This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders' 20th Anniversary. Transcriberâs Note When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has been surrounded by _underscores_. Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs=. Some corrections have been made to the printed text. These are listed in a second transcriberâs note at the end of the text. A YELLOW ASTER BY IOTA âAnd if this fought-for climax _is_ ever reached and science, creeping along the path of experiment, so invades the realm of Nature that a blue chrysanthemum or A Yellow Aster can be produced at will, the question still remains, has Nature been made more beautiful thereby?â _IN THREE VOLUMES_ VOL. III London 1894 HUTCHINSON & CO. 34 PATERNOSTER ROW PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) AND TALBOT HOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET LONDON, W.C. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER XXXI. 1 CHAPTER XXXII. 11 CHAPTER XXXIII. 29 CHAPTER XXXIV. 45 CHAPTER XXXV. 66 CHAPTER XXXVI. 84 CHAPTER XXXVII. 107 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 124 CHAPTER XXXIX. 140 CHAPTER XL. 152 CHAPTER XLI. 160 CHAPTER XLII. 171 CHAPTER XLIII. 185 CHAPTER XLIV. 192 A YELLOW ASTER. CHAPTER XXXI. GWEN lost no time in conducting her projected series of experiments, she carried them on conscientiously, and with an assumption of spontaneity that gave her husband a high opinion of her powers of self-government. As for the results on Gwen herself, she found them nil, she failed in experiencing one thrill, or the ghost of a tremor. She had an opportunity about this time of judging of the effects on the situation of a sudden danger to her husband. They had driven into the station to meet a parcel of books from London. They were early, and employed their time in watching the goings-on of an imp in human form wrestling with its nurse at one end of the platform. âWhat an inestimable blessing it would be,â said Humphrey reflectively, âif the Lord would be pleased to remove that creature. Look at it, biting and screaming like a horse!â âMr. Drew says the child is half idiotic.â âIf itâs not, the nurse soon will beâPhewâtake the reins!â She only knew she had them in a bundle in her hands, and Humphrey was off, then there struck on her ear a crash of sound, and through it one thin high shriek and a long wailing. For a second her eyes floated in darkness, then the express thundered on and she could see a confused mass of men and women bending down over something. âThat distinct definite shriek was awful!â Gwen found herself thinking, with curious composure, though she knew perfectly well that her husband had very likely lost his life to save that of a congenital idiot. He was only stunned, however, and the infant had got off scot-free. When he came to her, Gwen was very white in sheer disgust at her own want of emotion, and Strange knew as distinctly as if she had told him the cause of her pallor. He would not wait for the books, but turned the horsesâ heads homewards and set off at a smart trot. âThat amiable infant,â he said, when they had cleared the village, âit seems, felt itself moved to commit suicide in order to spite its nurse; it has been a long-standing threat, the woman says. It threw itself on its stomach before the in-coming train. By Jove! It was a close shave, we only got off by the skin of our teeth!â She would have liked to touch him, to let her eyes melt in his sight, to make her lips tremble, but she could not for the life of her. She knew he had acted like a hero, but as she had known before, he couldnât do any other thing when the call came; it did not seem in any way to alter matters. Then she began to speculate as to what would have happened if perchance he had _not_ come off by the skin of his teeth. She looked curiously at him and wondered. âI havenât a notion,â she concluded at last, and she was silent for a long time and very pale. âWas the game worth the candle?â she asked, as they went through the terrace gates. âYou had said a minute before, the Lord would do well to remove the child.â âProbably not, but when a man happens to be in a desperate hurry he canât stop to go all round a question. I must go to the stables myself, there is something wrong with Boccaccioâs off hoof. Shall I help you up the stepsâyou look white?â âNo, thank youâI wishâI wishââ she said slowly; she never finished her sentence, but went wearily into the house without turning her head. âI wish to Heaven I knew what he thinks of it allâhow much he minds!â she whispered to herself, with noiseless passion, as soon as she got into her room. âEven in this dead-level life a big thing has come and gone, and has left me precisely as it found me.â She smote her hands together sharply, then she rang for her maid; she dared not be alone, her control over herself was on its last legs. If she had looked into Strangeâs den half an hour later she might have got some idea of how much he minded, but he ate a good dinner and afterwards tied flies with a steady hand, and made several quite decent jokes as he watched her standing at the open window, looking with careless interest at his work. She wore a Watteau gown of pale primrose, with purple pansies scattered here and there over it; she held a great yellow fan in her hand and stood bathed in the yellow twilight. âIf I boxed her ears,â he thought, âI wonder what she would do or say? Any way it couldnât hurt her more than those devilish experiments of hers hurt me. I have a good mind to tryâif her ears werenât altogether so perfect I swear I would. Ah, my good girl, you are playing with fire!