"You have guessed rightly."
"Foolish boy. Is such a game worth your pursuing – you with a mind! Not to mention that it's poor sport hunting doves. There's but one way for such as you with a maid. Try the intellect first – then ask the heart. Love's ways are folded in the mind. Second-rate poets may walk in their gardens prelassing up and down, singing you songs of the scholar that loved a farmer's girl. But you and I are wise enough to know love from lust, Norman Price. Lust has her whims, even her selections – that I grant you: but shall she delude us into taking her for Love?"
"Lust is a great Goddess as well as Love."
"It may be; but she is a great foe of reasonable men. And Love comprises all her power and many other powers besides. But, believe me, your difficulty is not a disaster, and tact can meet it, and I swear you will learn what love means before you leave Alsander."
"Your promises are pretty bold, especially that last one, my Poet. However, if you promise me good sport, of course I will stay a little longer in Alsander."
"I have one bag full of promises and one full of fulfilments," smiled the old man, "and they both weigh pretty well the same. But first you have a promise to make to me."
"Which is?"
"That you will maintain the most absolute, the most impenetrable secrecy concerning what you have seen this afternoon, including the very existence of such persons as myself and the King of Alsander."
"A reasonable and not unexpected request. Of course I give you my word of honour to keep silent. But reveal your next mystery, Signore!"
"What is a revealed mystery, except for the Church? All I care to let you know is that if you prove your mettle you shall be allowed to help in the regeneration of Alsander."
"A political scheme – is that it? But how am I to prove my mettle?"
"Wait and you will see."
"Tell me at least," rejoined Norman, "what is to be my immediate conduct. How am I to make the first step of this sublime journey?"
"Return to your lodging, rise, eat, walk, sleep, and flirt a little less than usual, and await events."
"Is that all?"
"Not quite all. I have another very fanciful request to make. Are you what the ancients call a good hypocrite, that is to say, an accomplished actor? For there is a delicate piece of acting which I would like you to perform. I want you by gradual degrees to raise a little mystery about yourself. I want you to insinuate with a hint here and a whisper there that you are a personage, a man with a past, a nobleman in disguise, at all events not quite what you seem. Let the honest folk you dwell with begin to imagine that there is some secret about your arrival in Alsander."
"My dear sir, what a very odd idea!"
"You will be full of odd ideas in a few weeks' time. I only hope that you will succeed in this the first of your tasks, and that you have not already been too explicit concerning your origin and identity. Play the lost millionaire or the ruined marquis. Become quickly a marked man – a man at whose approach the townsfolk whisper.
"This is a harlequin's game," said Norman, indignantly.
"Well, the world's a ball, and out of shape at that: there's no need to be ashamed of mummery. If you don't like it leave it: but I should be extremely sorry, and you would miss the occasion of your life. Come, now!"
They passed through the castle gate. The sentries appeared to be still asleep, leaning against the archway, their lances propped on their drowsy bodies. The castle square was deserted as ever. Halfway across the old man stopped – seized Norman by the lapel of his coat and observed, "By the way, you ought to give that girl a handsome present!"
"What queer jumps you do make in the conversation, to be sure!" exclaimed Norman. "When your great and secret scheme has enriched me, no doubt I shall make her a very magnificent present. But I can't see the immediate necessity, and at present I am pretty short of cash."
"Never mind the cash. Go to a little shop in a back lane opposite the cathedral and ask to see fine presents for fine ladies. He buys stolen goods, sells cheap, gives unlimited credit to anyone who says 'The Poet sent me.'"
"Why, I have already noticed that little shop," cried Norman. "It contains all sorts of trash, and the other day I found a few old books exposed in the window, and an old Amsterdam Petronius among them."
"Yes. Those pretty old vellum bound classics, I should tell you, must be bought with caution and bought cheap. They have no intrinsic value if you want to sell them again. But he has all sorts of treasures; I can recommend him to you strongly. By the way, it may seem odd of me to ask, but will you excuse me a moment?"
"Certainly," said Norman, and the old man walked swiftly away from him and hurried up a back street. Norman kept wondering why his guide was so insistent on the question of the present. He then wondered why he had gone, and then, as minutes went on, he wondered why he had not returned. He looked up the back street. There was no trace of his strange companion, who evidently did not intend to reappear, and had taken this odd way of vanishing.
