Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn
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Elinor Glyn >> Three Weeks
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As he read the last words the room became dark for Paul, and he fell back
like a log on the bed, the paper fluttering to the floor from his nerveless
fingers.
She was gone--and life seemed over for him.
Here, perhaps an hour later, Tompson found him still unconscious, and in
terrified haste sent off for a doctor, and telegraphed to Sir Charles
Verdayne:
"Come at once, TOMPSON."
But ere his father could arrive on Sunday, Paul was lying 'twixt life and
death, madly raving with brain fever.
And thus ended the three weeks of his episode.
CHAPTER XXI
Have any of you who read crept back to life from nearly beyond the grave?
Crept back to find it shorn of all that made it fair? After hours of
delirium to awaken in great weakness to a sense of hideous anguish and
loss--to the prospect of days of aching void and hopeless longing, to the
hourly, momentary sting of remembrance of things vaster than death, more
dear than life itself? If you have come through this valley of the shadow,
then you can know what the first days of returning consciousness meant to
Paul.
He never really questioned the finality of her decree, he _sensed_ it meant
parting for ever. And yet, with that spring of eternal hope which animates
all living souls, unbidden arguings and possibilities rose in his enfeebled
brain, and deepened his unrest. Thus his progress towards convalescence was
long and slow.
And all this time his father and Tompson had nursed him in the old Venetian
palazzo with tenderest devotion.
The Italian servants had been left, paid up for a month, but the lady and
her Russian retinue had vanished, leaving no trace.
Both Tompson and Sir Charles knew almost the whole story now from Paul's
ravings, and neither spoke of it--except that Tompson supplied some links
to complete Sir Charles' picture.
"She was the most splendid lady you could wish to see, Sir Charles," the
stolid creature finished with. "Her servants worshipped her--and if
Mr. Verdayne is ill now, he is ill for no less than a Queen"'
This fact comforted Tompson greatly, but Paul's father found in it no
consolation.
The difficulty had been to prevent his mother from descending upon
them. She must ever be kept in ignorance of this episode in her son's life.
She belonged to the class of intellect which could never have
understood. It would have been an undying shock and horrified grief to the
end of her life--excellent, loving, conventional lady!
So after the first terrible danger was over, Sir Charles made light of
their son's illness. Paul and he were enjoying Venice, he said, and would
soon be home. "D--d hard luck the boy getting fever like this!" he wrote
in his laconic style, "but one never could trust foreign countries'
drains!"
And the Lady Henrietta waited in unsuspecting, well-bred patience.
Those were weary days for every one concerned. It wrung his father's heart
to see Paul prostrate there, as weak as an infant. All his splendid youth
and strength conquered by this raging blast. It was sad to have to listen
to his ever-constant moan:
"Darling, come back to me--darling, my Queen."
And even after he regained consciousness, it was equally pitiful to watch
him lying nerveless and white, blue shadows on his once fresh skin. And
most pitiful of all were his hands, now veined and transparent, falling
idly upon the sheet.
But at least the father realised it could have been no ordinary woman whose
going caused the shock which--even after a life of three weeks' continual
emotion--could prostrate his young Hercules. She must have been worth
something--this tiger Queen.
And one day, contrary to his usual custom, he addressed Tompson:
"What sort of a looking woman, Tompson?"
And Tompson, although an English valet, did not reply, "Who, Sir Charles?"
--he just rounded his eyes stolidly and said in his monotonous
voice:
"She was that forcible-looking, a man couldn't say when he got close, she
kind of dazzled him. She had black hair, and a white face, and--and--
witch's eyes, but she was very kind and overpowering, haughty and
generous. Any one would have known she was a Queen."
"Young?" asked Sir Charles.
Tompson smoothed his chin: "I could not say, Sir Charles. Some days about
twenty-five, and other days past thirty. About thirty-three to thirty-five,
I expect she was, if the truth were known."
"Pretty?"
The eyes rounded more and more. "Well, she was so fascinatin', I can't say,
Sir Charles--the most lovely lady I ever did see at times, Sir Charles."
"Humph," said Paul's father, and then relapsed into silence.
"She'd a beast of a husband; he might have been a King, but he was no
gentleman," Tompson ventured to add presently, fearing the "Humph" perhaps
meant disapprobation of this splendid Queen. "Her servants were close, and
did not speak good English, so I could not get much out of them, but the
man Vasili, who came the last days, did say in a funny lingo, which I had
to guess at, as how he expected he should have to kill him some time.
