The Dark Flower

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Dark Flower


She returned serene enough, concealing her 'grief,' and soon they were
once more whirling towards England.

But the future had begun to lay its hand on Olive; the spell of the past
was already losing power; the sense that it had all been a dream grew
stronger every minute. In a few hours she would re-enter the little
house close under the shadow of that old Wren church, which reminded her
somehow of childhood, and her austere father with his chiselled face.
The meeting with her husband! How go through that! And to-night! But she
did not care to contemplate to-night. And all those to-morrows wherein
there was nothing she had to do of which it was reasonable to complain,
yet nothing she could do without feeling that all the friendliness
and zest and colour was out of life, and she a prisoner. Into those
to-morrows she felt she would slip back, out of her dream; lost, with
hardly perhaps an effort. To get away to the house on the river, where
her husband came only at weekends, had hitherto been a refuge; only
she would not see Mark there--unless--! Then, with the thought that she
would, must still see him sometimes, all again grew faintly glamorous.
If only she did see him, what would the rest matter? Never again as it
had before!

The Colonel was reaching down her handbag; his cheery: "Looks as if it
would be rough!" aroused her. Glad to be alone, and tired enough now,
she sought the ladies' cabin, and slept through the crossing, till the
voice of the old stewardess awakened her: "You've had a nice sleep.
We're alongside, miss." Ah! if she were but THAT now! She had been
dreaming that she was sitting in a flowery field, and Lennan had drawn
her up by the hands, with the words: "We're here, my darling!"

On deck, the Colonel, laden with bags, was looking back for her, and
trying to keep a space between him and his wife. He signalled with his
chin. Threading her way towards him, she happened to look up. By the
rails of the pier above she saw her husband. He was leaning there,
looking intently down; his tall broad figure made the people on each
side of him seem insignificant. The clean-shaved, square-cut face, with
those almost epileptic, forceful eyes, had a stillness and intensity
beside which the neighbouring faces seemed to disappear. She saw him
very clearly, even noting the touch of silver in his dark hair, on each
side under his straw hat; noting that he seemed too massive for his
neat blue suit. His face relaxed; he made a little movement of one hand.
Suddenly it shot through her: Suppose Mark had travelled with them, as
he had wished to do? For ever and ever now, that dark massive creature,
smiling down at her, was her enemy; from whom she must guard and keep
herself if she could; keep, at all events, each one of her real thoughts
and hopes! She could have writhed, and cried out; instead, she tightened
her grip on the handle of her bag, and smiled. Though so skilled in
knowledge of his moods, she felt, in his greeting, his fierce grip of
her shoulders, the smouldering of some feeling the nature of which she
could not quite fathom. His voice had a grim sincerity: "Glad you're
back--thought you were never coming!" Resigned to his charge, a feeling
of sheer physical faintness so beset her that she could hardly reach
the compartment he had reserved. It seemed to her that, for all her
foreboding, she had not till this moment had the smallest inkling of
what was now before her; and at his muttered: "Must we have the old
fossils in?" she looked back to assure herself that her Uncle and Aunt
were following. To avoid having to talk, she feigned to have travelled
badly, leaning back with closed eyes, in her corner. If only she could
open them and see, not this square-jawed face with its intent gaze of
possession, but that other with its eager eyes humbly adoring her. The
interminable journey ended all too soon. She clung quite desperately to
the Colonel's hand on the platform at Charing Cross. When his kind face
vanished she would be lost indeed! Then, in the closed cab, she heard
her husband's: "Aren't you going to kiss me?" and submitted to his
embrace.

She tried so hard to think: What does it matter? It's not I, not my
soul, my spirit--only my miserable lips!

She heard him say: "You don't seem too glad to see me!" And then: "I
hear you had young Lennan out there. What was HE doing?"

She felt the turmoil of sudden fear, wondered whether she was showing
it, lost it in unnatural alertness--all in the second before she
answered: "Oh! just a holiday."

Some seconds passed, and then he said:

"You didn't mention him in your letters."

She answered coolly: "Didn't I? We saw a good deal of him."

