The Dark Flower

“What is it, dear boy? You look so white!”

Without quite knowing what he did, he bent his face towards the hand that she had laid on his sleeve, then knew no more, having fainted.

VIII

Growing boy – over-exertion in the morning! That was all! He was himself very quickly, and walked up to bed without assistance. Rotten of him! Never was anyone more ashamed of his little weakness than this boy. Now that he was really a trifle indisposed, he simply could not bear the idea of being nursed at all or tended. Almost rudely he had got away. Only when he was in bed did he remember the look on her face as he left her. How wistful and unhappy, seeming to implore him to forgive her! As if there were anything to forgive! As if she had not made him perfectly happy when she danced with him! He longed to say to her: “If I might be close to you like that one minute every day, then I don’t mind all the rest!” Perhaps he would dare say that to-morrow. Lying there he still felt a little funny. He had forgotten to close the ribs of the blinds, and moonlight was filtering in; but he was too idle, too drowsy to get up now and do it. They had given him brandy, rather a lot – that perhaps was the reason he felt so queer; not ill, but mazy, as if dreaming, as if he had lost the desire ever to move again. Just to lie there, and watch the powdery moonlight, and hear faraway music throbbing down below, and still feel the touch of her, as in the dance she swayed against him, and all the time to have the scent about him of flowers! His thoughts were dreams, his dreams thoughts – all precious unreality. And then it seemed to him that the moonlight was gathered into a single slip of pallor – there was a thrumming, a throbbing, and that shape of moonlight moved towards him. It came so close that he felt its warmth against his brow; it sighed, hovered, drew back soundless, and was gone. He must have fallen then into dreamless sleep…

What time was it when he was awakened by that delicate ‘rat-tat’ to see his tutor standing in the door-way with a cup of tea?

Was young Lennan all right? Yes, he was perfectly all right – would be down directly! It was most frightfully good of Mr. Stormer to come! He really didn’t want anything.

Yes, yes; but the maimed and the halt must be attended to!

His face seemed to the boy very kind just then – only to laugh at him a very little – just enough. And it was awfully decent of him to have come, and to stand there while he drank the tea. He was really all right, but for a little headache. Many times while he was dressing he stood still, trying to remember. That white slip of moonlight? Was it moonlight? Was it part of a dream; or was it, could it have been she, in her moonlight-coloured frock? Why had he not stayed awake? He would not dare to ask her, and now would never know whether the vague memory of warmth on his brow had been a kiss.

He breakfasted alone in the room where they had danced. There were two letters for him. One from his guardian enclosing money, and complaining of the shyness of the trout; the other from his sister. The man she was engaged to – he was a budding diplomat, attached to the Embassy at Rome – was afraid that his leave was going to be curtailed. They would have to be married at once. They might even have to get a special licence. It was lucky Mark was coming back so soon. They simply MUST have him for best man. The only bridesmaid now would be Sylvia… Sylvia Doone? Why, she was only a kid! And the memory of a little girl in a very short holland frock, with flaxen hair, pretty blue eyes, and a face so fair that you could almost see through it, came up before him. But that, of course, was six years ago; she would not still be in a frock that showed her knees, or wear beads, or be afraid of bulls that were never there. It was stupid being best man – they might have got some decent chap! And then he forgot all – for there was SHE, out on the terrace. In his rush to join her he passed several of the ‘English Grundys,’ who stared at him askance. Indeed, his conduct of the night before might well have upset them. An Oxford man, fainting in an hotel! Something wrong there!.

And then, when he reached her, he did find courage.

“Was it really moonlight?”

“All moonlight.”

“But it was warm!”

And, when she did not answer that, he had within him just the same light, intoxicated feeling as after he had won a race at school.

But now came a dreadful blow. His tutor’s old guide had suddenly turned up, after a climb with a party of Germans. The war-horse had been aroused in Stormer. He wished to start that afternoon for a certain hut, and go up a certain peak at dawn next day. But Lennan was not to go. Why not? Because of last night’s faint; and because, forsooth, he was not some stupid thing they called ‘an expert.’ As if – ! Where she could go he could! This was to treat him like a child. Of course he could go up this rotten mountain. It was because she did not care enough to take him! She did not think him man enough! Did she think that he could not climb what – her husband – could? And if it were dangerous SHE ought not to be going, leaving him behind – that was simply cruel! But she only smiled, and he flung away from her, not having seen that all this grief of his only made her happy.

