Books: The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
W >>
William J. Locke >> The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
He is a ripe and whimsical scholar, and his talk, even in infirm
old age, is marked by a Doric virility which has rendered his
companionship for these five days as stimulating as the moorland
air. How few men have this gift of discharging intellectual
invigoration. Indeed, I only know old McQuhatty who has it, and
a sportive Providence has carefully excluded mankind from its
benefits for half a century. Stay: it once fostered a genius who
arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic to Edinburgh to
become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two years
without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty's inspiration
was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for
instance, to Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw
coming up the brae on Sunday? An old ram stood in the path and,
as obstinate as he, refused to budge. And as they looked dourly
at each other, I wondered if the ram were dressed in black
broadcloth and McGrath in wool, whether either of their mothers
would notice the metamorphosis. Yet my host declares that I see
with the eyes of a Southron; that the Scotch peasant when he is
not drunk is intellectual, and that there is no occasion on which
he is not ready for theological disputation.
"But I dinna mind telling you," he added, "that I'd as lief talk
with my rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a
comfortable wee bit of false doctrine."
I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems
that only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane
in the right perspective, and in their true proportion. One
would see how important or unimportant portant in the cosmos was
the agricultural ant's dream of three millimetres and an aphis
compared with the aspirations of the English labourer. One would
justly focus the South African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the
ram, and bring them to their real lowest common denominator. One
would even be able to gauge the value of a History of Renaissance
Morals. The benefits I should derive from a long sojourn are
incalculable, but my new responsibilities call me back to London
and its refracting and distorting atmosphere. If I had dwelt
here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was
but a speck in the whirlwind of human dust whose ultimate destiny
was immaterial. As my five days' visit, however, has not
advanced me to that pitch of wisdom, I am foolishly concerned in
my mind as to her welfare, and anxious to dissolve the
triumvirate, Miss Griggs, Stenson, and Antoinette, whom I have
entrusted with the reins of government.
A month ago, in similar circumstances, I should have railed at
Fate and anathematised Carlotta from the tip of her pink toes to
the gold and bronze glory of her hair. But I am growing more
kindly disposed towards Carlotta, and taking a keen interest in
her spiritual development.
An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which
there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an
interest in Carlotta's spiritual development is a nice,
comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic
guardians of female youth for many generations.
"What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not," says
the voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play
cribbage with you afterwards?"
Well, what on earth does it matter?
July 21st.
She was at Euston to meet me. As soon as she saw my face at the
carriage window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a
pretty tame animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and
frisked and gamboled around me in excess of joy.
"So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?" I asked, as we were
driving home.
She sidled up against me in her terrier fashion.
"Oh, ye-es," she cooed. "The day was night without you."
"That is the oriental language of exaggeration," I said. But all
the same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice
coiled themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.
"I love dear Seer Marcous," she said.
I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a
child.
"You are a good little girl, Carlotta. That is to say," I added,
remembering my responsibilities, "if you _have_ been good. Have
you?"
"Oh, so good. Antoinette has been teaching me how to cook, and I
can make a rice pudding. It is so nice to cook things. I like
the smell. But I burned myself. See."
She pulled off her glove and showed me a red mark on her hand. I
kissed it to make it well, and she laughed and was very happy.
And I, too, was happy. Something new and fresh and bright has
come into my life. Stenson is an admirable servant; but his
impassive face and correct salute which have hitherto greeted me
at London railway termini, although suggestive of material
comfort, cannot be said to invest my arrival with a special
atmosphere of charm. Carlotta's welcome has been a new
sensation. I look upon the house with different eyes. It was a
pleasure, as I dressed for dinner, to reflect that I should not
go down to a solemn, solitary meal, but would have my beautiful
little witch to keep me company.
July 22d.
It appears that her conduct has not been by any means
irreproachable. Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of
my absence to saturate herself with scent, one of the most
heinous crimes in our domestic calendar. _Mulier bene olet dum
nihil olet_ is the maxim written above this article of our code.
