A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson

E >> Ernest Dowson et al >> The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson




'It is M. Tregellan,' said the young girl, flushing: 'and he must have seen
us.'

Her companion, frowning, hardly suppressed a little quick objurgation.

'It makes no matter,' he observed, after a moment: 'I shall see your uncle
to-morrow and we know, good man, how he wishes this; and, in any case, I
would have told Tregellan.'

The figure rose, as they drew near: he shook the ashes out of his briar,
and removed it to his pocket. He was a slight man, with an ugly, clever
face; his voice as he greeted them, was very low and pleasant.

'You must have had a charming walk, Mademoiselle. I have seldom seen
Ploumariel look better.'

'Yes,' she said, gravely, 'it has been very pleasant. But I must not linger
now,' she added breaking a little silence in which none of them seemed
quite at ease. 'My uncle will be expecting me to supper.' She held out her
hand, in the English fashion, to Tregellan, and then to Sebastian Murch,
who gave the little fingers a private pressure.

They had come into the market-place round which most of the houses in
Ploumariel were grouped. They watched the young girl cross it briskly; saw
her blue gown pass out of sight down a bye street: then they turned to
their own hotel. It was a low, white house, belted half way down the front
with black stone; a pictorial object, as most Breton hostels. The ground
floor was a _café_; and, outside it, a bench and long stained table
enticed them to rest. They sat down, and ordered _absinthes_, as the hour
suggested: these were brought to them presently by an old servant of the
house; an admirable figure, with the white sleeves and apron relieving her
linsey dress: with her good Breton face, and its effective wrinkles. For
some time they sat in silence, drinking and smoking. The artist appeared to
be absorbed in contemplation of his drink; considering its clouded green in
various lights. After a while the other looked up, and remarked, abruptly.

'I may as well tell you that I happened to overlook you, just now,
unintentionally.'

Sebastian Murch held up his glass, with absent eyes.

'Don't mention it, my dear fellow,' he remarked, at last, urbanely.

'I beg your pardon; but I am afraid I must.'

He spoke with an extreme deliberation which suggested nervousness; with
the air of a person reciting a little set speech, learnt imperfectly: and
he looked very straight in front of him, out into the street, at two dogs
quarrelling over some offal.

'I daresay you will be angry: I can't avoid that; at least, I have known
you long enough to hazard it. I have had it on my mind to say something. If
I have been silent, it hasn't been because I have been blind, or approved.
I have seen how it was all along. I gathered it from your letters when I
was in England. Only until this afternoon I did not know how far it had
gone, and now I am sorry I did not speak before.'

He stopped short, as though he expected his friend's subtilty to come to
his assistance; with admissions or recriminations. But the other was still
silent, absent: his face wore a look of annoyed indifference. After a
while, as Tregellan still halted, he observed quietly:

'You must be a little more explicit. I confess I miss your meaning.'

'Ah, don't be paltry,' cried the other, quickly. 'You know my meaning. To
be very plain, Sebastian, are you quite justified in playing with that
charming girl, in compromising her?'

The artist looked up at last, smiling; his expressive mouth was set, not
angrily, but with singular determination.

'With Mademoiselle Mitouard?'

'Exactly; with the niece of a man whose guest you have recently been.'

'My dear fellow!' he stopped a little, considering his words: 'You
are hasty and uncharitable for such a very moral person! you jump at
conclusions, Tregellan. I don't, you know, admit your right to question me:
still, as you have introduced the subject, I may as well satisfy you.
I have asked Mademoiselle Mitouard to marry me, and she has consented,
subject to her uncle's approval. And that her uncle, who happens to prefer
the English method of courtship, is not likely to refuse.'

The other held his cigar between two fingers, a little away; his curiously
anxious face suggested that the question had become to him one of increased
nicety.

'I am sorry,' he said, after a moment; 'this is worse than I imagined; it's
impossible.'

