Diogenes of London (collection)/The Advice of Achates
THE ADVICE OF ACHATES
THERE had never been the slightest question as to their relations. I had indeed fallen at one time into the common folly of the lover, and nursed a bitter jealousy of him, but after the passage of this madness the merest observation had been sufficient to re-assure me. It is true he was unmarried, and had many qualities that take a woman, but I believe he was really quite indifferent to the sex save as the source of some amusing friends. He was very sober and good-natured, and had a lazy regard for every one that came within his acquaintance. The two had grown up in the same countryside, and were on terms of unusual intimacy. She considered him a man of the world, which he was beyond question, and assumed him as a person of profound knowledge, which as certainly he was not. These opinions, with those early associations, were the credentials upon which she assigned him the position of her guide and counsellor. He was no doubt an excellent fellow, sufficiently wise; but from the moment of my infatuation I viewed his easy access to her with much chagrin and envy. So close a proximity was denied me, though I made the most desperate efforts to obtain her confidence. It seemed that I was never to persuade her of her affection for me. In the privacy of my own thoughts I had long since resolved upon the state of her heart. Many signs pointed at her condition; for one thing she had come to betray a blushing embarrassment if we met of a sudden, and though she was able to recover pretty quickly, after the manner of women, yet her eyes would still hold their trouble for some little time, as though her nature were but slowly settling from its disturbance. Indeed she was herself most uncertain of her mind, and sometimes I thought I had detected in her little airs of conduct a fear of her own bewilderment. She was new to the sensations, and avoided considering them with an instinct something between awe and shame. I think if she had found the courage to confront herself boldly she would have confessed to an attachment for me, would at least have realised in what current she was drifting, even if she did not acknowledge it openly. But hitherto her heart had been absolutely virginal, and to find it suddenly active with strange feelings was to throw her into a confusion she could not understand. Her soul was so private and so dainty that the presence therein of a new and foreign interest set her quivering with maidenly alarm; she fled from the thought and memory of it, but there it was, still awaiting her on her return, a veiled and silent mystery she would not examine. It was this doubt drove her back upon her established companion, not for advice indeed, but as a familiar landmark with which she need have no scruples.
My passion was very manifest, and I was aware he watched it, as it were, out of his sleepy eyes. I did not mind that the world should observe it, if only it were from a little distance; but that he, so close a neighbour of her own, so intimate an environment of our two selves, should be the witness of my uneven passage to her heart, chafed me beyond endurance. I believe he was so indifferent to her beauty that it was a quiet amusement for him to note the love of others for her. Of all these I was assuredly the most in her thoughts, and yet she held me at a greater distance than any, while he looked on with his smile. He was privileged with opportunities of sight and touch of her, which were nothing to him, but would have been all the world to me. Had he been her brother, their close friendship would not have annoyed me; but there he was, unperturbed, in serene possession, so to say, with the most obvious and irresistible chances to his hand—and not a natural tie between them. It is true he was never impertinent in his observance, never by a word gave me a hint of his knowledge; but his eyes followed me in the course of my passion; and it irked me to remark the intelligent regard with which he met me.
It will seem odd, but I had never put her to the ultimate test by a profession of my love. To say the truth, I still feared her own terror, and was unwilling to risk my hopes prematurely, ere she had been induced to recognise her feelings. But with my eyes, with every act and service of my life, I invited her to my heart, and to the urgency of my silent pleading I knew she must yield. Only this one irritation stood between me and content; and it was recurrent day by day in all the trivial facts of our intercourse. Once I had a rose for her from my garden. She took it with uncertain fingers and a precipitate flush, and carried it instantly to her bosom. It lay in a coign of that sweet bodice, and I knew she had given herself tremulously to the delight of that moment. It flashed upon me then that I had at last got to my end, and a vision of this exquisite surrender dazzled my mind with its surprising lights. I seemed to see the sacred soul come creeping softly from its pinnacle of virgin majesty down to the very level of my eyes, at last to inspect and welcome this strange love. And then, almost as I would have spoken, he came out from his midday rest, whistling an air and scrutinising the signs of the sky with amiable carelessness. The smoke was wreathing from his cigarette, and his friendly glance ran down her faultless figure with approval. It rested for a moment on the rose; then shot silently at my face. He put his cigarette between his lips again; said the rain was gathering, yawned and passed on. But the light had faded out of her eyes; she contemplated his miserable clouds; her voice rang coldly; she was itching to be off; she turned, and the rose fell from her bosom. You will not wonder that the grotesque situation filled me with indignation. She would pace the walks with him in the morning for an hour together, while I went solitary; she listened to his desultory talk as though it were the wisdom of centuries. She was uncertain of a strange course if she had not his opinion on it, and at the moment when she seemed to be yielding to the rarest emotions of her nature, his shadow had sufficed to frighten her from the trembling surrender.