Once when she disobeyed my orders and came into the drawing-room
reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs to change all her
things and have a bath, and not come near me till Antoinette
vouched for her scentlessness. And "Ah, monsieur," I remember
Antoinette replied, "that would be impossible, for the sweet lamb
smells of spring flowers, _de son naturel_." Which is true. Her
use of violent perfumes is thus a double offence. "There is
something more serious," said Miss Griggs.
"I can hardly believe there can be anything more serious than
making one's self detestable to one's fellow-creatures," said I.
"Unless it is making one's self too agreeable," said Miss Griggs,
pointedly.
I asked her what she meant.
"I have discovered," she replied, "that Carlotta has been
carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the young man who calls
for orders from the grocer's."
"I am glad it wasn't the butcher's boy," I murmured.
Miss Griggs giggled in a silly way, as if I were jesting. At my
stern request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She
had caught Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen
him smuggle a three-cornered note between Carlotta's fingers, and
Carlotta had definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour.
"What is the modern course of treatment," I asked, "prescribed
for young ladies who flirt with grocers' assistants? In
Renaissance times she could be whipped. The wise Margaret of
Navarre used to beat her daughter, Jeanne d'Albrecht, soundly for
far less culpable lapses from duty. Or she could be sent to a
convent and put into a cell with rats, or she could be bidden to
attend at a merry-making where the chief attraction was roast
grocer's assistant. But nowadays--what do you suggest?"
The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought
that I would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps
preventive measures would be more efficacious than punishment.
But what do I know of the repressory methods employed in
seminaries for young ladies? Burton in his "Anatomy" speaks
cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He also quotes, I
remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a noble
maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her
back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I
told Miss Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of
Medicine.
"He also recommends--whether for this complaint, or for something
similar I forget for the moment--" said I, "anointing the soles
of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-
wax of a dog; and speaks highly of a ram's lungs applied hot to
the fore part of the head. I am sorry these admirable remedies
are out of date. There is a rich Rabelaisianism about them.
Instead of the satisfying jorums of our forefathers we take
tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at the time, and
even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the past."
"But what about Carlotta?" inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.
That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is
beginning to talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I
sighed.
"Send Carlotta up to me," I said, resignedly.
Another morning's work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I
had just transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee
by Machiavelli about Zanobi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of
the early fifteenth century, who was locked up and given nothing
to eat but paper painted with snakes, so that he died, fasting,
in a few days. I had an apt epigram on the subject of
Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point, when Miss Griggs
came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the platitude I wrote
afterwards is not that original flash of wit.
Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-
chair, her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully
behind her back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I
believed less than ever in the enormity of the offence.
"Do you know what you're here for?" I asked, magisterially.
She nodded.
"Then you _have_ been making love to the young man from the
grocer's?"
She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the
grocer's young man. It was one of the most humiliating
sensations I have experienced. I think I have seen the
individual--a thick-set, red-headed, freckled nondescript.
"What did you do it for?" I asked.
"He wanted to make love to me," replied Carlotta.
"He is a young scamp," said I.
"What is a scamp?" she asked sweetly.
"I am not giving you a lesson in philology," I remarked. "Do you
know that you have been behaving in a shocking manner?"
"Now you are cross with me."
"Yes," I said, "infernally angry."
And I was. I expected to see her burst into tears. She did
nothing of the kind; only looked at me with irritating
demureness. She wore a red blouse and a grey skirt, and the
audacious high-heeled red slippers. I began to feel the return
of my early prejudice against her. Nobody so alluring could
possess a spark of virtue.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said I. "I make many
allowances for your lack of knowledge of our Western customs, but
for a young lady to flirt with an ugly red-headed varlet of the
lower orders is reprehensible all the world over."
"He gave me dates and dried fruits with sugar all over them,"
said Carlotta.
"Stolen from his employer," I said. "I will have that young man
locked up in prison, and if you go on receiving his feloniously
obtained presents they will put you in prison too, and I shall be
delighted."
