William John Locke

“ But being organically acquiescent she sighed again sentimentally, and brought Matthew his hat and stick.
For Ella, the hours of that day were winged with sunshine. She loved Sylvester as deeply as one of our untried, pure-minded Northern girls can love; and with larger wisdom, too, than most. For she had lived a free life in her aunt's eccentric house in London, and had sifted the vanities of many men. Passion would only be evoked by the clasp of encircling arms and would rise to meet claiming lips. As yet in Ella it lay a pure fire hidden in the depths of a fervent nature. ”

“ Roderick caught an appealing glance from Ella and sprang to his feet. He pleaded eloquently. He had worked with heart and soul to organise the Colony; was ready to devote his existence to it. The future of Art was at stake. Here was the one glorious chance the century had offered to free Art from the shackles that had degraded it and through its inexorable influence had degraded modern life. Never had he felt such pain as when he had heard Lord Eglington and Mr. Urquhart propose to dismiss the scheme to that unutterable horror of desolation, the limbo of forsaken ideals. ”

“ It is the irrefragable law of life and love.”
“To me,” replied Ella, “the cause and you are one.”
She glanced up swiftly and caught, as it seemed, a look of irritation on his face,—a contraction of the brows, a snarl of the lips between the auburn moustache and beard, showing the teeth. But it passed like a lightning flash and left his face aglow with such exuberant adoration that she attributed it to some-trick of shadow, and dismissed it from her mind.
But as the days went on, a vague uneasiness took root and began to grow. Roderick spoke less of the Colony, more of herself. ”

“ Sylvester sat by the bedside. It was as well, he thought, that the man's poor secrets should be blabbed into a friend's ears instead of a stranger's. He tried not to listen, but to think of other things,—Ella and his meeting with her on the morrow. But the clear voice, now rising in ghastly emphasis, now sinking to a murmur losing itself in guttural incoherence, continued its tale of love and despair, so that Sylvester could not choose but piece it together in his mind. It was a common tale of unlawful love: a passionate man, a yielding woman, a deceived and adoring husband. ”

“ In the midst of his frantic anxiety, it was suddenly revealed to Roderick that in alluding to Sylvester's marriage he had touched the man's hidden wound. He hastened to repair his blunder.
“I am not pleading for myself alone,” he said, drawing himself up and speaking in a more dignified voice. “You can disgrace me, but my disgrace will fall on another—whom your father loves. If you arrest me, the marriage will be broken off by a miserable, horrible scandal,—one that will poison a woman's whole existence. It would be more than pain to your father if such hurt happened to Ella Defries.” ”

“ Ella threw out her hands in a gesture of despair, and flung herself back against the cushions. Then suddenly she bent forward again, and laid a hand upon his knee.
“For my sake, Sylvester! To save me from the shame and disgrace of it. To save me from the endless horror of what he will be suffering. My God! Do you think that he was nothing to me? That a man can be snatched from a woman's life to degradation without her feeling it? Do you think I am bloodless marble like you? ”

“ He could no more blacken Roderick's reputation than he could Sylvester's. Perhaps the marriage would redeem him. Yet to stake the life's happiness of a human soul that was dear to him upon the chance of another's redemption was too great a responsibility. Why had she engaged herself to this man? It was not through love. He drew from his pocket the letter he had received from her that morning and read it through. It was constrained, artificial. The tone jarred upon their intimacy. Perhaps Ella had changed, grown worldly and cynical, lost her love for him. ”

“ He was not the man to be fond of pity, even from those dearest to him; a fortiori, he found Usher's sympathy particularly obnoxious.
“I'm exceedingly well,” he said somewhat irritably. “Better than I have been for months.”
“Perhaps the pleasant news has cheered you,” said Usher. “There is nothing like the happiness of others to make the heart young again. I am always rejoiced at the happiness of others. It is my nature.”
He said it with such an air of dull simplicity, uttering each vocable with weighty deliberation, that a smile flickered around Matthew's lips. ”

“ It was good to be alone, away from the torturing irony of sympathy. And it was good to be away from the foreshadowing of reproach in a woman's eyes.
That night, before he slept, he shut his teeth upon a horrible repulsion, and went into the death chamber to see that all things had been decently done. The man lay cold and pale, his jaws swathed and his eyes closed, an awful sphinx. Sylvester stood and gazed upon him till his heart grew as cold as the dead man's. It was well that he was dead, so that he could blab the disastrous secret no more. Sylvester had questioned the nurses discreetly. ”

“ This is too busy a world for us to stop to wonder whether a man wants what he does not ask for; too many are clamouring loudly for what we cannot give. So the unfortunates are passed by unheeded, each working out in his heart his little tragedy of unfulfilled longings. But when a finer spirit comes and divines their needs, then their hearts leap towards it and cling to it with a great unexpressed passion of gratitude. Such had been the beginning of Sylvesters love for his wife; such that of his dawning love for Ella. ”

“ But men will desire and women will yield till the end of the human race.
And Ella yielded. She bound herself to meet him that evening and go with him into the darkness, whithersoever he should lead; and Roderick left the house, holding his head high, exultant in the sense of having conquered destiny.
But when he had gone, Ella threw herself face downwards on the couch in all the abandonment of exhaustion. For a while she could not think; she could only be conscious of the flow and ebb, and again the flow and ebb, and once more the flow of emotion, during the past hour. ”

