Twilight, Julia Frankau [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

“The first two or three times that Gabriel Stanton came down he stayed at ‘ The King’s Arms.’ She was always ill after he left, always. She made a brave effort, poor girl. Day after day I have come in and seen her sitting as you are, paper before her, and ink. I don’t think anything ever came of it. She would play too, for hours.”

“You stayed away when he was here, I suppose?”

“No! Not always. I was sent for once or twice. She had those heart attacks.”

“Hysteria?”

“Heart attacks. He did not know how to treat or calm her.”

“Poor Gabriel Stanton!”

“Poor Margaret Capel!” he retorted. “I wouldn’t try to write the story if I were you. You misjudge her, I am sure you do. She was delicateminded.”

“Why did she have him down here at all? She knew the risk she ran. Why did she not wait until the decree was made absolute?” For by now, of course, I knew how the trouble came about.

“She was in love with him.”

“She did not know the meaning of the word. She was philandering with you at the time.” He grew red.

“She was not. I was her doctor.”

“And are not doctors men?”

“Not with their patients.”

I looked at him thoughtfully and remembered Ella. He answered as if he read my thoughts.

“You are not my patient, you are Lansdowne’s.” He gave a short uncertain laugh when he had said that. That seemed amusing to me, for I did not care whether he was a man or not, feeling ill and superlatively old and sexless, also that he lacked something, had played this game with Margaret, the game she had taught him, until his withers were all unwrung, until she had bereft him of reason, leaving him empty, as it were hollow, filled up with words, meaningless words that were part of the fine game, of which he had forgotten or never known the rules.

After he left I read her next letter, the one written after Gabriel Stanton had been to Pineland for the first time, and she had told him how she felt about him.

Carbies, Pineland.

I have been writing to you and tearing up the letters ever since you left. I look back and cannot believe you were here only two days. The two days passed like two hours, but now it seems as if we must have been together for weeks. You told me so much and I… I exposed myself to you completely. You know everything about me, it is incredible but nevertheless true that I tried all I knew to show you the real woman on whom you are basing such high hopes. What are you thinking of me now, I wonder. That I am a little mad, not quite human? What is this genius that separates me from the world, from all my kind? My books, my little plays, my piano-playing! There is a little of it in all of them, is there not, my friend, my companion, the first person to whom I have ever spoken so frankly. Is it not true that I have a wider vision, intenser emotions than other women? Love me therefore better, and differently than any man has ever loved a woman. You say that you will, you do, that I am to pour myself out on you. I like that phrase of yours you need never use it again, you have already used it twice.

“I shall remember while the light is yet, And when the darkness comes I shall not forget.”

It went through me, there is nowhere it has not permeated. And see, I obey you. I no longer feel a pariah and an outcast, with all the world pointing at me. The degradation of my marriage is only a nightmare, something, as you say, that never happened. I look out on the garden and the sea beyond, on the jagged coast-line and the green treeclad hills, all bathed in sunshine, and forget that I have suffered. I am glad to know you so intimately that I can picture each hour what you are doing. You are not happy, and I am almost glad. What could I give you if you were happy? But as it is when you are bored and wearied, with your office work, depressed in your uncongenial home, I can send you my thoughts and they will flow in upon you like fresh water to a stagnant pool. I have at times so great a sense of strength and power. At others, as you know, I am faint and fearful. Nobody but you has ever understood that I am not inconsistent, only a different woman at different times. I know I see things that are hidden from other people, not mystic things, but the great Scheme unfolded, the scheme of the world, why some suffer and some enjoy, what God means by it all. In my visions it is blindingly brilliant and clear, and I understand God as no human being has ever understood Him before. I want to be His messenger, to show the interblending marvel. I know it is for that I am here. Then I write a short story that says nothing at all, or I sit at the piano and try to express, all alone by myself, that for which I cannot find words. Afterwards I go to bed and know I am a fool, and lie awake all night, miserable enough at my futility. I have always lived like this save during those frenzied months when I thought love was the expression for which I had waited, and with my eyes on the stars, blundered into a morass. Notwithstanding we have hardly spoken of it, you know the love I ask from you has nothing in common with the love ordinary men and women have for each other, nothing at all in common. The very thought of physical love makes me sick and ill. That is still a nightmare, nothing more nor less. I want my thoughts held, not my hands. How intimate we must be for me to write you like this, and the weeks we have known each other so few.