"Well," said Norman to himself as he paced home pondering on the fantastic events of the afternoon, "in this fair city of Alsander at least I can pass as sane!"
CHAPTER VI
CONCERNING ISIS AND APHRODITE:
WITH A DIGRESSION ON THE SHOCKING TREATMENT
THE LATTER'S FOLLOWERS RECEIVE FROM THE HANDS OF ENGLISH NOVELISTS
I had read books you had not read,
Yet I was put to shame
To hear the simple words you said,
And see your eyes aflame.
Forty-two Poems
And there was Peronella!
Seated at the window charmingly dressed in white and rose, with the sun on her face and neck and naked arms, with light playing with those said marvellous arms of hers and making all the little downy hairs on them sparkle. "Beauty is Truth," says the poet, and Norman, looking on her with all the passion of a passionate man, longed to believe the poet's he and banish the disappointments of the mind. There was nothing vulgar or half-educated about her beauty – lips or hands or eyes. Was she not perhaps simply a child, a soul asleep, repeating like one in an hypnotic trance the rubbish she had been forced to learn? Was she not merely waiting for some violent shock of love or life to dispel the false personality of the genteel young Miss and unveil the true Woman, with all the unconquerable nobility of the peasant and the curious greatness of the South?
Norman sighed as he gazed on the lovely girl and immediately proceeded to eat an ample meal, washed down with ample wine. We have mentioned that he was very hungry. He was thirsty, too, and the white wine of that country is a good wine, if a little sweet. Then he took a book and read and looked at his mistress, exchanging some sufficiently foolish remarks from time to time. But he was worried with the strange events of the fore-noon, impatient to meet his strange mentor again and not knowing where to find him. Too soon also he became troubled by the philosophical question, May Beauty be stupid? and altogether he was not in a mood to be absorbed by any book at all.
Peronella, a few moments later, looking up, saw that his eyes had wandered, that the little book was on the floor, and that his face expressed deep thought. One does not often see people thinking in Alsander, and Peronella wondered if it hurt. Coming to the conclusion that it must be uncomfortable to wear such a face, she got up and went to stand by Norman's chair. Such a domestic scene has many an artist of Holland painted to please the quiet burghers of The Hague. Norman kissed her somewhat mechanically, and without that intense devotion and fiery rapture to which she was accustomed.
"What have you been reading that interests you so much and makes you kiss me in that stupid way?" she cried.
"It is a little Latin book I brought with me from England."
"In Latin? What's it all about? Is it very dull?"
"Sit on my knee and I will tell you all about it. No, don't ruffle my hair, but attend to lessons. I was reading about a great goddess who rose up from the sea, whose robe was so black that it shone…"
"But I thought she was quite naked."
"Who?"
"The goddess who came out of the foam."
"Why, who has been telling about the goddess who rose from the foam?"
"Father Algio in one of his Lent sermons told us a great deal about her."
Father Algio was an old monk with whom Norman had talked once or twice: a gentle soul, but with an odd fire lurking about his eyes. One realized that if roused by the trumpet of the Church he would have marched like a Crusader to uttermost Taprobane, fighting for the Lord.
"What had he to say about the Lady Aphrodite?"
"Aphrodite, yes, that was her name. How clever you are! Oh, the priest said that he thought the reason why we were so given to the sins of the flesh was that we were of the old Greek blood, and had never forgotten the worship of this lady who came from the sea."
"What an intelligent priest it is! O Peronella, you are a true daughter of Aphrodite."
"Tell me about her, Normano. She was the goddess of Love!"
"Yes, and she has a son called Cupid and is drawn in a chariot by violet-throated doves. Also, Peronella, she has a little silver broom, with which she drives away the cobwebs from a man's soul when he has read too many books."
"And when did she wear the shining black?"
"O! this book is not about Aphrodite, it is about Isis, an Egyptian goddess."
"Egyptian? That must be interesting. Was she as beautiful as Aphrodite? Tell me all about her."
"There are different sorts of beauty. Aphrodite was a graceful, careless and happy woman, rather like you to look at, and very much like you in character."
