Adrian

“ Besides, is it not a shame, that the genius of Adrian should fade from the earth like a flower in an untrod mountain-path, fruitless? Do you think Nature composed his surpassing machine for no purpose? Believe me, he was destined to be the author of infinite good to his native England. Has she not bestowed on him every gift in prodigality?—birth, wealth, talent, goodness? Does not every one love and admire him? and does he not delight singly in such efforts as manifest his love to all? ”

“ This unexpected turn in the debate was quickly communicated to Adrian. He hurried in, and witnessed the termination of my impassioned harangue. I did not see him: my soul was in my words,—my eyes could not perceive that which was; while a vision of Adrian's form, tainted by pestilence, and sinking in death, floated before them. He seized my hand, as I concluded—"Unkind!" he cried, "you have betrayed me!" then, springing forwards, with the air of one who had a right to command, he claimed the place of deputy as his own. He had bought it, he said, with danger, and paid for it with toil. ”

“ That much of his early success had been due to this heroic upbringing, Adrian was too honest not to admit, but then—by God, it had been hard! All the colour of youth! No time to dream—except sorely! Some warping, some perversion! A gasping, heart-breaking knowledge that you could not possibly keep up with the people with whom, paradoxically enough, you were supposed to spend your leisure hours. Here was the making of a radical. And yet, despite all this, Adrian dined with his uncle once a month. ”

“ Come now, come back to your home, where the sweetest wife ever a man had awaits you. And when I shall see the children spring up around you, Adrian, then God will have granted my last wish, and I shall die in peace.... There, there, I am an old fool, but when the heart is over full, then the tears fall. Come, Adrian, come, I'll say no more; but the sight of the poor child who loves you shall plead for her happiness and yours. ”

“ But what matter of that, when they were so full of power and passion? And who cared that the rich red lips, parted so as to show a double row of small glistening teeth, were so red and so ripe as to suggest sense rather than soul? Soul somehow was the last attribute one would associate with Countess Adrian. A glorious creature certainly—an intellectual creature—a creature with will, emotion, force of diameter, noble instinct it might be; but always of the flesh, and not of the spirit. Countess Adrian a disembodied thing! ”

“ I will give you of my strength and of my life. I will give you of my spirit and of my sense, till my soul itself shall live in you, and in loving you he shall love me whom he has scorned. This shall be my bridal gift to you, and with my kiss I seal it."
The red ripe lips of Countess Adrian bent down to Beatrice's lips and clung to them in a vampire kiss which seemed to drain the very life-breath from the girl's body. She uttered no sound, but as Countess Adrian moved from her she sank white and limp into Lendon's arms. Countess Adrian stood for a moment, rigid, and with staring glassy eyes. ”

“ No, it was unthinkable, beginning life over again without Adrian. A hundred little things plucked at random from the sweet monotony of their days together came drifting through his mind. The peculiar look Adrian had when he first woke in [371] the morning—the savage greediness with which he would devour honey and brown bread—the pleading, broken, childlike tones in his voice when, after some quarrel between them he begged his friend to forgive him—all these things and many others, came pouring in upon him in a great wave of miserable self-pity. No—she should not win. She should not triumph. ”

“ Adrian the solitary, the pessimist, the I-don't-know-what superior man, in love! Neither more nor less! In love, like an every-day inhabitant of these realms, and with that black-eyed sister of mine that is to be! My word, it's too perfect! Adrian my brother-in-law—for if I gauge that fine creature properly—splendid old lady—she won't let him slide back this time. No, my dear Adrian, you are hooked for matrimony and a return to the living world. That black-eyed jade too, that Molly sister of my Madeleine, will wake up and lead you a life, by George!... ”

“ Adrian, those last words of yours were severe—unjust. I do not deserve such interpretation of my motives. Is it my fault that you are not as other men? Am I to be blamed for judging you by the ordinary standard? But you have convinced me: you were as chivalrous as Cécile was pure, and if needs be, believe me, Adrian, I will maintain it so in the face of the world. ”