â He paused to fix a wrenâs tail feather in its place. âThere may come a time, little fool, when I may get tired of this game and resort to active measures, and then youâll find your bit of hell, ââDann willst du weine, du liebe kleine!ââ In a moment of abstraction he sang it aloud, and gave Gwen a considerable start. âDo you ever sew, Gwen?â âNo, but I can, I believe, in a fashion.â âI wish you would then, it might make you look a bit human.â âGood gracious! I am not divine again, am I? I thought I had shut all that away with my white tea-gown. Perhaps you would like to call Tolly?â âOh, dear, no! You would not conduce to his soulâs salvation in the least. On the contrary, I was thinking you had a marked resemblance to Lilith.â âOh, Lilith! I am flattered certainly. I think I will go and get some work.â Strange laughed, and went on tying feathers on hooks. âHa, that touched her up!â he muttered. When she was half up the stairs she stopped and stamped: âHow dare he sayâsay with a laugh what I wonât even dare to think!â However, she was soon back again in her yellow twilight, but sitting this time, and with a big bundle of coarse flannel in her hand that she began to stitch with demure diligence. âWhat in the name of fortune is that!â said Strange, after taking steady stock of it. âI donât really know, I got it in Elizaâs roomâI think it is a jelly-bag, itâs just like one I once made for Mrs. Fellowes, and spoiled disgracefully. I sewed up the wrong end!â Strange investigated it with much interest. âMy good girl,â he said at last, âdo you know what you are doing? You are sewing an old womanâs petticoat.â He gave a laugh that reached Tolly, as he sat varnishing boots downstairs. âBless âem, the pair of âem,â he remarked, âand as âappy together as if they lived in four rooms! Queer, too! as the aristocracyâs mostly gone to the dogs in the domestic line!â CHAPTER XXXII. âI WONDER whether the fellow is grasping the âhigh seriousnessâ of Art, or going to the devil!â Strange was on his road to see Brydon, from whom that morning he had received a rather enigmatical note. âI didnât expect you this hour,â said Brydon, when he arrived, âI thought it was that brute, the fellow over me, who always forgets his key. I came back to the old place, you see, from a sort of habit, and I thought too it would suit Mag and Con. I went to see them. They taught me a lot, those two girls; they had fine flesh tints, better than the French article as a rule.â âHave they been to see you?â âYes, Magâs married, and her figure!âthrow your coat thereâItâs a sin to see it; women of that order should die young.â âAnd Connie?â âConnie! sheâs grown frowsy, Iâm afraid itâs gin! There was a blackguard she âwalked withâ who levanted with a cook, so itâs censorious to grudge her a drop of comfort. But to think of those pearly tints grown frowsy!â he murmured, âto sell that colouring for a greasy mess of pottage! The folly of man is inscrutable!âStrange, you want desert air, your skin has lost tone!â âSeason, my good boy, what else can you expect?â âI wonder if itâs all season,â thought the fellow, and an unaccountable coldness ran down his spine. âI wonder if heâs made a mistake too!â âHow are you getting on, as to work?â âI have to speak of something else first, and for reasons best known to myself, I prefer fresh air for itâwill you stroll round?â âI should like to see the picture first,â said Strange. One of his old blushes mounted to Brydonâs cheeks. âWait till afterwards, if you donât mind,â he said. âLook at the light from that gin-palace on the red head of that child!â he went on, as they turned the corner, âitâs funny what glorious effects one gets from the filthiest combinations! There is no light more bewildering and lovely than the phosphoric blue flicker from a grave-yard. âThat effect now, those reeking gin lights on that beastly dirty head, and the corpse lights are like a lot of writersâ work, no one can pass it by, it has a power to grasp and hold you, that cleaner things donât have, and such power means genius, donât you think? Power strong enough, I mean, to stoop a fellowâs mind and nose low enough to batten on corruption? If the corruption wasnât made worth examining, one would only pass on, with a kick at the seething mass. Instead of that, one looks and spits, and looks and spits again, but keeps looking and finally settles down to enjoy oneself and then a fellow gets enervated and unmanned before he knows what he is about. He sees the pitiless truth of things, of course, but he loses everything elseâthe result is very limiting when one thinks of it. Battening on certain books,â went on Brydon after a pause, âwas the beginning of it, I think, then rottenness smells sweet after a time, and a fellow gets curious and wants to exploit on his own account. I did all sorts of things first, I tried trees, sun, shade, moonlight; I walked blisters on my feet, I worked in the sweat of my brow, but nothing would still the brutal throbbing, and I went mad one day in that maddening city. Art wasnât worth a straw to save me. I made a beast of myself, the cheap sort of beast that I had funds for, andâhere is the result!â âWell, youâre a sorry object, it must be confessed!â âBut thatâs not the worst eitherâdo you know I have altogether lost the way to work; I can do nothing. Now some fellows can go down in the gutter one day and mount up amongst the gods the next without turning a hair; it beats me.