H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ But I shall be buried in the church, and I know that my tablet will bear the inscription, "Sir Gerald Wilder, Kt." so that even our dust may not meet,—what matter?
I am not afraid to die; in fact, if I could be glad about anything, I should now be glad. Death seems to me such a little withered, contemptible figure, for ever jealous of Love—yet sometimes death seems to me like a white marble portico, seen down an alley of cypress trees, under a sky all dark with autumn. ”

“ I dreamt that I was in man's clothes, and that I was astride of a coal black horse: how I knew that the horse was black I scarcely can tell, for the night around me was dark as death, Geraldine was on the pommel before me, grasping me round the loins with her arms; her head was on my breast, the horse was galloping mad, mad he seemed; behind me galloped a man on a white horse, a man in the dress of a cavalier. ”

“ Mr James told me to tell you; it's only beknownst to Mr James and I—God help me—God help us all—Miss Geraldine—is a boy."
"A boy," I said, half rising out of my chair; "what do you say—how—how can a girl be a boy?"
"Hush, ma'am, for the love of God don't speak above your breath. People may be listening, and no one knows it, not even Miss Geraldine herself."
I was sitting now with my mouth hanging open like a trap; I must have looked the picture of a fool. ”

“ A dimly-painted face began to grow out of the background—a man's face, with long flowing hair; his eyes were turned towards Beatrice, they seemed also turned towards me. It was myself. This man's portrait was my portrait, the face larger and more masculine, but the same.
Then the old butler dropped the lamp, and it smashed to pieces on the floor. I thought I could hear him weeping in the darkness, but I am not sure. I felt I was in the room with a ghost, and I remember catching the old man's arm, and his leading me towards the light glimmering in from the hall. ”

“ I took pens, ink, and paper with me—why I took them I had no notion—I took them. I lit all the wax lights on the mantel, and the wax lights that stood on the dressing-table. Then I stood before the dressing-table mirror looking at myself. I can see the reflection of my face still, a pale face with dark sombre eyes, and lips that curled in a sneer. That was how Gerald Wilder looked when he was in a rage. I could see now Gerald Wilder, the assassin and the suicide. I was Gerald Wilder.
Geraldine and I were inextricably entangled—she in the body of a boy, I in the body of a woman. ”

“ Stretched upon the snow-white coverlet lay the body of a cavalier, full-dressed in amber satin doublet and long buff-coloured riding-boots, his hair long, curling, and black as night, surrounded a face pale as marble and beautiful as a woman's. His white right hand, peeping from its lace ruffle, grasped the hilt of a sword, his left hand grasped a silver trumpet. Attached to the trumpet a crimson silk cord streaked the coverlet like a thin and tortuous stream of blood. ”

“ My lips kept murmuring, "It is fate." As if in answer to the muttering of my lips there [Pg 155] came a sound, the turret clock was striking six, six melancholy strokes; they brought back to my mind the words of the little black book.
"Geraldine," I cried, holding my face on her knees, "it was this hour, long, long ago, when I killed you; tell me to go, tell me to leave you, it will happen again, for Death is here, oh! listen to the wind." I ceased, and the wind sobbed and sighed in the garden, but no word came from Geraldine, only a tear that fell and burned my hand. ”

“ I went up to my bedroom, and there I found the dressing bag and the portmanteaux all standing open and waiting to be packed. I felt just like a robber as I put my silks and satins, bonnets and hats, boots and shoes, in their proper places. Then I undressed and sprang into bed. I was almost tired already of my new life, my old dreams came back to me, would I meet someone nice to-morrow? Then I thought of Wilder and his spirit faces, and his round back, and his opium decanter, and I laughed till the bed shook. ”

“ Then Wilder opened the hall door and I saw a splendid carriage and pair drawn up, the horses champing and flinging white foam about from their mouths. Wilder came down the steps and helped me in, the tall footman shut the door, and I heard Wilder's voice saying to the coachman, "Coutts'."
Gracious! all the things I thought of as the carriage drove into Oxford Street. It was an open landau, and I wondered that everyone did not stop to stare at me. How strange all the people that were walking seemed, just like mean things that had no business with life; how sweet the violets smelt in my bosom. ”

“ Yes, I was even more beautiful than before, my troubles had given my face more expression; my teeth were perfect—Jessie's teeth were broken—Jessie. I would be revenged yet. I leaned on my side before the great glass, gazing at myself as gloomily as a thunder-cloud. I would be revenged on this world. Why had God created such a place, and the clergymen whining about heaven, and the doctors who took a poor girl's rings, and—I smelt a subtle perfume, and turning, I saw a great bunch of violets standing in a little bowl in the corner. ”

“ GERALDINE
"Well, suppose I was once a man, suppose I was Gerald Wilder," I said to myself as I went into the library and music room, where a fire was lit, "Oh, bosh—and yet——"
I shut the library door and looked round. Thousands of books, a grand piano standing open, cigar boxes, cigarette boxes, easy chairs, turkey carpet. I lit a cigarette, and turned to the piano. I play well, but I am always too weak to play now. ”

“ Do you know that perfect and absolute purity frightens one to look at, as if it were a ghost? You may laugh, but it does, though it is more rarely seen than any ghost. I have only seen it once, and that was when I saw this child asleep with the dawn on her face.
When I had found my room again I [Pg 125] drew up the window-blind and opened the window. The trees in the garden stood all dripping with dew in the grey light that came from the slate-coloured sky, and the chrysanthemums looked like the ghosts of chrysanthemums. Not a breath of wind. ”

