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Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

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<h2> CHAPTER XXIII </h2> Behold Carlotta again installed in my house which she regarded as her home. Heaven forbid that I should sow any doubt thereof in her mind. I had learned perhaps one lesson: the meaning of love. The love that is desire alone, though sung in all romance of all the ages, is of the brute nature and is doomed to perish. The love that pardons, endures through wrong, contents itself in abnegation, is of the imperishable things that draw weak man a little nearer to the angels. When Carlotta wept upon my shoulder during those few first moments of her return I knew that all resentment was gone from my heart, that it would have been a poor, ignoble thing. Had she come back to me leprous of body and abominable of spirit, it would not have mattered. I would have forgiven her, loved her, cherished her just the same. It was a question, not of reason, not of human pity, not of quixotism; not of any argument or sentiment for which I could be responsible. I was helpless, obeying a reflex action of the soul. The days passed tranquilly. In spite of pain I felt an odd happiness. I had nothing selfishly to hope for. Perhaps I had aged five years in one, and I viewed life differently. It was enough for me that she had come home, to the haven where no harm could befall her. She was my appointed task, even as her husband was Judith’s. I recognised in myself the man with the one talent. The deep wisdom of the parable can be taken to inmost heart for comfort only by men of little destinies. With infinite love and patience to mould Carlotta into a sweet, good woman, a wise mother of the child that was to be—that was the inglorious task which Providence had set me to accomplish. In its proportion to the aggregate of human effort it was infinitesimal. But who shall say that it was not worth the doing? Save writing a useless book, in what other sphere of sublunar energy could I have been effectual? I did not thus analyse my attitude at the time; the man who does so is a poser, a mime to his own audience; but looking back, I think I was guided by some such unformulated considerations. Although my hermit mania was in itself radically cured, yet I altered nothing in my relations with the outside world. I wrote to Judith a brief account of what had occurred and received from her a sympathetic answer. My reading among the Mystics and Thaumaturgists put me on the track of Arabic. I found that Carlotta knew enough of the language to give me elementary instruction, and thus the whirligig of time brought in its revenge by constituting me her pupil, to our joint edification. After a while the unhappiness of the past seemed to have faded from her mind. She spoke little of Paris, less of the dull pension, and never of Pasquale. She bore towards him an animal’s silent animosity against a human being who has done it an unforgettable injury. On the other hand, as I have since discovered, she was slowly developing, and had begun to realise that in giving herself light-heartedly to a man whom she did not love, she had committed a crime against her sex, for which she had paid a heavy penalty: a sentiment, however, which did not mitigate her resentment against him. Often I saw her sitting with knitted brows, her needlework idle on her lap, evidently unravelling some complicated problem; presently she would either shake her head sadly as if the intellectual process were too hard for her and resume her needle, or if she happened to catch my glance, she would start, smile reassuringly at me, and apply herself with exaggerated zeal to her work. These fits of abstraction were not those of a woman speculating on mysteries of the near future. Such Carlotta also indulged in, and they were easy to recognise, by the dreaminess of her eyes and the faint smile flickering about her lips. The moods of knitted brows were periods of soul-travail, and I wondered what they would bring forth. One afternoon I came home and found her weeping over a book. When I bent down to see what she was reading—she had acquired a taste for novels during the dull pension time in Paris—she caught my head with both hands. “Oh, Seer Marcous, do you think they ought to make me wear a great ‘A’?” