The Dark Flower

XIII

Outside, he walked a few steps, then stood looking back at the windows of the hall through some trees, the shadows of whose trunks, in the light of a street lamp, were spilled out along the ground like the splines of a fan. A church clock struck eleven. For hours yet she would be there, going round and round in the arms of Youth! Try as he might he could never recapture for himself the look that Oliver’s face had worn – the look that was the symbol of so much more than he himself could give her. Why had she come into his life – to her undoing, and his own? And the bizarre thought came to him: If she were dead should I really care? Should I not be almost glad? If she were dead her witchery would be dead, and I could stand up straight again and look people in the face! What was this power that played with men, darted into them, twisted their hearts to rags; this power that had looked through her eyes when she put her fan, with his flowers, to her lips?

The thrumming of the music ceased; he walked away.

It must have been nearly twelve when he reached home. Now, once more, would begin the gruesome process of deception – flinching of soul, and brazening of visage. It would be better when the whole thievish business was irretrievably begun and ordered in its secret courses!

There was no light in the drawing-room, save just the glow of the fire. If only Sylvia might have gone to bed! Then he saw her, sitting motionless out there by the uncurtained window.

He went over to her, and began his hateful formula:

“I’m afraid you’ve been lonely. I had to stay rather late. A dull evening.” And, since she did not move or answer, but just sat there very still and white, he forced himself to go close, bend down to her, touch her cheek; even to kneel beside her. She looked round then; her face was quiet enough, but her eyes were strangely eager. With a pitiful little smile she broke out:

“Oh, Mark! What is it – what is it? Anything is better than this!”

Perhaps it was the smile, perhaps her voice or eyes – but something gave way in Lennan. Secrecy, precaution went by the board. Bowing his head against her breast, he poured it all out, while they clung, clutched together in the half dark like two frightened children. Only when he had finished did he realize that if she had pushed him away, refused to let him touch her, it would have been far less piteous, far easier to bear, than her wan face and her hands clutching him, and her words: “I never thought – you and I – oh! Mark – you and I – ” The trust in their life together, in himself, that those words revealed! Yet, not greater than he had had – still had! She could not understand – he had known that she could never understand; it was why he had fought so for secrecy, all through. She was taking it as if she had lost everything; and in his mind she had lost nothing. This passion, this craving for Youth and Life, this madness – call it what one would – was something quite apart, not touching his love and need of her. If she would only believe that! Over and over he repeated it; over and over again perceived that she could not take it in. The only thing she saw was that his love had gone from her to another – though that was not true! Suddenly she broke out of his arms, pushing him from her, and cried: “That girl – hateful, horrible, false!” Never had he seen her look like this, with flaming spots in her white cheeks, soft lips and chin distorted, blue eyes flaming, breast heaving, as if each breath were drawn from lungs that received no air. And then, as quickly, the fire went out of her; she sank down on the sofa; covering her face with her arms, rocking to and fro. She did not cry, but a little moan came from her now and then. And each one of those sounds was to Lennan like the cry of something he was murdering. At last he went and sat down on the sofa by her and said:

“Sylvia! Sylvia! Don’t! oh! don’t!” And she was silent, ceasing to rock herself; letting him smooth and stroke her. But her face she kept hidden, and only once she spoke, so low that he could hardly hear: “I can’t – I won’t keep you from her.” And with the awful feeling that no words could reach or soothe the wound in that tender heart, he could only go on stroking and kissing her hands.