Carlotta maintained her demure expression and extracted from her
skirt pocket a very dirty piece of paper.
"He writes poetry--about me," she remarked, handing me what I
recognised as the three-cornered note.
I took the thing between finger and thumb, and glanced over the
poem. I have read much indifferent modern verse in my time--I
sometimes take a slush-bath after tea at the club--but I could
not have imagined the English language capable of such emulsion.
It was execrable. The first couplet alone contained an idea.
"Thou art a lovely girl and so very nice
I dream till death upon your face."
To the wretch's ear it was a rhyme! I destroyed the noisome
thing and cast it into the waste-paper basket.
"Prison," said I, "would be a luxurious reward for him. In a
properly civilised country he would be bastinadoed and hanged."
"Yes, he is dam bad," said Carlotta, serenely.
"Good heavens!" I cried, "the ruffian has even taught you to
swear. If you dare to say that wicked word again, I'll punish
you severely. What is his horrid name?"
"Pasquale," said Carlotta.
"Pasquale?"
"Yes, he likes to hear me say 'dam.' Oh, the other? Oh, no, he
is too stupid. He does not say anything. His name is Timkins. I
only play with him. He is so funny. He can go and kill himself;
I won't care."
"Never mind about Timkins," said I, "I want to hear about
Pasquale. When did he teach you that wicked, wicked word?"
I think Carlotta flushed as she regarded the point of her red
slipper.
"I went for a walk and he met me at the corner and walked here by
my side. Was that wicked?"
"What would the excellent Hamdi Effendi have said to it?"
Woman-like she evaded my question.
"I hope Hamdi is dead. Do you think so?"
"I hope not. For if you behave in this naughty manner, I shall
have to send you back to him."
She had imperceptibly moved nearer my chair until she stood quite
close to my side, so that as I spoke the last words I looked up
into her face. She put her arm about my shoulders. It is one of
her pretty, caressing ways.
"I will be good--very good," she said.
"You will have to," said I, leaning back my head.
She must have caught a relenting note in my voice; for what
happened I feel even now a curious shame in noting down. Her
other arm flew under my chin to join its fellow, and holding me a
prisoner in my chair, she bent down and kissed me. She also laid
her cheek against mine.
I am still aware of the indescribable, soft, warm pressure,
although she has gone to bed hours ago.
I vow that a man must be less a man than a petrified egg to have
repulsed her. The touch of her lips was like the falling of dewy
rose-petals. Her breath was as fragrant as new-mown hay. Her
hair brushing my forehead had the odour of violets.
I sent her back to Miss Griggs. She ran out of the room laughing
merrily. She has received plenary absolution for her shameless
coquetry and her profane language. Worse than that she has
discovered how to obtain it in future. The witch has found her
witchcraft, and having once triumphantly exerted her powers, will
take the earliest opportunity of doing so again. I am fallen,
both in my own eyes and hers, from my high estate. Henceforward
she will regard me only with good-humoured tolerance; I shall be
to her but a non-felonious Timkins.
I was an idiot to have kissed her in return.
I have not seen her since. I lunched at the club, and paid a
formal call on Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne and my cousin Rosalie, in their
sunless house in Kensington.
I met a singular lack of welcome. Rosalie gave me a limper
hand than usual, and took an early opportunity of leaving me
tete-a-tete with her mother, who conversed frigidly about the
warm weather. The very tea, if possible, was colder.
I met Judith by appointment in Kensington Gardens, and walked
with her homewards. I mentioned my chilly reception.
"My dear man," she observed--I dislike this apostrophe, which
Judith always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant
remark--"My dear man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury
a reputation as any one in London. You are credited with an
establishment like Solomon's--minus the respectable counter-balance
of the wives, and your devout relatives are very properly shocked."
I said that it was monstrous. Judith retorted that I had brought
the calumny upon myself.
"But what can I do?" I asked.
"Board her out with a suburban family, as you should have done
from the first. Even I, who am not strait-laced, consider it
highly improper for you to have her alone with you in the house."