And that afternoon they went off without him. What deep, dark thoughts he had then! What passionate hatred of his own youth! What schemes he wove, by which she might come back, and find him gone-up some mountain far more dangerous and fatiguing! If people did not think him fit to climb with, he would climb by himself. That, anyway, everyone admitted, was dangerous. And it would be her fault. She would be sorry then. He would get up, and be off before dawn; he put his things out ready, and filled his flask. The moonlight that evening was more wonderful than ever, the mountains like great ghosts of themselves. And she was up there at the hut, among them! It was very long before he went to sleep, brooding over his injuries – intending not to sleep at all, so as to be ready to be off at three o’clock. At NINE o’clock he woke. His wrath was gone; he only felt restless and ashamed. If, instead of flying out, he had made the best of it, he could have gone with them as far as the hut, could have stayed the night there. And now he cursed himself for being such a fool and idiot. Some little of that idiocy he could, perhaps, retrieve. If he started for the hut at once, he might still be in time to meet them coming down, and accompany them home. He swallowed his coffee, and set off. He knew the way at first, then in woods lost it, recovered the right track again at last, but did not reach the hut till nearly two o’clock. Yes, the party had made the ascent that morning – they had been seen, been heard jodelling on the top. Gewiss! Gewiss! But they would not come down the same way. Oh, no! They would be going home down to the West and over the other pass. They would be back in house before the young Herr himself.

He heard this, oddly, almost with relief. Was it the long walk alone, or being up there so high? Or simply that he was very hungry? Or just these nice friendly folk in the hut, and their young daughter with her fresh face, queer little black cloth sailor hat with long ribbons, velvet bodice, and perfect simple manners; or the sight of the little silvery-dun cows, thrusting their broad black noses against her hand? What was it that had taken away from him all his restless feeling, made him happy and content?.. He did not know that the newest thing always fascinates the puppy in its gambols! … He sat a long while after lunch, trying to draw the little cows, watching the sun on the cheek of that pretty maiden, trying to talk to her in German. And when at last he said: “Adieu!” and she murmured “Kuss die Hand. Adieu!” there was quite a little pang in his heart… Wonderful and queer is the heart of a man!.. For all that, as he neared home he hastened, till he was actually running. Why had he stayed so long up there? She would be back – she would expect to see him; and that young beast of a violinist would be with her, perhaps, instead! He reached the hotel just in time to rush up and dress, and rush down to dinner. Ah! They were tired, no doubt – were resting in their rooms. He sat through dinner as best he could; got away before dessert, and flew upstairs. For a minute he stood there doubtful; on which door should he knock? Then timidly he tapped on hers. No answer! He knocked loud on his tutor’s door. No answer! They were not back, then. Not back? What could that mean? Or could it be that they were both asleep? Once more he knocked on her door; then desperately turned the handle, and took a flying glance. Empty, tidy, untouched! Not back! He turned and ran downstairs again. All the guests were streaming out from dinner, and he became entangled with a group of ‘English Grundys’ discussing a climbing accident which had occurred in Switzerland. He listened, feeling suddenly quite sick. One of them, the short grey-bearded Grundy with the rather whispering voice, said to him: “All alone again to-night? The Stormers not back?” Lennan did his best to answer, but something had closed his throat; he could only shake his head.

“They had a guide, I think?” said the ‘English Grundy.’

This time Lennan managed to get out: “Yes, sir.”

“Stormer, I fancy, is quite an expert!” and turning to the lady whom the young ‘Grundys’ addressed as ‘Madre’ he added:

“To me the great charm of mountain-climbing was always the freedom from people – the remoteness.”

The mother of the young ‘Grundys,’ looking at Lennan with her half-closed eyes, answered:

“That, to me, would be the disadvantage; I always like to be mixing with my own kind.”

