Complete Works of Bram Stoker (302 page)

“Well, Sally, it’s all very well not being inquisitive; but you know, my dear, we can’t begin to lie properly till we know what we are to lie about. There’s nothing so destructive of after happiness-  —  no kindliness so full of pitfalls, as a useless lie.”

Now, her argument ran:

“You can’t be all wrong about a man. You have thought too much on the subject not to be able to form an opinion. And even if your old maid’s instinct  —  for you are an old maid, my dear, despite your saying that you are so to prove that you are not  —  warps your judgment in favour of the man. The pride that is in that man’s features never came out of merely one or two generations of command. It takes a couple of centuries at any rate to put that stamp on a face. He is bold  —  well we know that from to-day’s work; he is courtly  —  a man doesn’t do nice things unconsciously, unless it has been his habit. He’s in love with Joy  —  no doubt about that; and small blame to him for it. He’s in her father’s house, an honoured guest as he should be. He’s sitting next to her and she’s looking straight into his soul with those big lamps of eyes of hers. He saved her life a few hours ago, and now he can see  —  if he’s not a fool and he’s not that whatever else he may be  —  that she adores him  —  and yet he’s not at his ease... What is it? What does it mean? For Joy’s sake I must find that out. I may have to lie a bit; but at least I’ll know what I am doing!”

With this object in view she took, when the charm of the meeting began to lose its lustre, the conversation in hand herself. She felt that the time had come. Well she understood when she saw on Colonel Ogilvie’s face the very faintest shade of a shadow of that dark look which in earlier years had meant trouble for some one. “Lucius is thinking!” was the way she put it to herself. To a woman of her bringing up, the acts of the men of the family, and especially of its head, were not within the women’s sphere. In the old slave-owning families there was perpetuated something of the spirit of subordination  —  some survival of old feudal principle. This was especially so in everything relating to quarrels or fighting. It was not women’s work, and women were trained not to take any part in it, not even to manifest any concern. Indeed the free-spirited Judy having lived so many years in that particular atmosphere, before being able to look round her in wider communities, compared the dominance of view of a man in his own family life to that of a cock who lords it over the farmyard, struts about masterfully, and summons his household round him with no other purpose than his own will. Woman-like she was content to yield herself to the situation.

“We’re all the same,” she once said to a farmer’s wife, women or hens. When the master clucks we come!”

As it was quite apparent to her that both her sister and brother-in-law were uneasy, she began to take on herself the responsibility of action, even if it should have to be followed by the odium.

“What’s the use of being an old maid if you can’t do something.” she said to herself as a sort of rallying cry to her own nerves. Such gathering of one’s courage is not uncommon; it is, in unusual circumstances, to many men and to most women. It does not as a rule apply to professional or accustomed duties. To the soldier, the lawyer, the engineer, the man of commerce, each as such, the faculties which wait on the intelligence are already braced by habit. And to the woman in her hours of social self-consciousness the same applies. When a woman puts on her best frock she is armed and ready as completely as is the cavalry man with the thunder of the squadron behind him; as the artillery man when “Action!” has been sounded. Ordinarily Miss Judith was equal to all demands made on her; now she was engaging in a matter in which she did not thoroughly understand either the purpose or the end. Now she spoke:

“Have you been staying long in New York Mr. Hardy?” At the moment Athlyne was talking with his hostess and did not seem to hear; but Joy heard and said gently: “Mr. Hardy!” He turned suddenly red, even to his ears.

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t...” There he stopped, suddenly realising that he had almost betrayed himself. The fact was that he heard the question but forgot for an instant the part he was playing. His ears had been tuned to the music of Joy’s voice, and he did not wake at once to the less welcome sound. Partly it was of course due to the fact that as yet he had heard but little of Aunt Judy’s speech; her intentional silence had a drawback as well as an advantage. He stopped his explanation just in time to save suspicion from the rest of the family, but not from Judy, who having an intention of her own was alert to everything. She made a mental note to be afterwards excogitated: “I didn’t  —  what?”

