Chapter VI.

CLIO, OR THALIA?

According to the ordinary and inaccurate method of measuring time, a fortnight may have gone by since the event last narrated, and Honora had tasted at last the joys of authorship. Her name was not to appear, to be sure, on the cover of the Life and Letters of General Angus Chiltern; nor indeed, so far, had she written so much as a chapter or a page of a work intended to inspire young and old with the virtues of citizenship. At present the biography was in the crucial constructive stage. Should the letters be put in one volume, and the life in another? or should the letters be inserted in the text of the life? or could not there be a third and judicious mixture of both of these methods? Honora's counsel on this and other problems was, it seems, invaluable. Her own table was fairly littered with biographies more or less famous which had been fetched from the library, and the method of each considered.

Even as Mr. Garrick would never have been taken for an Actor in his coach and four, so our heroine did not in the least resemble George Eliot, for instance, as she sat before her mirror at high noon with Monsieur Cadron and her maid Mathilde in worshipful attendance. Some of the ladies, indeed, who have left us those chatty memoirs of the days before the guillotine, she might have been likened to. Monsieur Cadron was an Artist, and his branch of art was hair-dressing. It was by his own wish he was here to-day, since he had conceived a new coiffure especially adapted, he declared, to the type of Madame Spence. Behold him declaring ecstatically that seldom in his experience had he had such hairs to work with.

"Avec une telle chevelure, l'on peut tout faire, madame. Etre simple, c'est le comble de l'art. Ca vous donne,"he added, with clasped hands and a step backward,"ca vous donne tout a fait l'air d'une dame de Nattier."

Madame took the hand-glass, and did not deny that she was eblouissante. If madame, suggested Monsieur Cadron, had but a little dress a la Marie Antoinette? Madame had, cried madame's maid, running to fetch one with little pink flowers and green leaves on an ecru ground. Could any coiffure or any gown be more appropriate for an entertainment at which Clio was to preside?

It is obviously impossible that a masterpiece should be executed under the rules laid down by convention. It would never be finished. Mr. Chiltern was coming to lunch, and it was not the first time. On her appearance in the doorway he halted abruptly in his pacing of the drawing-room, and stared at her.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting,"she said.

"It was worth it,"he said. And they entered the dining room. A subdued, golden-green light came in through the tall glass doors that opened out on the little garden which had been Mrs. Forsythe's pride. The scent of roses was in the air, and a mass of them filled a silver bowl in the middle of the table. On the dark walls were Mrs. Forsythe's precious prints, and above the mantel a portrait of a thin, aristocratic gentleman who resembled the poet Tennyson. In the noonday shadows of a recess was a dark mahogany sideboard loaded with softly gleaming silver—Honora's. Chiltern sat down facing her. He looked at Honora over the roses,—and she looked at him. A sense of unreality that was, paradoxically, stronger than reality itself came over her, a sense of fitness, of harmony. And for the moment an imagination, ever straining at its leash, was allowed to soar. It was Chiltern who broke the silence.

"What a wonderful bowl!"he said.

"It has been in my father's family a great many years. He was very fond of it,"she answered, and with a sudden, impulsive movement she reached over and set the bowl aside.

"That's better,"he declared,"much as I admire the bowl, and the roses."

She coloured faintly, and smiled. The feast of reason that we are impatiently awaiting is deferred. It were best to attempt to record the intangible things; the golden-green light, the perfumes, and the faint musical laughter which we can hear if we listen. Thalia's laughter, surely, not Clio's. Thalia, enamoured with such a theme, has taken the stage herself—and as Vesta, goddess of hearths. It was Vesta whom they felt to be presiding. They lingered, therefore, over the coffee, and Chiltern lighted a cigar. He did not smoke cigarettes.

"I've lived long enough,"he said,"to know that I have never lived at all. The re is only one thing in life worth having."

"What is it?"asked Honora.

"This,"he answered, with a gesture;"when it is permanent."

She smiled.

"And how is one to know whether it would be—permanent?"

"Through experience and failure,"he answered quickly,"we learn to distinguish the reality when it comes. It is unmistakable."

"Suppose it comes too late?"she said, forgetting the ancient verse inscribed in her youthful diary:"Those who walk on ice will slide against their wills."

"To admit that is to be a coward,"he declared.