'It is you that are impossible, Tregellan,' said Sebastian Murch. He looked
at him now, quite frankly, absolutely: his eyes had a defiant light in
them, as though he hoped to be criticised; wished nothing better than to
stand on his defence, to argue the thing out. And Tregellan sat for a long
time without speaking, appreciating his purpose. It seemed more monstrous
the closer he considered it: natural enough withal, and so, harder to
defeat; and yet, he was sure, that defeated it must be. He reflected how
accidental it had all been: their presence there, in Ploumariel, and the
rest! Touring in Brittany, as they had often done before, in their habit of
old friends, they had fallen upon it by chance, a place unknown of Murray;
and the merest chance had held them there. They had slept at the _Lion
d'Or_, voted it magnificently picturesque, and would have gone away and
forgotten it; but the chance of travel had for once defeated them. Hard by
they heard of the little votive chapel of Saint Bernard; at the suggestion
of their hostess they set off to visit it. It was built steeply on an edge
of rock, amongst odorous pines overhanging a ravine, at the bottom of
which they could discern a brown torrent purling tumidly along. For the
convenience of devotees, iron rings, at short intervals, were driven into
the wall; holding desperately to these, the pious pilgrim, at some peril,
might compass the circuit; saying an oraison to Saint Bernard, and some ten
_Aves_. Sebastian, who was charmed with the wild beauty of the scene, in a
country ordinarily so placid, had been seized with a fit of emulation: not
in any mood of devotion, but for the sake of a wider prospect. Tregellan
had protested: and the Saint, resenting the purely æsthetic motive of the
feat, had seemed to intervene. For, half-way round, growing giddy may be,
the artist had made a false step, lost his hold. Tregellan, with a little
cry of horror, saw him disappear amidst crumbling mortar and uprooted
ferns. It was with a sensible relief, for the fall had the illusion of
great depth, that, making his way rapidly down a winding path, he found him
lying on a grass terrace, amidst _débris_ twenty feet lower, cursing his
folly, and holding a lamentably sprained ankle, but for the rest uninjured!
Tregellan had made off in haste to Ploumariel in search of assistance; and
within the hour he had returned with two stalwart Bretons and M. le Docteur
Mitouard.

Their tour had been, naturally, drawing to its close. Tregellan indeed had
an imperative need to be in London within the week. It seemed, therefore, a
clear dispensation of Providence, that the amiable doctor should prove an
hospitable person, and one inspiring confidence no less. Caring greatly for
things foreign, and with an especial passion for England, a country whence
his brother had brought back a wife; M. le Docteur Mitouard insisted that
the invalid could be cared for properly at his house alone. And there, in
spite of protestations, earnest from Sebastian, from Tregellan halfhearted,
he was installed. And there, two days later, Tregellan left him with an
easy mind; bearing away with him, half enviously, the recollection of the
young, charming face of a girl, the Doctor's niece, as he had seen her
standing by his friend's sofa when he paid his _adieux_; in the beginnings
of an intimacy, in which, as he foresaw, the petulance of the invalid, his
impatience at an enforced detention, might be considerably forgot. And all
that had been two months ago.


II

'I am sorry you don't see it,' continued Tregellan, after a pause, 'to me
it seems impossible; considering your history it takes me by surprise.'

The other frowned slightly; finding this persistence perhaps a trifle
crude, he remarked good-humouredly enough:

'Will you be good enough to explain your opposition? Do you object to the
girl? You have been back a week now, during which you have seen almost as
much of her as I.'

'She is a child, to begin with; there is five-and-twenty years' disparity
between you. But it's the relation I object to, not the girl. Do you intend
to live in Ploumariel?'

Sebastian smiled, with a suggestion of irony.

'Not precisely; I think it would interfere a little with my career; why do
you ask?'

'I imagined not; you will go back to London with your little Breton wife,
who is as charming here as the apple-blossom in her own garden. You will
introduce her to your circle, who will receive her with open arms; all the
clever bores, who write, and talk, and paint, and are talked about between
Bloomsbury and Kensington. Everybody who is emancipated will know her, and
everybody who has a "fad"; and they will come in a body and emancipate her,
and teach her their "fads."'

'That is a caricature of my circle, as you call it, Tregellan! though I may
remind you it is also yours. I think she is being starved in this corner,
spiritually. She has a beautiful soul, and it has had no chance. I propose
to give it one, and I am not afraid of the result.'

Tregellan threw away the stump of his cigar into the darkling street, with
a little gesture of discouragement, of lassitude.

'She has had the chance to become what she is, a perfect thing.'

'My dear fellow,' exclaimed his friend, 'I could not have said more
myself.'

The other continued, ignoring his interruption.

'She has had great luck. She has been brought up by an old eccentric, on
the English system of growing up as she liked. And no harm has come of it,
at least until it gave you the occasion of making love to her.'

'You are candid, Tregellan!'

'Let her go, Sebastian, let her go,' he continued, with increasing gravity.
'Consider what a transplantation; from this world of Ploumariel where
everything is fixed for her by that venerable old _Curé_, where life is
so easy, so ordered, to yours, ours; a world without definitions, where
everything is an open question.'