It was atrocious – horrible – this that he had done! God knew that he had not sought it – the thing had come on him. Surely even in her misery she could see that! Deep down beneath his grief and self-hatred, he knew, what neither she nor anyone else could know – that he could not have prevented this feeling, which went back to days before he ever saw the girl – that no man could have stopped that feeling in himself. This craving and roving was as much part of him as his eyes and hands, as overwhelming and natural a longing as his hunger for work, or his need of the peace that Sylvia gave, and alone could give him. That was the tragedy – it was all sunk and rooted in the very nature of a man. Since the girl had come into their lives he was no more unfaithful to his wife in thought than he had been before. If only she could look into him, see him exactly as he was, as, without part or lot in the process, he had been made – then she would understand, and even might not suffer; but she could not, and he could never make it plain. And solemnly, desperately, with a weary feeling of the futility of words, he went on trying: Could she not see? It was all a thing outside him – a craving, a chase after beauty and life, after his own youth! At that word she looked at him:

“And do you think I don’t want my youth back?”

He stopped.

For a woman to feel that her beauty – the brightness of her hair and eyes, the grace and suppleness of her limbs – were slipping from her and from the man she loved! Was there anything more bitter? – or any more sacred duty than not to add to that bitterness, not to push her with suffering into old age, but to help keep the star of her faith in her charm intact!

Man and woman – they both wanted youth again; she, that she might give it all to him; he, because it would help him towards something – new! Just that world of difference!

He got up, and said:

“Come, dear, let’s try and sleep.”

He had not once said that he could give it up. The words would not pass his lips, though he knew she must be conscious that he had not said them, must be longing to hear them. All he had been able to say was:

“So long as you want me, you shall never lose me… and, I will never keep anything from you again.”

Up in their room she lay hour after hour in his arms, quite unresentful, but without life in her, and with eyes that, when his lips touched them, were always wet.

What a maze was a man’s heart, wherein he must lose himself every minute! What involved and intricate turnings and turnings on itself; what fugitive replacement of emotion by emotion! What strife between pities and passions; what longing for peace!.

And in his feverish exhaustion, which was almost sleep, Lennan hardly knew whether it was the thrum of music or Sylvia’s moaning that he heard; her body or Nell’s within his arms…

But life had to be lived, a face preserved against the world, engagements kept. And the nightmare went on for both of them, under the calm surface of an ordinary Sunday. They were like people walking at the edge of a high cliff, not knowing from step to step whether they would fall; or like swimmers struggling for issue out of a dark whirlpool.

In the afternoon they went together to a concert; it was just something to do – something that saved them for an hour or two from the possibility of speaking on the one subject left to them. The ship had gone down, and they were clutching at anything that for a moment would help to keep them above water.

In the evening some people came to supper; a writer and two painters, with their wives. A grim evening – never more so than when the conversation turned on that perennial theme – the freedom, spiritual, mental, physical, requisite for those who practise Art. All the stale arguments were brought forth, and had to be joined in with unmoved faces. And for all their talk of freedom, Lennan could see the volte-face his friends would be making, if they only knew. It was not ‘the thing’ to seduce young girls – as if, forsooth, there were freedom in doing only what people thought ‘the thing’! Their cant about the free artist spirit experiencing everything, would wither the moment it came up against a canon of ‘good form,’ so that in truth it was no freer than the bourgeois spirit, with its conventions; or the priest spirit, with its cry of ‘Sin!’ No, no! To resist – if resistance were possible to this dragging power – maxims of ‘good form,’ dogmas of religion and morality, were no help – nothing was any help, but some feeling stronger than passion itself. Sylvia’s face, forced to smile! – that, indeed was a reason why they should condemn him! None of their doctrines about freedom could explain that away – the harm, the death that came to a man’s soul when he made a loving, faithful creature suffer.

But they were gone at last – with their “Thanks so much!” and their “Delightful evening!”

And those two were face to face for another night.

He knew that it must begin all over again – inevitable, after the stab of that wretched argument plunged into their hearts and turned and turned all the evening.

“I won’t, I mustn’t keep you starved, and spoil your work. Don’t think of me, Mark! I can bear it!”