It was impossible to remain in this distressing uncertainty. I loved her in a tumultuous fashion and the tide of my passion might not be unduly retarded. I must put her to the test, I found, and dare my dismissal. All fortunes must come to the touch at last, I thought, and I had a lively faith in my own success. When I had reached the resolution my heart mounted like a lark, as I set out that day upon my adventure. I found her murmuring an air to her own playing in the twilight of the drawing-room. She rose on my entrance and bade me welcome with some show of diffidence, as I fancied. Perhaps my intention glowed in my eyes. She remarked upon the softness of the night, and pushed open the long window that overlooked the lawn. There she stood with the melancholy light touching her white neck, with the breeze stirring her rich hair. She looked very young and very pure, and a little embarrassed. At the vision she presented of troubled innocence I was half in the mind to keep my words unsaid yet a little longer, to go forth from her and leave her still unacquainted with passion, with that mystery still veiled, still fearful of the voices that whispered within her. To rob her of those doubts and tremors seemed for that moment to reduce her to the horrid prose of life; she stood now on heights romantical, with strange and mystic regions about her feet. But this fancy passed like a shadow over my determination, and when, startled at the long silence, she turned and glanced wistfully at my face, I made a movement forward and took her hand.
'Dearest,' said I, 'I love you.'
She shrank from me against the window; her eyes were beggars for my mercy; but heedless in the full course of my passion I discovered to her my hopes in a flood of language. She had said never a word, but her eyes had fallen, and the hand she would at first have wrested from me lay still and hot in mine. Even when I paused in my entreaties she made no answer.
'My darling,' I pleaded, 'you love me? Give me some word, sweetheart. Give me your eyes and I will read it there.'
She shook her head, all atremble from head to foot.
'No,' she murmured brokenly, 'I cannot. I don't know. To-morrow—no—I will write to you. It is better. Not to-day. I am—you have startled me.'
With that, and one look of her pitiful eyes, she slipped from my hold and vanished into the garden. I stood for a while wrestling with the temptation to pursue her, but at length regaining possession of myself left the house glowing with elation. She loved me beyond question.
All the next day I had no word from her, and refrained from the house with the greatest difficulty; and when on the following day there came no letter I fell from an elevation of joyous confidence into critical misgivings. I took to strolling in the vicinity of the house I might not enter, and here in the afternoon befel that which once more filled me with the fiercest chagrin. When I espied him entering at the gate there revived in me all the foolish jealousy of my early acquaintance with them. He then had the liberty of those precincts from which I was an exile. Him she would meet with smiles, while from me she had fled as from a danger. In my fancy I could hear her merriment as they laughed together; and I not there to intercede against her gaiety. I hung about in concealment in the humour of a desperado, and when, at the end of an hour he came out, her voice accompanied him to the foot of the walk. I heard her thank him with some perturbation; and when he left the gate, across his face a smile broke slowly, and he chuckled to himself. Then in the fury of this sudden revelation I could have followed and struck him to the ground. For now the object of his visit had flashed upon me in an instant: she had distrusted the evidence of her own perplexed feelings and had fallen back upon his cooler judgment. Upon his verdict was to hang my fate; he was the recipient of my confession; to him I had poured out my hopes; his was the decision that should make or mar my happiness. The more I reflected upon this turn in events the more embittered I became. This was not the act of one who truly loved me; a sincere devotion should be held in confidence; that another should be summoned to review the delicate characters of love was repulsive to its divine instinct. Even though she had veiled her problem in impersonal hypotheses it were an affront upon the sovereignty and independence of the passion. He was called in to pronounce upon the case, as it were, and from him I was to take my fortune. The thought broke like gall in my stomach. I had no doubt now that I should have her answer at once; and so it fell out, for that evening she wrote to accept me. It appeared then that he had 'passed' me, and I might breathe with freedom. The idea was so ludicrous that I screamed with laughter, which lapsed, however, into a sudden angry oath. To go through our joint lives on these terms was impossible. One long farce would be daily in progress by our fireside if she were never to be weaned from this dependence. A dictator betwixt me and her actions! I vow I was in love to desperation, yet such a marriage was preposterous, and I took my pen to disentangle myself from the false position.
My face must have glowered on him as dark as night when he entered, but he nodded affably and lolled in an arm-chair. I could not trust myself to speak, but my silence did not affect his complacency. He smoked and talked with benevolent lethargy.
No one had seen me these last few days. Had I been ill or away? he inquired. And then my my wrath broke out before his imperturbable smile.
'Neither the one nor the other,' I answered, 'merely patenting a scheme to suppress meddlers.'
'Ah!' he said lazily, 'good.'
'See here,' I said, 'I want no interference in my affairs. I can put my own fingers in my fortune, and when I've need of yours I'll ask for them. This letter,' and I waved it at him, 'was written to your dictation. I would sooner have got it from the Devil.'
He lifted his eyebrows, but made no sign of discomfort,
'Advice is cheap enough,' he said, 'nor am I likely to give mine where it isn't solicited. Of course I regret your annoyance, but it's only natural. If I am asked—' he smiled and shrugged his shoulders, 'well, what am I to say?'
'I'm not going to take any favours from you,' I burst forth, 'I'll not owe you any thanks.'
'Thanks!' said he, smiling; 'scarcely thanks, is it?'
She should never have come into our quarrel, but in my passion I had lost my manners.
'I will not accept her at your hands,' I said. 'If she will not have me of her own free will, she'll not of yours; and that's my answer.'
'Have you!' he cried, starting to his feet, and betraying for the first time a lively excitement. 'She'll have you then, after all? Good Lord, I'd no notion of this,' and catching up his hat in an absent manner he left the room.
I stood for a moment in silent bewilderment, and then as the meaning of his conduct grew upon me, some bar fell from my heart, and a flood of delicious feeling swept along all my nerves. I tore my letter into shreds.