Coningsby Dawson

“ The little tiger helped the maid of the inn to wait upon us. And what a meal we had!—salmon and salad and fowl, stuffed veal and pine-apple, dates, almonds, and raisins—everything that a boy could ask to have. Up the walls of the inn climbed rambler roses and tumbled over the sides of the balcony. Beneath us lay the river, like a silver snake, lazily uncurled, sunning itself in great green meadows.
“This is to be your day, Dante,” Mr. Rapson said. “We brought some of these things from London because we knew you liked ’em. You discovered your Uncle Obad before I did, and when no one else had. ”

“ Next day I heard that he had departed from Ransby.
I could not rid myself for many days of the impression this incident had created. Like a Hogarth canvas, it typified for me the ugly nemesis of illicit passion in all its grotesque nakedness. There was horror in connecting such a man as Halloway with such a woman as Lottie. The horror was emphasized by the child. Yet Lottie had once been “as nice and kind a little girl as there was in Ransby,” until he destroyed her. Doubtless at the time, their sinning had seemed sweet and excusable—much the same as the love of any lover for any lass. ”

“ I came to see that a love which is unlawful is only lovely in its unfulfilment. The young girl in the woodland, did she rouse the frenzy in her lover, would lose the purity which was irrecoverable; by evening she would weep among the broken flowers. Perhaps, did I win her, it might be so with Vi.
I tried to find satisfaction by losing myself in memories of the past. The past is always kindlier than the present because, as Carlyle once said, the fear has gone out of it. The heavy actuality of the sorrows of Romeos makes them pleasurable romance only to latter-day observers. ”

“ Brimming their channels they slip over into the meadows, flashing like quicksilver through ashen sedges.
The sun had vanished. The lip of the horizon was scarlet. The dust of twilight was drifting down. In this primitive spaciousness and freedom one’s thoughts expanded.
“Vi,” I whispered, “we’re two sensible persons. Of what have we to be afraid? Only ourselves.”
“There’s the future.”
“The future doesn’t belong to us. We have the present. All our lives we’ve wanted to be happy. Don’t let’s spoil our happiness now that we have it. ”

“ The country lay windswept and golden in the sunshine. The air had the sharp tang of autumn—the acrid fragrance which foretells the decay of foliage. A pleasant melancholy lurked in the reds and yellows of woods and hedges. Tops of trees were already growing thin of leaves where the gales had harried them. Pasturing in harvested fields, flocks of sheep lent a touch of grayness to the landscape. Here and there overhead gulls hovered, or slid down the sky on poised wings, as though brooding on the summer that was gone.
Ruthita and I spoke of Lilith, recalling childhood’s days. ”

“ An English summer’s night lay before me in all its silver splendor—huge shadows of trees, scented coolness of the air, and damp smoothness of turf beneath my tread. The exultation of life’s bigness and cleanness came upon me. I knew now that it was right to be proud of the body and to love the body. Oh, why had it been left to a glimpse in the dusk of a young girl’s face to teach me that? At a rush I had become possessed of all the codes of mediaeval chivalry. Every woman, however old or unpleasing, was for Fiesole’s sake most perfect—a person to be worshiped ”

“ That night I sat by the quays at Rouen, observing the groups of men and women, always together, passing up and down. I saw how they drew frankly near to one another. I listened to their scraps of quiet conversation. The lazy laughter, now the hoarse brass of men’s voices, now the silver clearness of a woman’s, rose and fell. Below me barges from Paris creaked against the piles, and the golden Seine swept beneath the bridges, singing like a gay grisette. As night sank down I was stung to loneliness, thinking of the absence of Vi and Fiesole. ”

“ After breakfast, while Hetty was dusting, John built me a little fowl-run. In the afternoon, while he was cutting the grass, Hetty sat with me beneath the apple-tree and told me what life meant. She spoke in whispers like a conspirator, and all the time that she was talking, I could hear Ruthita humming just the other side of the wall.
As I understood it, this was what she told me. When you first get here, here being the world, you own nothing; and know nothing. Then, as you grow up, you know something but still own nothing. ”

“ On the other hand, Filippino’s tattered Magdalene symbolized the hideous rewards of abandonment. Both restraint and unrestraint brought sorrow, and I wanted to be supremely glad. Life should be an affair of singing. I was fascinated by the thought of woman. With one woman I was in love; in another I was interested. Both of them I must forget. I would not love Fiesole because I could not marry Vi. Yet within me was this capacity for passion, smoldering, leaping, expanding, fighting for an outlet. Surely in a rightly governed world it should find some fine expression! ”

