Books: A Phantom Lover
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Vernon Lee >> A Phantom Lover
Suddenly Mr. Oke broke the silence.
"I don't know you very well," he began hurriedly, and without turning his
face towards me; "but I think you are honest, and you have seen a good deal
of the world--much more than I. I want you to tell me--but truly,
please--what do you think a man should do if"--and he stopped for some
minutes.
"Imagine," he went on quickly, "that a man cares a great deal--a very great
deal for his wife, and that he finds out that she--well, that--that she is
deceiving him. No--don't misunderstand me; I mean--that she is constantly
surrounded by some one else and will not admit it--some one whom she hides
away. Do you understand? Perhaps she does not know all the risk she is
running, you know, but she will not draw back--she will not avow it to her
husband"--
"My dear Oke," I interrupted, attempting to take the matter lightly, "these
are questions that can't be solved in the abstract, or by people to whom
the thing has not happened. And it certainly has not happened to you or
me."
Oke took no notice of my interruption. "You see," he went on, "the man
doesn't expect his wife to care much about him. It's not that; he isn't
merely jealous, you know. But he feels that she is on the brink of
dishonouring herself--because I don't think a woman can really dishonour
her husband; dishonour is in our own hands, and depends only on our own
acts. He ought to save her, do you see? He must, must save her, in one way
or another. But if she will not listen to him, what can he do? Must he seek
out the other one, and try and get him out of the way? You see it's all the
fault of the other--not hers, not hers. If only she would trust in her
husband, she would be safe. But that other one won't let her."
"Look here, Oke," I said boldly, but feeling rather frightened; "I know
quite well what you are talking about. And I see you don't understand the
matter in the very least. I do. I have watched you and watched Mrs. Oke
these six weeks, and I see what is the matter. Will you listen to me?"
And taking his arm, I tried to explain to him my view of the
situation--that his wife was merely eccentric, and a little theatrical and
imaginative, and that she took a pleasure in teasing him. That he, on the
other hand, was letting himself get into a morbid state; that he was ill,
and ought to see a good doctor. I even offered to take him to town with me.
I poured out volumes of psychological explanations. I dissected Mrs. Oke's
character twenty times over, and tried to show him that there was
absolutely nothing at the bottom of his suspicions beyond an imaginative
_pose_ and a garden-play on the brain. I adduced twenty instances, mostly
invented for the nonce, of ladies of my acquaintance who had suffered from
similar fads. I pointed out to him that his wife ought to have an outlet
for her imaginative and theatrical over-energy. I advised him to take her
to London and plunge her into some set where every one should be more or
less in a similar condition. I laughed at the notion of there being any
hidden individual about the house. I explained to Oke that he was suffering
from delusions, and called upon so conscientious and religious a man to
take every step to rid himself of them, adding innumerable examples of
people who had cured themselves of seeing visions and of brooding over
morbid fancies. I struggled and wrestled, like Jacob with the angel, and I
really hoped I had made some impression. At first, indeed, I felt that not
one of my words went into the man's brain--that, though silent, he was not
listening. It seemed almost hopeless to present my views in such a light
that he could grasp them. I felt as if I were expounding and arguing at a
rock. But when I got on to the tack of his duty towards his wife and
himself, and appealed to his moral and religious notions, I felt that I was
making an impression.
"I daresay you are right," he said, taking my hand as we came in sight of
the red gables of Okehurst, and speaking in a weak, tired, humble voice. "I
don't understand you quite, but I am sure what you say is true. I daresay
it is all that I'm seedy. I feel sometimes as if I were mad, and just fit
to be locked up. But don't think I don't struggle against it. I do, I do
continually, only sometimes it seems too strong for me. I pray God night
and morning to give me the strength to overcome my suspicions, or to remove
these dreadful thoughts from me. God knows, I know what a wretched creature
I am, and how unfit to take care of that poor girl."
And Oke again pressed my hand. As we entered the garden, he turned to me
once more.
"I am very, very grateful to you," he said, "and, indeed, I will do my best
to try and be stronger. If only," he added, with a sigh, "if only Alice
would give me a moment's breathing-time, and not go on day after day
mocking me with her Lovelock."
