"Don't you think it should be kept under a glass case?" asked James, with his grave smile.
"It'll get so dirty if we leave it out, won't it?" replied Mary, seriously.
"I wish there were no inscription. It won't fetch so much if we get hard-up and have to pop our jewels."
"Oh, James," cried Mary, shocked, "you surely wouldn't do a thing like that!"
James was pleased to have seen the Larchers. It satisfied and relieved him to know that human sorrow was not beyond human endurance: as the greatest of their gifts, the gods have vouchsafed to man a happy forgetfulness.
In six months the boy's family were able to give parties, to laugh and jest as if they had suffered no loss at all; and the thought of this cleared his way a little. If the worst came to the worst--and that desperate step of which he had spoken seemed his only refuge--he could take it with less apprehension. Pain to those he loved was inevitable, but it would not last very long; and his death would trouble them far less than his dishonour.
Time was pressing, and James still hesitated, hoping distractedly for some unforeseen occurrence that would at least delay the marriage. The House of Death was dark and terrible, and he could not walk rashly to its dreadful gates: something would surely happen! He wanted time to think--time to see whether there was really no escape. How horrible it was that one could know nothing for certain! He was torn and rent by his indecision.
Major Forsyth had been put off by several duchesses, and was driven to spend a few economical weeks at Little Primpton; he announced that since Jamie's wedding was so near he would stay till it was over. Finding also that his nephew had not thought of a best man, he offered himself; he had acted as such many times--at the most genteel functions; and with a pleasant confusion of metaphor, assured James that he knew the ropes right down to the ground.
"Three weeks to-day, my boy!" he said heartily to James one morning, on coming down to breakfast.
"Is it?" replied James.
"Getting excited?"
"Wildly!"
"Upon my word, Jamie, you're the coolest lover I've ever seen. Why, I've hardly known how to keep in some of the fellows I've been best man to."
"I'm feeling a bit seedy to-day, Uncle William."
James thanked his stars that ill-health was deemed sufficient excuse for all his moodiness. Mary spared him the rounds among her sick and needy, whom, notwithstanding the approaching event, she would on no account neglect. She told Uncle William he was not to worry her lover, but leave him quietly with his books; and no one interfered when he took long, solitary walks in the country. Jamie's reading now was a pretence; his brain was too confused, he was too harassed and uncertain to understand a word; and he spent his time face to face with the eternal problem, trying to see a way out, when before him was an impassable wall, still hoping blindly that something would happen, some catastrophe which should finish at once all his perplexities, and everything else besides.
XXII
In solitary walks James had found his only consolation. He knew even in that populous district unfrequented parts where he could wander without fear of interruption. Among the trees and the flowers, in the broad meadows, he forgot himself; and, his senses sharpened by long absence, he learnt for the first time the exquisite charm of English country. He loved the spring, with its yellow, countless buttercups, spread over the green fields like a cloth of gold, whereon might fitly walk the angels of Messer Perugino. The colours were so delicate that one could not believe it possible for paints and paint-brush to reproduce them; the atmosphere visibly surrounded things, softening their outlines. Sometimes from a hill higher than the rest James looked down at the plain, bathed in golden sunlight. The fields of corn, the fields of clover, the roads and the rivulets, formed themselves in that flood of light into an harmonious pattern, luminous and ethereal. A pleasant reverie filled his mind, unanalysable, a waking dream of half-voluptuous sensation.