“ A long breath of pent emotion heaved through the audience. Lendon became conscious of a movement behind him. A woman's voice whispered in an audible sibilant whisper, "She shall feel me." He turned involuntarily. Countess Adrian was standing with her head bent a little forward, and her eyes fixed in a gaze of the most extraordinary intensity on the young actress's face. ”

“ Adrian the superstitious but unspiritual dreamer, the vain Sybarite, the dull poet, the chopper of false logic, the weak and passionate self-seeker, whose best and deepest cravings, such as his love for his mother and another love that shall be told of, were really little more than a reflection of his own pride and lusts, or at least could be subordinated to their fulfilment. ”

“ Adrian—he was still her only thought. When she was sitting at times, by the sea-shore, with the child playing on the sands, she would utter his name aloud for the sake of hearing its music.
"Adrian," she would say; and a light that was wonderful to see would come over the lovely face. "Adrian," the winds and waves would seem to re-echo; and she would bend forward, the better, as she thought, to hear the music of the name.
"Mamma," said Veronica to Lady Dartelle one day, "I think you have done a very foolish thing."
"What is that, my dear?" ”

“ Perhaps it was that Adrian, like his great brothers, Humphrey and Raleigh, was a man full of all lofty and delicate enthusiasms, tender and poetical, such as women cling to when their hearts are lonely; but so it was; and Adrian, half ashamed of his own ambitious dreams, sate looking at her a while in silence; and then—
"The Lord be with you, dearest lady. Strange, how you women sit at home to love and suffer, while we men rush forth to break our hearts and yours against rocks of our own seeking! ”

“ Then it was, just as Adrian rose to his feet, standing beneath the shadow of the big oak upon which the birds had fallen, that coming from the road, which was separated from him by a little belt of undergrowth, he heard the sound of men’s voices growling and threatening, and with them a woman’s cry for help. ”

“ Countess Adrian bent forward quite eagerly. "That is a curious idea."
"It is an idea which has taken possession of her. She dreads you with a superstitious and unreasoning dread. She believes that you have the evil eye. She thinks that if you chose to exert your power you could make her fail in a great part."
"Oh, I am not so wicked as that," Countess Adrian laughed softly. "She has all my good wishes for success in the Duchess of Malfi. She will succeed, I am sure of it!"
"Yes, I am sure of it also," answered Lendon. ”

“ I soon found that the recollection of all the extraordinary incidents Sir Adrian had lived through, is one neither of pride nor pleasure to him, but, all the same, never has anything in books seemed to me so stirring, as the tale of relentless fate, of ever-recurring battles and struggles and misfortunes told by the man who, still in the strength of life, has now chosen to forego everything that might for the remainder of his days have compensated him. ”

“ Nor did Adrian instruct me only in the cold truths of history and philosophy. At the same time that he taught me by their means to subdue my own reckless and uncultured spirit, he opened to my view the living page of his own heart, and gave me to feel and understand its wondrous character.
The ex-queen of England had, even during infancy, endeavoured to implant daring and ambitious designs in the mind of her son. She saw that he was endowed with genius and surpassing talent; these she cultivated for the sake of afterwards using them for the furtherance of her own views. ”

“ For himself, as a man and a philosopher, Adrian had no objection to its being either; and he had only to consider which was temporarily most threatening to the ridiculous System he had to support. Richard's absence annoyed him. The youth was vivacious, and his enthusiasm good fun; and besides, when he left table, Adrian had to sit alone with Hippias and the Eighteenth Century, from both of whom he had extracted all the amusement that could be got, and he saw his digestion menaced by the society of two ruined stomachs, who bored him just when he loved himself most. ”

“ But Adrian, though kind, generous, and indulgent, was so absorbed by his own great affairs, was a man at the same time of so serene a temper and so supreme a will, that the over-refined fantasies of his wife produced not the slightest effect on the course of his life. ”

