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In Luck at Last, a novel by Walter Besant |
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Chapter 7. On Battersea Terrace |
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_ CHAPTER VII. ON BATTERSEA TERRACE If a woman were to choose any period of her life which she pleased, for indefinite prolongation, she would certainly select that period which lies between the first perception of the first symptoms--when she begins to understand that a man has begun to love her--and the day when he tells her so. Yet women who look back to this period with so much fondness and regret forget their little tremors and misgivings--the self-distrust, the hopes and fears, the doubts and perplexities, which troubled this time. For although it is acknowledged, and has been taught by all philosophers from King Lemuel and Lao-Kiun downward, that no greater prize can be gained by any man than the love of a good woman, which is better than a Peerage--better than a Bonanza mine--better than Name and Fame, Kudos and the newspaper paragraph, and is arrived at by much less exertion, being indeed the special gift of the gods to those they love; yet all women perfectly understand the other side to this great truth--namely, that no greater happiness can fall to any woman than the love of a good man. So that, in all the multitudinous and delightful courtships which go on around us, and in our midst, there is, on both sides, both with man and with maid, among those who truly reach to the right understanding of what this great thing may mean, a continual distrust of self, with humility and anxiety. And when, as sometimes happens, a girl has been brought up in entire ignorance of love, so that the thought of it has never entered her head, the thing itself, when it falls upon her, is overwhelming, and infolds her as with a garment from head to foot, and, except to her lover, she becomes as a sealed fountain. I know not how long this season of expectation would have lasted for Iris, but for Arnold's conversation with his cousin, which persuaded him to speak and bring matters to a final issue. To this girl, living as secluded as if she was in an Oriental harem, who had never thought of love as a thing possible for herself, the consciousness that Arnold loved her was bewildering and astonishing, and she waited, knowing that sooner or later something would be said, but trembling for fear that it should be said. After all, it was Lala Roy, and not Clara, who finally determined Arnold to wait no longer. He came every day to the studio with Iris when she sat for her portrait. This was in the afternoon. But he now got into the habit of coming in the morning, and would sit in silence looking on. He came partly because he liked the young man, and partly because the painter's art was new to him, and it amused him to watch a man giving his whole time and intellect to the copying or faces and things on canvas. Also, he was well aware by this time that it was not to see Mr. Emblem or himself that Arnold spent every evening at the house, and he was amused to watch the progress of an English courtship. In India, we know, they manage matters differently, and so as to give the bridegroom no more trouble than is necessary. This young man, however, took, he observed, the most wonderful pains and the most extraordinary trouble to please. "Do you know, Lala Roy," Arnold said one morning after a silence of three hours or so, "do you know that this is going to be the portrait of the most beautiful woman in the world, and the best?" "It is well," said the Philosopher, "when a young man desires virtue as well as beauty." "You have known her all her life. Don't trouble yourself to speak, Lala. You can nod your head if there isn't a maxim ready. You began to lodge in the house twenty years ago, and you have seen her every day since. If she is not the best, as well as the most beautiful girl in the world, you ought to know and can contradict me. But you do know it." "Happy is the man," said the Sage, "who shall call her wife; happy the children who shall call her mother." "I suppose, Lala," Arnold went on with an ingenuous blush, "I suppose that you have perceived that--that--in fact--I love her." The Philosopher inclined his head. "Do you think--you who know her so well--that she suspects or knows it?" "The thoughts of a maiden are secret thoughts. As well may one search for the beginnings of a river as inquire into the mind of a woman. Their ways are not our ways, nor are their thoughts ours, nor have we wit to understand, nor have they tongue to utter the things they think. I know not whether she suspects." "Yet you have had experience, Lala Roy?" A smile stole over the Sage's features. "In the old days when I was young, I had experience, as all men have. I have had many wives. Yet to me, as to all others, the thoughts of the harem are unknown." "Yet, Iris--surely you know the thoughts of Iris, your pupil." "I know only that her heart is the abode of goodness, and that she knows not any evil thought. Young man, beware. Trouble not the clear fountain." "Heaven knows," said Arnold, "I would not--" And here he stopped. "Youth," said the Sage presently, "is the season for love. Enjoy the present happiness. Woman is made to be loved. Receive with gratitude what Heaven