"How charming of you to say so!"
"While Isis had all Nature to manage, and the moon and the sea. She was a terrible goddess, with snakes in her hair, and a great disc between her breasts. Men loved her none the less; she was the spirit of all Nature, and required purity and endurance from her worshippers."
"Purity and endurance! And snakes in her hair! Aphrodite must have been far more pleasant, especially if she was like me. She was the patroness of our city, the Father said; and Dr Sforelli wrote to the papers once to say that the image of the Virgin in the Cathedral Church was a heathen statue that some King put up there and that clothes had been made for it later. I know that because Father Algio was so furious at the time that he preached three sermons against the Jews. But why do you read such rubbish?"
Norman was irritated by the naïveness of the remark, and still more irritated with himself for being irritated.
"What an ass I am," he said to himself, "to talk to a pretty girl about the Classics, and what a much larger ass to trouble what she thinks!"
Norman had to learn that education makes prigs of all of us, whether we will or no. Of wise and learned men only the truly great can keep their characters free of priggishness, and even then, what of Marcus Aurelius and William Wordsworth and John Ruskin? What even of Olympian Goethe?
And there she was, shining, shining.
"You mean," said Norman, "why do I read such rubbish when I have you to look at?"
And still Peronella shone.
"The book of your eyes is the best book," said Norman.
Romance even in her moment could not so fool him that he did not wish he could have said "the book of your soul."
Peronella shone, and, by an instinct, shone in silence.
"You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen," said Norman.
And the sun shone on Peronella.
Then though indeed for a moment more Norman heard the voice of caution, it was but a voice fading far away. Some arguments against caution ran through his mind – pompous self-depreciation and some inverted snobbery about "good enough for a grocer boy." Then the petty arguments were needed no longer: his mind faded and went out, and he leapt upon her like a god from Olympus on some not reluctant spirit of wood or water. He pressed her to him till he felt as if every inch of the fiery contact were complete, and he forgot whole oceans of civilization in a moment. That is what education is made for, some might say, it gives us more to forget and more to abandon in crucial moments of love or heroism.
He kissed her all round her burning face. He kissed the soft skin behind her ear where first he kissed her in the dawn – in the best and earliest hour of all the golden days. He kissed her smooth and naked arms that bound his neck like a silver chain. He set all the snow of her shoulder afire with kisses, and on her mouth he forgot the wise advice of Browning and gave her the bee's kiss first.
The maddening sun still shone on Peronella, on her soft dishevelled robe whence gleamed what a man might take for a red rosebud; on her dark hair with the hyacinthine shadows where a man might see all the stars that shine in a Syrian night – on her cheek and throat and her silver arms – but not on her eyes, for, heavy with passion, they were all but closed.
On Norman, too, shone that great and primitive Ball of Fire – on Norman, as bright an Adonis as ever ran riot in a gallant tale.
But when they paused for breath, as even the bravest lovers must, and sat together on the little blue divan that graced the barren room; when Peronella's lips were free to speak, and Norman's mind was free to meditateif only for a brief, sharp, cruel moment – how swiftly went the sun behind a cloud!
"When will you marry me?" said Peronella, "and will you take me to England? O, say you will take me to England, Normano, and when you drive me round in your carriage all the world will say, 'That woman cannot be of our town; she is the most beautiful woman that we have ever seen.'"
"Darling," said Norman, "let me think of this moment, of nothing but this moment, and always of this moment," and he kissed her again.
But the sun shone no more on Peronella! And her lover was not thinking only of the moment. He was thinking of his life. Her pretty words pierced him like little darts of ice, and all the comminations of the sages could not have frightened him more than the maiden's innocent speech.
He saw in his clear-sighted panic that here was an end of all bright dreams save this one: and he knew how soon this dream would fade. He saw Peronella unhappy – a Peronella who could not be afforded a carriage – sulking behind the counter of the Bon Marché, in the rain. He saw how her beauty would fade away in England, swiftly, in a few years – and all in a moment she seemed as she sat there to grow old and tired before him, wasting away beneath the low, dark northern skies. He judged her character with Minoan rightness. He knew she would always be a child, always be silly, querulous, unfaithful, passionate: he knew, above all, how soon she would kill that spark in him that made him different from other men – that spark the poet bade him cherish. And he feared she would bore him at breakfast every morning of his life.