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Like Hester Prynne—see.” She showed me Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter.” “What made you take this out of the shelves?” “The title,” she replied, simply. “I am so fond of red things; but I should not like that great red ‘A’.” “Those were days,” said I, “when people thought they could only be good by being very cruel.” “They would have been more cruel if Hester had not loved the minister,” said Carlotta, looking at me wistfully. “My dear little girl,” said I, seeing whither her thoughts were tending, “do not bother your brain with psychological problems.” “What are—?” began Carlotta. I pinched the question, as it were, out of her cheek and smiled and took away the book. “They are a dreadful disease my little girl has been afflicted with for some time. When you sit and wrinkle your forehead like this,” and I scowled forbiddingly, whereat Carlotta laughed, “you are suffering from acute psychological problem.” “Then I am thinking,” said Carlotta, reflectively. “Don’t think too much, dear, just now,” said I. “It is best for you to be happy and calm and contented. Otherwise I’ll have to tell the doctor, and he’ll give you the blackest and nastiest physic you have ever tasted.” “To cure me of a what-you-call-it problem?” “Yes,” said I, emphatically. “Hou!” laughed Carlotta in a superior way, “physic can’t cure that.” “You are relying on an exploded fallacy immortalised in a hackneyed Shakespearian quotation,” I remarked. “Go on,” said Carlotta, encouragingly. “What do you mean?” I asked, taken aback. “Oh, you darling Seer Marcous,” cried Carlotta. “It is so lovely to hear you talk!” So I went on talking, and the distress occasioned by the “Scarlet Letter” was forgotten. I have mentioned Carlotta’s needlework. This was undertaken at the sapient instigation of Antoinette, who in her turn, I am sure, neglected the ladle for the scissors, and cast many of her duties upon the silent but sympathetic Stenson. Carlotta herself delighted in these preparations. She was never happier than when curled up on the sofa, a box of chocolates by her side, her work-basket frothing over, like a great dish of oeufs a la neige, with lawn or mull or what-not, and (I verily believe to complete her content) my ungainly figure and hatchet-face within her purview. She would eat and sew industriously. Sometimes she would press too hard on a sweetmeat and with a little cry would hold up a sticky finger and thumb. “Look,” she would say, puckering up her face. And to save from soilure the dainty fabric she was working at, I would rise and wipe her fingers with my handkerchief; whereupon she would coo out the sweetest “thank you,” in the world, and perhaps hold up a diminutive garment. “Isn’t it pretty?” “Yes, my dear,” I would say, and I would turn aside wondering at the exquisite refinements of pain that men were sometimes called upon to bear. At last the time came. I sat up all night in a torture of suspense, having got it into my foolish head that Carlotta might die. The doctor came upon me at six in the morning sitting half frozen at the bottom of the stairs. When he gave me his cheery news he seemed to develop from a middle-aged, commonplace man into a radiant archangel. I met Antoinette soon afterwards, busy, important, exultant. She nevertheless graciously accorded me a brief interview. “And to think, Monsieur,” she exclaimed, as if the crowning triumph of a million ions of evolution had at, last been attained, “to think that it is a boy!” “You would have been just as pleased if it had been a girl,” said I. She shook her wise, fat head. “Women ca ne vaut pas grand’ chose.” Let it be remembered that “women are of no great account” is a sentiment expressed, not by me, but by Antoinette. But all the same I soon found myself a cipher in the house, where the triumvirate of the negligible sex, Antoinette, the nurse and Carlotta, reigned despotically. To write much of Carlotta’s happiness would be to treat of sacred things at which I can only guess. She dwelt in rapture. The joy and meaning of the universe were concentrated in the tiny bundle of pink flesh that lay on her bosom. I used to sit by her side while she talked unwearyingly of him. He was a thing of infinite perfections. He had such a lot of hair. “She won’t believe, sir,” said the nurse, “that it will all drop off and a new crop come.” “Oh-h!” said Carlotta. “It can’t be so cruel. For it is my hair—see, Seer Marcous, darling; isn’t it just my hair?” It was her great solicitude that the boy should resemble her. “I don’t know about his nose,” she remarked critically. “There is so little of it yet and it is so soft—feel how soft it is. But his eyes are brown like mine, and his mouth—now look, aren’t they just the same?” She put her cheek next to the child’s and invited me to compare the two adjacent baby mouths. They were, of a truth, very much alike. She was jealous of the baby, desirous of having it always with her to tend and fondle, impatient of the nurse and Antoinette. It was a thing so intensely hers that she resented other hands touching it. Oddly enough, of me she made an exception. Nothing delighted her more than to put the little creature into my awkward and nervous arms, and watch me carry it about the room. I think she wanted to give me something, and this share in the babe was the most precious gift she could devise. Of Pasquale she continued to say nothing. In her intense joy of motherhood he seemed to have become the dim creature of a dream. I had registered the birth without consulting her—in the legal names of the parents. “What are you going to call him, Carlotta?” I asked one day. “Mon petit chou. That’s what Antoinette says. It’s a beautiful name.” “There are many points in