'Exactly,' said the artist, 'why should she be so limited? I would give her
scope, ideas. I can't see that I am wrong.'

'She will not accept them, your ideas. They will trouble her, terrify her;
in the end, divide you. It is not an elastic nature. I have watched it.'

'At least, allow me to know her,' put in the artist, a little grimly.

Tregellan shook his head.

'The Breton blood; her English mother: passionate Catholicism! a touch of
Puritan! Have you quite made up your mind, Sebastian?'

'I made it up long ago, Tregellan!'

The other looked at him, curiously, compassionately; with a touch of
resentment at what he found his lack of subtilty. Then he said at last:

'I called it impossible; you force me to be very explicit, even cruel. I
must remind you, that you are, of all my friends, the one I value most,
could least afford to lose.'

'You must be going to say something extremely disagreeable! something
horrible,' said the artist, slowly.

'I am,' said Tregellan, 'but I must say it. Have you explained to
Mademoiselle, or her uncle, your--your peculiar position?'

Sebastian was silent for a moment, frowning: the lines about his mouth grew
a little sterner; at last he said coldly:

'If I were to answer, Yes?'

'Then I should understand that there was no further question of your
marriage.'

Presently the other commenced in a hard, leaden voice.

'No, I have not told Marie-Yvonne that. I shall not tell her. I have
suffered enough for a youthful folly; an act of mad generosity. I refuse
to allow an infamous woman to wreck my future life as she has disgraced my
past. Legally, she has passed out of it; morally, legally, she is not my
wife. For all I know she may be actually dead.'

The other was watching his face, very gray and old now, with an anxious
compassion.

'You know she is not dead, Sebastian,' he said simply. Then he added very
quietly as one breaks supreme bad tidings, 'I must tell you something
which I fear you have not realised. The Catholic Church does not recognise
divorce. If she marry you and find out, rightly or wrongly, she will
believe that she has been living in sin; some day she will find it out.
No damnable secret like that keeps itself for ever: an old newspaper, a
chance remark from one of your dear friends, and the deluge. Do you see the
tragedy, the misery of it? By God, Sebastian, to save you both somebody
shall tell her; and if it be not you, it must be I.'

There was extremest peace in the quiet square; the houses seemed sleepy
at last, after a day of exhausting tranquillity, and the chestnuts, under
which a few children, with tangled hair and fair dirty faces, still played.
The last glow of the sun fell on the gray roofs opposite; dying hard
it seemed over the street in which the Mitouards lived; and they heard
suddenly the tinkle of an _Angelus_ bell. Very placid! the place and the
few peasants in their pictorial hats and caps who lingered. Only the two
Englishmen sitting, their glasses empty, and their smoking over, looking
out on it all with their anxious faces, brought in a contrasting note of
modern life; of the complex aching life of cities, with its troubles and
its difficulties.

'Is that your final word, Tregellan?' asked the artist at last, a little
wearily.

'It must be, Sebastian! Believe me, I am infinitely sorry.'

'Yes, of course,' he answered quickly, acidly; 'well, I will sleep on it.'


III

They made their first breakfast in an almost total silence; both wore the
bruised harassed air which tells of a night passed without benefit of
sleep. Immediately afterwards Murch went out alone: Tregellan could guess
the direction of his visit, but not its object; he wondered if the artist
was making his difficult confession. Presently they brought him in a
pencilled note; he recognised, with some surprise, his friend's tortuous
hand.

'I have considered our conversation, and your unjustifiable interference.
I am entirely in your hands: at the mercy of your extraordinary notions of
duty. Tell her what you will, if you must; and pave the way to your own
success. I shall say nothing; but I swear you love the girl yourself; and
are no right arbiter here. Sebastian Murch.'

He read the note through twice before he grasped its purport; then sat
holding it in lax fingers, his face grown singularly gray.

'It's not true, it's not true,' he cried aloud, but a moment later knew
himself for a self-deceiver all along. Never had self-consciousness been
more sudden, unexpected, or complete. There was no more to do or say; this
knowledge tied his hands. _Ite! missa est!_...

He spent an hour painfully invoking casuistry, tossed to and fro
irresolutely, but never for a moment disputing that plain fact which
Sebastian had so brutally illuminated. Yes! he loved her, had loved her all
along. Marie-Yvonne! how the name expressed her! at once sweet and serious,
arch and sad as her nature. The little Breton wild flower! how cruel it
seemed to gather her! And he could do no more; Sebastian had tied his
hands. Things must be! He was a man nicely conscientious, and now all the
elaborate devices of his honour, which had persuaded him to a disagreeable
interference, were contraposed against him. This suspicion of an ulterior
motive had altered it, and so at last he was left to decide with a sigh,
that because he loved these two so well, he must let them go their own way
to misery.