Ah! Peronella was good enough – nay, a prize beyond all dreams! – for a Blaindon grocer: he knew that. But all the brilliant fantasies and conquering ambitions which his heart kept so secret that he would not have spoken of them to his old friend (are there not wild miracles which we all, even the sanest of us, hope will happen for our benefit and glory?), all these hidden desires and insane fancies came beating upon the doors of his soul.
Had he been a southerner himself, of course he would have taken the girl and left her at his pleasure, the moment the love-glow faded and the romance grew stale. Her body was his for a kiss, for a smile, at the worst for a traitor promise ora roseleaf he. But he was an Englishman – and perhaps only Englishmen can fully understand why Norman, for all that the thought quivered in his mind, withstood, as we say in our canting phrase, temptation.
For my part, I think the phrases we use, specially in books, are canting enough, and the foreigners rightly scorn us. In no tale since Tom Jones have we had an honest Englishman who makes love because it is jolly and because he doesn't care. With what a pompous gravity and false seriousness do we talk, we English men of letters, of a little lovemaking which in France they pass with a jest and a smile. Think how our just and righteous novelists fulminate against the miscreants of their own creation. Think of Becky Sharp and her devilish intrigues, of Seaforth and his vile deceitfulness. For Thackeray, the Irregular Unionist (if so we may style those easy livers) is a scourge of high society: for Dickens, he is an ungodly scoundrel, a scourge of low society; for Thomas Hardy, he is a noble fellow disregarding the shackles of convention; while the late George Meredith invariably punishes the amorous by describing them as intellectual failures. To-day Mr Shaw would consider Lovelace disreputable owing to his lack of interest in social problems, while the pale Nietzscheans would worship him with ecstatic gasps as a monstrous fine blonde beast. Our popular novelists are entirely unaware that such horrible scoundrels exist, and our legislators will shortly pass a law which will enable all offenders against monogamy to be flogged. Their agitation will be called a "revival of the old Puritan spirit," and their law will be applied with rigour to the lower classes. The French, I say, call us filthy hypocrites.
And yet the accusation, if levelled against our race and not only against our writers, is not a true one, however plausible. We are more restrained than other races, and that neither because we are less passionate nor because we are more timorous. Our athletic youths are purer – do not merely say they are purer, than the diminutive young men abroad. It is really true there is a special kind of nobility-and generosity in the way our gentlemen treat women. There is something in our race that makes us different from other nations. Call our severe principles a fear of convention, an outworn chivalry, if you like; you have not accounted for all cases; perhaps it is true that an Englishman is more likely than any other European to love a woman deeply enough to be content with her for ever. At all events, it should be remarked how those Englishmen who through education or travel have most tolerance for the sins of others and most opportunity for sinning themselves seldom lose their own traditional scruples. And that is why (to come back to our hero) Norman, who would never have dreamed of blaming Tom Jones for his jolly conduct, and who had read with zeal and appreciation novelists of France who held the most scandalous theories concerning the unimportance of it all, was nevertheless unable to make love to a girl whom he intended to desert. Besides, it struck him, the girl had never yet yielded to a lover. For him the dilemma was clear: he must marry this girl or leave her, and the thought came over him like that
One clear nice
Cool squirt of water o'er the bust,
The right thing to extinguish lust.
Now had he accepted this dilemma bravely, and fled that very hour from the siren presence, he would have had only a flirtation and a few kisses to store up against the hour of remorse. But he fought shy of drastic measures and sought to gain time like a Turkish diplomat. Perhaps, too, he wanted to stay in Alsander yet a little longer to inquire into the mystifications of his tramp guide, and await instructions as to the promised "career of good works." At all events, there is no doubt that as far as the procrastination business went, he found suddenly a great inspiration in the curious parting command which the old poet had given him. He would weave a mystery about himself. He would thus not only obey the fantastic injunction of the poet, but find a most practical means of escape from a perilous position.
He shook himself free of the twining arms, roughly and suddenly, as though he had just remembered something, and paced up and down the room as one lost in thought.
