it. I must have it written-here, come! The worst is over; the rest is child's play. Come, take the pen, I'll guide your hand.'

The pen was fixed in her hand, and the first words formed. They looked such sprawling skeletons that Clotilde had the comfort of feeling sure they would be discerned as the work of compulsion. So she wrote on mechanically, solacing herself for what she did with vows of future revolt. Alvan had a saying, that want of courage is want of sense; and she remembered his ill.u.s.tration of how sense would nourish courage by scattering the fear of death, if we would only grasp the thought that we sink to oblivion gladly at night, and, most of us, quit it reluctantly in the morning. She shut her eyes while writing; she fancied death would be welcome; and as she certainly had sense, she took it for the promise of courage. She flattered herself by believing, therefore, that she who did not object to die was only awaiting the cruelly-delayed advent of her lover to be almost as brave as he--the feminine of him. With these ideas in her head much clearer than when she wrote the couple of lines to Alvan--for then her head was reeling, she was then beaten and prostrate--she signed her name to a second renunciation of him, and was aware of a flush of self-reproach at the simple suspicion of his being deceived by it; it was an insult to his understanding. Full surely the professor would not be deceived, and a lover with a heart to reach to her and read her could never be hoodwinked by so palpable a piece of slavishness. She was indeed slavish; the apology necessitated the confession. But that promise of courage, coming of her ownership of sense, vindicated her prospectively; she had so little of it that she embraced it as a present possession, and she made it Alvan's task to put it to the trial. Hence it became Alvan's offence if, owing to his absence, she could be charged with behaving badly. Her generosity pardoned him his inexplicable delay to appear in his might: 'But see what your continued delay causes!' she said, and her tone was merely sorrowful.

She had forgotten her signature to the letter to the professor when his answer arrived. The sight of the handwriting of one of her lover's faithfullest friends was like a peal of bells to her, and she tore the letter open, and began to blink and spell at a strange language, taking the frosty sentences piecemeal. He begged her to be firm in her resolution, give up Alvan and obey her parents! This man of high intelligence and cultivation wrote like a provincial schoolmistress moralizing. Though he knew the depth of her pa.s.sion for Alvan, and had within the month received her lark-song of her betrothal, he, this man--if living man he could be thought--counselled her to endeavour to deserve the love and respect of her parents, alluded to Alvan's age and her better birth, approved her resolve to consult the wishes of her family, and in fine was as rank a traitor to friendship as any chronicled. Out on him! She swept him from earth.

And she had built some of her hopes on the professor. 'False friend!'

she cried.

She wept over Alvan for having had so false a friend.

There remained no one that could be expected to intervene with a strong arm save the baroness. The professor's emphasized approval of her resolve to consult the wishes of her family was a shocking hypocrisy, and Clotilde thought of the contrast to it in her letter to the baroness. The tripping and stumbling, prettily awkward little tone of gosling innocent new from its egg, throughout the letter, was a triumph of candour. She repeated pa.s.sages, paragraphs, of the letter, a.s.suring herself that such affectionately reverential prattle would have moved her, and with the strongest desire to cast her arms about the writer: it had been composed to be moving to a woman, to any woman. The old woman was entreated to bestow her blessing on the young one, all in Arcadia, and let the young one nestle to the bosom she had not an idea of robbing. She could not have had the idea, else how could she have made the pet.i.tion? And in order to compliment a venerable dame on her pure friendship for a gentleman, it was imperative to reject the idea.