And then a breakdown worse than the night before. What genius, what sheer genius Nature had for torturing her creatures! If anyone had told him, even so little as a week ago, that he could have caused such suffering to Sylvia – Sylvia, whom as a child with wide blue eyes and a blue bow on her flaxen head he had guarded across fields full of imaginary bulls; Sylvia, in whose hair his star had caught; Sylvia, who day and night for fifteen years had been his devoted wife; whom he loved and still admired – he would have given him the lie direct. It would have seemed incredible, monstrous, silly. Had all married men and women such things to go through – was this but a very usual crossing of the desert? Or was it, once for all, shipwreck? death – unholy, violent death – in a storm of sand?

Another night of misery, and no answer to that question yet.

He had told her that he would not see Nell again without first letting her know. So, when morning came, he simply wrote the words: “Don’t come today!” – showed them to Sylvia, and sent them by a servant to Dromore’s.

Hard to describe the bitterness with which he entered his studio that morning. In all this chaos, what of his work? Could he ever have peace of mind for it again? Those people last night had talked of ‘inspiration of passion, of experience.’ In pleading with her he had used the words himself. She – poor soul! – had but repeated them, trying to endure them, to believe them true. And were they true? Again no answer, or certainly none that he could give. To have had the waters broken up; to be plunged into emotion; to feel desperately, instead of stagnating – some day he might be grateful – who knew? Some day there might be fair country again beyond this desert, where he could work even better than before. But just now, as well expect creative work from a condemned man. It seemed to him that he was equally destroyed whether he gave Nell up, and with her, once for all, that roving, seeking instinct, which ought, forsooth, to have been satisfied, and was not; or whether he took Nell, knowing that in doing so he was torturing a woman dear to him! That was as far as he could see to-day. What he would come to see in time God only knew! But: ‘Freedom of the Spirit!’ That was a phrase of bitter irony indeed! And, there, with his work all round him, like a man tied hand and foot, he was swept by such a feeling of exasperated rage as he had never known. Women! These women! Only let him be free of both, of all women, and the passions and pities they aroused, so that his brain and his hands might live and work again! They should not strangle, they should not destroy him!

Unfortunately, even in his rage, he knew that flight from them both could never help him. One way or the other the thing would have to be fought through. If it had been a straight fight even; a clear issue between passion and pity! But both he loved, and both he pitied. There was nothing straight and clear about it anywhere; it was all too deeply rooted in full human nature. And the appalling sense of rushing ceaselessly from barrier to barrier began really to affect his brain.

True, he had now and then a lucid interval of a few minutes, when the ingenious nature of his own torments struck him as supremely interesting and queer; but this was not precisely a relief, for it only meant, as in prolonged toothache, that his power of feeling had for a moment ceased. A very pretty little hell indeed!

All day he had the premonition, amounting to certainty, that Nell would take alarm at those three words he had sent her, and come in spite of them. And yet, what else could he have written? Nothing save what must have alarmed her more, or plunged him deeper. He had the feeling that she could follow his moods, that her eyes could see him everywhere, as a cat’s eyes can see in darkness. That feeling had been with him, more or less, ever since the last evening of October, the evening she came back from her summer – grown-up. How long ago? Only six days – was it possible? Ah, yes! She knew when her spell was weakening, when the current wanted, as it were, renewing. And about six o’clock – dusk already – without the least surprise, with only a sort of empty quivering, he heard her knock. And just behind the closed door, as near as he could get to her, he stood, holding his breath. He had given his word to Sylvia – of his own accord had given it. Through the thin wood of the old door he could hear the faint shuffle of her feet on the pavement, moved a few inches this way and that, as though supplicating the inexorable silence. He seemed to see her head, bent a little forward listening. Three times she knocked, and each time Lennan writhed. It was so cruel! With that seeing-sense of hers she must know he was there; his very silence would be telling her – for his silence had its voice, its pitiful breathless sound. Then, quite distinctly, he heard her sigh, and her footsteps move away; and covering his face with his hands he rushed to and fro in the studio, like a madman.

No sound of her any more! Gone! It was unbearable; and, seizing his hat, he ran out. Which way? At random he ran towards the Square. There she was, over by the railings; languidly, irresolutely moving towards home.