The grey-bearded ‘Grundy’ murmured in a muffled voice:

“Dangerous thing, that, to say – in an hotel!”

And they went on talking, but of what Lennan no longer knew, lost in this sudden feeling of sick fear. In the presence of these ‘English Grundys,’ so superior to all vulgar sensations, he could not give vent to his alarm; already they viewed him as unsound for having fainted. Then he grasped that there had begun all round him a sort of luxurious speculation on what might have happened to the Stormers. The descent was very nasty; there was a particularly bad traverse. The ‘Grundy,’ whose collar was not now crumpled, said he did not believe in women climbing. It was one of the signs of the times that he most deplored. The mother of the young ‘Grundys’ countered him at once: In practice she agreed that they were out of place, but theoretically she could not see why they should not climb. An American standing near threw all into confusion by saying he guessed that it might be liable to develop their understandings. Lennan made for the front door. The moon had just come up over in the South, and exactly under it he could see their mountain. What visions he had then! He saw her lying dead, saw himself climbing down in the moonlight and raising her still-living, but half-frozen, form from some perilous ledge. Even that was almost better than this actuality of not knowing where she was, or what had happened. People passed out into the moonlight, looking curiously at his set face staring so fixedly. One or two asked him if he were anxious, and he answered: “Oh no, thanks!” Soon there would have to be a search party. How soon? He would, he must be, of it! They should not stop him this time. And suddenly he thought: Ah, it is all because I stayed up there this afternoon talking to that girl, all because I forgot HER!

And then he heard a stir behind him. There they were, coming down the passage from a side door – she in front with her alpenstock and rucksack – smiling. Instinctively he recoiled behind some plants. They passed. Her sunburned face, with its high cheek-bones and its deep-set eyes, looked so happy; smiling, tired, triumphant. Somehow he could not bear it, and when they were gone by he stole out into the wood and threw himself down in shadow, burying his face, and choking back a horrible dry sobbing that would keep rising in his throat.

IX

Next day he was happy; for all the afternoon he lay out in the shade of that same wood at her feet, gazing up through larch-boughs. It was so wonderful, with nobody but Nature near. Nature so alive, and busy, and so big!

Coming down from the hut the day before, he had seen a peak that looked exactly like the figure of a woman with a garment over her head, the biggest statue in the world; from further down it had become the figure of a bearded man, with his arm bent over his eyes. Had she seen it? Had she noticed how all the mountains in moonlight or very early morning took the shape of beasts? What he wanted most in life was to be able to make images of beasts and creatures of all sorts, that were like – that had – that gave out the spirit of – Nature; so that by just looking at them one could have all those jolly feelings one had when one was watching trees, and beasts, and rocks, and even some sorts of men – but not ‘English Grundys.’

So he was quite determined to study Art?

Oh yes, of course!

He would want to leave – Oxford, then!

No, oh no! Only some day he would have to.

She answered: “Some never get away!”

And he said quickly: “Of course, I shall never want to leave Oxford while you are there.”

He heard her draw her breath in sharply.

“Oh yes, you will! Now help me up!” And she led the way back to the hotel.

He stayed out on the terrace when she had gone in, restless and unhappy the moment he was away from her. A voice close by said:

“Well, friend Lennan – brown study, or blue devils, which?”

There, in one of those high wicker chairs that insulate their occupants from the world, he saw his tutor leaning back, head a little to one side, and tips of fingers pressed together. He looked like an idol sitting there inert, and yet – yesterday he had gone up that mountain!

“Cheer up! You will break your neck yet! When I was your age, I remember feeling it deeply that I was not allowed to risk the lives of others.”

Lennan stammered out:

“I didn’t think of that; but I thought where Mrs. Stormer could go, I could.”

“Ah! For all our admiration we cannot quite admit – can we, when it comes to the point?”

The boy’s loyalty broke into flame:

“It’s not that. I think Mrs. Stormer as good as any man – only – only – ”

“Not quite so good as you, eh?”

“A hundred times better, sir.”

Stormer smiled. Ironic beast!

“Lennan,” he said, “distrust hyperbole.”