â âItâs a good deal a question of nationality,â said Strange, âEnglishmen as a rule canât do complete work while theyâre mud-larking; French fellows often can; just as no decent bourgeois John Bull has it in him to write tons of magnificent filth on a sort of principle. The fact is, no fellow of your temperament has any business to wallow in modern French realism, you havenât tone enough. I felt certain this would happen, but you had to take your chance with your betters, and no doubt the experience hasnât been all loss. I am sorry for you all the same; youâll find your repentance a darned sight bitterer than the delirium was sweet. That is my experience anyway, and it will go harder with you; your health, you see, canât stand it.â âIt canât, which makes me the bigger fool. To think of my work being knocked on the head, and to so little purpose! Especially,â he added naÃ¯vely, âwhen one has to do that sort of thing on the cheap.â âFellows like you feel that sort of thing always, even if they have a pocket full of coin. You see, you are too fastidious and sensitive to enjoy vice properly; and yet the queer thing is, it debases you sooner than it does men of coarser make, unless it kills you right off the reel, as it mostly does. Stronger men have things to keep them up, you fellows havenât; they get brutalized if you like, but it is the brutalization of men, not of women.â Here Brydon winced, possibly Strange saw himâhe took no notice, however, but went on coolly: âThey donât get rotten-soft, and corrupt. Another thing thatâs against you; your fatherâs a parson, and his father before him, and your mother is a parsonâs daughter.â âYesâwhat on earth has that to do with it?â âA lot. With inherited conscience and spiritual feelings, and a sneaking regard for hell fire in every drop of your blood, things were sure to be made pretty hot for you in next to no time. Small wonder your work went to the devil!â âI suppose itâs all the brutal truth,â said Brydon. âDid you expect this?â he asked with sudden shyness. âAre you disappointed?â âI am too old ever to be disappointed in any fellow, probably thereâs not a thing you have done I wouldnât myself have done had I been in your skin. Now the question is, whatâs to fit you for work again?â âI think,â said the boy dolefully, âthe best thing I could do would be to cut my throat.â âIf I felt like an ass I should hold my tongue about it, and take a blue pill. By the way, thereâs some contradiction, for Blunt saw Legrun the other day, and heâs tremendously pleased with you.â âOh, I took to swatting for a time, as a sop to Cerberus, and worked like the very devil at drawing, but somehow Iâd rather get a kick any day, than praise, when I know my workâs dishonest, done to cover filth; itâs an insult to Art.â âMy good boy, donât be morbid! It was a good sight better to bring your lines into order than to do nothing.â âAll the same, I have no satisfaction in any work done then.â âAh, parsonâs blood againâno need you should, but you neednât add it to the list of your sins, that would be rather a work of supererogation, wouldnât it?â âI would like to go out into the desert alone for forty days or so, and wrestle with anything that came along, God or the devil.â âA very proper attitude of mind and befitting your breed. In the meantime, when do you intend returning to Paris?â âI must go to-morrow.â âWhy must you?â âBecauseâââ he hesitated, blushing furiously. âGood Heavens, man, speak out! Have we been friends for fifteen years for nothing?â âWell, beastliness, however cheap you do it, is costly. Even your magnificent commission has gone down the gutter.â âIt wouldnât pay either of us for you to return there just now, besides, I want you to come over and stay at my house.â âI cannot stay in the house with Lady Strange,â said Brydon in a low voice, âI couldnât. If I am not clean enough to work at my Art I am certainly not fit to eat and drink in her presence. I didnât stay in my fatherâs house until my mother and sisters had gone away, andâLady Strange, somehow, is divine to me. She is always the bride in that picture. I think,â he continued, with a strange softness in his voice, âfor all her jeering at me, that I have painted the real woman.â It was Strangeâs turn to wince this time. âLook here, Strange,â the boy went on, still softly and with lowered head, âI finished that picture before I went into the sty. I wouldnât have touched her with a dirty brush.â âMy dear fellow, I know it! I should have liked you to have stayed with us. At any rate you will stay in London for a few days; I will be your banker, of course; it will be, after all, only a very trifling increase of your debt to me, and thereâs plenty of time to pay that in.â He took hold of the fellowâs arm and swung him round. âItâs getting late,â he said, âand I want to see the picture to-night.â They walked on in silence, the boyâs chivalrous adoration of his wife touched Strange sharply. All the same, he felt vastly inclined to turn round and punch his head for it. âHow dared the fellow go speculating on her possibilities!â he thought; âthat is my business. âYet when one comes to think of it, Iâm an ass, I might just as well go for the dozens of others whose admiration is quite as vicarious. Itâs not Gwen one of the lot goes mad over, itâs her double. Heigh ho! Bigamyâs an awful embarrassment.â âI tried to keep exactly to Nature in that last picture of Lady Strange,â said Brydon, as he set to unfastening the packing of his picture. âYou succeeded,â said Strange. Brydon looked round. âYou didnât like it thenâno more did I, I tried too hard to be faithful to the order.