“ You should hear how differently Roderick speaks of you.”
“My dear Ella,” replied Sylvester, “I have not uttered a single word against Roderick. It would be in very bad taste for me to do so. I have known him for many years, and we still meet. But he is not an intimate friend of mine.”
“You dislike him,” said Ella. “I feel that you do.”
The feline that is in the nature of all women—just as its stronger, tigerish development is in the nature of all men—tingled to her finger ends. She felt the velvet sheaths stiffen back. The sight of him angered her. ”

“ The one perfect man lay there, still living. He must not die. Sylvester shook with a great terror. His father was as needful as the sun in a foul and dismal world. These two were remote as stars from the rest of humanity. Through them passed his faith in God.
But his faith in man was gone. On this night of vigil, after his day of self-repression and stern meting out of justice, was the culmination of all the disillusion and the bitterness of his life. Towards the three human beings upon whom he was bringing crushing disgrace his heart was cold granite. ”

“ Sylvester sat opposite, his arm around Dorothy, who looked up shyly yet gladly into his face, unable to explain to her childish mind this revulsion of passionate love. To him it was a happiness that flooded his soul. The parched places drank it in like the river of life. He was a new man, able to feel in all its sacredness the sorrow that had come.
His temperament had undergone a curious transmutation. Instead of flying, as used to be his wont, to solitude, to brood over his grief, a newly awakened instinct drove him imperiously to companionship. ”

“ Sylvester shook hands with him in his glum style and strolled on towards the Marble Arch, glad to be winning homewards again away from the froth of fashion and the jargon of art. He smiled once on his way. It was at the idea of his father, shrewd-headed abhorrer of cranks, putting his hands in his pockets for the Walden Art Colony. Not while there was a lazy miscreant with wife and children in Ayresford, he thought. How could a man of the world like Roderick imagine him to be such a fool? ”

“ And faith meant love and love meant life. He had seldom felt so keenly the abomination of his desolation, and the craving for a woman's touch grew to a pang like hunger. And yet his whole nature rejected the idea of fulfilment. He shuddered as he walked, and strove to turn his thoughts into another channel. But the elemental dominates a man's will. Unconsciously he returned to the subject. Ella had been much in his mind since Roderick's announcement. Her yielding to such a lover had strengthened his conviction of the contemptibility of a woman's nature. ”

“ How much, unconsciously, for the man? The question racked her. He had woven his influence around her life. Her name was publicly associated with his. She dreaded meeting him, yet felt the heart taken out of the day on which she was not working under his direction. Whither was she tending? She could not answer. Not where happiness would lie. To have brought herself into this morass was the last and greatest of the year's follies. In her helpless anger she hated the scheme and all that she had done to further it. A sickening surmise as to its futility overspread her retrospect. ”

“ She had armed herself in triple brass against Lady Milmo's shafts of flippant satire, against Matthew Lanyon's kindly wisdom, against her own common sense. The Colony would be merely a paradise of cranks. No serious artist would throw away his or her career in such a Cloud-cuckoo-land.
She herself, at the best but a well-taught amateur painter in water-colours, what was she doing in that galley? She set aside reason. To believe in Roderick, she must believe in the Colony. To believe in the Colony, she must believe in Roderick. ”

“ The sense of his loss hung heavy upon Sylvester. He had left a home that glowed with a happiness for ever beyond his reach. He had seen love, trust, sympathy, reflected from face to face of husband and wife. The house was glad with the laughter of youth. The somewhat intellectual atmosphere was softened by an indescribable tenderness of human relation. Faith in themselves as men and women, in humanity in general, gave a largeness to their social intercourse. ”

“ He had come here, besides, to reconnoitre.
“Why should I dislike Roderick?” he asked.
“Because you never try to understand anybody. Because Roderick has not locked himself up in your iron cage of convention; because he hasn't set himself up on a pillar of impeccability as you have done. You sit within your own prim parlour of moderation and think the man who goes to generous extremes is a lost soul. You need not have congratulated me. I should not have resented it. I should have understood and have given you credit for honesty.”
But Sylvester was not to be drawn into strife. ”

“ Usher squeezed her hand impressively.
“He is indeed, Miss Lanyon. He is indeed.”
But Matthew sat in his library chair staring in front of him in agony of spirit. He had yielded. The trace of the writing was there on the fresh blotting-paper before him. The strong man writhed under the humiliation of defeat. The proud, sensitive gentleman was tortured in his Nessus shirt of dishonour. And it comforted him not that it was for his son's sake. He felt as if he had ransomed him at the price of Ella's deliverance to the Minotaur. ”

“ He was always a faithful friend. It was his disposition. The saint leered at her out of his red-rimmed eyes, and Ella felt a shiver of repulsion which lasted till the next morning, when a fervid epistle from Roderick restored her serenity.
“I can't make out why Matthew and Mr. Usher have quarrelled,” said Miss Lanyon during the day.
“And I wonder why they haven't quarrelled for forty years,” returned Ella. “Oh, don't look shocked, auntie. It is no reason for me to adore a man because I am engaged to his son!” ”

“ Each man kept his own life's secrets hidden in his heart, would have gone through torture rather than reveal them to the other, or indeed to any human being, and yet each was dearer to the other than any being on earth. Speech, then, on intimate matters was dragged reluctantly and painfully from their souls, which preferred to hold a silent and mysterious communion. Even what he had said to Sylvester this evening seemed to Matthew an indecency, an exposure of an integral part of himself that the proud man kept hidden under a usually inscrutable veil of reserve. ”