XIV

But now that she was within reach, he wavered; he had given his word – was he going to break it? Then she turned, and saw him; and he could not go back. In the biting easterly wind her face looked small, and pinched, and cold, but her eyes only the larger, the more full of witchery, as if beseeching him not to be angry, not to send her away.

“I had to come; I got frightened. Why did you write such a tiny little note?”

He tried to make his voice sound quiet and ordinary.

“You must be brave, Nell. I have had to tell her.”

She clutched at his arm; then drew herself up, and said in her clear, clipped voice:

“Oh! I suppose she hates me, then!”

“She is terribly unhappy.”

They walked a minute, that might have been an hour, without a word; not round the Square, as he had walked with Oliver, but away from the house. At last she said in a half-choked voice: “I only want a little bit of you.”

And he answered dully: “In love, there are no little bits – no standing still.”

Then, suddenly, he felt her hand in his, the fingers lacing, twining restlessly amongst his own; and again the half-choked voice said:

“But you WILL let me see you sometimes! You must!”

Hardest of all to stand against was this pathetic, clinging, frightened child. And, not knowing very clearly what he said, he murmured:

“Yes – yes; it’ll be all right. Be brave – you must be brave, Nell. It’ll all come right.”

But she only answered:

“No, no! I’m not brave. I shall do something.”

Her face looked just as when she had ridden at that gravel pit. Loving, wild, undisciplined, without resource of any kind – what might she not do? Why could he not stir without bringing disaster upon one or other? And between these two, suffering so because of him, he felt as if he had lost his own existence. In quest of happiness, he had come to that!

Suddenly she said:

“Oliver asked me again at the dance on Saturday. He said you had told him to be patient. Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I was sorry for him.”

She let his hand go.

“Perhaps you would like me to marry him.”

Very clearly he saw those two going round and round over the shining floor.

“It would be better, Nell.”

She made a little sound – of anger or dismay.

“You don’t REALLY want me, then?”

That was his chance. But with her arm touching his, her face so pale and desperate, and those maddening eyes turned to him, he could not tell that lie, and answered:

“Yes – I want you, God knows!”

At that a sigh of content escaped her, as if she were saying to herself: ‘If he wants me he will not let me go.’ Strange little tribute to her faith in love and her own youth!

They had come somehow to Pall Mall by now. And scared to find himself so deep in the hunting-ground of the Dromores, Lennan turned hastily towards St. James’s Park, that they might cross it in the dark, round to Piccadilly. To be thus slinking out of the world’s sight with the daughter of his old room-mate – of all men in the world the last perhaps that he should do this to! A nice treacherous business! But the thing men called honour – what was it, when her eyes were looking at him and her shoulder touching his?

Since he had spoken those words, “Yes, I want you,” she had been silent – fearful perhaps to let other words destroy their comfort. But near the gate by Hyde Park Corner she put her hand again into his, and again her voice, so clear, said:

“I don’t want to hurt anybody, but you WILL let me come sometimes – you will let me see you – you won’t leave me all alone, thinking that I’ll never see you again?”

And once more, without knowing what he answered, Lennan murmured:

“No, no! It’ll be all right, dear – it’ll all come right. It must – and shall.”

Again her fingers twined amongst his, like a child’s. She seemed to have a wonderful knowledge of the exact thing to say and do to keep him helpless. And she went on:

“I didn’t try to love you – it isn’t wrong to love – it wouldn’t hurt her. I only want a little of your love.”

A little – always a little! But he was solely bent on comforting her now. To think of her going home, and sitting lonely, frightened, and unhappy, all the evening, was dreadful. And holding her fingers tight, he kept on murmuring words of would-be comfort.

Then he saw that they were out in Piccadilly. How far dared he go with her along the railings before he said good-bye? A man was coming towards them, just where he had met Dromore that first fatal afternoon nine months ago; a man with a slight lurch in his walk and a tall, shining hat a little on one side. But thank Heaven! – it was not Dromore – only one somewhat like him, who in passing stared sphinx-like at Nell. And Lennan said:

“You must go home now, child; we mustn’t be seen together.”