Vasili had a scar on his face as long as your finger that he'd got
defending the Queen from her husband's brutality, when he was the worse for
drink, only last year. And Mr. Verdayne is so handsome. It is no wonder,
Sir Charles--"
"That will do, Tompson," said Sir Charles, and he frowned.
The fatal letter, carefully sealed up in a new envelope, and the leather
case were in his despatch-box. Tompson had handed them to him on his
arrival. And one day when Paul appeared well enough to be lifted into a
long chair on the side loggia, his father thought fit to give them to him.
Paul's apathy seemed paralysing. The days had passed, since the little
Italian doctor had pronounced him out of danger, in one unending languid
quietude. He expressed interest in no single thing. He was polite, and
indifferent, and numb.
"He must be roused now," Sir Charles said to the doctor. "It is too hot for
Venice, he must be moved to higher air," and the little man had nodded his
head.
So this warm late afternoon, as he lay under the mosquito curtains--which
the coming of June had made necessary in this paradise--his father said to
him:
"I have a letter and a parcel of yours, Paul: you had better look at
them--we hope to start north in a day or two--you must get to a more
bracing place."
Then he had pushed them under the net-folds, and turned his back on the
scene.
The blood rushed to Paul's face, but left him deathly pale after a few
moments. And presently he broke the seal. The minute Sphinx in the corner
of the paper seemed to mock at him. Indeed, life was a riddle of anguish
and pain. He read the letter all over--and read it again. The passionate
words of love warmed him now that he had passed the agony of the farewell.
One sentence he had hardly grasped before, in particular held balm.
"Sweetheart," it said, "you must not grieve--think always of the future
and of our hope. Our love is not dead with our parting, and one day
there will be the living sign--" Yes, that thought was comfort--but how
should he know?
Then he turned to the leather case. His fingers were still so feeble that
with difficulty he pressed the spring to open it.
He glanced up at his father's distinguished-looking back outlined against
the loggia's opening arches. It appeared uncompromising. A fixed
determination to stare at the oleanders below seemed the only spirit
animating this parent.
Yes--he must open the box. It gave suddenly with a jerk, and there lay a
dog's collar, made of small flexible plates of pure beaten gold, mounted on
Russian leather, all of the finest workmanship. And on a slip of paper in
his darling's own writing he read:
"This is for Pike, my beloved one; let him wear it always--a gift from me."
On the collar itself, finely engraved, were the words, "Pike, belonging to
Paul Verdayne."
Then the floodgates of Paul's numbed soul were opened, a great sob rose in
his breast. He covered his face with his hands, and cried like a child.
Oh! her dear thought! her dear, tender thought--for Pike! His little
friend!
And Sir Charles made believe he saw nothing, as he stole from the place,
his rugged face twitching a little, and his keen eyes dim.
CHAPTER XXII
They did not go north, as Sir Charles intended, an unaccountable reluctance
on Paul's part to return through Switzerland changed their plans. Instead,
by a fortunate chance, the large schooner yacht of a rather eccentric old
friend came in to Venice, and the father eagerly accepted the invitation to
go on board and bring his invalid.
The owner, one Captain Grigsby, had been quite alone, so the three men
would be in peace, and nothing could be better for Paul than this warm sea
air.
"Typhoid fever?" Mark Grigsby had asked.
"No," Sir Charles had replied, "considerable mental tribulation over a
woman."
"D--d kittle cattle!" was Captain Grigsby's polite comment. "A fine boy,
too, and promising--"
"Appears to have been almost worth while," Sir Charles added, "from what I
gather--and, confound it, Grig, we'd have done the same in our day."
But Captain Grigsby only repeated: "D--d kittle cattle!"
And so they weighed anchor, and sailed along the Italian shores of the
sun-lit Adriatic.
These were better days for Paul. Each hour brought him back some health and
vigour. Youth and strength were asserting their own again, and the absence
of familiar objects, and the glory of the air and the blue sea helped
sometimes to deaden the poignant agony of his aching heart. But there it
was underneath, an ever-present, dull anguish. And only when he became
sufficiently strong to help the sailors with the ropes, and exert physical
force, did he get one moment's respite. The two elder men watched him with
kind, furtive eyes, but they never questioned him, or made the slightest
allusion to his travels.
And the first day they heard him laugh Sir Charles looked down at the white
foam because a mist was in his eyes.