“ By one slight action of assent, the quiver of an eye-lid or the raising of a hand, I would thrust Vi from me forever. A marriage with Fiesole would at least be correct—approved by society; but I should have to sin against Vi to get it—to sin against a love which was half-sinful.
Fiesole straightened. The tension relaxed. She placed her hand on my head, ruffling my hair. As though imitating the thrush, a peal of silver laughter fell from her lips. “Oh, Dante, Dante! You are just as you were. You’re still afraid of girls.” ”

“ With that strange sophistry that we practise on ourselves, I tried to be persuaded that, were I to see her in her own surroundings with her husband and Dorrie, it would be a lesson to me of how little share I had in her life. Perhaps I had even idealized her memory; seeing her might cure me. So I reasoned, but I was conscious that my own judgment on the wisdom of such a step was not to be trusted. Ruthita was too young to tell. My father, though I admired him, was not the man to whom a son would willingly betray a weakness. ”

“ We had a common fund of money. His memories of India lent a touch of romance to our friendship. He would spin long yarns of man-eating tigers and terrible battles with hill-tribes. He had a lurid imagination and added some fresh detail each time he told his tales. Not to be behindhand, I narrated my escape to the forest—leaving out the Ruthita part of it—and how Lilith had made me a gipsy.
These stories became a secret between us which we shared with no one. We created for ourselves a mirage world which we called IT. In IT we had only to speak of things and they happened. ”

“ The Fiesole I had seen was a wild, mad girl, provoking, charming, inconsiderate as a child and frolicsome as the mad spring weather—but rarely tender. I wondered what other secrets of kindness lay hidden in her personality. She was the sort of woman a man might live with for twenty years and still be discovering. She kept one restless by the very richness of her character. It was true what she had said: many men might love her; few would desire to marry her.
She rose from the lounge. Standing between me and the lamp, her long shadow fell across me. ”

“ I see Ruthita unsubdued and bare-legged, plunging shoulder-high into golden bracken, shouting with natural gladness, followed by the gipsy boys and girls. We tasted life in its fullness for the first time, she and I, on that fantastic honeymoon of ours. We felt in our bones and flesh the simple ecstasy of being alive—the wide, sweet cleanness of the open world. And remembering, I wonder now, as I wondered then, why men have toiled to learn everything except to be happy, and have labored with so much heaviness to build cities when the tent and the camp-fire might be theirs. ”

“ On the drive back to the Red House I grew drowsy.
I tried to keep my eyes open, but even the soft moonlight seemed dazzling. The meadows and tall trees stealing by, ceased to stand out separate, but became a blur. The sharp trit-trot, trit-trot of the horses’ hoofs on the hard macadam road lulled me by their monotonous regularity.
When I came to myself I heard my uncle saying, “I like that little cousin of yours, Rapson; she’s charming and different from any woman that I ever met.”
“Daresay she is,” Rapson answered, dryly; “you’ve led such a sheltered life. ”

“ Puppy passions of thought had grown into hounds of action—that was all.
From the first my pagan imagination, at war with my puritan conscience, had lured me on. All my life I had been breaking bounds imaginatively: innocently for Ruthita in my childhood; in appearance for Fiesole at Venice; dangerously for Vi; and at last in fact for Fiesole. Narrower affections I had passed by, not perceiving that their narrowness made for safety and kindness. The unwalled garden of masterless desire had proved a wilderness ”

“ When we had reached the black flint house and the door had shut, Ruthita snuggled close to me with a relieved little sigh. Ever since my return from Woadley she had been waiting for this moment of privacy. With a sweet sisterly air of proprietorship she slipped her arm through mine. We turned down a score and struck out across the denes to the north beach, where we could be quiet. A wet wind from the sea pattered about our faces, giving Ruthita an excuse to cling yet more closely.
You would not have called Ruthita beautiful in those days. She lacked the fire that goes with beauty. ”

“ A tap at my door made me jump up conscience-stricken. “It’s only Ruthita,” a low voice said.
She crept in noiselessly as a shadow. Her warm arms went about my neck, drawing my face down to hers. “Oh, Dannie, I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered.
“What about?”
“Because I’ve never missed welcoming you home ever since you went to school, and you needed me most of all this evening—and because you’ve got to go to work.”
“That doesn’t matter, Ruthie. If I go to work I’ll earn money, and then I’ll be able to do things for you.” ”

“ Now a swiftly moving barca would overtake us; as it fled by we had a glimpse through the curtains of a man and a woman sitting close together. Now the door of a tavern would suddenly open, flinging across the water a bar of garish light; cloaked figures would emerge and the door would close as suddenly as it had opened. Overhead in balconies we sometimes detected the stir of life where we had thought there was emptiness, and would catch the rustle of a woman’s dress or see the red flare of a cigarette. ”