She knew that he was looking at her--an inquisitive, half-menacing
regard. Why--oh, why!--could she not then and there cry out: "And I love
him--do you hear?--I love him!" So awful did it seem to be denying her
love with these half lies! But it was all so much more grim and hopeless
than even she had thought. How inconceivable, now, that she had ever
given herself up to this man for life! If only she could get away from
him to her room, and scheme and think! For his eyes never left her,
travelling over her with their pathetic greed, their menacing inquiry,
till he said: "Well, it's not done you any harm. You look very fit." But
his touch was too much even for her self-command, and she recoiled as if
he had struck her.

"What's the matter? Did I hurt you?"

It seemed to her that he was jeering--then realized as vividly that
he was not. And the full danger to her, perhaps to Mark himself, of
shrinking from this man, striking her with all its pitiable force, she
made a painful effort, slipped her hand under his arm, and said: "I'm
very tired. You startled me."

But he put her hand away, and turning his face, stared out of the
window. And so they reached their home.

When he had left her alone, she remained where she was standing, by her
wardrobe, without sound or movement, thinking: What am I going to do?
How am I going to live?


IX


When Mark Lennan, travelling through from Beaulieu, reached his rooms in
Chelsea, he went at once to the little pile of his letters, twice hunted
through them, then stood very still, with a stunned, sick feeling. Why
had she not sent him that promised note? And now he realized--though not
yet to the full--what it meant to be in love with a married woman. He
must wait in this suspense for eighteen hours at least, till he could
call, and find out what had happened to prevent her, till he could hear
from her lips that she still loved him. The chilliest of legal lovers
had access to his love, but he must possess a soul that was on fire, in
this deadly patience, for fear of doing something that might jeopardize
her. Telegraph? He dared not. Write? She would get it by the first post;
but what could he say that was not dangerous, if Cramier chanced to
see? Call? Still more impossible till three o'clock, at very earliest,
to-morrow. His gaze wandered round the studio. Were these household
gods, and all these works of his, indeed the same he had left twenty
days ago? They seemed to exist now only in so far as she might come to
see them--come and sit in such a chair, and drink out of such a cup, and
let him put this cushion for her back, and that footstool for her feet.
And so vividly could he see her lying back in that chair looking across
at him, that he could hardly believe she had never yet sat there. It was
odd how--without any resolution taken, without admission that their love
could not remain platonic, without any change in their relations, save
one humble kiss and a few whispered words--everything was changed. A
month or so ago, if he had wanted, he would have gone at once calmly to
her house. It would have seemed harmless, and quite natural. Now it was
impossible to do openly the least thing that strict convention did
not find desirable. Sooner or later they would find him stepping over
convention, and take him for what he was not--a real lover! A real
lover! He knelt down before the empty chair and stretched out his arms.
No substance--no warmth--no fragrance--nothing! Longing that passed
through air, as the wind through grass.

He went to the little round window, which overlooked the river. The last
evening of May; gloaming above the water, dusk resting in the trees, and
the air warm! Better to be out, and moving in the night, out in the ebb
and flow of things, among others whose hearts were beating, than stay in
this place that without her was so cold and meaningless.

Lamps--the passion-fruit of towns--were turning from pallor to full
orange, and the stars were coming out. Half-past nine! At ten o'clock,
and not before, he would walk past her house. To have this something to
look forward to, however furtive and barren, helped. But on a Saturday
night there would be no sitting at the House. Cramier would be at home;
or they would both be out; or perhaps have gone down to their river
cottage. Cramier! What cruel demon had presided over that marring of her
life! Why had he never met her till after she had bound herself to
this man! From a negative contempt for one who was either not sensitive
enough to recognize that his marriage was a failure, or not chivalrous
enough to make that failure bear as little hardly as possible on his
wife, he had come already to jealous hatred as of a monster. To be face
to face with Cramier in a mortal conflict could alone have satisfied his
feeling.... Yet he was a young man by nature gentle!

His heart beat desperately as he approached that street--one of those
little old streets, so beautiful, that belonged to a vanished London. It
was very narrow, there was no shelter; and he thought confusedly of what
he could say, if met in this remote backwater that led nowhere. He would
tell some lie, no doubt. Lies would now be his daily business. Lies and
hatred, those violent things of life, would come to seem quite natural,
in the violence of his love.