They had coasted round Italy and Sicily, and not among the Ionian Isles, as
had been Captain Grigsby's intention.
"I fancy the lady came from some of those Balkan countries," Sir Charles
had said. "Don't let us get in touch with even the outside of one of them."
And Mark Grigsby had grunted an assent.
"The boy is a fine fellow," he said one morning as they looked at Paul
hauling ropes. "He'll probably never get quite over this, but he is
fighting like a man, Charles--tell me as much as you feel inclined to of
the story."
So Sir Charles began in his short, broken sentences:
"Parson's girl to start with--sympathy over a broken collar-bone. The wife
behaved unwisely about it, so the boy thought he was in love. We sent him
to travel to get rid of that idea. It appears he met this lady in
Lucerne--seems to have been an exceptional person--a Russian, Tompson
says--a Queen or Princess _incog.,_ the fellow tells me--but I can't spot
her as yet. Hubert will know who she was, though--but it does not
matter--the woman herself was the thing. Gather she was quite a remarkable
woman--ten years older than Paul."
"Always the case," growled Captain Grigsby.
Sir Charles puffed at his pipe--and then: "They were only together three
weeks," he said. "And during that time she managed to cram more knowledge
of everything into the boy's head than you and I have got in a
lifetime. Give you my word, Grig, when he was off his chump in the fever,
he raved like a poet, and an orator, and he was only an ordinary sportsman
when he left home in the spring! Cleopatra, he called her one day, and I
fancy that was the keynote--she must have been one of those exceptional
women we read of in the sixth form."
"And fortunately never met!" said Captain Grigsby.
"I don't know," mused Sir Charles. "It might have been good to live as
wildly even at the price. We've both been about the world, Grig, since the
days we fastened on our cuirasses together for the first time, and each
thought himself the devil of a fine fellow--but I rather doubt if we now
know as much of what is really worth having as my boy there--just
twenty-three years old."
"Nonsense!" snapped Captain Grigsby--but there was a tone of regret in his
protest.
"Lucky to have got off without a knife or a bullet through him--dangerous
nations to grapple with," he said.
"Yes--I gather some pretty heavy menace was over their heads, and that is
what made the lady decamp, so we've much to be thankful for," agreed Sir
Charles.
"Had she any children?" the other asked.
"Tompson says no. Rotten fellow the husband, it appears, and no heir to the
throne, or principality, or whatever it is--so when I have had a talk with
Hubert--Henrietta's brother, you know--the one in the Diplomatic Service,
it will be easy to locate her--gathered Paul doesn't know himself."
"Pretty romance, anyway. And what will you do with the boy now, Charles?"
Paul's father puffed quite a long while at his meerschaum before he
answered, and then his voice was gruffer than ever with tenderness
suppressed.
"Give him his head, Grig," he said. "He's true blue underneath, and he'll
come up to the collar in time, old friend--only I shall have to keep his
mother's love from harrying him. Best and greatest lady in the world, my
wife, but she's rather apt to jog the bridle now and then."
At this moment Paul joined them. His paleness showed less than usual
beneath the sunburn, and his eyes seemed almost bright. A wave of thankful
gladness filled his father's heart.
"Thank God," he said, below his breath. "Thank God."
The weather had been perfection, hardly a drop of rain, and just the
gentlest breezes to waft them slowly along. A suitable soothing idle life
for one who had but lately been near death. And each day Paul's strength
returned, until his father began to hope they might still be home for his
birthday the last day of July. They had crept up the coast of Italy now,
when an absolute calm fell upon them, and just opposite the temple of
Paestum they decided to anchor for the night.
For the last evenings, as the moon had grown larger, Paul had been
strangely restless. It seemed as if he preferred to tire himself out with
unnecessary rope-pulling, and then retire to his berth the moment that
dinner was over, rather than go on deck. His face, too, which had been
controlled as a mask until now, wore a look of haunting anguish which was
grievous to see. He ate his dinner--or rather, pretended to play with the
food--in absolute silence.
Uneasiness overcame Sir Charles, and he glanced at his old friend. But
Paul, after lighting a cigar, and letting it out once or twice, rose, and
murmuring something about the heat, went up on deck.
It was the night of the full moon--eight weeks exactly since the joy of
life had finished for him.
He felt he could not bear even the two kindly gentlemen whose unspoken
sympathy he knew was his. He could not bear anything human. To-night, at
least, he must be alone with his grief.