You won’t read this in the office, you will take it home with you to the bookish and precise flat in Hampstead, and hoard it up until the little round-backed sister with her claim and her querulousness has left you in peace. She is part of that great scheme of things which evades me when I try to write it. Why should you sacrifice your freedom to make a home for her? Poor cripple, with her cramped small brain; your companion to whom you are tied like a sound man to a leper, and with whom you cannot converse and yet must sometimes talk. You cannot read or write very well in the atmosphere she creates for you, but must listen to gossip and answer fittingly, wasting the precious hours. Nevertheless you will find time to answer this letter. I shall not watch for the coming of the post and be disappointed. She does not care for you overmuch I fear, this poor sister of yours, only for herself. I am sorry she is hunchbacked and ailing. But I am sorrier still that she is your sister and burdens you. Life has given you so little. Your dreary orphaned childhood in your uncle’s large hospitable family, of which you were always the one apart, you and that same suffering sister; your strenuous schooldays. You say you were happy at Oxford, but for the cramping certainty that there was no choice of a career; only the stool at Stanton’s, and so repayment for all your uncle had done for you. My poor Gabriel, it seems to me your boyhood and your manhood have been spent. And now you have only me. Me! with hands without gifts and arid lips, an absorbing egotism, and only my passionate desire for expression. I don’t want to live; I want to write, and even for that I am not strong enough! My message is too big for me. Hold me and enfold me, I want to rest in you; you are unlike all other men because you want to give and give and give, asking nothing. And therefore you are my mate, because I am unlike all other women, being a genius. You alone of all men or women I have ever known will not doubt that I have a message, although I may never prove it. You don’t want to be proud of me, only to rest me.

Which reminds me that book on Staffordshire Pottery will never be written. How will you explain it to your partners, and the wasted expense of the illustrations? I shall send you a business letter withdrawing; then I suppose you will say that you had better run down and discuss the matter with me. But, oh! it’s so wonderful to know that you, you yourself will know without any explaining that I cannot write about pottery just now. I have written a few verses. I will send them to you when they are polished and the rhythm is perfect. There will.be little else left by ‘then!

Write and tell me that one day you will come again to Pineland. One day, but not yet. I could not bear it, not to think of you concretely here with me again, this week or next. I want you as a light in the distance, my eyes are too weak to see you more closely… I won’t even erase that, although it will hurt you. Sometimes I feel I am not going to bring you happiness, only drain you of sympathy.

MARGARET.

Church Row, Hampstead.

My dear, dear love, you wonderful, wonderful Margaret:

I wish I could tell you, I wish I could begin to tell you all you mean to me, what our two days together meant to me. You ask me what I am thinking of you. If only I could let you know that, you would know everything. For your sufferings I love you, for your crucified gift and agonies. You say I am to love you better and differently than any man has ever loved woman. My angel child, I do. Can’t you feel it? Tell me you do. That is all I want, that you tell me you do know how I worship you, that it means something to you, helps you a little.

What am I to answer to your next sentence? You say you ask of me a love that has nothing in common with the love ordinary men and women have for each other, that physical love makes you sick and ill. Beloved, everything shall be as you wish between us. I would not so much as kiss the hem of your dress if you forbade it by a look, nor your delicate white hands. I love your hands. You let me hold them, you must let me hold them sometimes. Dear generous one, I will never trouble you. I am for you to use as you will, that you use me at all is gift enough. This time will pass this trying dreadful time. Until then, and afterwards if you wish it, I will be only your comrade your very faithful knight. I love your delicacy and reserve, all you withhold from me. I yearn to be your lover, your husband; all and everything to you. Don’t hate and despise me. You say when radiant love came to you, your eyes were on the stars, and you blundered into a morass. But, sweetheart, darling, if I had been your lover husband, do you think this would have happened? Think, think. I cannot bear that you should confuse any love with mine. I want to hold you in my arms, teach you.