He stood a moment, hesitating, by the rails of the old church. Black,
white-veined, with shadowy summits, in that half darkness, it was like
some gigantic vision. Mystery itself seemed modelled there. He turned
and walked quickly down the street close to the houses on the further
side. The windows of her house were lighted! So, she was not away!
Dim light in the dining-room, lights in the room above--her bedroom,
doubtless. Was there no way to bring her to the window, no way his
spirit could climb up there and beckon hers out to him? Perhaps she was
not there, perhaps it was but a servant taking up hot water. He was at
the end of the street by now, but to leave without once more passing
was impossible. And this time he went slowly, his head down, feigning
abstraction, grudging every inch of pavement, and all the time furtively
searching that window with the light behind the curtains. Nothing! Once
more he was close to the railings of the church, and once more could not
bring himself to go away. In the little, close, deserted street, not a
soul was moving, not even a cat or dog; nothing alive but many discreet,
lighted windows. Like veiled faces, showing no emotion, they seemed to
watch his indecision. And he thought: "Ah, well! I dare say there
are lots like me. Lots as near, and yet as far away! Lots who have to
suffer!" But what would he not have given for the throwing open of those
curtains. Then, suddenly scared by an approaching figure, he turned and
walked away.


X


At three o'clock next day he called.

In the middle of her white drawing-room, whose latticed window ran the
whole length of one wall, stood a little table on which was a silver
jar full of early larkspurs, evidently from her garden by the river. And
Lennan waited, his eyes fixed on those blossoms so like to little blue
butterflies and strange-hued crickets, tethered to the pale green stems.
In this room she passed her days, guarded from him. Once a week, at
most, he would be able to come there--once a week for an hour or two of
the hundred and sixty-eight hours that he longed to be with her.

And suddenly he was conscious of her. She had come in without sound, and
was standing by the piano, so pale, in her cream-white dress, that her
eyes looked jet black. He hardly knew that face, like a flower closed
against cold.

What had he done? What had happened in these five days to make her like
this to him? He took her hands and tried to kiss them; but she said
quickly:

"He's in!"

At that he stood silent, looking into that face, frozen to a dreadful
composure, on the breaking up of which his very life seemed to depend.
At last he said:

"What is it? Am I nothing to you, after all?"

But as soon as he had spoken he saw that he need not have asked, and
flung his arms round her. She clung to him with desperation; then freed
herself, and said:

"No, no; let's sit down quietly!"

He obeyed, half-divining, half-refusing to admit all that lay behind
that strange coldness, and this desperate embrace; all the self-pity,
and self-loathing, shame, rage, and longing of a married woman for the
first time face to face with her lover in her husband's house.

She seemed now to be trying to make him forget her strange behaviour;
to be what she had been during that fortnight in the sunshine. But,
suddenly, just moving her lips, she said:

"Quick! When can we see each other? I will come to you to
tea--to-morrow," and, following her eyes, he saw the door opening, and
Cramier coming in. Unsmiling, very big in the low room, he crossed
over to them, and offered his hand to Lennan; then drawing a low chair
forward between their two chairs, sat down.

"So you're back," he said. "Have a good time?"

"Thanks, yes; very."

"Luck for Olive you were there; those places are dull holes."

"It was luck for me."

"No doubt." And with those words he turned to his wife. His elbows
rested along the arms of his chair, so that his clenched palms were
upwards; it was as if he knew that he was holding those two, gripped one
in each hand.

"I wonder," he said slowly, "that fellows like you, with nothing in the
world to tie them, ever sit down in a place like London. I should have
thought Rome or Paris were your happy hunting-grounds." In his voice, in
those eyes of his, a little bloodshot, with their look of power, in his
whole attitude, there was a sort of muffled menace, and contempt, as
though he were thinking: "Step into my path, and I will crush you!"

And Lennan thought:

"How long must I sit here?" Then, past that figure planted solidly
between them, he caught a look from her, swift, sure, marvellously
timed--again and again--as if she were being urged by the very presence
of this danger. One of those glances would surely--surely be seen
by Cramier. Is there need for fear that a swallow should dash itself
against the wall over which it skims? But he got up, unable to bear it
longer.

"Going?" That one suave word had an inimitable insolence.

He could hardly see his hand touching Cramier's heavy fist. Then he
realized that she was standing so that their faces when they must say
good-bye could not be seen. Her eyes were smiling, yet imploring; her
lips shaped the word: "To-morrow!" And squeezing her hand desperately,
he got away.