10
I had begun Mrs. Oke's portrait, and she was giving me a sitting. She was
unusually quiet that morning; but, it seemed to me, with the quietness of a
woman who is expecting something, and she gave me the impression of being
extremely happy. She had been reading, at my suggestion, the "Vita Nuova,"
which she did not know before, and the conversation came to roll upon that,
and upon the question whether love so abstract and so enduring was a
possibility. Such a discussion, which might have savoured of flirtation in
the case of almost any other young and beautiful woman, became in the case
of Mrs. Oke something quite different; it seemed distant, intangible, not
of this earth, like her smile and the look in her eyes.
"Such love as that," she said, looking into the far distance of the
oak-dotted park-land, "is very rare, but it can exist. It becomes a
person's whole existence, his whole soul; and it can survive the death, not
merely of the beloved, but of the lover. It is unextinguishable, and goes
on in the spiritual world until it meet a reincarnation of the beloved; and
when this happens, it jets out and draws to it all that may remain of that
lover's soul, and takes shape and surrounds the beloved one once more."
Mrs. Oke was speaking slowly, almost to herself, and I had never, I think,
seen her look so strange and so beautiful, the stiff white dress bringing
out but the more the exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness of her
person.
I did not know what to answer, so I said half in jest--
"I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. There
is something dreadfully esoteric in all you say."
She smiled contemptuously.
"I know people can't understand such matters," she replied, and was silent
for some time. But, through her quietness and silence, I felt, as it were,
the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as if I had been
holding her pulse.
Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better in
consequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke had scarcely once alluded to
Lovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more cheerful
and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; and
once or twice I had caught in him a look of great gentleness and
loving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frail
thing, as he sat opposite his wife.
But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained of fatigue
and retired to her room, and Oke had driven off on some business to the
nearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and after having worked a
little at a sketch I was making in the park, I amused myself rambling about
the house.
It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather that
brings the perfume out of everything, the damp ground and fallen leaves,
the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to bring
on to the surface of one's consciousness all manner of vague recollections
and expectations, a something half pleasurable, half painful, that makes it
impossible to do or to think. I was the prey of this particular, not at all
unpleasurable, restlessness. I wandered up and down the corridors, stopping
to look at the pictures, which I knew already in every detail, to follow
the pattern of the carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn flowers,
arranged in magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. I
took up one book after another and threw it aside; then I sat down to the
piano and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite alone, although
I had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that my host
had returned. I was lazily turning over a book of verses--I remember it
perfectly well, it was Morris's "Love is Enough"--in a corner of the
drawing-room, when the door suddenly opened and William Oke showed himself.
He did not enter, but beckoned to me to come out to him. There was
something in his face that made me start up and follow him at once. He was
extremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his face moving, but very
pale.
"I have something to show you," he said, leading me through the vaulted
hall, hung round with ancestral pictures, into the gravelled space that
looked like a filled-up moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with its
twisted, pointing branches. I followed him on to the lawn, or rather the
piece of park-land that ran up to the house. We walked quickly, he in
front, without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped, just where there
jutted out the bow-window of the yellow drawing-room, and I felt Oke's hand
tight upon my arm.
"I have brought you here to see something," he whispered hoarsely; and he
led me to the window.
I looked in. The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; but
against the yellow wall I saw Mrs. Oke sitting alone on a couch in her
white dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her hand.
"Do you believe now?" whispered Oke's voice hot at my ear. "Do you believe
now? Was it all my fancy? But I will have him this time. I have locked the
door inside, and, by God! he shan't escape."
The words were not out of Oke's mouth. I felt myself struggling with him
silently outside that window. But he broke loose, pulled open the window,
and leapt into the room, and I after him. As I crossed the threshold,
something flashed in my eyes; there was a loud report, a sharp cry, and the
thud of a body on the ground.
Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about him;
and at his feet, sunk down from the sofa, with her blond head resting on
its seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white dress. Her mouth
was convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her wide-open white eyes
seemed to smile vaguely and distantly.
I know nothing of time. It all seemed to be one second, but a second that
lasted hours. Oke stared, then turned round and laughed.
"The damned rascal has given me the slip again!" he cried; and quickly
unlocking the door, rushed out of the house with dreadful cries.
That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, but
merely fractured his jaw, and died a few days later, raving. There were all
sorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a dream; and
whence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit of momentary
madness. That was the end of Alice Oke. By the way, her maid brought me a
locket which was found round her neck, all stained with blood. It contained
some very dark auburn hair, not at all the colour of William Oke's. I am
quite sure it was Lovelock's.