John looked at her, and was mute, as always in the presence of this adored and reserved girl. Once he tried to imagine her naked, but even his lusty and ruthless nature had recoiled at the thought, as at a sacrilege. He had almost come to believe that she had been born this way, fully clothed in pale and elusive colours, always composed and virgin. He had seen and played with her, when they had been children, but he could not remember that she had ever been flustered, that she had ever pouted or been dishevelled or hot or petulant. Always, she had been clean and orderly, sure of herself, graceful, faintly smiling, well-bred and tactful. She had always given way before him, lightly and coolly, with an obliging grace and delicacy. Yet, though he had known her so long, and worshipped her from the very first moment, he realized that he did not know her at all. Was she ever discomposed, uncertain, unsure, sad, angry or petty? If she was, he had never witnessed it. Her character was a locked box to him. She excited him enormously. She was unexplored and provocative. She never failed to confuse him, even to anger him with her remoteness. Yet her mystery, her cold and aristocratic charm, was to live for him always, to torture him and humble him in his lustiness and earthy lack of true breeding. The world of books, of music, of painting and literature, was her world, in which he was a loutish and hating stranger. But he reverenced it, with fury, knowing it forever unattainable to him, and convinced, to the end of his life, that it was the only worthy world.
She was no intruder, as he was, in this room so frightful to him. The dark and withdrawn portraits on the wall became alive in her presence, seemed to smile down upon her, recognizing her as the embodiment of themselves. Now the chill and the bareness lightened about her, became exquisite serenity for all their austere majesty. She extended her white unringed hand to her cousin, and he raised it to his lips with a sudden and impetuous gesture, full of passion and love. Her thin black brows lifted for an instant, then fell. She smiled again. The faint colour in her cheeks and lips brightened. He did not hear her caught breath. He could not know that under that dove-gray bodice her calm heart had quickened its beat, and that in those fragile violet veins the blood ran swifter. He would never know that at his touch her breasts became warm and full, and that a hot languor disturbed that quiet flesh. He only knew that when he approached her the icy aura about her dissolved. He thought this only a reflection of his own desire and love.
Remembering his manners, he ceremoniously led her to a seat near the fire, and put a hassock under those tiny slippered feet. He did this with the priest’s reverence and adoration. He did not see how her hand crept out to touch his black curly head, and then withdrew swiftly. When he glanced up into her face, his own dark with congested blood, it was soft for all its quietness. She was removing her gloves with slow and graceful movements, and smiling at him.
He poked the low fire into a quick and crackling life, his gestures impatient and disturbed. She watched him. Her gray eyes were quick and bright. He sat near her, and leaned forward, impetuously. His mouth felt dry, and his heart was thundering. She sat upright in her chair, as became a lady, and waited.
“I have been booted out of Carruthers’,” he said, bluntly. He could never speak to her with composure, or with a casual intonation. He flung all his words at her with an awkward and despairing violence, brutal in their incoherent intensity. He always cursed himself for this. Why could he not speak and behave to her as did that pallid milksop, Tony Broughton, with his leg-making and his bows and neatness? How ridiculous he must appear to her!
She did not answer immediately. She paled; the firelight, reflected on her cheeks, was a reflection cast on polished ivory. She was a carved and silent image, with a severe and withheld look and secret thoughts. Now there was a certain bloodlessness about her, and, with rage, he strove against it, as always.
“Do not look so condemning, pray,” he said, with deep sarcasm. “No doubt you are thinking that this would never occur to our pretty friend, Broughton.”
Her large gray eyes regarded him inscrutably, and even with a slight contempt.
“Certainly, it would not occur,” she answered. “Why need it have occurred to you? What did you do?”
She was like a wall of ice, against which he impotently, and with despair, thrust himself, hating her, adoring her for her perfection which could not understand his own imperfection.
“There were a number of things, not fit for your maiden ears,” he said, with harshness. “Among them, petty gambling, debts, rioting. Do I offend you?”