He had never dreamed that to see her in the presence of the man who
owned her would be so terrible. For a moment he thought that he must
give her up, give up a love that would drive him mad.

He climbed on to an omnibus travelling West. Another twenty-four hours
of starvation had begun. It did not matter at all what he did with them.
They were simply so much aching that had to be got through somehow--so
much aching; and what relief at the end? An hour or two with her,
desperately holding himself in.

Like most artists, and few Englishmen, he lived on feelings rather
than on facts; so, found no refuge in decisive resolutions. But he made
many--the resolution to give her up; to be true to the ideal of service
for no reward; to beseech her to leave Cramier and come to him--and he
made each many times.

At Hyde Park Corner he got down, and went into the Park, thinking that
to walk would help him.

A great number of people were sitting there, taking mysterious anodyne,
doing the right thing; to avoid them, he kept along the rails, and ran
almost into the arms of Colonel and Mrs. Ercott, who were coming from
the direction of Knightsbridge, slightly flushed, having lunched and
talked of 'Monte' at the house of a certain General.

They greeted him with the surprise of those who had said to each
other many times: "That young man will come rushing back!" It was very
nice--they said--to run across him. When did he arrive? They had thought
he was going on to Italy--he was looking rather tired. They did not ask
if he had seen her--being too kind, and perhaps afraid that he would
say 'Yes,' which would be embarrassing; or that he would say 'No,' which
would be still more embarrassing when they found that he ought to have
said 'Yes.' Would he not come and sit with them a little--they were
going presently to see how Olive was? Lennan perceived that they were
warning him. And, forcing himself to look at them very straight, he
said: "I have just been there."

Mrs. Ercott phrased her impressions that same evening: "He looks quite
hunted, poor young man! I'm afraid there's going to be fearful trouble
there. Did you notice how quickly he ran away from us? He's thin, too;
if it wasn't for his tan, he'd look really ill. The boy's eyes are so
pathetic; and he used to have such a nice smile in them."

The Colonel, who was fastening her hooks, paused in an operation that
required concentration.

"It's a thousand pities," he muttered, "that he hasn't any work to do.
That puddling about with clay or whatever he does is no good at all."
And slowly fastening one hook, he unhooked several others.

Mrs. Ercott went on:

"And I saw Olive, when she thought I wasn't looking; it was just as if
she'd taken off a mask. But Robert Cramier will never put up with it.
He's in love with her still; I watched him. It's tragic, John."

The Colonel let his hands fall from the hooks.

"If I thought that," he said, "I'd do something."

"If you could, it would not be tragic."

The Colonel stared. There was always SOMETHING to be done.

"You read too many novels," he said, but without spirit.

Mrs. Ercott smiled, and made no answer to an aspersion she had heard
before.


XI


When Lennan reached his rooms again after that encounter with the
Ercotts, he found in his letterbox a visiting card: "Mrs. Doone" "Miss
Sylvia Doone," and on it pencilled the words: "Do come and see us before
we go down to Hayle--Sylvia." He stared blankly at the round handwriting
he knew so well.

Sylvia! Nothing perhaps could have made so plain to him how in this
tornado of his passion the world was drowned. Sylvia! He had almost
forgotten her existence; and yet, only last year, after he definitely
settled down in London, he had once more seen a good deal of her; and
even had soft thoughts of her again--with her pale-gold hair, her true
look, her sweetness. Then they had gone for the winter to Algiers for
her mother's health.

When they came back, he had already avoided seeing her, though that was
before Olive went to Monte Carlo, before he had even admitted his own
feeling. And since--he had not once thought of her. Not once! The world
had indeed vanished. "Do come and see us--Sylvia." The very notion was
an irritation. No rest from aching and impatience to be had that way.

And then the idea came to him: Why not kill these hours of waiting for
to-morrow's meeting by going on the river passing by her cottage? There
was still one train that he could catch.