“Of course, I know I’m no good at climbing,” the boy broke out again; “but – but – I thought where she was allowed to risk her life, I ought to be!”

“Good! I like that.” It was said so entirely without irony for once, that the boy was disconcerted.

“You are young, Brother Lennan,” his tutor went on. “Now, at what age do you consider men develop discretion? Because, there is just one thing always worth remembering – women have none of that better part of valour.”

“I think women are the best things in the world,” the boy blurted out.

“May you long have that opinion!” His tutor had risen, and was ironically surveying his knees. “A bit stiff!” he said. “Let me know when you change your views!”

“I never shall, sir.”

“Ah, ah! Never is a long word, Lennan. I am going to have some tea;” and gingerly he walked away, quizzing, as it were, with a smile, his own stiffness.

Lennan remained where he was, with burning cheeks. His tutor’s words again had seemed directed against her. How could a man say such things about women! If they were true, he did not want to know; if they were not true, it was wicked to say them. It must be awful never to have generous feelings; always to have to be satirical. Dreadful to be like the ‘English Grundys’; only different, of course, because, after all, old Stormer was much more interesting and intelligent – ever so much more; only, just as ‘superior.’ “Some never get away!” Had she meant – from that superiority? Just down below were a family of peasants scything and gathering in the grass. One could imagine her doing that, and looking beautiful, with a coloured handkerchief over her head; one could imagine her doing anything simple – one could not imagine old Stormer doing anything but what he did do. And suddenly the boy felt miserable, oppressed by these dim glimmerings of lives misplaced. And he resolved that he would not be like Stormer when he was old! No, he would rather be a regular beast than be like that!.

When he went to his room to change for dinner he saw in a glass of water a large clove carnation. Who had put it there? Who could have put it there – but she? It had the same scent as the mountain pinks she had dropped over him, but deeper, richer – a scent moving, dark, and sweet. He put his lips to it before he pinned it into his coat.

There was dancing again that night – more couples this time, and a violin beside the piano; and she had on a black frock. He had never seen her in black. Her face and neck were powdered over their sunburn. The first sight of that powder gave him a faint shock. He had not somehow thought that ladies ever put on powder. But if SHE did – then it must be right! And his eyes never left her. He saw the young German violinist hovering round her, even dancing with her twice; watched her dancing with others, but all without jealousy, without troubling; all in a sort of dream. What was it? Had he been bewitched into that queer state, bewitched by the gift of that flower in his coat? What was it, when he danced with her, that kept him happy in her silence and his own? There was no expectation in him of anything that she would say, or do – no expectation, no desire. Even when he wandered out with her on to the terrace, even when they went down the bank and sat on a bench above the fields where the peasants had been scything, he had still no feeling but that quiet, dreamy adoration. The night was black and dreamy too, for the moon was still well down behind the mountains. The little band was playing the next waltz; but he sat, not moving, not thinking, as if all power of action and thought had been stolen out of him. And the scent of the flower in his coat rose, for there was no wind. Suddenly his heart stopped beating. She had leaned against him, he felt her shoulder press his arm, her hair touch his cheek. He closed his eyes then, and turned his face to her. He felt her lips press his mouth with a swift, burning kiss. He sighed, stretched out his arms. There was nothing there but air. The rustle of her dress against the grass was all! The flower – it, too, was gone.

X

Not one minute all that night did Anna sleep. Was it remorse that kept her awake, or the intoxication of memory? If she felt that her kiss had been a crime, it was not against her husband or herself, but against the boy – the murder of illusion, of something sacred. But she could not help feeling a delirious happiness too, and the thought of trying to annul what she had done did not even occur to her.

He was ready, then, to give her a little love! Ever so little, compared to hers, but still a little! There could be no other meaning to that movement of his face with the closed eyes, as if he would nestle it down on her breast.