Coming in later in the day, Sebastian Murch found his friend packing.

'I have come to get your answer,' he said; 'I have been walking about the
hills like a madman for hours. I have not been near her; I am afraid. Tell
me what you mean to do?'

Tregellan rose, shrugged his shoulders, pointed to his valise.

'God help you both! I would have saved you if you had let me. The Quimperlé
_Courrier_ passes in half-an-hour. I am going by it. I shall catch a night
train to Paris.'

As Sebastian said nothing; continued to regard him with the same dull,
anxious gaze, he went on after a moment:

'You did me a grave injustice; you should have known me better than that.
God knows I meant nothing shameful, only the best; the least misery for you
and her.'

'It was true then?' said Sebastian, curiously. His voice was very cold;
Tregellan found him altered. He regarded the thing as it had been very
remote, and outside them both.

'I did not know it then,' said Tregellan, shortly.

He knelt down again and resumed his packing. Sebastian, leaning against
the bed, watched him with absent intensity, which was yet alive to trivial
things, and he handed him from time to time a book, a brush, which the
other packed mechanically with elaborate care. There was no more to say,
and presently, when the chambermaid entered for his luggage, they went down
and out into the splendid sunshine, silently. They had to cross the Square
to reach the carriage, a dusty ancient vehicle, hooded, with places for
four, which waited outside the postoffice. A man in a blue blouse preceded
them, carrying Tregellan's things. From the corner they could look down
the road to Quimperlé, and their eyes both sought the white house of
Doctor Mitouard, standing back a little in its trim garden, with its one
incongruous apple tree; but there was no one visible.

Presently, Sebastian asked, suddenly:

'Is it true, that you said last night: divorce to a Catholic--?'

Tregellan interrupted him.

'It is absolutely true, my poor friend.'

He had climbed into his place at the back, settled himself on the shiny
leather cushion: he appeared to be the only passenger. Sebastian stood
looking drearily in at the window, the glass of which had long perished.

'I wish I had never known, Tregellan! How could I ever tell her!'

Inside, Tregellan shrugged his shoulders: not impatiently, or angrily, but
in sheer impotence; as one who gave it up.

'I can't help you,' he said, 'you must arrange it with your own
conscience.'

'Ah, it's too difficult!' cried the other: 'I can't find my way.'

The driver cracked his whip, suggestively; Sebastian drew back a little
further from the off wheel.

'Well,' said the other, 'if you find it, write and tell me. I am very
sorry, Sebastian.'

'Good-bye,' he replied. 'Yes! I will write.'

The carriage lumbered off, with a lurch to the right, as it turned the
corner; it rattled down the hill, raising a cloud of white dust. As it
passed the Mitouards' house, a young girl, in a large straw hat, came down
the garden, too late to discover whom it contained. She watched it out of
sight, indifferently, leaning on the little iron gate; then she turned, to
recognize the long stooping figure of Sebastian Murch, who advanced to meet
her.




AN ORCHESTRAL VIOLIN


I

At my dining-place in old Soho--I call it mine because there was a time
when I became somewhat inveterate there, keeping my napkin (changed once a
week) in a ring recognisable by myself and the waiter, my bottle of Beaune
(replenished more frequently), and my accustomed seat--at this restaurant
of mine, with its confusion of tongues, its various, foreign _clientèle_,
amid all the coming and going, the nightly change of faces, there were some
which remained the same, persons with whom, though one might never have
spoken, one had nevertheless from the mere continuity of juxtaposition a
certain sense of intimacy.

