Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection. Radclyffe Hall
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Название: Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection
Автор: Radclyffe Hall
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066499549
isbn:
Churm smoked for some time in grave silence. At last he began.
“I loved your father, Robert, like a brother. For his sake and your own, I wish to be your friend.”
His benignant manner, even more than the words, touched me. I felt my eyes fill with tears.
“Thank you,” said I, “for my father’s sake and my own. I yearn, as only a fatherless man can, for such a friend as you may be. I hoped I might count upon you.”
“We have met but those few times in Europe since your boyhood. I think I know something of you. Still I may as well have more facts. What do you think of yourself? Person and character, now, in a paragraph.”
“Person you see!” said I, standing up, straight as an exclamation-point. “Harry Stillfleet made me parade this morning, and pronounced me reasonably fit for service, legs, lungs, and looks. Character, — as to my character, it is not yet compacted enough for inspection. My soul grows slow as a century-plant. You can hardly look for blossoms at the end of the first twenty-five years. I am a fellow of good intentions, — that is the top of my claim. But whether I am to be a pavior of hell or a promenader of heaven, is as hell or heaven pleases. It seems to me that my allotted method of forming myself is by passing out of myself into others. I am dramatic. I adopt the natures of my companions, and act as if I were they. When I have become, in my proper person, a long list of dramatis personæ, I shall be ready to live my life, be it tragedy, comedy, or romance. And there you have me, Mr. Churm, in a rather lengthy paragraph!”
“I understand. And now you have come home, a working-man, who wishes ‘se ranger’?”
“I should like to find my place.”
“Your place to live you have found already. Your place to labor will not be hard to find. Capable men of your trade are in demand. I have no doubt I can settle you to-morrow.”
“You are a friend indeed,” said I.
“Home and handicraft disposed of; — and now this young absentee, with his place to live and his place to labor arranged, is beginning to think of the other want, namely, somebody to love. How is that, Byng?”
“‘Hoc erat in votis!’” said I, bashfully.
“It was in mine, when I was, like you, impressible, affectionate, trustful, and in my twenties. My forties have a confidence and a special warning to offer you, Robert, if you will accept it.”
“No mature man has ever given me the benefit of his experience. Yours will be most precious.”
“I strip off the battens, and slide back the hatches, and show you a cell in my heart which I thought never to uncover. But there comes a time, after a man’s grief has become historical to himself, when he owes the lesson of his own tragedy to some other man. You are the man to whom my story belongs.”
“Why am I the one?”
“That you must discover for yourself. I tell you my tale. You must adapt it to your own circumstances. You must put in your own set of characters from the people you meet. I point a moral for you; I have no right to impale others upon it.”
“You might misunderstand and wrong them?”
“I might. This bit of personal history I am about to give you explains my connection with the Denmans.”
“It will lead you then to the mystery of Clara’s death?”
“Yes.”
Churm’s Story
Churm took refuge with his cigar for a moment.
“Twenty-four years ago,” he began, jerking his short sentences away as if each was an arrow in his heart, — “twenty-four years ago I was a young man about New York. There came a beautiful girl from the country. Poor! She had rich friends in town. They wanted a flower for their parlors. They took her. Emma — Emma Page was her name.”
He repeated the name, as if it was barbed, and would not come from him without an agonized effort.
“She charmed all,” he continued. “She fascinated me. Strangely, strangely. I will not analyze her power. You will see what knowledge it implied. I was a simple, eager fellow. Eager to love, as you are.”
“I only said willing” I interjected.
“The wish soon ripens to frenzy. Presently the lady and I were betrothed. I was a passionate lover. You would not think it to look at me now, with this coat and these clodhopper shoes.” He forced a smile.
“Shaggy jackets and thick shoes with an orchestral creak are de rigueur for lovers now,” rejoined I, trying to lighten the growing gloom of Churm’s manner.
“We wore smooth black, and paper soles,” said he. “Ah, well! I was a loyal, undoubting heart. I loved and I trusted wholly.”
He paused, and drew his cigar to a fresh light. Then, as he remained silent and grew moodier, I recalled him to the subject, and asked, “You lost her? By death?”
“By death, Byng? Yes, by the death of my love. She stabbed it. Shall I tell you how? Poor child! one single poisoned look of hers, one single phrase that proved a tainted nature, stabbed and poisoned my love dead, dead, dead.”
Again he was silent. Pity would not let me speak.
“This may seem disloyalty,” he by and by resumed. “But she is dead and pardoned long ago. I must be loyal to the living. You may run the risk I ran. I give to you, to you only, to you peculiarly, the warning of my misery. If you are ever harmed as I was, you will owe the same to your son, or your friend.”
I was full of youthful, unshaken self-confidence. I saw no danger, anticipated no wound. I could not make the personal application Churm suggested. I listened, greatly touched and interested, but without foreboding.
“A look and a word,” Churm began again, “seemed to flash upon me the conviction that the woman I loved was sullied. A foul-minded man may do foul wrong by such a fancy. My mind was pure. My first impulse was to rebel against the agonizing doubt, and be truer and tenderer than before. You comprehend the feeling?”
“Thoroughly. Your impulse would be mine.”
“‘Love,’” said I to myself, “‘tests love,’” Churm continued. “‘I mistrust, because I do not love enough. I must beware of being personally base and cruelly unjust to her. My suspicion shall be the evanescent dream of an unwholesome instant, — like Ophelia’s song.’ But still the anguish and the dread stayed in my heart. What could I do? Wait? Watch? Make myself a spy to examine this seeming sully, and find it an indelible stain? Uncover the bad side of my nature, apply it to hers, and study the kind and degree of the electricity evoked by the contact! Should I protect myself by any such baseness? While these thoughts were tangling in my brain, an outer force cut the knot.”
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