â âWell, and so you were, and that was what was wanted of you. Mrs. Waring, for whom the portrait was intended, liked it tremendously,â said Strange shortly. âDamn the fellowâs impudence!â he thought. Brydon continued his cutting and unwinding, painfully red in the face. When it was all undone he waited for a moment before he removed the last covering, then he pulled it off with a quick soft movement, and from a vague feeling of half shy delicacy he turned aside and began to cut up tobacco diligently. When Strange saw his wife, not the cold living abstraction, but a warm, big-hearted, divinely-natural creature, alive there on the canvas before him, a sudden soft gush of tears flooded his eyes, and he shook and reeled at the queer warm shock of them. âBrydon,â he said, turning round suddenly, âone makes a fool of oneself over her, it is a tribute to your genius.â Brydon looked at him and hesitated, then he said in a half-fearful tone, looking away, âIt is no tribute to my genius, it is that face! I never cried, I have roared and howled, you know, scores of times, but I never cried properly till I saw it; it is the strongest and the most touching womanâs face I ever saw.â âIt is, and you have done infinite justice to it.â âI had to paint her as she was there, I couldnât help myself, I shall never again do anything like it.â âWhat does Legrun say of it?â He was silent for a minute. âDid you think,â he asked at last, angrily, âthat I did that for Legrunâs praise or blame? Did I paint _her_ to be torn limb from limb by those old steely eyes?â âAs a matter of fact I did not expect anything half so sensible from you, but thisâthis,â he added slowly, with a spasm of infinite generosity, âthis shall hang in the Academy.â âIf it does,â said the boy, âI shall never touch a brush again.â âWell, we wonât discuss it now.â âNor at any other time. I shouldnât care a tuppenny damn, donât you know, for any fame for which you had to suffer.â âThere was no word of suffering to me, or to anyone else.â âWho said there was? But do you see the alterations I made,â he went on hurriedly, âI made you even vaguer than you were and served the parson in the same way, and that carpet in Waring church was too strong altogether, I got a piece of stem green stuff and substituted it.â âWell, it is a work of genius,â said Strange as he got into his coat. âI am not such a fool as to deny that, but _I_ didnât paint it, you know. Here, youâll break your neck on these stairs, let me light you. Good night, dear old man.â CHAPTER XXXIII. WHEN Mrs. Waring got the sketches of her childrenâfor Strange had used almost physical force to compel Dacre to run over to Paris to sit to Brydonâthe very first minute she found herself alone with them she cried her heart out over the two, then she sat herself down and systematically adored them. She had them hung in the library where she could see them from her writing-table and only for their weight she would have had them carried to her room every night. Mr. Waring, in his emotionless way, valued his daughterâs gift, but this chronic passion of adoration was beyond him. He had already borne much with divine patience; he had seen his wife carried away from his side for hours at a stretch, to waste her mind and soul in the duties of an ordinary squireâs wife, and she had come back to babble of babies in a way that made his blood run cold. He had caught her thoughts wandering at moments when the crisis of a discovery was setting in, and with tears in her eyes that the subject under discussion could in no wise account for. Ah, he had suffered in a thousand indefinable ways! But yet there were moments when he had her still, just as in the sweet old times, body and soul and brain, all to himself; when she still put out all the force of her keen fine intellect and saw, with her beautiful intuition, puzzles that had made his great manâs brain reel. Through all time had ever any man such a wife, he would think, as he watched her softly frowning, pondering over a thought and bringing out the result with that charming diffidence, that wonderful veneration for the nice intricacies of truth that characterized her, looking withal so young, so soft, so serene. No wonder that the manâs heart clave unto her! And now those pictures! That sublimely haughty young womanâthat big strong soldier with pluck of a most soulless British order stamped all over him, came in and robbed him of the better part of himself. They still sat side by side, hand in hand, and worked together, but they were no longer one. No wonder indeed, that untimely age fell upon the man and forced him with its chill hand down on his stick, a little heavier as each day passed! Mrs. Waring did not go out every day, her restless yearning often took her no farther than the childrenâs old nursery, where she would sit by their little chests of drawers and finger their old yellowing baby clothes with a shy sad wistful wonderment; she had never put a stitch into one of them, and their shapes and intricacies were sealed mysteries to her. Mary, now grown aged and gray, looked upon the state of affairs with much dissatisfaction, and seemed likely to continue to do so, for things instead of getting better got worse. Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes did all they could to turn her gentle persistent grief into a more healthy channel and were by no means careful to spare her any plain speaking, but it seemed impossible to get her to fit her new sweet sad experience into her old life and to make a whole of it. It is a frightful grind to get a great heartful of fresh emotions, of new sorrows and joys, into a middle-aged woman, and not to cause a general disruption. It seemed rather hard, however, that Mr. Waring should half perish in his wifeâs own particular earthquake. But though his grief lay down with him at night and rose with him day by day, he cherished her with ever-increasing tenderness, and never by word or look expressed the smallest atom of reproach. Towards the end of July a little fleecy cloud of hope, no bigger than a manâs hand, appeared upon the horizon, and Mr. Waring grasped it with nervous despair. After repeated puttings off, Gwen was coming for certain in a week or two, to remain until the shooting took them North. âPerhaps now,â the poor man thought, âperhaps now she will find what she wants, and can rest and be satisfied, and our life will return to us. This maternal feeling must certainly be a very powerful and a very precious factor in a womanâs making, or such an one as my wife would not be so touched and shaken by its advent and growth in her. It is a mystery, in truth, thus to come so late, born out of due season as it were, and so strongly to take possession of her. I certainly never should have classed her among the true mothers, the producing women; they should be of a more robust, a more animal type altogether. It is a most remarkable case, with curious complications. It is the daughterâthe feminine part of herâmy wife yearns and pants for, the masculine element seems to affect her but little; when our son Dacre visits us I have in vain looked for any symptoms of satisfaction or restfulness. âI feel so unusually depressed and aged, this afternoon,â he went on, slowly, laying down his fruitless pen, and gazing with sad eyes out of the window, âeven my ordinary lucidity of brain seems clouding and thickening. It cannot be that I have already reached the ultimatum, and that the period of decadence is now upon meâthat cannot surely be! Only just forty-seven,â he cried softly, and his face sank down in his hands on the study table. He raised it again, and went over to his cabinet and touched his heaps of manuscript one by one with loving lingering tenderness, but a little shakily. âThis but just begun!â he murmured; âthis but just wanting the verification of an experiment or two; these, notes for a new work, the most comprehensive, the most exact we have yet madeâah! this book would have been very close up to the truth, nearer to it than anything yet produced.âShe looked with such keen, such very youthful pleasure to the lighter task of compilation; that youthfulness in her intellectual pleasures is a very precious gift of my wife. âHere is a little satirical skit she wrote in a playful moment, how charming it is, how delicate! Ah, my sweet young wife! More notesâmoreâand so few worked out to their final conclusion! Must I then take these symptoms as those of untimely decay,â he whispered sitting down again, âI, who looked to long years of honest labour in which I might have forged on farther than my fellows, and have erected some fresh finger-posts on the road to everlasting truth? To stop now, when the world is crying and wailing in the darkness of its ignorance, when men grasp any scrap of verified knowledge as a drowning man a straw, and must I be swept down the hill before I have breasted the crest? Must I sink to oblivion with my work but just begun, and with the heat of battle strong upon meâand sheâmy wife, my own, my helpmeetââDo none of these things strike and touch her, does this overmastering strange tumult of new emotions shut her heart to the awful beauty of truth? âIt is strange,â he repeated, âstrange, and very sad. The swift-running smooth course of life has been paralyzed for me, I am oppressed with torturing doubts, andâandâI believe it is not age, it is not the years which have stunned my powers, I believe it is this new phase of her life; then comes the consideration: is this a passing phase, or is it permanent? I cannot face the question!â he cried with a groan, holding his head in both hands to steady it. Then he took his hat and stick, and made mechanically for the Rectory. She always came from that direction, and always sadder than when she went forth. But to-day she was different. When she saw her husband she did not keep to her ordinary soft listless movements, and then when she reached him, slip her hand into his mechanically from mere reflex action, and strike out eagerly into an infant anecdote. She started and flushed, and ran towards him with outstretched hands, and looked wistfully up in his face, and her mouth trembled as, for the first time, the great change in the man flashed itself into her, and her heart stood still and her brain reeled. âHenry!â she cried, âMy Henry, you are tired!â He stooped wonderingly closer to her. âDearest, no!â She gazed with sickening dread up into his face. âAh, yes, you are tired and sad. Mr. Fellowes has been telling me so much, making things clear, andâandâyes, you are older, and I never saw it until this instant.â âMy love, I am well!â he said, caressing her softly. âIt is I who have done this, Henryââshe silenced his protest with a soft imperious motionââthey saw it weeks ago; I am a bad wife now, as I have been a bad motherâah, that is very sad!â She laid her head down on their clasped hands and with a little shudder broke into soft sobbing. âYou are a most true, most noble wife,â he whispered, âmy helpmeet in all things!â âI have gone away and neglected you, and you have grown older.â âCome home, my best beloved, come home and rest.