Was she ashamed of her little manoeuvres of these last few days – ashamed of having smiled at the young violinist, of that late return from the mountain climb, of the flower she had given him, of all the conscious siege she had laid since the evening her husband came in and sat watching her, without knowing that she saw him? No; not really ashamed! Her remorse rose only from the kiss. It hurt to think of that, because it was death, the final extinction of the mother-feeling in her; the awakening of – who knew what – in the boy! For if she was mysterious to him, what was he not to her, with his eagerness, and his dreaminess, his youthful warmth, his innocence! What if it had killed in him trust, brushed off the dew, tumbled a star down? Could she forgive herself for that? Could she bear it if she were to make him like so many other boys, like that young violinist; just a cynical youth, looking on women as what they called ‘fair game’? But COULD she make him into such – would he ever grow like that? Oh! surely not; or she would not have loved him from the moment she first set eyes on him and spoke of him as ‘an angel.’

After that kiss – that crime, if it were one – in the dark she had not known what he had done, where gone – perhaps wandering, perhaps straight up to his room. Why had she refrained, left him there, vanished out of his arms? This she herself hardly understood. Not shame; not fear; reverence perhaps – for what? For love – for the illusion, the mystery, all that made love beautiful; for youth, and the poetry of it; just for the sake of the black still night itself, and the scent of that flower – dark flower of passion that had won him to her, and that she had stolen back, and now wore all night long close to her neck, and in the morning placed withered within her dress. She had been starved so long, and so long waited for that moment – it was little wonder if she did not clearly know why she had done just this, and not that!

And now how should she meet him, how first look into his eyes? Would they have changed? Would they no longer have the straight look she so loved? It would be for her to lead, to make the future. And she kept saying to herself: I am not going to be afraid. It is done. I will take what life offers! Of her husband she did not think at all.

But the first moment she saw the boy, she knew that something from outside, and untoward, had happened since that kiss. He came up to her, indeed, but he said nothing, stood trembling all over and handed her a telegram that contained these words: “Come back at once Wedding immediate Expect you day after to-morrow. Cicely.” The words grew indistinct even as she read them, and the boy’s face all blurred. Then, making an effort, she said quietly:

“Of course, you must go. You cannot miss your only sister’s wedding.”

Without protest he looked at her; and she could hardly bear that look – it seemed to know so little, and ask so much. She said: “It is nothing – only a few days. You will come back, or we will come to you.”

His face brightened at once.

“Will you really come to us soon, at once – if they ask you? Then I don’t mind – I – I – ” And then he stopped, choking.

She said again:

“Ask us. We will come.”

He seized her hand; pressed and pressed it in both his own, then stroked it gently, and said:

“Oh! I’m hurting it!”

She laughed, not wishing to cry.

In a few minutes he would have to start to catch the only train that would get him home in time.

She went and helped him to pack. Her heart felt like lead, but, not able to bear that look on his face again, she kept cheerfully talking of their return, asking about his home, how to get to it, speaking of Oxford and next term. When his things were ready she put her arms round his neck, and for a moment pressed him to her. Then she escaped. Looking back from his door, she saw him standing exactly as when she had withdrawn her arms. Her cheeks were wet; she dried them as she went downstairs. When she felt herself safe, she went out on the terrace. Her husband was there, and she said to him:

“Will you come with me into the town? I want to buy some things.”

He raised his eyebrows, smiled dimly, and followed her. They walked slowly down the hill into the long street of the little town. All the time she talked of she knew not what, and all the time she thought: His carriage will pass – his carriage will pass!

Several carriages went jingling by. At last he came. Sitting there, and staring straight before him, he did not see them. She heard her husband say:

“Hullo! Where is our young friend Lennan off to, with his luggage – looking like a lion cub in trouble?”

She answered in a voice that she tried to make clear and steady:

“There must be something wrong; or else it is his sister’s wedding.”

She felt that her husband was gazing at her, and wondered what her face was like; but at that moment the word “Madre!” sounded close in her ear and they were surrounded by a small drove of ‘English Grundys.’

XI

That twenty mile drive was perhaps the worst part of the journey for the boy. It is always hard to sit still and suffer.

When Anna left him the night before, he had wandered about in the dark, not knowing quite where he went. Then the moon came up, and he found himself sitting under the eave of a barn close to a chalet where all was dark and quiet; and down below him the moon-whitened valley village – its roofs and spires and little glamorous unreal lights.