gives. The present moment is your own. Defer not until the evening what you may accomplish at noon." With these words the oracle became silent, and Arnold sat down and began to think it all over again. An hour later he presented himself at the house in the King's Road. Iris was alone, and she was playing. "You, Arnold? It is early for you." "Forgive me, Iris, for breaking in on your afternoon; but I thought--it is a fine afternoon--I thought that, perhaps--You have never taken a walk with me." She blushed, I think in sympathy with Arnold, who looked confused and stammered, and then she said she would go with him. They left the King's Road by the Royal Avenue, where the leaves were already thin and yellow, and passed through the Hospital and its broad grounds down to the river-side; then they turned to the right, and walked along the embankment, where are the great new red houses, to Cheyne Walk, and so across the Suspension Bridge. Arnold did not speak one word the whole way. His heart was so full that he could not trust himself to speak. Who would not be four-and-twenty again, even with all the risks and dangers of life before one, the set traps, the gaping holes, and the treacherous quicksands, if it were only to feel once more the overwhelming spirit of the mysterious goddess of the golden cestus? In silence they walked side by side over the bridge. Half-way across, they stopped and looked up the river. The tide was running in with a swift current, and the broad river was nearly at the full; the strong September sun fell upon the water, which was broken into little waves under a fresh breeze meeting the current from the north-west. There were lighters and barges majestically creeping up stream, some with brown three-cornered sails set in the bows and stern, some slowly moving with the tide, their bows kept steady by long oars, and some, lashed one to the other, forming a long train, and pulled along by a noisy little tug, all paddle wheel and engine. There was a sculler vigorously practicing for his next race, and dreaming, perhaps, of sending a challenge to Hanlan; there were some boys in a rowing-boat, laughing and splashing each other; on the north bank there was the garden of the Embankment, with its young trees still green, for the summer lasted into late September this year, and, beyond, the red brick tower of the old church, with its flag post on the top. These details are never so carefully marked as when one is anxious, and fully absorbed in things of great importance. Perhaps Arnold had crossed the bridge a hundred times before, but to day, for the first time, he noticed the common things of the river. One may be an artist, and yet may miss the treasures that lie at the very feet. This is a remark which occurs to one with each new Academy Show. With every tide the boats go up and down with their brown sails, and always the tower of Chelsea Church rises above the trees, and the broad river never forgets to sparkle and to glow in the sunshine when it gets the chance. Such common things are for the most part unheeded, but, when the mind is anxious and full, they force themselves upon one. Arnold watched boats, and river, and sunshine on the sails, with a strange interest and wonder, as one sees visions in a dream. He had seen all these things before, yet now he noticed them for the first time, and all the while he was thinking what he should say to Iris, and how he should approach the subject. I know not whether Iris, like him, saw one thing and noticed another. The thoughts of a maiden, as Lala Roy said, are secret thoughts. She looked upon the river from the bridge with Arnold. When he turned, she turned with him, and neither spoke. They left the bridge, and passed through the wooden gate at the Battersea end of it, and across the corner where the stone columns lie, like an imitation of Tadmor in the Desert, and so to the broad terrace overlooking the river. There is not, anywhere, a more beautiful terrace than this of Battersea Park, especially when the tide is high. Before it lies the splendid river, with the barges which Arnold had seen from the bridge. They are broad, and flat, and sometimes squat, and sometimes black with coal, and sometimes they go up and down sideways, in lubberly Dutch fashion, but they are always picturesque; and beyond the river is the Embankment, with its young trees, which will before many years be tall and stately trees; and behind the trees are the new red palaces; and above the houses, at this time of the year and day, are the flying clouds, already colored with the light of the sinking sun. Behind the terrace are the trees, and lawns of the best-kept park in London. In the afternoon of a late September day, there are not many who walk in these gardens. Arnold and Iris had the terrace almost to themselves, save for half-a-dozen girls with children, and two or three old men making the most of the last summer they were ever likely to see, though it would have been cruel to tell them so. "This is your favorite walk, Iris," said Arnold at last, breaking the silence. "Yes; I come here very often. It is my garden. Sometimes in the winter, and when the east wind blows up the river, I have it all to myself." "A quiet life, Iris," he said, "and a happy life." "Yes; a happy life." "Iris, will you change it for a life which will