â âIf I only could,â she said wistfully, âbut dear, I am restless, I cannot stay still. âAfter Gwen went away,â she continued softly, with bent head, as they paced slowly up the drive, âmy heart seemed to fill with restless growth, new thoughts and feelings were for ever astir in me, I could not rest; old feelings that should have had their budding and birth long ago only then awoke, and beset me with sweet pain.â She stopped and leaned up against him. âI have never been able to tell you all this before, except indirectly. Ah, Henry, such strange new thoughts torture and soothe me, they war with one another continually and there is not one drop of sweetness that has not two drops of bitterness to temper it withal. âLetâs walk on, dearest, you are cold.âI have such strange yearnings, Henry, for baby touches and baby kisses, I, who have never felt them for my own, have to seek them among babies not of my flesh and blood. I have to find the pale ghosts of them amongst my lost childrenâs little clothes.â âMy love, not lost.â âYes, Henry, lost, more than if the grave had closed over them; those forfeited things do not return. I have a motherâs heart now when I no longer need it,â she said, with a wan smile, âand I knowâah, I know so many things, such pitiful things. The other day a tiny baby grasped at my breast and tried to nestle his head thereâto suck my breast, Henryâit was worse than death, for I knew I had lost the best sweetness of life.â âMy love, my love, those things are not lost,â cried her husband, and then with sudden and surprising astuteness, he added, âthere will be Gwenâs children.â She clutched his hand in a sudden tremor of excitement. âAh, and thenâ_then_, too, Gwen might understandânowââ she coughed softly and broke off. âBut, Henry, I have you, we will go together as we used to do; perhaps work, regular work, may make me feel better.â âMy love,â he cried eagerly, âI am certain it is just the thing you want, the very thing.â âPerhaps,â she said sadly, âperhaps it is.â CHAPTER XXXIV. ONE morning Strange came into his wifeâs boudoir with his whip in his hand, and a light overcoat on his arm. âI am going out beyond Highgate,â he said, âto see a pointer pup, it is a pretty drive, would you like to come?â She had been thinking with a sort of dread of the hours that must run before the darkness came, and of the numbers of times she would be expected to smile, to return brilliant answers to dull questions, and generally to keep up her superb deception. She had a dozen engagements but she decided to go with him. He drove a high mail-phaeton that ran very lightly. âThat Highgate hill is a bad one,â he said as they were starting, giving the brake a sharp tug, âI donât think this will cave in easily, however.â âBesides, Hengist and Horsa can be trusted anywhere,â said Gwen, who knew nothing of ordinary nervousness. âI wouldnât trust anything in horseflesh down a steep hill with the brake off. Look down that mesh of streets! Taking it in patches there isnât a more hideous, sordid, mean hole in the world than this London, just look through that lane!â Gwen gave a shrug of disgust. âItâs all frightful and gray and deadly dull, but that never strikes me as the worst part of life in these places. It is the hideous want of privacy that revolts me, and the awful nearness of one human creature to another, the sheer impossibility of thinking, or feeling, or looking, except under observation, the horrible indecent openness of life.â âWhat do you know about it?â he asked laughing. âOh, I have done slumming in my time, under Mrs. Meadesâ wing. I like new experiences, you know. We saw a great many frightful things while the craze lasted, but the worst of all was a cobblerâs _mÃ©nage_. He had a wife and seven children, and they lived in two rooms, he never went out, that man, neither did his wife; she squatted on the floor all day and cleaned things with a patent soap which smelt worse than they did, and he saw all she did and thought and felt; the awful hunted look of that woman was a thing to dream of. âWhile Mrs. Meades talkedââreligionâ she called itâthe cobbler sewed leather, and glanced now and again at his wife in a way to make your blood freeze, and then he would hold up his awl in a ghastly fashion, and grin at her over it; it was no bit of steel he was gloating over, it was his wifeâs soul held up on that awl. âBut putting husbands and wives out of the question,â she went on, âthis appalling nearness of living is most horrible. One must feel for ever on a dissecting table, having oneâs most hidden nerves pulled out one by one.â âThey have no nerves, and they donât experiment on one another, those people; they donât live enough for that, they exist in a smoky thick atmosphere of indifference.â âThat man did experiment, and his wife was not indifferent; she was nerves and nothing else.â âThese were exceptions.â âThe worst tragedies are made out of exceptions.â âProbably, exceptions are mostly unnatural.â âIt is not unnatural to object to have oneâs sensations flayed alive!â âSuch sensitiveness is unnatural to a low under-fed semi-sentient state of life, such people have enough to do to keep body and soul together, without considering them apart.â âBut I contend they do consider them apart, they do make investigations.â âYes, into the vices of their betters, which have a perennial interest for them as being beyond their reach. You wonât catch them as a rule classifying one another and flaying souls. These are the distractions of the leisure classes.â âThen,â said Gwen, âI wish I had been born in the other class.â âTo what purpose?â said her husband, âyou would have been an exception.