There was one old gentleman in particular, as inveterate as myself, who
especially aroused my interest. A courteous, punctual, mild old man with an
air which deprecated notice; who conversed each evening for a minute or two
with the proprietor, as he rolled, always at the same hour, a valedictory
cigarette, in a language that arrested my ear by its strangeness; and which
proved to be his own, Hungarian; who addressed a brief remark to me at
times, half apologetically, in the precisest of English. We sat next each
other at the same table, came and went at much the same hour; and for a
long while our intercourse was restricted to formal courtesies; mutual
inquiries after each other's health, a few urbane strictures on the
climate. The little old gentleman in spite of his aspect of shabby
gentility,--for his coat was sadly inefficient, and the nap of his
carefully brushed hat did not indicate prosperity--perhaps even because of
this suggestion of fallen fortunes, bore himself with pathetic erectness,
almost haughtily. He did not seem amenable to advances. It was a long time
before I knew him well enough to value rightly this appearance, the timid
defences, behind which a very shy and delicate nature took refuge from the
world's coarse curiosity. I can smile now, with a certain sadness, when I
remind myself that at one time I was somewhat in awe of M. Maurice Cristich
and his little air of proud humility. Now that his place in that dim,
foreign eating-house knows him no more, and his yellow napkin-ring, with
its distinguishing number, has been passed on to some other customer; I
have it in my mind to set down my impressions of him, the short history
of our acquaintance. It began with an exchange of cards; a form to which
he evidently attached a ceremonial value, for after that piece of ritual
his manner underwent a sensible softening, and he showed by many subtile
indefinable shades in his courteous address, that he did me the honour of
including me in his friendship. I have his card before me now; a large,
oblong piece of pasteboard, with _M. Maurice Cristich, Theatre Royal_,
inscribed upon it, amid many florid flourishes. It enabled me to form my
first definite notion of his calling, upon which I had previously wasted
much conjecture; though I had all along, and rightly as it appeared,
associated him in some manner with music.

In time he was good enough to inform me further. He was a musician, a
violinist; and formerly, and in his own country, he had been a composer.
But whether for some lack in him of original talent, or of patience,
whether for some grossness in the public taste, on which the nervous
delicacy and refinement of his execution was lost, he had not continued. He
had been driven by poverty to London, had given lessons, and then for many
years had played a second violin in the orchestra of the Opera.

'It is not much, Monsieur!' he observed, deprecatingly, smoothing his
hat with the cuff of his frayed coat-sleeve. 'But it is sufficient; and
I prefer it to teaching. In effect, they are very charming, the seraphic
young girls of your country! But they seem to care little for music; and I
am a difficult master, and have not enough patience. Once, you see, a long
time ago, I had a perfect pupil, and perhaps that spoilt me. Yes! I prefer
the theatre, though it is less profitable. It is not as it once was,' he
added, with a half sigh; 'I am no longer ambitious. Yes, Monsieur, when I
was young, I was ambitious. I wrote a symphony and several concertos. I
even brought out at Vienna an opera, which I thought would make me famous;
but the good folk of Vienna did not appreciate me, and they would have none
of my music. They said it was antiquated, my opera, and absurd; and yet, it
seemed to me good. I think that Gluck, that great genius, would have liked
it; and that is what I should have wished. Ah! how long ago it seems, that
time when I was ambitious! But you must excuse me, Monsieur! your good
company makes me garrulous. I must be at the theatre. If I am not in my
place at the half-hour, they fine me two shillings and sixpence, and that I
can ill afford, you know, Monsieur!'

In spite of his defeats, his long and ineffectual struggle with adversity,
M. Cristich, I discovered, as our acquaintance ripened, had none of the
spleen and little of the vanity of the unsuccessful artist. He seemed
in his forlorn old age to have accepted his discomfiture with touching
resignation, having acquired neither cynicism nor indifference. He was
simply an innocent old man, in love with his violin and with his art, who
had acquiesced in disappointment; and it was impossible to decide, whether
he even believed in his talent, or had not silently accredited the verdict
of musical Vienna, which had condemned his opera in those days when he was
ambitious. The precariousness of the London Opera was the one fact which
I ever knew to excite him to expressions of personal resentment. When
its doors were closed, his hard poverty (it was the only occasion when
he protested against it), drove him, with his dear instrument and his
accomplished fingers, into the orchestras of lighter houses, where he was
compelled to play music which he despised. He grew silent and rueful during
these periods of irksome servitude, rolled innumerable cigarettes, which
he smoked with fierceness and great rapidity. When dinner was done, he was
often volubly indignant, in Hungarian, to the proprietor. But with the
beginning of the season his mood lightened. He bore himself more sprucely,
and would leave me, to assist at a representation of _Don Giovanni_, or
_Tannhauser_, with a face which was almost radiant. I had known him a year
before it struck me that I should like to see him in his professional
capacity. I told him of my desire a little diffidently, not knowing how
my purpose might strike him. He responded graciously, but with an air of
intrigue, laying a gentle hand upon my coat sleeve and bidding me wait. A
day or two later, as we sat over our coffee, M. Cristich with an hesitating
urbanity offered me an order.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.