He reached the village after dark, and spent the night at the inn; got
up early next morning, took a boat, and pulled down-stream. The bluffs
of the opposite bank were wooded with high trees. The sun shone softly
on their leaves, and the bright stream was ruffled by a breeze that bent
all the reeds and slowly swayed the water-flowers. One thin white
line of wind streaked the blue sky. He shipped his sculls and drifted,
listening to the wood-pigeons, watching the swallows chasing. If only
she were here! To spend one long day thus, drifting with the stream! To
have but one such rest from longing! Her cottage, he knew, lay on the
same side as the village, and just beyond an island. She had told him of
a hedge of yew-trees, and a white dovecote almost at the water's edge.
He came to the island, and let his boat slide into the backwater. It
was all overgrown with willow-trees and alders, dark even in this early
morning radiance, and marvellously still. There was no room to row; he
took the boathook and tried to punt, but the green water was too deep
and entangled with great roots, so that he had to make his way by
clawing with the hook at branches. Birds seemed to shun this gloom, but
a single magpie crossed the one little clear patch of sky, and flew low
behind the willows. The air here had a sweetish, earthy odour of too
rank foliage; all brightness seemed entombed. He was glad to pass out
again under a huge poplar-tree into the fluttering gold and silver of
the morning. And almost at once he saw the yew-hedge at the border of
some bright green turf, and a pigeon-house, high on its pole, painted
cream-white. About it a number of ring-doves and snow-white pigeons were
perched or flying; and beyond the lawn he could see the dark veranda of
a low house, covered by wistaria just going out of flower. A drift
of scent from late lilacs, and new-mown grass, was borne out to him,
together with the sound of a mowing-machine, and the humming of many
bees. It was beautiful here, and seemed, for all its restfulness, to
have something of that flying quality he so loved about her face, about
the sweep of her hair, the quick, soft turn of her eyes--or was that but
the darkness of the yew-trees, the whiteness of the dovecote, and the
doves themselves, flying?

He lay there a long time quietly beneath the bank, careful not to
attract the attention of the old gardener, who was methodically pushing
his machine across and across the lawn. How he wanted her with him then!
Wonderful that there could be in life such beauty and wild softness as
made the heart ache with the delight of it, and in that same life grey
rules and rigid barriers--coffins of happiness! That doors should be
closed on love and joy! There was not so much of it in the world! She,
who was the very spirit of this flying, nymph-like summer, was untimely
wintered-up in bleak sorrow. There was a hateful unwisdom in that
thought; it seemed so grim and violent, so corpse-like, gruesome, narrow
and extravagant! What possible end could it serve that she should be
unhappy! Even if he had not loved her, he would have hated her fate just
as much--all such stories of imprisoned lives had roused his anger even
as a boy.

Soft white clouds--those bright angels of the river, never very long
away--had begun now to spread their wings over the woods; and the
wind had dropped so that the slumbrous warmth and murmuring of summer
gathered full over the water. The old gardener had finished his job of
mowing, and came with a little basket of grain to feed the doves. Lennan
watched them going to him, the ring-doves, very dainty, and capricious,
keeping to themselves. In place of that old fellow, he was really seeing
HER, feeding from her hands those birds of Cypris. What a group he could
have made of her with them perching and flying round her! If she were
his, what could he not achieve--to make her immortal--like the old
Greeks and Italians, who, in their work, had rescued their mistresses
from Time! . . .

He was back in his rooms in London two hours before he dared begin
expecting her. Living alone there but for a caretaker who came every
morning for an hour or two, made dust, and departed, he had no need
for caution. And when he had procured flowers, and the fruits and cakes
which they certainly would not eat--when he had arranged the tea-table,
and made the grand tour at least twenty times, he placed himself with a
book at the little round window, to watch for her approach. There, very
still, he sat, not reading a word, continually moistening his dry lips
and sighing, to relieve the tension of his heart. At last he saw her
coming. She was walking close to the railings of the houses, looking
neither to right nor left. She had on a lawn frock, and a hat of the
palest coffee-coloured straw, with a narrow black velvet ribbon. She
crossed the side street, stopped for a second, gave a swift look round,
then came resolutely on. What was it made him love her so? What was the
secret of her fascination? Certainly, no conscious enticements. Never
did anyone try less to fascinate. He could not recall one single little
thing that she had done to draw him to her. Was it, perhaps, her very
passivity, her native pride that never offered or asked anything, a sort
of soft stoicism in her fibre; that and some mysterious charm, as close
and intimate as scent was to a flower?