â âOh, then,â she said impatiently, âI shall in future reserve all my pity for the exceptions, and retain my normal hardness of heart for the other crowd. I never could get universal philanthropy to appeal to me, and itâs comfortable to put oneâs want of humanity on a reasonable basis. But those generations of square pegs in round holes, they worry one! And yet people speak of a just God!â âPoor God! What should we do without that universal scape-grace? As if He had anything to do with the matter! The fathers have trusted to chance, and the children suffer. âBut at any rate whether the fathers or God are the real scape-goats itâs quite original nowadays to profess faith in justice, and to refrain from railing against the Almighty, so weâll let God and heredity have a rest; besides, we are losing the pauper scent and getting that of the countryâdid you catch that whiff? I am glad we are down this hill, the horses are unaccountable.â âHengist actually looks like kicking,â said Gwen. âBell, get off, will you, I believe thereâs a fly somewhere I canât spot.â âSure enough, three on âem, sir; and them horses is mortal thin-skinned since their clipping yesterday.â âWhat a duffer I was,â said Strange to his wife, ânot to look at them before we started, they are probably not half groomed and are tickling like the deuce, and I canât even have the satisfaction of swearing about it properly, as I was every bit as careless myself.â A quick little conviction shot into Gwen, that whatever God and the general ruck of fathers might be, her husband was just enough. This silenced her for two solid miles. When they got near the Inn, Strange suggested that they had better stay and lunch there. âOh, yes, it really doesnât matter,â she said. âI wonder what does, in her present mood!â thought Strange, as he helped her down. As ill-luck would have it, a wretched faint feeling she had experienced once or twice before, came on her, and she reeled a little in her husbandâs hands. He looked at her in the most utter astonishment, he hadnât fathomed her yet it seemed. âAre you ill?â he asked. She blushed suddenly. âNo, my foot got twisted in my shoe-lace.â âThe girl is lying,â he thought, with a most unpleasant shock. He brought her into a small, clean, quaint old room, fragrant with mignonette, a bunch stood in a glass on the cottage piano and there was a long green box full of it on the window-sill. âNow sit in here in the shade,â he said, âand take off your hat, and rest.â He stood for a moment and watched her, then he arranged the pillows on the couch and made her lie down, with an involuntary protecting manner quite unlike his usual airs of equality and sexlessness. That lie had made her all at once so young to him, so infinitely pathetic. He could have taken her in his arms like a little child, and hushed her to sleep. When he had gone she clenched her hands in a rage. âOne canât call oneâs soul oneâs own with such a man!â she muttered, âitâs bondage worse than death. Talk of that cobbler, heâs not the only man who holds his wifeâs soul on an awlâoh, the horrible, horrible, horrible indecency of marriage without love! And this vile pretence of fair living!â she went on, sitting up and staring out of the window, âthe jokes we have together, and the talks!â She got up and went about the room examining the curiosities, the stuffed birds, and the shells, and the awful oleographs. âWhatâs this?â she said, lifting the glass from some glittering object, but she dropped it as if it stung her. âAh, why did I touch it? I am sick to death of everything.â She went over to the sofa and flung herself back among the cushions. It was a great slab of frosted wedding-cake, kept over for the first christening. âOh, itâs all a most frantic joke!â she said. âHere he comes, I must sit up and play to my audience, knowing all the time the audience sees into the marrow of my bones.â She was not perhaps quite sane, as saneness goes, all through their lunch, but she was strangely brilliant, her eyes flashed with a queer fluttering light, her lips were soft and mobile, and she ate her chicken with a will, and only that her natural fineness of nature restrained her, she would have seized the big old cut-glass decanter of wine and have drained it at a gulp. But she kept the curb well on and never once flagged in her course, which surprised herself even more than it did her husband. But when he went out to see the horses put in she had a little private collapse all to herself. It was hotter than ever and the flies grew more troublesome, but it was all very fresh and green. âI never knew this part was so pretty,â she said as they were driving through a chestnut-bordered lane. Talking was an effort but it seemed a less exhaustive one than sitting there mute under her husbandâs reflections. âItâs pretty,â he said absently, âand almost as little known as Central Africa; look at the indifferent calm estate of those cows, they might live in the desert for anything they know of the noise of life.â âYes, and here we are in the thick of genteel barbarism,â said Gwen, as they turned into the high road. âIt is well for the cows that they live by sight, not by imagination; itâs a horrid anomaly, the cows and the country, and not a hundred yards away âArry rampant.â âI believe I like the combinations, still life, and life in the struggle, and âArry everywhere, from cradle to grave, his cemetery not a stone-throw away.â âYour toleration is rather overpowering,â remarked Gwen sardonically, âyou speak in the same kindly good-humoured way of âArry and of God, adopting the same heavy-fatherly style to both.