All nature was in a mood divine. They were close enough inshore to see the
splendid temples clearly with the naked eye. The sky and the sea were of
the colour only the Mediterranean knows.
It was hot and still, and the moon in her pure magnificence cast her
never-ending spell.
Not a sound of the faintest ripple met his ear. The sailors supped
below. All was silence. On one side the vast sea, on the other the shore,
with this masterpiece of man's genius, the temple of the great god
Poseidon, in this vanished settlement of the old Greeks. How marvellously
beautiful it all was, and how his Queen would have loved it! How she would
have told him its history and woven round it the spirit of the past, until
his living eyes could almost have seen the priests and the people, and
heard their worshipping prayers!
His darling had spoken of it once, he remembered, and had told him it was a
place they must see. He recollected her very words:
"We must look at it first in the winter from the shore, my Paul, and see
those splendid proportions outlined against the sky--so noble and so
perfectly balanced--and then we must see it from the sea, with the
background of the olive hills. It is ever silent and deserted and calm, and
death lurks there after the month of March. A cruel malaria, which we must
not face, dear love. But if we could, we ought to see it from a yacht in
safety in the summer time, and then the spell would fall upon us, and we
would know it was true that rose-trees really grew there which gave the
world their blossoms twice a year. That was the legend of the Greeks."
Well, he was seeing it from a yacht, but ah, God! seeing it
alone--alone. And where was she?
So intense and vivid was his remembrance of her that he could feel her
presence near. If he turned his head, he felt he should see her standing
beside him, her strange eyes full of love. The very perfume of her seemed
to fill the air--her golden voice to whisper in his ear--her soul to
mingle with his soul. Ah yes, in spirit, as she had said, they could never
be parted more.
A suppressed moan of anguish escaped his lips, and his father, who had come
silently behind him, put his hand on his arm.
"My poor boy," he said, his gruff voice hoarse in his throat, "if only to
God I could do something for you!"
"Oh, father!" said Paul.
And the two men looked in each other's eyes, and knew each other as never
before.
CHAPTER XXIII
Next day there was a fresh breeze, and they scudded before it on to Naples.
Here Paul seemed well enough to take train, and so arrive in England in
time for his birthday. He owed this to his mother, he and his father both
felt. She had been looking forward to it for so long, as at the time of his
coming of age the festivities had been interrupted by the sudden death of
his maternal grandfather, and the people had all been promised a
continuance of them on this, his twenty-third birthday. So, taking the
journey by sufficiently easy stages, sleeping three nights on the way, they
calculated to arrive on the eve of the event.
The Lady Henrietta would have everything in readiness for them, and her
darling Paul was not to be over-hurried. Only guests of the most congenial
kind had been invited, and such a number of nice girls!
The prospect was perfectly delightful, and ought to cause any young man
pure joy.
It was with a heart as heavy as lead Paul mounted the broad steps of his
ancestral home that summer evening, and was folded in his mother's
arms. (The guests were all fortunately dressing for dinner.)
Captain Grigsby had been persuaded to abandon his yacht and accompany them
too.
"Yes, I'll come, Charles," he said. "Getting too confoundedly hot in these
seas; besides, the boy will want more than one to see him through among
those cackling women."
So the three had travelled together through Italy and France--Switzerland
had been strictly avoided.
"Paul! darling!" his mother exclaimed, in a voice of pained surprise as she
stood back and looked at him. "But surely you have been very ill. My
darling, darling son--"
"I told you he had had a sharp attack of fever, Henrietta," interrupted Sir
Charles quickly, "and no one looks their best after travelling in this
grilling weather. Let the boy get to his bath, and you will see a different
person."
But his mother's loving eyes were not to be deceived. So with infinite
fuss, and terms of endearment, she insisted upon accompanying her offspring
to his room, where the dignified housekeeper was summoned, and his every
imaginable and unimaginable want arranged to be supplied.
Once all this would have irritated Paul to the verge of bearish rudeness,
but now he only kissed his mother's white jewelled hand. He remembered his
lady's tender counsel to him, given in one of their many talks: "You must
always reverence your mother, Paul, and accept her worship with love." So
now he said:
"Dear mother, it is so good of you, but I'm all right--fever does knock one
over a bit, you know. You'll see, though, being at home again will make me
perfectly well in no time--and I'll be as good as you like, and eat and
drink all Mrs. Elwyn's beef-teas and jellies, and other beastly stuff, if
you will just let me dress now, like a darling."