“ The Countess took her hand and stood tall and erect before the shrinking girl. Her bosom dilated as if she were drawing in strength. For a moment she did not speak. It was a strange scene. Lendon felt his heart throb with fear and suspense. He looked from Beatrice to Countess Adrian. Never had he seen so sudden and curious a change in the face of any human being. It was like the contrast between dead grey ashes and living fire. The impression she gave him was one of demoniac power. Her eyes glowed with an unearthly lustre from her white face. ”

“ I've had to do it for eight years, and I'm tired of it, Adrian! I'm tired of seeing people drift along, living according to chance and without reason; thinking of nothing but pleasure or what indulgence they can get—I don't want to live that way! Sometimes I've felt like joining a sisterhood—really going in for the other sort of thing!”
Adrian laughed harshly at that.
“You'd be very picturesque in the garb,” he said. “And you'd have about as much joy of life as you'll get with Philip. Lord, Hilda, do you expect me to stand here calmly and talk about your marrying him?” ”

“ You, who walked the earth in the body of a passion-tossed woman, and as Countess Adrian awoke the desire of sin and the lust of the flesh—spirit of all evil and uncleanness, in the might of the White Brotherhood, by the Sign which must be obeyed, by the Word which is Holy, I command you to come forth. ”

“ Too good to be true was it, moreover, that his brother, the wayward, passionate, weak, poetical-minded Adrian, made by nature to be the tool of others, and bear the burden of their evil doing, should have been dragged before it was over late, out of the net of the fowler, have repented of his sins and follies, and, at the risk of his own life, shown that he was still a man, no longer the base slave of passion and self-love. ”

“ Adrian made no answer, but lifted his sword.
“One moment, young gentleman,” went on Ramiro, drawing his own weapon and putting himself on guard; “are you in earnest? Do you really wish to fight?”
“Yes,” answered Adrian.
“What a fool you must be,” mused Ramiro. “Why at your age should you seek to be rid of life, seeing that you have no more chance against me than a rat in a corner against a terrier dog? Look!” and suddenly he lunged most viciously straight at his heart. But Adrian was watching and parried the thrust. ”

“ After this Simon said no more, for he had this virtue, so useful in domestic life--he knew when to yield.
On this same morning Adrian rose late. The talk at the supper table on the previous night, especially Foy's coarse, uneducated sarcasm, had ruffled his temper, and when Adrian's temper was ruffled he generally found it necessary to sleep himself into good humour. As the bookkeeper of the establishment, for his stepfather had never been able to induce him to take an active part in its work, which in his heart he considered beneath him, Adrian should have been in the office by nine o'clock. ”

“ Then he remembered that here was a good chance of finishing a sonnet, of which the last lines were running in his head. It chanced that Adrian was a bit of a poet, and, like most poets, he found quiet essential to the art of composition. Somehow, when Foy was in the house, singing and talking, and that great Frisian brute, Martin, was tramping to and fro, there was never any quiet, for even when he could not hear them, the sense of their presence exasperated his nerves. ”

“ Countess Adrian looked at him steadily for a moment or two before she replied. "Suppose," she said, "that the man I loved, the man whom I knew would satisfy all the requirements of my being, for whom I had poured forth all that I have to give—what could never be taken back and given to another—suppose that he had no love to give me in return?"
"Impossible, Countess," said Lendon, "unless"——
"Unless?" she repeated.
"Unless he were devoted heart and soul to another woman."
"There is the hazard of the game," she said calmly. ”

“ There is no servant within sight. No friend comes across Sir Adrian's path. All is silent. The old house seems wrapped in slumber. Above, the pretty guests in their dainty tea-gowns are sipping Bohea and prattling scandal; below, the domestics are occupied in their household affairs.
Arthur, watching carefully, sees Sir Adrian go quickly up the broad front staircase, after which he turns aside, and, as though filled with guilty fear, rushes through one passage and another, until he arrives in the corridor that belongs to the servants' quarters. ”