â âI really beg their pardons, but as a matter of fact, I look on them both as much-maligned beings and as requiring the conscientious championship of all honest citizens. We judge the two, the Potter and His clay, by measuring them by our own standards. I think, for my own part, itâs amazing impudence to sit at oneâs ease and damn âArry, as is the vogue now; nearly as much the vogue as sitting at ease and criticizing the Almighty. I must, however, leave God and man, and proceed to think chiefly of horses for the present. Look at those brutes of donkey carts!â They were just going up the hill which was abnormally crowded. The donkey carts were ubiquitous. âI never saw them so thick before,â said Strange, âwhy, I forgot, of course, itâs a holiday! I wonder if it will be so crowded down the hill? Those tram lines are the deuce for hoofs.â They drove on silently between the rows of quaint old houses, till they got to the crest of the hill coming down towards Holloway. âThe horses seem steady enough now,â said Gwen. âYes, theyâre all rightâjust as well too. Did you ever see such a crowd!âPhew!â There was a rustle and a flying glimmer of white from a costermongerâs cart coming slowly up the hill behind a jaded ass. It was the _Echo_ of the day before, caught by a sudden flickering breeze, and carried fantastically to and fro right under the horsesâ noses; they threw up their heads and sniffed angrily, but Strange had them well in hand and soothed their terror gently, and being no fools the brutes were just realizing the causelessness of their fright, when a demon got into the breeze, caught the paper in its clutches, and with a rushing swirl of leaves, dashed it into Hengistâs two eyes right between the blinkers. Blinded, tickled, irritated to madness, the horse lashed out wildly, plunged forward, carrying Horsa with him, and tore down the hill. They were beyond restraint now, it was only possible to swing them by sheer strength out of destructionâs way. It was a touch-and-go game from the first. Just as they got very nearly down the hill, there was a sudden jarring click. Gwen saw her husbandâs leg drop sharply. He turned one look on her. âBrakeâs gone!â he shouted, sawing the mouths of the frantic horses till the veins stood out like cords on his wrists. He would have felt the whole thing less hideous and awful if even then he could have seen one sign of failing courage in his wife, if she had once clutched him, once cried out, once showed an atom of weak womanhood. But in all the mad tumultuous race with death her calm, inscrutable, half-scornful face loomed on him, watching each movement of his, and not one shade paler. She was more beautiful and less of a woman than she had ever been in all her life. They were just at the twist of the hill, the traffic was denser than ever, the carriage swayed wildly, and the shrill screaming of women was giving the last touch to the horsesâ madness. The final crash was upon them. âOne last experiment,â thought Strange, laughing aloud in a grim spasm of humour. âGwen!â he shouted, âwill you kiss me once, as women kiss men?â She might have done it without that clause, she changed colour for the first time, her mouth twitched, she loosed her hands from their half-mechanical grasp on the seat, and looked in her husbandâs face laughing above her. No tears ever held the pathos of that laugh. âWhy canât I kiss him and be done with it?â she thought wildly. âTruth or lie, what matters it now!â She moved forward slightly with curved lips, then she looked again, one little look, but it was enough, her hands fell limp into her lap, and she shivered from head to foot. âNo!â she shouted, her eyes aflame, âif that had been possible I shouldnât have left it until now.â Then she pulled herself together to show a decent front to death. The silent laugh on Strangeâs face broke into sound, above all the bedlam of clang and yell, then it ceased suddenly. Great gouts of blood and foam flew to right and left from the lips and nostrils of the horses, who were blind now in their anguish. âHold tight, Gwen!â roared her husband hoarsely. The horses swayed and shuddered, screaming with terror. With one despairing shriek, Bell covered his face. The swerving wheel caught in the tram-line and then came the end. CHAPTER XXXV. AS always happens in such cases it was several minutes after the crash before anyone with an ounce of reason in his head appeared on the scene. Then a fellowâhe was in the dog line, âand knew a thing or twoââdropped in and took a rapid and comprehensive view of affairs, and by the help of infinite blasphemy did what was best under the circumstances. Strange was only stunned. After a time he sat up, and looked about him. A howl from Bell struck on his ears. He turned and saw the horses shivering among the broken mass of carriage, and the dog-man rubbing their noses to a soft gurgling accompaniment. âWhere, where?â he asked faintly, and in reply to a pointed finger, lifted himself up with both hands, and groped half-blindly to a huddled-up lump of muslin and lace. He just knew she was lying there, cold, and white, and moveless. He touched her forehead; it was like marble. He laid his hand on her heart; it was still. A sudden wonder seized him as to who had undressed and covered her with such lovely decency, and he looked with half vague inquiry at the two women hovering near. As a matter of fact it was the dog-man who had done it, with his eyes turned on the two women whom he cursed foully the whole time. âHave you
{'title': 'A Yellow Aster, Volume 3 (of 3) by Mrs. Mannington Caffyn', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}