XVII

Frank was grieved and troubled at the sad accounts that came to him of Maggie's health; he was perplexed, too, for he knew himself to be the cause, and he longed to relieve and to cure her. It seemed to him that he would give his life to go to her, and comfort her with love, and yet he was impotent to make the least effort to attain the end he desired. He lay in the sad and cruel memory of Lizzie, his mind filled with ignoble visions of her life with the waiter, or with delicate fancies of her beauty amid the summer of the Thames. He mused on her gracious figure and face, illuminated by reflections from the water, set off by the bulrushes and floating blossoms which she so eagerly coveted, and varied by the movements of the waist and shoulders, the round white arm, the trailing scarf, and all the wistful charm of the slumbering evening. He thought of the country light, the sound and smell of cows, of the sparrows in the vine, the cottage looking so cosy amid the foliage, the bit of garden full of old-fashioned flowers, tall lilies, convolvuluses, and marigolds, and the sitting-room full of things belonging to her—her flowers, her books, her music, and he thought of this until his life was sick with desire, and there grew a burning pain about his heart.

A man's struggles in the web of a vile love are as pitiful as those of a fly in the meshes of the spider; he crawls to the edge, but only to ensnare himself more completely; he takes pleasure in ridiculing her, but whether he praises or blames, she remains mistress of his life; all threads are equally fatal, and each that should have served to bear him out of the trap only goes to bind him faster. A man in love suggests the spider's web, and when he is seeking to escape from a woman that will degrade his life, the cruelty which is added completes and perfects the comparison. A man's love for a common woman is as a fire in his vitals; sometimes it seems quenched, sometimes it is torn out by angry hands, but always some spark remains; it contrives to unite about its victim, and in the end has its way. It is a cancerous disease, but it cannot be cut out like a cancer. It is more deadly; it is inexplicable. All good things, wealth and honour, are forfeited for it; long years of toil, trouble, privation of all kinds, are willingly accepted; on one side all the sweetness of the world, on the other nothing of worth, often vice, meanness, ill-temper, all that go to make life a madness and a terror; twenty, thirty, forty, perhaps fifty years lie a head of him and her, but the years and their burdens are not for his eyes any more than the flowers he elects to disdain. Love is blind, but sometimes there is no love. How then shall we explain this inexplicable mystery; wonderful riddle that none shall explain and that every generation propounds?

Frank lingered in Southwick, for he had promised Willy to stay with him when he went to live at the stables on the Portslade Road. Summer was nearly over, hunting would soon commence, and he could keep a couple of hunters—Willy had calculated it out—for two and twenty shillings a week. He had ceased to paint, and when he went to the studio it was to play the piano or the violin. None knew of Lizzie, and all knew of Maggie. It was thought a little strange that he would not forgive her, but the obscurity of the story of this point and the delight felt in her misfortune helped to intensify and idealise Frank in the popular mind, and when he played Gounod in the still evenings the young ladies would steal from the villas and wander sentimentally through the shadows about the green. He got up late in the morning, he lingered over breakfast, and until it was time to go to Brighton he lay on the sofa watching the cricketers and the children playing, shaping resolutions, and striving with himself and deceiving himself. A dozen times, a hundred times, he had concluded he must see Maggie; he had decided he would write to Lord Mount Rorke, that he would go to Mr. Brookes and settle the matter off-hand. But, somehow, he did nothing. His mind was absorbed in a novel, which he narrated when Willy came to see him. It concerned the accident that led a man not to marry the woman he loved, and was in the main an incoherent version of his own life at Southwick.

“I don't think I told you,” said Willy, “that they are removing the furniture to-day.”

“You don't say so—to-day? And where is your father?”

“He is in London, at the 'Metropole.'”

The young men walked on slowly in silence, and when they came to the lodge gate, standing wide open, and saw the curtainless windows and the flowerless greenhouses, Willy said: “It is very sad to see all the things you have known since you were a child sold by auction.”

“Oh, yes, it is. Look at the swards. Do they not look sad already? Those beautiful elms, under whose shade we have sat, will be cut down, and stucco work and glass porticoes take their places. Oh, it is very sad.”

“My father never had any feeling, he never cared for the place. Had I been in his place I should have invested my money in land and gone in for the county families.”