For a moment he thought she was going to break down, refuse to leave him. Then she threw up her head, and for a second stood like that, quite motionless, looking in his face. Suddenly stripping off her glove, she thrust her warm, clinging hand into his. Her lips smiled faintly, tears stood in her eyes; then she drew her hand away and plunged into the traffic. He saw her turn the corner of her street and disappear. And with the warmth of that passionate little hand still stinging his palm, he almost ran towards Hyde Park.

Taking no heed of direction, he launched himself into its dark space, deserted in this cold, homeless wind, that had little sound and no scent, travelling its remorseless road under the grey-black sky.

The dark firmament and keen cold air suited one who had little need of aids to emotion – one who had, indeed, but the single wish to get rid, if he only could, of the terrible sensation in his head, that bruised, battered, imprisoned feeling of a man who paces his cell – never, never to get out at either end. Without thought or intention he drove his legs along; not running, because he knew that he would have to stop the sooner. Alas! what more comic spectacle for the eyes of a good citizen than this married man of middle age, striding for hours over those dry, dark, empty pastures – hunted by passion and by pity, so that he knew not even whether he had dined! But no good citizen was abroad of an autumn night in a bitter easterly wind. The trees were the sole witnesses of this grim exercise – the trees, resigning to the cold blast their crinkled leaves that fluttered past him, just a little lighter than the darkness. Here and there his feet rustled in the drifts, waiting their turn to serve the little bonfires, whose scent still clung in the air. A desperate walk, in this heart of London – round and round, up and down, hour after hour, keeping always in the dark; not a star in the sky, not a human being spoken to or even clearly seen, not a bird or beast; just the gleam of the lights far away, and the hoarse muttering of the traffic! A walk as lonely as the voyage of the human soul is lonely from birth to death with nothing to guide it but the flickering glow from its own frail spirit lighted it knows not where…

And, so tired that he could hardly move his legs, but free at last of that awful feeling in his head – free for the first time for days and days – Lennan came out of the Park at the gate where he had gone in, and walked towards his home, certain that tonight, one way or the other, it would be decided…

XV

This then – this long trouble of body and of spirit – was what he remembered, sitting in the armchair beyond his bedroom fire, watching the glow, and Sylvia sleeping there exhausted, while the dark plane-tree leaves tap-tapped at the window in the autumn wind; watching, with the uncanny certainty that, he would not pass the limits of this night without having made at last a decision that would not alter. For even conflict wears itself out; even indecision has this measure set to its miserable powers of torture, that any issue in the end is better than the hell of indecision itself. Once or twice in those last days even death had seemed to him quite tolerable; but now that his head was clear and he had come to grips, death passed out of his mind like the shadow that it was. Nothing so simple, extravagant, and vain could serve him. Other issues had reality; death – none. To leave Sylvia, and take this young love away; there was reality in that, but it had always faded as soon as it shaped itself; and now once more it faded. To put such a public and terrible affront on a tender wife whom he loved, do her to death, as it were, before the world’s eyes – and then, ever remorseful, grow old while the girl was still young? He could not. If Sylvia had not loved him, yes; or, even if he had not loved her; or if, again, though loving him she had stood upon her rights – in any of those events he might have done it. But to leave her whom he did love, and who had said to him so generously: “I will not hamper you – go to her” – would be a black atrocity. Every memory, from their boy-and-girl lovering to the desperate clinging of her arms these last two nights – memory with its innumerable tentacles, the invincible strength of its countless threads, bound him to her too fast. What then? Must it come, after all, to giving up the girl? And sitting there, by that warm fire, he shivered. How desolate, sacrilegious, wasteful to throw love away; to turn from the most precious of all gifts; to drop and break that vase! There was not too much love in the world, nor too much warmth and beauty – not, anyway, for those whose sands were running out, whose blood would soon be cold.