There was an imperceptible movement of her smooth gray shoulders, as if she shrugged. But her eyes fixed themselves upon him, sternly.
“You are trying, perhaps, to be the young gay gentleman?” she asked. “You think you are romantic?”
He stared at her, with furious wretchedness. How could he explain to her his feverish revolt against gentility, against good behaviour which was without blood and life, against his own sense that he did not measure up to incomprehensible and elegant standards of conduct? How could he explain to her that he did not really know against what he revolted? He was always inarticulate. When he spoke, in a desperate effort to make himself comprehensible, he could only use the form and sound of violence.
“I do not think I am romantic,” he said, in a stifled tone, clenching his fists. “Perhaps I am guilty of folly. What young man is not?”
“There is folly which is in good taste, and folly which is not,” said Eugenia.
“Hah!” he snorted, “you imply there is a difference between a coarse carouser and an elegant rake? You are quite right, ma’am. I am a coarse carouser. I do not bow properly, nor make a leg magnificently when I smash windows and run up accounts at the pastry shop.”
She raised her left eyebrow. Her look was long and disdainful.
“I am seen in Soho, instead of Vauxhall,” continued John, with withering emphasis.
“I prefer Vauxhall,” said Eugenia, in a voice in marked contrast with his own.
She held her transparent hands to the fire. He saw the modelling of each delicate finger, the coolness, the bloodlessness of it. But he was not repelled. His passion for her was only increased at the sight of her inaccessible hands.
She spoke, without looking at him: “Uncle James went to great effort to secure your admission to Dr. Carruthers’. The sons of tradesmen and merchants are not customarily admitted. He, himself, would not have cared for this, for he is a gentleman of discernment, and has a sense of proportion. Nevertheless, your mother had an elegant tradition—”
“Though she was nothing but a merchant-draperer’s daughter, herself,” interrupted John, loudly, with a derisive but painful smirk.
Eugenia continued quietly, as if he had not spoken: “It was his promise, on your mother’s deathbed, that he would make a gentleman of you, John.” She turned to him now, and that bright inscrutable look, somewhat hard and shining, came back into her gray eyes. “Though why he should promise this, and demean himself by the promise, is, I confess, beyond me. Through his own worth, his own qualities of character and spirit, he is admitted to the most elegant and noble drawing-rooms in London. There is none who would dare to impugn that he is not a gentleman, of the noblest tradition. He is accepted where many another would not be allowed to enter. And, because of him, you are also admitted. You are the first merchant’s son who has ever been admitted to Carruthers’.”
As this was all only too true, John’s fury increased. But she heeded this no more than she did the storm and wind outside. She spoke, but it was as if she spoke only to herself:
“Young gentlemen’s high spirits are often offered in apology for unpardonable conduct. I believe your conduct is unpardonable, but not because of high spirits, John. I do not believe that you are capable of innocent high spirits. You behave unspeakably because you think the other gentlemen at the school look down upon you, in uncivil snobbery. I believe you are fully aware of Uncle James’s remarkable character, and that it infuriates you that your companions do not defer to you beca
use of this character, and even behave contemptuously towards you.”
It is true! he thought, wildly. He was incapable of analysing his own impulses, even his own thoughts and desires. He was trembling with angry eagerness, and his dark cheek flushed.
“Yes,” he said, hoarsely. “There is much to be considered in that. They are nothing but milksops and feckless fools, none of whom I would desire as a friend. Nevertheless, because of birth, they believe they are better than I.”
She gazed at him with delicate ruthlessness.
“Are they?” she asked. “Does your conduct warrant the opinion that you are better?”
He looked at her wrathfully. “I did no worse than Bollister. He becomes entangled with drabs—” He stopped abruptly, terrified that she would be offended. But no modest or indignant blush appeared on that gleaming ivory cheek. There was no distaste in her expression.
“There are things in society, however deplorable and unjust, which must be accepted, John. Do not believe that I agree with these traditions. But they exist. Mr. Bollister’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather are nobility. You may be a worthier man, but you are not gentry. We must bow to these laws of society.”