“ I had never known much of Ruthita’s secret thoughts.
“Dante,” she cried, “why did they leave us to find out everything?”
I slowed the horse down to a walk. “I know what you mean, Ruthie. They brought us up on fables. They left us to fight with all kinds of fantastic imaginings. They allowed us to infer that so many things were shameful. D’you remember what a fuss they made when they found that the Bantam had kissed you?”
She nodded, casting down her eyes. “I’ve never got over it. It’s made me awkward with men—self-conscious and afraid of...” ”

“ In the autumn, when I returned to Lazarus, I had an opportunity to judge how the world treats breakers of convention. No one had a good word to say for the Bantam. Everybody was eager to disclaim him as his friend—he had married a shop-girl. Yet Halloway, who sinned cavalierly without twinge of conscience or attempt at reparation, was spoken of, even by persons who had never known him, with a kind of tolerant, admiring affection. So much for what this taught me of social morality. Playing safe, and not ethical right or wrong, was the standard of conventional righteousness. ”

“ But now the woman’s instinct for self-decoration had come to life. Vi’s exquisite femininity had made her remember that she herself was a woman. She had rummaged through her jewelry and found a large gold-set cameo brooch, which she wore at her throat, and some rings, and a long gold chain, which she now wore about her neck, from which her watch was suspended.
Vi’s vivid physical beauty and intense joy in life had broadened the horizons of everyone in the house, and set them dreaming. Ruthita, coming down from London, had at once become infatuated. ”

“ Out of this guess Ruthita wove for me a romantic future, opening to my astonished imagination a career more congenial than any I had dreamt in my boldest moments. Up to this time, save for whispered hints from my grandmother Cardover, no mention had been made of my mother’s family. My father’s plebeian pride had never recovered from the shock and humiliation of his early years. At first out of jealous purpose, latterly from force of habit and the delicacy which men feel after re-marriage, he had allowed me to grow up in almost entire ignorance of my maternal traditions. ”

“ Do we ever get beyond that? The woman is Nature. The man is God. The room is the world—for me it has always been filled with sunlight.
My mother I remember as very tall and patient, vaguely beautiful and smiling. I can recall hardly anything she said—only her atmosphere and the fragrance of violets which seemed always to cling about her. I know that she took me out beneath the stars one night; there was frost on the ground and church-bells were ringing. And I know that one summer’s day, on a holiday at Ransby, she led me through lanes far out into the country till my legs were very tired. ”

“ It was in Pope Lane that I first began to dream of a garden without walls. As I grew older I became curious, and fretted at the narrowness of my restraint. What happened over there in the great beyond? Rumors came to me; sometimes it was the roar of London to the southward; sometimes it was the sing-song of a mower traversing a neighbor’s lawn. I dreamt of an unwalled garden, through which a child might wander on forever—an Eden, where each step revealed a new beauty and a fresh surprise, where flowers grew always and there were no doors to lock. ”

“ We came to the Lazarus barge. I piled cushions in a punt for her. She lay with her back to the prow, so that she faced me. I took the pole and pushed off into midstream.
We had the river to ourselves; its restful loneliness caused us to fall silent. We left the barges quickly; then we drifted slowly. Fields were growing white and vaporous. The air was damp, and cool, and earthy. Behind us the spires of Oxford shone like a clump of spears against the embattled, orange-tinted sky. Before us, swimming in blue haze, was Iffley Mill. Everything was becoming ill-defined—receding into nothingness. ”

“ Yet always, beneath our pose of flippancy, we were seeking the face pre-destined to be for us the most beautiful in all the world. For myself, I was feverishly eager in its quest. I would scour the green-gray uplands of the Thames, telling myself that she might lie hidden in the cheerful quiet of some thatched farm. Every new landscape became the possible setting for my individual romance. I lived each day in expectancy of her coming. Sometimes at nightfall I would pause outside a lighted shop-window, arrested by a girl’s profile, and would pretend to myself that I had found her. ”

“ With the sincere absurdity of youth, the more absurd because of its sincerity, I confided my passion for Fiesole. “After what she has done,” I said, “I could never marry her; and yet I love her too well ever to marry anybody else. I can only love golden hair now, and the golden hair of another girl would always remind me of Fiesole.”
Ruthita was silent. Then I remembered that her hair was black and saw that I had been clumsy in my sentiment, so I added, “But, Ruthie, in a sister I think black hair is the prettiest color in the world.” ”