“How old was I when I came down to see you for the first time—fourteen, I think? How well I remember everything. It was there, look, through that glade, that I saw your sisters coming to meet me, they were then only ten or eleven years old. I can see them in my mind's eye, quite distinctly, walking towards me, Grace leading the way, and now she is a mother; and they were all so dark. I remember thinking I had never seen girls so dark, they were like foreigners. And do you remember how your father scolded Sally for carrying me round the garden on her back, and she used to wake me up in the mornings by rolling croquet balls along the floor into my room. Oh, what good, dear days those were, and to think they are dead and gone, and that the house is going to be pulled down; and the garden—oh! the moonlights in that garden, where I walked with the girls, with scarves round their shoulders, through the dreamy light and shade. We have sung songs, and talked of all manner of things. You don't feel as I feel.”

“Yes I do, my dear fellow, I think I feel a great deal more, only I don't talk so much about it.”

“I know it is infinitely sad. This dear old wall! There is Maggie's window: how often have I looked up to that window for her winsome face, and I shall never look again.”

“You are as bad as my father. Cheer up; I suppose it will be all the same a hundred years hence.”

“No, no, it won't be the same. Why should all I feel and love be forgotten. I suppose it will be all the same. There goes Berkins. I hate that man.”

“So do I.”

“If time takes away pleasant things it takes unpleasant things too, and those who live a hundred years hence will not be troubled with that fool. True, there will be other Berkinses, and there will be other gardens, and other girls, but that doesn't make it the least less sad to see this garden pass into bricks and mortar.”

Two footmen approached Mr. Berkins, and with all solemnity helped him to take off his overcoat. He said a few words to Willy, and was soon loudly ordering the workmen who were taking the Goodalls and the Friths from the walls.

“Take care, there! Hi, you! get on the ladder and take hold of this end of the picture. There, that's better! That's the way to do it!”

“That's what he said when he shot my bird,” Willy whispered; and they tried to laugh as they went upstairs. But their footsteps sounded hollow, and the wardrobes, where they had so often put their clothes, stood wide open, desolately empty. They looked out of the windows, and heard the voices of the work-people.

“How very sad it is,” said Frank; then, after a long silence: “How beautiful a scene like this would be in a book—a young girl leaving her home, straying through the different rooms musing on the different pieces of furniture, all of which recall the past. I think I shall write it. I wish you would tell me what you feel; I mean, I wish you would tell me what impresses itself most on your mind, and, as it were, epitomises the whole. You have known all this since you were a child. You have played in these passages; some spot, some piece of furniture, your toys—I suppose they are gone long ago; but something must stand out and assert itself amid conflicting thoughts. Do tell me.”

Willy stroked his moustache. “Of course it is very sad, but it is difficult to put one's feelings into words. I should have to think about it; I don't think I could say off-hand.”

At that moment there came a great crash.

“What the devil is that?” cried Frank.

“I hope they haven't broken the statue of Flora,” said Willy, and a look of alarm overspread his face. Frank felt that if such were the case he should feel no great sorrow. They ran down the echoing stairs. The workmen had got drunk in the cellars and in removing the statue they had let it fall, and it strewed the floor—an arm here, a fragment of drapery there.

“I knew what would happen. I told Mr. Brookes so. All my statues are in marble.”

“Come away, I can't listen to that cad. I wouldn't have had Flora broken for a hundred pounds. When I was a child I used to stand and look at her. I never could make out how she was made, and I always wanted to look inside. If you'd like to know what I feel most sorry for, it is Flora. She has stood amid the flowers in the bow window as long as I can remember.”

They followed the high road by Windmill Inn, where they struck across the Downs, and when they reached the first crest they could see the paddocks and enclosures situated along the road in the valley, and the private house so trim and middle-class. “Splendid paddocks and first-rate stabling. The house is not much. When I am making fifteen per cent. on my money I shall go in for a little architecture. If I had a glass I could show you Blue Mantle's stable. Do you see two horses in the paddock, right away on the left, in the far corner—Apple Blossom and Astarte? Apple Blossom is by See-saw out of Melody, by Stockwell out of Fairy Queen. Is that good enough for you? Astarte is by Blue Gown out of Merry Maid, by Beadsman out of Aurora. What do you say to that?”

“I see you have been looking up the Stud Book.”

“Business, sir, business. And if I were to go in for owning a racer or two, just look and see what a magnificent training ground; miles upon miles of downland. Did you ever see a handsomer view? You must paint me some landscapes for my dining-room.”