“I do not bow!” he exclaimed, starting to his feet. “I loathe society! I repudiate it. I scorn it! I shall not knuckle under to it!”
She smiled, somewhat disdainfully, as at the ravings of a schoolboy.
“What can you do? Can you change traditions single-handed, yourself? It is easier to change the laws of the realm than it is to change the artificial laws of a self-conscious society. Your father understands this. He has tried to imply it to you—”
“You are both in league against me! You always were! You used to sit beside him, when you were in pinafores, with your hair plaited, and you would both smirk at me as if I were a fool!” He stood by the mantelpiece, and now he struck it with a clenched fist. His face was alive with rage; his black eyes snapped and glittered, and there was something of hatred in the look he flashed at her.
She was not intimidated. “You are tedious, John. You are childish. No one has ever smirked at you. If the consciousness of your own shortcomings and impetuousness made you uneasy, and uncivil, it was your own fault, not ours. Because you felt you were not a gentleman born, you became a boor. That is an insult to your father.”
He was silent. But his disordered breathing was loud in the echoing room. The day had become darker and grayer. The far corners of the room were lost in uncertain mist, as if the rising fog outside had penetrated to them. In contrast, the fire was vivid and scarlet.
“Because of the esteem in which your father is universally held, it may be possible for you to return—” said the girl, contemplatively.
“I shall never return!” cried John, furiously. And then, in wonder, fear and amazement, he knew this was true. Instantly, he knew that he would not, could not return, no matter if this was granted to his father. He was done with all that. He had left a hateful place. The world was before him.
Eugenia, who was accustomed to dismissing John’s extravagances, knowing that he hardly meant them for more than an instant, suddenly knew that he meant this, that nothing would change his new resolution. She was alarmed. She looked at him with uncertainty, as if he were a strong hard stranger, and not the impetuous, wild and foolish cousin whom she loved.
“What, then, is your intention?”
He did not speak. He sat down, heavily. He leaned forward, his elbows folded on his knees, and stared at the fire, as if he was alone. The firelight, as at a signal, suddenly flowered into brilliant red flames, and lit up that broad dark countenance, those wide planes of his cheeks, that ruthless heavy mouth. It lay like a red glare in the sockets of his eyes. He was a stranger, and her heart hurried, with a mysterious excitement.
“What shall I do?” he said, very softly, and with a kind of fierceness. “I do not know, yet. But this I do know: I shall not return to that accursed place; I shall not go into my father’s trade. It is loathsome to me. England is loathsome to me. I gasp in this wet and gritty air. I hate all that is within these little borders.”
His hands clenched. He began to beat his strong knees with them. A terrible excitement filled him. He looked at her with blazing eyes, as if dazzled by something she did not see. A deep flush rose to his face, increased.
“This is no land for me!” he exclaimed, and his voice was hoarse and quickened. “I shall go to the Colonies—to America— Anywhere where a man can breathe, away from this effluvia of oldness and stench.”
She tried to smile. How extravagant! But she could not smile. Instead, she could only place her hand upon her breast, with great agitation. He had never seen her make that gesture before. She, then, was not invulnerable. He had the power to distract her! He reached out and took her other hand. It was very cold, and trembling. He turned over that hand and kissed the palm with vehement passion. Never had he dared such familiarity before. He had touched her pale cool cheek with his lips; he had kissed the back of her hand on a few occasions. But this pressing of his mouth deep into her flesh, that demanding hot mouth, was something new and shattering. He felt strong and inexorable, and when she would withdraw her hand, he clung to it, and kissed it over and over, until she was still.
He looked up at her, the dark blood in his face making his features thick and congested. And she gazed at him with the strange and frightened face of a woman, aware of passion for the first time, revolted by it, drawn mysteriously by it.
“Genie! Come with me!” he whispered, urgently. “We can be married by special licence. We can go tomorrow, the next day—”
His words forced her swift recovery from momentary confusion. She dragged her hand from his, and rose to her feet, trembling.