calling an infant one’s little cabbage,” I admitted, “but soon he’ll grow up to be as old as I am, and—” I sighed, “who would call me their petit chow?” Carlotta laughed. “That is true. We shall have to find a name.” She reflected for a few moments; then put her arms round my neck and continued her reflections. “He shall be Marcus—another Marcus Ordeyne. Then perhaps some day he will be ‘Seer Marcous’ like you.” “Do you mean when I die?” I asked. “Oh, not for years and years and years!” she cried, tightening her clasp in alarm. “But the child lives longer than the father. It is fate. He will live longer than I.” “Let us hope so, dear,” I answered. “But it is just because I am not his father that he can’t be Sir Marcus when I die. He can have my name; but my title—” “Who will have it?” “No one.” “It will die too?” “It will be quite dead.” “You are his father, you know, really,” she whispered. “The law of England takes no count, unfortunately, of things of the spirit,” said I. “What are things of the spirit?” “The things, my dear,” said I, “that you are beginning to understand.” I bent down and kissed the child as it lay on her lap. “Poor little Marcus Ordeyne,” I said. “My poor quaintly fathered little son, I’m afraid there is much trouble ahead of you, but I’ll do my best to help you through it.” “Bless you, dear,” said Carlotta, softly. I looked at her in wonder. She had spoken for the first time like a grown woman—like a woman with a soul. A few weeks later. We were sitting at breakfast. The morning newspaper contained the account of a battle and the lists of British officers killed. I scanned as usual the melancholy columns, when a name among the dead caught my eye—and I stared at it stupidly. Pasquale was dead, killed outright by a Boer bullet. The wild, bright life was ended. It seemed a horrible thing, and, much as he had wronged me, my first sentiment was one of dismay. He was too gallant and beautiful a creature for death. Carlotta poured out my tea and came round with the cup which she deposited by my side. To prevent her peeping over my shoulder at the paper, as she usually did, I laid it on the table; but her quick eye had already read the great headlines. “Great Battle. British officers killed. Oh, let me see, Seer Marcous.” “No, dear,” said I. “Go and eat your breakfast.” She looked at me strangely. I tried to smile; but as I am an incompetent actor my grimace was a proclamation of disingenuousness. “Why shouldn’t I read it?” she asked, quickly. “Because I say you mustn’t, Carlotta.” She continued to look at me. She had suddenly grown pale. I stirred my tea and made a pretence of sipping it. “Go on with your breakfast, my child,” I repeated. “There is something—something about him in the paper,” said Carlotta. “He is a British officer.” In the face of her intuition further concealment appeared useless. Besides, sooner or later she would have to know. “He is a British officer no longer, dear,” said I. “Is he dead?” My mind flew back to an evening long ago—long, long ago it seemed—when another newspaper had told of another death, and my ears caught the echo of the identical question that had then fallen from her lips. I dreaded lest she should say again, “I am so glad.” I beckoned her to my side, and pointing with my finger to the name watched her face anxiously. She read, stared for a bit in front of her and turned to me with a piteous look. I drew her to me, and she laid her face against my shoulder. “I don’t know why I’m crying, Seer Marcous, dear,” she said, after a while. I made her drink some of my tea, but she would eat nothing, and presently she went upstairs. She had not said that she was glad. She had wept and not known the reason for her tears. I railed at myself for my doubts of her. She was subdued and thoughtful all the day. In the evening, instead of curling herself up in the sofa-corner among the cushions, she sat on a stool by my feet as I read, one hand supporting her chin, the other resting on my knee. “I am glad he was a brave man,” she said at last, alluding to Pasquale for the first time since the morning. “I like brave men.” “Dulce et decorum est. He died for his country,” said I. “It does not hurt me now so much to think of him,” said Carlotta. I could not help feeling a miserable pang of jealousy at Pasquale’s posthumous rehabilitation as a hero in Carlotta’s heart. Yet, was it not natural? Was it not the way of women? I saw myself far remote from her, and though she never spoke of him again I divined that her thoughts dwelt not untenderly on his memory. I was absurd, I know. But I had begun almost to believe in my make-believe paternity, and I was jealous of the rightful claims of the dead man. And yet had he lived he might have come back one day with his conquering air and his irresistible laugh, and carried them both away from me. In sparing me this crowning humiliation I thanked the high gods. But never to this day has she mentioned his name again. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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