"My dear," said I, "there is Antoinette."
"Tush"--or something like it--said Judith.
"And Stenson. No one seeing Stenson could doubt the
irreproachable propriety of his master."
"I really have no patience with you," said Judith.
It is hopeless to discuss Carlotta with her. I shall do it no
more.
We sat for a while under the trees, and conversed on rational
topics. She likes her employment with Willoughby. The morning
she spends among blue books and other waste matter at the British
Museum, and she devotes the evening to sorting her information.
Willoughby commends her highly.
"And there is something I know you'll be very pleased to hear,"
she continued. "Who do you think called on me yesterday? Mrs.
Willoughby. Her husband wants me to spend August and September
at a place they have taken in North Wales, and help him with his
new book--as a private secretary, you know. I said that I never
went into society. I must tell you this was the first time I had
seen her. She put her hand on my arm in the sweetest way in the
world and said: 'I know all about it, my dear, and that is why I
thought I'd come myself as Harold's ambassador.' Wasn't it
beautiful of her?"
She looked at me and her eyes were filled with tears.
"Marcus dear, I am not a bad woman, am I?"
"My dearest," I answered, very deeply touched, "you are the best
woman in the world. So far from conferring a favour on you, Mrs.
Willoughby has gained for herself the inestimable privilege of
your friendship."
"Ah!" said Judith, "a man cannot tell what it means."
Really men are not such dullard dunderheads as women are pleased
to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs.
Willoughby's invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a
morbid satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by
a mysterious nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser
sense of man is powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts
it is a prodigious comfort to a woman to feel herself
misunderstood. Even she who is most perfectly mated, and is
intellectually convinced that the difference of sex is no barrier
to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish some little
secret bit of her nature, to which _he_, on account of his
masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are
dull men who could not understand a tabbycat or a professional
cricketer, let alone an expert autothaumaturgist--a
self-mystery-maker--like a woman. But an intelligent and
painstaking man should find no difficulty in appreciating what,
after all, is merely a point of view; for what women see from that
point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a two-year-old
babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand Judith
--that is to say the whole welter of contradictions in which her ego
consists--but that is solely because I have not taken the trouble
to subject her to special microscopic study. Such a scientific
analysis would, I think, be an immodest discourtesy towards any
lady of my acquaintance, especially towards one for whom I bear
considerable affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a
decent-minded man to speculate upon her exact spiritual
dimensions as upon those portions of her physical frame that are
hidden beneath her attire. The charm of human intercourse rests,
to a great extent, on the vague, the deliberately unperceived,
the stimulating sense that an individual possesses more
attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But this, I
say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her
skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the
scaly tail of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace
legs. One knows that when she has passed through certain well
defined experiences in life, a certain definite range of
sentiments must exist behind whatever mask of facial expression
she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense, therefore, for
Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with regard
to Mrs. Willoughby's invitation.
I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in
Kensington Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally
through Hyde Park to the Marble Arch. She listened with great
attention, and when I had finished regarded me in a pitying
manner, a smile flickering over her lips.
"My dear Marcus," she said, "there is no man, however
humble-minded, who has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge
of women. He, at any rate, has established the veritable Theory
of Women. And we laugh at you, my good friend, for the more
you expound, the more do you reveal your beautiful and artistic
ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up as a feminine
psychologist."
"And pray, why not?" I asked, somewhat nettled.
"Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as
Marcus Ordeyne."
This was exceedingly pretty of Judith. But really woman is the
Eternal Philistine, as Matthew Arnold has defined the term. Her
supreme characteristic is inconvincibility. I had simply wasted
my breath.
CHAPTER XII
August 3d.
_Etretat, Seine-Injerieure_:--A young fellow on the Casino
terrace this evening caught my eye, looked at me queerly, and
passed on. His face, though unfamiliar, stirred some dormant
association. What was it? The profitless question pestered me
for hours. At last, during the performance at the theatre, I
slapped my knee and said aloud
"I've got it!"