"Such a philosophy may be fitting for a man,"she replied,"but for a woman—"

"We are no longer in the dark ages,"he interrupted."Every one, man or woman, has the right to happiness. The re is no reason why we should suffer all our lives for a mistake."

"A mistake!"she echoed.

"Certainly,"he said."It is all a matter of luck, or fate, or whatever you choose to call it. Do you suppose, if I could have found fifteen years ago the woman to have made me happy, I should have spent so much time in seeking distraction?"

"Perhaps you could not have been capable of appreciating her—fifteen years ago,"suggested Honora. And, lest he might misconstrue her remark, she avoided his eyes.

"Perhaps,"he admitted."But suppose I have found her now, when I know the value of things."

"Suppose you should find her now—within a reasonable time. What would you do?"

"Marry her,"he exclaimed promptly."Marry her and take her to Grenoble, and live the life my father lived before me."

She did not reply, but rose, and he followed her to the shaded corner of the porch where they usually sat. The bundle of yellow-stained envelopes he had brought were lying on the table, and Honora picked them up mechanically.

"I have been thinking,"she said as she removed the elastics,"that it is a mistake to begin a biography by the enumeration of one's ancestors. Readers become frightfully bored before they get through the first chapter."

"I'm beginning to believe,"he laughed,"that you will have to write this one alone. All the ideas I have got so far have been yours. Why shouldn't you write it, and I arrange the material, and talk about it! That appears to be all I'm good for."

If she allowed her mind to dwell on the vista he thus presented, she did not betray herself.

"Another thing,"she said,"it should be written like fiction."

"Like fiction?"

"Fact should be written like fiction, and fiction like fact. It's difficult to express what I mean. But this life of your father deserves to be widely known, and it should be entertainingly done, like Lockhart, or Parton's works—"

An envelope fell to the floor, spilling its contents. Among them were several photographs.

"Oh,"she exclaimed,"how beautiful! What place is this?"

"I hadn't gone over these letters,"he answered."I only got them yesterday from Cecil Grainger. The se are some pictures of Grenoble which must leave been taken shortly before my father died."

She gazed in silence at the old house half hidden by great maples and beeches, their weighted branches sweeping the ground. The building was of wood, painted white, and through an Archway of verdure one saw the generous doorway with its circular steps, with its fan-light above, and its windows at the side. Other quaint windows, some of them of triple width, suggested an interior of mystery and interest.

"My great-great-grandfather, Alexander Chiltern, built it,"he said,"on land granted to him before the Revolution. Of course the house has been added to since then, but the simplicity of the original has always been kept. My father put on the conservatory, for instance,"and Chiltern pointed to a portion at the end of one of the long low wings."He got the idea from the orangery of a Georgian house in England, and an English architect designed it."

Honora took up the other photographs. One of them, over which she lingered, was of a charming, old-fashioned garden spattered with sunlight, and shut out from the world by a high brick wall. Behind the wall, again, were the dense masses of the trees, and at the end of a path between nodding foxgloves and Canterbury bells, in a curved recess, a stone seat.

She turned her face. His was at her shoulder.

"How could you ever have left it?"she asked reproachfully.

She voiced his own regrets, which the crowding memories had awakened.

"I don't know,"he answered, not without emotion."I have often asked myself that question."He crossed over to the railing of the porch, swung about, and looked at her. Her eyes were still on the picture."I can imagine you in that garden,"he said.

Did the garden cast the spell by which she saw herself on the seat? or was it Chiltern's voice? She would indeed love and cherish it. And was it true that she belonged there, securely infolded within those peaceful walls? How marvellously well was Thalia playing her comedy! Which was the real, and which the false? What of true value, what of peace and security was contained in her present existence? She had missed the meaning of things, and suddenly it was held up before her, in a garden.

A later hour found them in Honora's runabout wandering northward along quiet country roads on the eastern side of the island. Chiltern, who was driving, seemed to take no thought of their direction, until at last, with an exclamation, he stopped the horse; and Honora beheld an Abandoned mansion of a bygone age sheltered by ancient trees, with wide lands beside it sloping to the water.

"What is it?"she asked.

"Beaulieu,"he replied."It was built in the seventeenth century, I believe, and must have been a fascinating place in colonial days."He drove in between the fences and tied the horse, and came around by the side of the runabout."Won't you get out and look at it?"