However, his mother was obliged to examine and assure herself that his
beautiful hair was still thick and waving--and she had to pause and sigh
over every sharpened line of his face and figure--though the thought of
being permitted to lavish continuous care for long days to come held a
certain consolation for her.
At last Paul was left alone, and there came a moment he had been longing
for. He had sent written orders that Tremlett should bring Pike, and leave
him in his dressing-room beyond--and all the while his mother had talked he
had heard suppressed whines and scratchings. Somehow he had not wanted to
see his dog before any of the people; the greeting between himself and his
little friend must be in solitude, for was there not a secret link between
them in that golden collar given by his Queen?
And Pike would understand--he certainly would understand!
If short, passionate barks, and a madness of wagging tail-stump,
accompanied by jumps of crazy joy, could comfort any one--then Paul had his
full measure when the door was opened, and this rough white terrier bounded
in upon him, and, frantic with welcome and ecstasy, was with difficulty
quieted at last in his master's fond arms.
"Oh! Pike, Pike!" Paul said, while tears of weakness flowed down his
cheeks. "I can talk to you--and when you wear her collar you will know my
Queen--our Queen."
And Pike said everything of sympathy a dog could say. But it was not until
late at night, when the interminable evening had been got through, that his
master had the pleasure of trying his darling's present on.
That first evening of his homecoming was an ordeal for Paul. He was still
feeble, and dead tired from travelling, to begin with--and to have to
listen and reply to the endless banalities of his mother's guests was
almost more than he could bear.
They were a nice cheery company of mostly young friends. Pretty girls and
his own boon companions abounded, and they chaffed and played silly games
after dinner--until Paul could have groaned.
Captain Grigsby had eventually caught Sir Charles' eye:
"You will have the boy fainting if you don't get him off alone soon," he
said. "These girls would tire a man in strong health!"
And at last Paul had escaped to his own room.
He leant out of his window, and looked at the gibbous moon. Pike was there
on the broad sill beside him, under his arm, and he could feel the golden
collar on the soft fur neck--a wave of perhaps the most hopeless anguish he
had yet felt was upon his spirit now. The unutterable blankness--the
impossible vista of the endless days to come, with no prospect of
meeting--no aim--no hope. Yes, she had said there was one hope--one hope
which could bring peace to their crud unrest. But how and when should he
ever know? And if it were so--then more than ever he should be by her
side. The number of beautiful things he would want to say to her about it
all--the oceans of love he would desire to pour upon her--the tender care
which should be his hourly joy. To honour and worship her, and chase all
pain away. And he did not even know her name, or the country where one day
this hope should reign. That was incredible--and it would be so easy to
find out. But he had promised her never to make inquiries, and he would
keep his word. He saw her reason now; it had arisen in an instinct of
tender protection for himself. She had known if he knew her place of abode
no fear of death would keep him from trying to see her. Ah! he had had the
tears--and why not the cold steel and blood? It was no price to pay could
he but hear once more her golden voice, and feel her loving, twining arms.
He was only held back by the fear of the danger for her. And instead of
being with her, and waiting on her footsteps, he should have to spend his
next hours with those ridiculous Englishwomen! Those foolish, flippant
girls! One had quoted poetry to him at dinner, the very scrap his lady had
spoken a line of--this new poet's, who was taking the world of London by
storm that year: "Loved with a love beyond all words or sense!" And it had
sounded like bathos or sacrilege. What did these dolls know of love, or
life? Chattering parrots to weary a man's brain! Yes, the Greeks were
right, it would be better to keep them spinning flax, and uneducated.
And so in his young intolerance, maddened by pain, he saw all things
gibbous like the mocking moon. Pike stirred under his arm and licked his
hand, a faint whine of love making itself heard in the night.
"O God!" said Paul, as he buried his face in his hands, "let me get through
this time as she would have me do; let me not show the anguish in my heart,
but be at least a man and gentleman."
CHAPTER XXIV
The neighbours and his parents were astonished at the eloquence of Paul's
speech at the great dinner given to the tenants next day. No one had
guessed at his powers before, and the county papers, and indeed some London
reporters, had predicted a splendid political future for this young
orator. It had been quite a long speech, and contained sound arguments and
common sense, and was expressed in language so lofty and refined that it
sent ecstatic admiration through his mother's fond breast.
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