She repeated the question. He answered with what nonchalance he could:

“No. Only a few days.”

“Do you remain long?”

“I am sorry to say that I cannot I had promised myself a few weeks after grizzlies; but that has to be foregone for the present. Something has happened which requires my going back at once. But I hope to renew my visit before long.” He was pleased with himself for the verbal accuracy of the statement, and this reassured him.

“What a pity you have to give up your hunting,” said Colonel Ogilvie, heartily. ‘You would find it really excellent sport. I haven’t had any of it for twenty years; but I’d dearly like to have another turn at it if I could.”

“What boat do you go by?” asked Mrs. Ogilvie.

“By the French boat. The Mignonette which sails on Saturday.” He answered with confidence for he had spent a quarter of an hour looking it up before he had dressed; and had already posted a letter to the Office asking to have the best cabin open kept for him.

“What a pity,” said Joy. “We are going on the Graphic on the Wednesday after; you might have come with us.” She coloured up as she became conscious of the dead silence  —  lasting for a few seconds  —  of the rest of the party.

“H’m!” said the Colonel.

“Perhaps dear, Mr. Hardy has reasons of his own for choosing his own route,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, determined that her daughter should not appear to be too ardent in pressing the new acquaintanceship.

Athlyne hastened to set matters right, as well as he could. He knew from his own bringing up that such a request should come rather from the parents than from the girl herself; but he understood and tried to protect her. He addressed himself therefore to Mrs. Ogilvie and not her daughter as he spoke:

“It would I assure you, be a delight to me to go on your ship. But unhappily it would not be possible. Some business matters, not altogether my own, are dependent on my arriving in England. If I had only known that you were going  —  Indeed I may say,” he added with a smile which all three women accepted as “winning” “that if I had known, to begin with, that such delightful people existed... But until that... that accident I had no such knowledge. I must not say that ‘happy’ accident for it was fraught with such danger to one whom you hold dear. But, that apart, it was a happy accident to me that has given me the opportunity of making friends whom I already value so highly!” This was for him quite a long speech; he breathed more freely when it was over.

When the ladies had gone, he and his host had a long chat over their cigars. He was now more at ease, and as the conversation was all about sport and horses, matters in which he was thoroughly at home, he could speak more freely and more naturally than he had yet done. There was not any personal element which would require him to be on guard and so cause constraint. The result was that Colonel Ogilvie got quite over his stiffness and began to warm to his genial influence.

It was quite a sign of his existing attitude that he now took on himself to say just what he had reprehended in his daughter:

“I am really sorry you can’t come on the Graphic with us. It would make the voyage a new pleasure for us all!” As he spoke he took the young man’s arm in a most friendly way, and to Joy’s secret delight, they came in this wise into the drawing-room.

CHAPTER 7

A DISCUSSION

On reflection Lord Athlyne was glad that circumstances had not allowed him to travel on the Graphic with his new friends. At first he felt horribly disappointed; as if Fate had in a measure checkmated him. Had he known that the Ogilvies were to travel on the White Star boat he could have easily arranged his plans. The voyage would in some ways  —  one way  —  have been delightful. Well he knew that; but as he should have to keep up his alias he would have been in a perpetual state of anxiety and humiliation.