“ How—how could I leave this child, whose life was dearer to me than my own, how could I leave her without saying good-bye? Do you know what it means to leave a person you love, to leave for ever without saying good-bye? Could a mother leave her infant never [Pg 153] to see it again without first kissing its tiny hands, its lips, its eyes? I could have torn my heart out with my own hands, but I could not have left Geraldine without saying good-bye.
I came to the great pier-glass and I saw myself—the cavalier. ”

“ I can scarcely write. I am half-blind with what? God only knows. Not tears, for I have no tears left. A darkness has stolen over my brain. In writing this story I have drawn the past up to me like an unwilling ghost: I have kissed it on the forehead, mouth, and eyes, and now that my [Pg 163] story is finished it has slipped back into the darkness, and I am left alone.
They have buried Geraldine. Not in the little church in the park, where all the Wilders are buried; she has a grave of her own outside the church, and on the marble headstone is the name "Beatrice Sinclair." ”

“ I said; "tell me this. Don't you think you see the ghost in the flesh? I am exactly twenty-three, and it is twenty-three years since the trumpeter has been. Do you not think that my coming is the return of the trumpeter—without the trumpet?"
I shall never forget the old man's face as I said this; it absolutely became glorified with—what—I don't know, perhaps hope.
"Oh, ma'am," said he, "I did see the trumpeter's face, despite the lie I told you; it was your face, line for line. ”

“ Geraldine had just entered my mind, and the stern cavalier, who would have laughed in the face of a battle, became like a child. Do men turn weak like this before the image of their love? I veritably believe they do. ”

“ THE BALLADE OF THE FALCON
To the deep window of the library, where I am sitting now wrapped in shawls and scribbling this, I came that day after our drive to sit and think, and stare out of the double windows at the dusky garden, and wait for tea. I had taken an old book from one of the library shelves. It was "The whole art of Falconry," dedicated to his Majesty, King Charles the First, by his liege servant—I forget whom.
When I was tired with looking out of the window I turned over the leaves of the book; they smelt of age. ”

“ The Geraldine who came up to me last night to be kissed, just as a tame fawn might have done, was not exactly the Geraldine of this morning. And yet I liked this something that had come between us. Kisses are just like apples; if you can get as many as you want they grow tasteless, and the more you pay for them the sweeter they seem, and they are never so sweet as when you steal them. ”

“ As he opened the oak door of the picture gallery the lamp light rushed in before us, and I saw two long walls covered with the stern faces of the dead and gone Wilders; dim and faint they all looked in the faint light, just like ghosts. We walked down the centre of the gallery. I was looking for my face amongst all these strangers, but I could not find it.
I touched the old man on the arm, "Which is the picture of Beatrice Sinclair?" He made no reply, but the lamp in his hand shook with a noise like the chattering of teeth. Then he walked to a picture set in a black ebony frame. ”

“ Ma'am, you'll excuse my sitting in your presence, you'll excuse my talking so free, but I am old, and I have grown to love that child as if it was my own, it's that sweet and that innocent, and, saving your presence, ma'am, doesn't know what a man is, or a woman is neither. ”

“ It was about a little falcon which a lady had given to her lover; he killed her in a fit of passion, and he killed the little falcon, or "the little hawke," as the ballad sometimes called it, and then he killed himself. As I read it grew sadder and sadder, it seemed to moan to me like a living thing, and my eyes became blind with tears so that I could scarcely read it in the twilight. It was all about the little falcon, but I knew that the pity was meant for the cavalier. Perhaps the writer dared not express it openly, for was not the cavalier an assassin and a suicide? ”

“ It came up softly behind the woman seated at the table—the woman with the face so like Gerald Wilder; it paused as if undecided. I watched.
Geraldine evidently was utterly ignorant of the mirror and its picture. Geraldine the observed imagined herself unobserved: then, like a little thief, she bent her lips to kiss the woman's hair without the woman knowing. I threw my head back and caught the kiss upon my lips, I threw my arms back and caught her round the neck; never was a thief so caught in his own trap. ”

“ In the reign of King Charles the First a terrible tragedy happened. A member of the Wilder family did a fearful wrong upon a member of the Sinclair family. No family feud took place, because Gerald Wilder, who had committed this wrong, expiated it by suicide, but a blind, reasonless, unintentional feud has been going on between the two houses ever since. The house of Sinclair has warred with our family in a strange and fearful manner. All the eldest sons of our house have been slain before the age of twenty by—a Sinclair. ”

“ I had done it with my own lips, I had blown the death-trumpet for Geraldine. And now that voice came back that I heard at [Pg 152] first, saying, "Remember, Geraldine is a boy." Ah, yes, I remembered it now, now that I had heralded to Geraldine the fate to which all the eldest boys of the Wilder family were doomed.
I threw myself face down on the pillows, weeping as if my heart would break; but of what use were tears? I had elected to play the part of a man, tears were out of place. I stopped weeping and dried my eyes. What was to be done? how could I save this child? ”

“ That little Puritan with the pale face would whimper no more for jingling spurs and a sword on her lover. Oh! the good sword! I drew it from its sheath, and looked at its broad, strong blade, all damascened near the hilt, then I popped it back in its sheath, and kicked off my shoe. I wanted to see if the boots would fit; I tried one on, it fitted to perfection. This cavalier, whoever he was, must have had an amazingly small foot. Perhaps he was Gerald Wilder. ”

“ Oh, the dismal dawn that woke me, it came through the window that I had left wide open. I sat up in bed. I was still dressed. My spurs had torn the coverlet, the trumpet and its blood-red silken cord lay upon the floor. The wind blew in, shaking the curtains mournfully. ”