"Why, what is it?" said Peronella. She was always alarmed at seeing a man meditate. Such is the profound instinct of women!
But Norman, intent now on playing his part with thoroughness and efficiency, made no answer, and going over to the window frowned gloomily and began to mutter to himself.
"Tell me what is the matter," cried the girl, running over to him. "Are you ill?"
"Ah!" said Norman. "I wish I could tell you what is the matter. There is more the matter than you know of, dear, and my heart is as heavy as lead."
"Why, what ever has happened?" said the girl, and her face grew longer still.
"Forgive me, Peronella. I should not have spoken."
"You say your heart is heavy as lead. Tell me what is troubling you!"
"Oh! a little secret trouble, that is all."
"What trouble can be secret between you and me?"
"Do not speak of it again, dear. Forget it. I am sorry I hinted that anything was wrong."
"You are not deceiving me, Normano? You do not love an English girl?"
"No, it is not that."
"Then what is it? You must tell me."
Norman sat on the table and put his hands on the girl's shoulders.
"Well, then, who do you suppose I am?" he asked, with a half-smile.
"Why, an Englishman, of course."
"An Englishman. But what Englishman? And why should I come to Alsander and live in Alsander?"
"But why not? Other Englishmen have come to Alsander."
"Yes, but to buy and sell."
This crude artifice was quite enough to trouble the wits of Peronella.
"It is very strange," she said, musing, "and Cesano said it was strange, but who are you, then, by all the Saints?"
"That I cannot tell you, Peronella."
"Well, what have you come for if not to buy and sell? Besides," added Peronella, passionately, "I love you, and that is enough. What do I care who you are?"
"If your love were deep, perhaps you would care who I was."
The saying of this sentence was the worst thing Norman ever did in his life. His conscience haunted him for years and never let him forget those dozen careless words and their cynical hypocrisy.
Peronella did not understand him, nor attempt to, but blazed out in a fury, "How dare you come and tell lies and pretend to be what you aren't and deceive us all? It's all lies, you don't care for me one bit, and I am a little fool!" cried Peronella, on the brink of tears and truth.
"How have I deceived you?" said Norman, lamely.
"You never told me who you were. You come and pretend to be what you are not. You make love to me, and now I see you want to run away."
"You never-asked me. I am not running away," said Norman, breathlessly, seeing this card-house toppling.
"I ask you now."
"Look here," said the hypocrite. "Listen to me and trust me. No, you know I am not lying to you. Look into my eyes and see. I ask just one thing of you. Wait three months and you shall have an answer and know who I am."
"Don't tell more lies and talk more nonsense, species of brute," said the girl, savagely.
"Ah, Peronella, I wish I were talking nonsense."
And the infernal fellow put on an air of sorrow and nobility.
"Wait three months," he repeated, "and then see if you want to marry me, or dare to want to marry me," he added with magniloquence, thoroughly ashamed of himself but too deep in the mire to get free.
"O, Normano, what do you mean? Shall I kill you or believe you?"
"Wait a little while, dear," he said, bending over her with a not feigned tenderness. "Wait a little while and you shall see."
Steps were heard on the stair.
"Here is Cesano," said Peronella, and forthwith Cesano came in with an ineffable air of being on his best behaviour. Norman took his opportunity and went, and with a bow which his fuming rival took for supercilious generosity bade them both good-night.
In the loneliness of his bedroom he fell on his bed like a penitent child and cursed himself for a mean scoundrel. As for Peronella, the first words she said to Cesano were:
"There is a mystery about my Englishman, I wonder who he is," and thereupon she repeated to him the whole conversation. True, he had not told her to keep the secret, but in any case she could not have kept one. It was to be the first thing Cesano was to tell Petro the cobbler when he saw him later that evening, and the first thing Petro the cobbler told Father Algio when he came in for a cup of coffee towards midnight, and the first thing Father Algio told to all his numerous acquaintance. Norman woke up next morning famous and a mystery, and was stared at in the street even more than before. Peronella was perhaps pleased to pass for the mistress of a mystery, Cesano's hopes revived and all seemed for the best in the best of all possible worlds – for three spacious months to come, at least. So thought Norman.