not be so quiet?" He took her hand, but she made no reply. "I must tell you, Iris, because I cannot keep it from you any longer. I love you--oh, my dear, I cannot tell you how I love you." "Oh, Arnold!" she whispered. It had come, the thing she feared to hear! "May I go on? I have told you now the most important thing, and the rest matters little. Oh, Iris, may I go on and tell you all?" "Go on," she said; "tell me all." "As for telling you everything," He said with a little laugh, "that is no new thing. I have told you all that is in my mind for a year and more. It seems natural that I should tell you this too, even if it did not concern you at all, but some other girl; though that would be impossible. I love you, Iris; I love you--I should like to say nothing more. But I must tell you as well that I am quite a poor man; I am an absolute pauper; I have nothing at all--no money, no work, nothing. My studio and all must go back to her; and yet, Iris, in spite of this, I am so selfish as to tell you that I love you. I would give you, if I could, the most delightful palace in the world, and I offer you a share in the uncertain life of an artist, who does not know whether he has any genius, or whether he is fit even to be called an artist." She gave him her hand with the frankness which was her chief charm, and with a look in her eyes so full of trust and truth that his heart sunk within him for very fear lest he should prove unworthy of so much confidence. "Oh, Arnold," she said, "I think that I have loved you all along, ever since you began to write to me. And yet I never thought that love would come to me." He led her into that bosky grove set with seats convenient for lovers, which lies romantically close to the Italian Restaurant, where they sell the cocoa and the ginger beer. There was no one in the place besides themselves, and here, among the falling leaves, and in a solitude as profound as on the top of a Dartmoor tor, Arnold told the story of his love again, and with greater coherence, though even more passion. "Oh," said Iris again, "how could you love me, Arnold--how could you love any girl so? It is a shame, Arnold; we are not worth so much. Could any woman," she thought, "be worth the wealth of passion and devotion which her lover poured out for her?" "My tutor," he went on, "if you only knew what things you have taught me, a man of experience! If I admired you when I thought you must be a man, and pictured an old scholar full of books and wisdom, what could I do when I found that a young girl had written those letters? You gave mine back to me; did you think that I would ever part with yours? And you owned--oh, Iris, what would not the finished woman of the world give to have the secret of your power?--you owned that you knew all my letters, every one, by heart. And after all, you will love me, your disciple and pupil, and a man who has his way to make from the very beginning and first round of the ladder. Think, Iris, first. Is it right to throw away so much upon a man who is worth so little?" "But I am glad that you are poor. If you were rich I should have been afraid--oh, not of you, Arnold--never of you, but of your people. And, besides it is so good--oh, so very good for a young man--a young man of the best kind, not my cousin's kind--to be poor. Nobody ought ever to be allowed to become rich before he is fifty years of age at the very least. Because now you will have to work in earnest, and you will become a great artist--yes, a truly great artist, and we shall be proud of you." "You shall make of me what you please, and what you can. For your sake, Iris, I wish I were another Raphael. You are my mistress and my queen. Bid me to die, and I will dare--Iris, I swear that the words of the extravagant old song are real to me." "Nay," she said, "not your queen, but your servant always. Surely love cannot command. But, I think," she added softly, with a tender blush; "I think--nay, I am sure and certain that it can obey." He stooped and kissed her fingers. "My love," he murmured; "my love--my love!" The shadows lengthened and the evening fell; but those two foolish people sat side by side, and hand in hand, and what they said further we need not write down, because to tell too much of what young lovers whisper to each other is a kind of sacrilege. At last Arnold became aware that the sun was actually set, and he sprung to his feet. They walked home again across the Suspension Bridge. In the western sky was hanging a huge bank of cloud all bathed in purple, red and gold; the river was ablaze; the barges floated in a golden haze; the light shone on their faces, and made them all glorious, like the face of Moses, for they, too, had stood--nay, they were still standing--at the very gates of Heaven. "See, Iris," said the happy lover, "the day is done; your old life is finished; it has been a happy time, and it sets in glory and splendor. The red light in the west is a happy omen of the day to come." So he took her hand, and led her over the river, and then to his own studio in Tite Street. There, in the solemn twilight, he held her in his arms, and renewed the vows of love with kisses and fond caresses. "Iris, my dear--my dear--you are mine and I am yours. What have I done to deserve this happy fate?" _ |
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