“What are you saying, John?”
He stood up, also, and caught her by her thin shoulders. His fingers went deeply into her soft flesh. He was no longer afraid of her, overcome by her. He only knew that he loved her beyond reason, and that he could not let her go.
“We were to be married in July, Genie, my love. On your sixteenth birthday. What does it matter if it is a few months earlier? You are not a child. I am a man. Let us be married at once, and then go away together, to the Colonies, to America—”
“You are mad,” she said, in a low voice. Never had he seen her so pale and stern.
“I shall indeed go mad if I remain here!” he exclaimed. He reached out his hands to take her again, but she stepped backward, and caught at the arm of the chair from which she had risen. She lifted her hand with a hard cold gesture, which restrained him.
“You would run away, like a coward?” she asked, incredulously. “Only because you have been expelled from a foolish school? You are afraid to face your father, who would only laugh, because he is wise?”
Her inability to understand made him frantic. He must reach through that chill and obdurate flesh to the steely heart that lay under it. He must warm it with understanding. But words, as always, failed him. He could only seize them, like heavy stones, and fling them wildly at her:
“Is it possible you cannot see, Genie? Do you not know how terrible this place has become for me? I am not running away. I have talked to my father before, and he has frankly confessed that he would not care if I did not follow him into the trade. He is wiser than you, Genie. He has understanding.” He flung out his arms, awkwardly, despairingly. “Cannot you understand that I must leave England?”
“Why?” she asked, in her incisive and softly ruthless voice.
He dropped his arms hopelessly to his sides, and gazed at her despairingly.
“Because of the fools who have sneered at you, looked down upon you? And you have cared for this, with such a father?”
He shook his head numbly. She thought that he looked like a child, a great schoolboy, inarticulate and confused.
Finally he spoke, stiffly and painfully, as though words were sharp stones in darkness, over which he must pick his way:
“I m
ust go away. It is necessary for me to go away. There was an etching in a book—It was called the Iron Maiden. It was a torture instrument, an iron cast of a woman, filled with sharp spikes. They—put heretics in the iron shape, and pushed the parts together. The spikes went into the heretic’s body—that is how I feel. In England. I must go away.”
She contemplated the crude image which he had drawn with his halting words, then, as the full import dawned on her, she shivered with disgust. What ungenteel extravagance! But John was always wild and extravagant, saying the most exaggerated and incomprehensible things. One had learned to smile at them, knowing that he meant only a small part, or none at all. He spoke always for effect. What had Uncle James called him once? A buccaneer. An audacious pirate. But buccaneers and pirates were such theatrical impostors. But Uncle James had not smiled when he had called his son these things. He had looked a little sad and thoughtful, and had sighed. That sigh had been very mysterious, almost as if there had been envy in it, or nostalgia.
Now she was truly frightened. She looked at John’s vivid and desperate face, crowned by its disordered thick profusion of black curls. He was no Englishman, this big young man with the broad shoulders and the military waist and thighs. He was foreign. He was an alien. There was no thin blue blood of England in those riotous veins. His grandfather, Angus Burnley, had been a Scotsman. One could never trust or understand Scotsmen. They were dour or violent, and so unEnglish. They produced women like those dreadful Catholic Marys, wantons and trollops and murderesses. They spawned Lady Macbeths, and their husbands. Wild colourful creatures, lawless and passionate, grim and terrible, creatures leaping over their blasted hills with dirks in their teeth, great black-bearded creatures and women with flashing indomitable eyes, shrieking! Eugenia had often heard the Scottish pipers. The frightful wailing of the pipes had appalled and terrified her, so barbarous had it sounded, so inhuman, so ominous. They made her see distressing visions of white mountains and black caves, of empty moors dark under Northern lights, of green and purple seas, icy cold, dashing over savage wet rocks and hurling themselves against impregnable cliffs. And now, as she gazed affrightedly at John, she saw all these things again and shivered.