On the other side of the common, James knew a wood of tall fir trees, dark and ragged, their sombre green veiled in a silvery mist, as though, like a chill vapour, the hoar-frost of a hundred winters still lingered among their branches. At the edge of the hill, up which they climbed in serried hundreds, stood here and there an oak tree, just bursting into leaf, clothed with its new-born verdure, like the bride of the young god, Spring. And the ever-lasting youth of the oak trees contrasted wonderfully with the undying age of the firs. Then later, in the height of the summer, James found the pine wood cool and silent, fitting his humour. It was like the forest of life, the grey and sombre labyrinth where wandered the poet of Hell and Death. The tall trees rose straight and slender, like the barren masts of sailing ships; the gentle aromatic odour, the light subdued; the purple mist, so faint as to be scarcely discernible, a mere tinge of warmth in the day--all gave him an exquisite sense of rest. Here he could forget his trouble, and give himself over to the love which seemed his real life; here the recollection of Mrs. Wallace gained flesh and blood, seeming so real that he almost stretched out his arms to seize her.... His footfall on the brown needles was noiseless, and the tread was soft and easy; the odours filled him like an Eastern drug with drowsy intoxication.
But all that now was gone. When, unbidden, the well-known laugh rang again in his ears, or he felt on his hands the touch of the slender fingers, James turned away with a gesture of distaste. Now Mrs. Wallace brought him only bitterness, and he tortured himself insanely trying to forget her.... With tenfold force the sensation returned which had so terribly oppressed him before his illness; he felt that Nature had become intolerably monotonous; the circumscribed, prim country was horrible. On every inch of it the hand of man was apparent. It was a prison, and his hands and feet were chained with heavy iron.... The dark, immovable clouds were piled upon one another in giant masses--so distinct and sharply cut, so rounded, that one almost saw the impressure of the fingers of some Titanic sculptor; and they hung low down, overwhelming, so that James could scarcely breathe. The sombre elms were too well-ordered, the meadows too carefully tended. All round, the hills were dark and drear; and that very fertility, that fat Kentish luxuriance, added to the oppression. It was a task impossible to escape from that iron circle. All power of flight abandoned him. Oh! he loathed it!
The past centuries of people, living in a certain way, with certain standards, influenced by certain emotions, were too strong for him. James was like a foolish bird--a bird born in a cage, without power to attain its freedom. His lust for a free life was futile; he acknowledged with cruel self-contempt that he was weaker than a woman--ineffectual. He could not lead the life of his little circle, purposeless and untrue; and yet he had not power to lead a life of his own. Uncertain, vacillating, torn between the old and the new, his reason led him; his conscience drew him back. But the ties of his birth and ancestry were too strong; he had not the energy even of the poor tramp, who carries with him his whole fortune, and leaves in the lap of the gods the uncertain future. James envied with all his heart the beggar boy, wandering homeless and penniless, but free. He, at least, had not these inhuman fetters which it was death to suffer and death to cast off; he, indeed, could make the world his servant. Freedom, freedom! If one were only unconscious of captivity, what would it matter? It is the knowledge that kills. And James walked again by the neat, iron railing which enclosed the fields, his head aching with the rigidity and decorum, wishing vainly for just one piece of barren, unkept land to remind him that all the world was not a prison.
Already the autumn had come. The rich, mouldering colours were like an air melancholy with the approach of inevitable death; but in those passionate tints, in the red and gold of the apples, in the many tones of the first-fallen leaves, there was still something which forbade one to forget that in the death and decay of Nature there was always the beginning of other life. Yet to James the autumn heralded death, with no consoling afterthought. He had nothing to live for since he knew that Mrs. Wallace could never love him. His love for her had borne him up and sustained him; but now it was hateful and despicable. After all, his life was his own to do what he liked with; the love of others had no right to claim his self-respect. If he had duties to them, he had duties to himself also; and more vehemently than ever James felt that such a union as was before him could only be a degradation. He repeated with new emotion that marriage without love was prostitution. If death was the only way in which he could keep clean that body ignorantly despised, why, he was not afraid of death! He had seen it too often for the thought to excite alarm. It was but a common, mechanical process, quickly finished, and not more painful than could be borne. The flesh is all which is certainly immortal; the dissolution of consciousness is the signal of new birth. Out of corruption springs fresh life, like the roses from a Roman tomb; and the body, one with the earth, pursues the eternal round.