She hesitated, and their eyes met as he held out his hand, but she avoided it and leaped quickly to the ground neither spoke as they walked around the deserted house and gazed at the quaint facade, broken by a crumbling, shaded balcony let in above the entrance door. No sound broke the stillness of the summer's day—a pregnant stillness. The air was heavy with perfumes, and the leaves formed a tracery against the marvellous blue of the sky. My stery brooded in the place. Here, in this remote paradise now in ruins, people had dwelt and loved. Thought ended there; and feeling, which is unformed thought, began. Again she glanced at him, and again their eyes met, and hers faltered. They turned, as with one consent, down the path toward the distant water. Paradise overgrown! Could it be reconstructed, redeemed?

In former days the ground they trod had been a pleasance the width of the house, bordered, doubtless, by the forest. Trees grew out of the flower beds now, and underbrush choked the paths. The box itself, that once primly lined the alleys, was gnarled and shapeless. Labyrinth had replaced order, nature had reaped her vengeance. At length, in the deepening shade, they came, at what had been the edge of the old terrace, to the daintiest of summer-houses, crumbling too, the shutters off their hinges, the floor-boards loose. Past and gone were the idyls of which it had been the stage.

They turned to the left, through tangled box that wound hither and thither, until they stopped at a stone wall bordering a tree-arched lane. At the bottom of the lane was a glimpse of blue water.

Honora sat down on the wall with her back to a great trunk. Chiltern, with a hand on the stones, leaped over lightly, and stood for some moments in the lane, his feet a little apart and firmly planted, his hands behind his back.

What had Thalia been about to allow the message of that morning to creep into her comedy? a message announcing the coming of an intruder not in the play, in the person of a husband bearing gifts. What right had he, in the eternal essence of things, to return? He was out of all time and place. Such had been her feeling when she had first read the hastily written letter, but even when she had burned it it had risen again from the ashes. Anything but that! In trying not to think of it, she had picked up the newspaper, learned of a railroad accident,—and shuddered. Anything but his return! Her marriage was a sin,—there could be no sacrament in it. She would flee first, and abandon all rather than submit to it.

Chiltern's step aroused her now. He came back to the wall where she was sitting, and faced her.

"You are sad,"he said.

She shook her head at him, slowly, and tried to smile.

"What has happened?"he demanded rudely."I can't bear to see you sad."

"I am going away,"she said. The decision had suddenly come to her. Why had she not seen before that it was inevitable?

He seized her wrist as it lay on the wall, and she winced from the sudden pain of his grip.

"Honora, I love you,"he said,"I must have you—I will have you. I will make you happy. I promise it on my soul. I can't, I won't live without you."

She did not listen to his words—she could not have repeated them afterwards. The very tone of his voice was changed by passion; creation spoke through him, and she heard and thrilled and swayed and soared, forgetting heaven and earth and hell as he seized her in his arms and covered her face with kisses. Thus Eric the Red might have wooed. And by what grace she spoke the word that delivered her she never knew. As suddenly as he had seized her he released her, and she stood before him with flaming cheeks and painful breath.

"I love you,"he said,"I love you. I have searched the world for you and found you, and by all the laws of God you are mine."

And love was written in her eyes. He had but to read it there, though her lips might deny it. This was the man of all men she would have chosen, and she was his by right of conquest. Yet she held up her hand with a gesture of entreaty.

"No, Hugh—it cannot be,"she said.

"Cannot!"he cried."I will take you. You love me."

"I am married."

"Married! Do you mean that you would let that man stand between you and happiness?"

"What do you mean?"she asked, in a frightened voice.

"Just what I say,"he cried, with incredible vehemence."Leave him —divorce him. You cannot live with him. He isn't worthy to touch your hand."

The idea planted itself with the force of a barbed arrow from a strong-bow. Struggle as she might, she could not henceforth extract it.

"Oh!"she cried.

He took her arm, gently, and forced her to sit down on the wall. Such was the completeness of his mastery that she did not resist. He sat down beside her.

"Listen, Honora,"he said, and tried to speak calmly, though his voice was still vibrant;"let us look the situation in the face. As I told you once, the days of useless martyrdom are past. The world is more enlightened today, and recognizes an individual right to happiness."

"To happiness,"she repeated after him, like a child. He forgot his words as he looked into her eyes: they were lighted as with all the candles of heaven in his honour.