This feeling made it easier for him therefore to come to a definite conclusion regarding his journey home: he would keep to himself, as far as possible, during the journey and try to get at the earliest possible moment out of his present humiliating position. Under any ordinary circumstances he would have gone to Colonel Ogilvie and told him frankly of the state of matters, relying on his good feeling to understand and sympathise with his difficulty. Had there been opportunity for reflection he would have done so; but all was so hurried at the scene of the accident that there had not been time for thought. He had accepted of necessity the invitation to dinner. Then, or before going to the Holland House would have been his chance. But again the Colonel meeting him and taking him at once to his family made present explanation difficult. Dinner finished him. When first on the Drive he had seen Joy he had thought her a beautiful girl. The act of rescuing her had made her of the supreme interest to him. But it was not till he had sat beside her and looked into her eyes that he felt that love had come. No man could look into those beautiful eyes and remain untouched. But this man, heart-hungry and naturally susceptible after some years of campaigning, fell madly in love. His very soul had gone down into the depths of those unfathomable eyes, and come back purified and sweetened  —  like the smoke drawn through the rosewater of a hookah.  Even’ instant that he sat beside her the spell grew upon him. Joy was a woman in whom the sex-instinct was very strong. She was woman all over; type of woman who seems to draw man to her as the magnet draws the steel. Athlyne was a very masculine person and therefore peculiarly sensitive to the influence. That deep thinking young madman who committed suicide at twenty-three, Otto Weininger, was probably right in that wonderful guess of his as to the probable solution of the problem of sex. All men and all women, according to him, have in themselves the cells of both sexes; and the accredited masculinity or femininity of the individual is determined by the multiplication and development of these cells. Thus the ideal man is entirely or almost entirely masculine, and the ideal woman is entirely or almost entirely feminine. Each individual must have a preponderance, be it ever so little, of the cells of its own sex; and the attraction of each individual to the other sex depends upon its place in the scale between the highest and the lowest grade of sex. The most masculine man draws the most feminine woman, and vice versa; and so down the scale till close to the border line is the great mass of persons who, having only development of a few of the qualities of sex, are easily satisfied to mate with any one. This is the true principle of selection which is one of the most important of Nature’s laws; one which holds in the lower as well as in the higher orders of life, zoological and botanical as well as human. It accounts for the way in which such a vast number of persons are content to make marriages and even liaisons, which others, higher strung, are actually unable to understand.

As yet, of course, Joy being a young woman had not her power developed. Such an unconscious power takes in the course of its development its own time. Instinct is a directing principle, and obedience can be given to it in many different ways. With Joy its course had been slow, the growth of time alone. Up to now there had been no disturbing element in her life; most of her years had been spent in a quiet house in a quiet neighbourhood where there were but few inhabitants of her own class; and where, therefore, the percentage of eligible men was small. There was even to her, as there must be to any girl like her, certain protecting oppositions. She was at once practical and sentimental, sensuous and dainty. Her taste was her first line of defence to the attacks of the baser qualities of her own nature. Nothing could appeal to her thoroughly which did not answer widely divergent conditions. Aunt Judy had summed her up well in saying that she would, if she ever fell in love, give herself absolutely. But it must be the right man to whom she did so give herself; one who must comply with all the conditions which she had laid down for herself. A girl of her up-bringing  —  with a father and mother who adored her each in special way; with an aunt who represented impulsive youth all the more actively because she professed the staidness of age which is without hope; and with no intimate relationships or friendships of the male kind  —  had not only a leaning to, but a conviction of romance as a prime factor of life. “Life” was to her not that which is, but that which is to be. As the world of the present, where such thoughts are, is not one which is lit and coloured by love, the world of the future is the World of Love. The Fairy Prince who is to bring so much happiness  —  when he comes  —  is no mere casual visitor to feminine childhood. He is as real to the child’s imagination as the things of her waking life, though his nodding plume has little in common with the material things which surround her. As she grows older so does he change form, coming more into harmony with Irving fact; till at last in some lofty moment, whose memory is a treasure for after life, the ideal and the real merge in one.

To Joy the hour had come. The Prince Charming who had swept across her path in such heroic fashion was all that she had ever longed for. He was tall and strong and handsome and brave. He was a gentleman with all a gentleman’s refined ways. He had taste and daintiness, though they were expressed in masculine ways. He too had love and passion. How could she not know it who had seen  —  had felt  —  his soul sink into the deeps of her eyes, where mermaid-like her own soul peeping from behind the foliage of the deep had smiled on him to lead him on. How could she forget that strong arm which was thrown around her waist and which tore her from her saddle just in time to save her from a horrible death. How could she forget the seconds when she hung on to him for life, her arms clasped around his neck.