"What?" asked Carlotta in alarm.
"A fly," I answered. Whereat Carlotta laughed, and bent forward
to get a view of the victim. I austerely directed her attention
to the stage. It was a metaphorical fly whose buzzing I had
stopped.
The young fellow was he who had pointed me out in Hyde Park to
his companion, and lightly assured her that I was as mad as a
dingo dog. From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that
of the slapping of my knee, it had been altogether absent from my
mind. Now it haunts me. It reiterates itself after the manner
of a glib phrase. I am glad I am not in a railway carriage; the
cranks would amuse the wheels with it all night long. As it is,
the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle just a few yards
away from my window. I keep asking myself: why a dingo dog? If
I am mad it is in a gentle, Jaquesian, melancholy manner. I do
not dash at life, rabid and foaming at the mouth.
I think the idiot simile must have been merely the misuse of
language so common among the half-educated youth of Great
Britain.
Yet when I come to consider my present condition, I have
doubts as to my complete sanity. Here am I, in a little,
semi-fashionable French seaside place, away from my books and
my comforts and my habits, as much interested in its vapid
distractions as if the universe held no other pursuits worth the
attention of a rational man. And I have been here a calendar
month.
To please Carlotta I wear white duck trousers, a pink shirt, and
a yachting-cap. I wired for them to my London tailor and they
arrived within a week. The first time I appeared in the maniacal
costume I slunk from the stony stare of a gendarme, as I was
about to ascend the Casino steps, and hid myself among the
fishing-boats lower down on the beach. Carlotta, however, was
delighted and said that I looked pretty. Now I have grown
callous, seeing other fools similarly apparelled. But a year
ago, should I have dreamed it possible for me to strut about a
fashionable _plage_ in white ducks, a pink shirt, and a
yachting-cap? I trow not. They are signs of some sort of madness
--whether that of a Jaques or a dingo dog matters very little.
Pasquale was the main cause of my taking Carlotta away from
London. He came far too frequently to the house, established far
too great a familiarity with my little girl. She quoted him far
too readily. She is at the impressionable age when young women
fall easy victims to the allurements of a fascinating creature
like Pasquale. If he showed himself in the light of a possible
husband for Carlotta, I should have nothing to say. I should
give the pair my paternal benediction. But I know my Renaissance
and I know my Pasquale. Carlotta is merely a new sensation--that's
all he seems to live for, the delectable scoundrel. But I am not
going to have her heart broken by any cinquecento wolf in
Poole's clothing. I assume that Carlotta has a heart, even if
she is not possessed of a soul. As to the latter I am still in
doubt. At all events I resolved to withdraw Carlotta from his
influence, put her in fresh surroundings, and allow her to mix
more freely among men and women, so as to divert and possibly
improve her mind.
I perceive that Carlotta is becoming an occupation. Well, she is
quite as profitable as collecting postage-stamps, or golf, or
amateur photography.
I have spent a pleasant month in this little place. It is the
mouth of a gorge in the midst of a cliff-bound coast. The bay,
but a quarter of a mile in sweep, is shut in at each end by a
projecting wall of cliff cut by a natural arch. Half the shingle
beach is given up to fisherfolk and their boats and tarred Noah's
arks where they keep their nets. The other half suddenly rises
into a digue or terrace on which is built a primitive casino, and
below the terrace are the bathing-cabins. We are staying at the
most spotlessly clean of all clean French hotels. There are no
carpets on the stairs; but if one mounts them in muddy boots, an
untiring chambermaid emerges from a lair below, with hot water
and scrubbing-brush and smilingly removes the traces of one's
passage. Carlotta and Antoinette have adjoining rooms in the
main building. I inhabit the annexe, sleeping in a quaint,
clean, bare little chamber with a balconied window that looks
over the Noah's Arks and the fishing-smacks and fisherfolk, away
out to sea. This morning as I lay in bed I saw our Channel fleet
lie along the arc of the horizon.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19