Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection. Radclyffe Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ There was a general move toward our party. The click of balls upon the tables was still. The players came forward, cue in hand. These unknightly knights of the Long Table stood about us, with the blunted lances of a blunted chivalry, waiting to chuckle over the fate of some comrade in the dust, of some damsel soiled with scorn. Remember, that these were only the baser sort of the members. Heroes may sometimes lounge. Real heroes may play billiards, like the Phelan, and be heroes still.

      Densdeth’s manner with his auditory was a study.

      “Pigs,” he seemed to say, “I suppose I must feed you. Gobble up this and this, ye rabble rout! Take your fare and my mental kicking with it.”

      Soon he tired of the herd, and led the way to a billiard-table, apart.

      “I wanted to show you, Byng,” said he, with an air of weary disgust, “what kind of men will be your associates among the idlers.”

      “The busy men are nobler, I hope,” said I.

      “You shall see. I will give you the entrée to the other worlds, — the business world, the literary world, the religious world, all of them. Possibly you may not have quite outlived your illusions. Possibly you may have fancied that men are to be trusted on a new continent. Possibly you may believe in the success of a society and polity based on the assumption that man-kind is not an ass when he is not a villain, and vice versa.”

      “I had some such fancy.”

      “Better be disenchanted now, than disappointed by and by. Apropos, don’t suppose I often degrade myself to the level of that swinish multitude of scandal-mongers. But when I saw them so greedy, I could not forbear giving them diet, according to their stomachs.”

      “What an infernal humbug you are, Densdeth!” said Raleigh, marking a five-shot; “you love to spoil those boys, and keep the men spoilt. If you were out of the world, they would all reform, and go, to sucking honey, instead of poison.”

      “We are all humbugs,” rejoined Densdeth; “I want to put Byng on his guard against me and the rest. He might get some unhappy notion, that in America men are brave and women are pure.”

      I kept my protest to myself, willing to study Densdeth further.

      Densdeth led the conversation, as indeed he never failed to do. He was a keen, hard analyzer of men, utterly sceptical to good motives. There is always just such a proportion of selfishness in every man’s every act; there must be, because there is a man in it. It may be the larger half, the lesser half, a fraction, the mere dust of an atom, that makes the scale descend. Densdeth always discovered the selfish purpose, put it in focus, held up a lens of his own before it. At once it grew, and spread, and seemed the whole.

      Densdeth was the Apostle of Disenchantment. No paradisiacal innocence where he entered. He revealed evil everywhere. That was at the core, according to him, however smooth the surface showed. Power over others consisted in finding that out. And that power was the only thing, except sensuality, worth having.

      Thus I condense my impressions of him. I did not know him, in and in, out and out, after this first morning at the club, nor after many such meetings. I learnt him slowly.

      Yet I think I divined him from the first. I did not state to my own mind, then, why he captivated me, — why he sometimes terrified me, — why I had a hateful love for his society. In fact, the power of deeply analyzing character comes with a maturity that I had not attained. I was to pay price for my knowledge. Densdeth’s shadow was to fall upon me. My danger with evil personified, in such a man as Densdeth, was to sear into me a profound and saving horror of evil. One does not read the moral, until the tale is told.

      We played our billiards. One o’clock struck. We left Raleigh to be bored with the world and sick of himself, to knock the balls about, and wish he had been born a blacksmith or a hod-carrier.

      Densdeth and I walked to the Denmans.

      “You will see a very captivating young lady,” he said, with a sharp and rapid glance at me.

      I was aware of a conscious look. He caught it also.

      “Aha, Byng! a little tenderness for the old playmate! Well, perhaps she has been waiting for you. She has looked coldly on scores of lovers.”

      There was a familiarity in his tone which offended me. It seemed to sneer away the delicacy I felt towards one with whom I had childish passages of admiration ten years ago. I was angry at his disposing of my destiny and hers at once. In turn, I looked sharply at him, and said, in the same careless tone, “How does Miss Denman compare with her sister?”

      Not a spark of emotion in his impassive face. There might have been a slight smile, as if to say, “This boy fancies that he is able to probe me, and learn why I courted the less beautiful sister, and what I did to drive her mad and to death.” But the smile vanished, and he said, quietly: “We will not speak of the dead, if you please. Among the living, Miss Denman stands alone. A great prize, Byng! People that pretend to know say that Mr. Denman is a millionnaire. See what a grand house he lives in!”

      “Grand houses sometimes make millionnaires paupers,” I remarked, thinking of what Churm had told me.

      “I am quite sure no pauper owns this,” Densdeth said, measuring it with a look, as we walked up the steps.

      I remembered what Churm had said, and fancied I saw at least mortgagee, if not proprietor, in my companion’s eye. Was he inspecting to see if his house needed a trowelful of mortar, or a gutter repaired?

      Emma Denman

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      Densdeth rang. We were admitted at once. The footman introduced us into a parlor fronting on the avenue. The interior of the house was worthy of its stately architecture. I do not describe. People, not things, passions, not objects, are my topics.

      Presently, in a mirror at the end of the long suite of rooms, I was aware of the imaged figure of a young lady approaching. Semblance before substance, instead of preparing me for the interview, it almost startled me. I half fancied that shadowy reflection to be the spirit of the dead sister watching. The living sister was coming in the body; the presence of the sister dead tarried in the background, curious to see what would grow from the germ of a childish friendship revived.

      In a moment the lady herself stepped forward.

      No thought of shadows any more!

      She, the substance, took a stand among the foremost figures in my drama.

      The effect of the room where I sat was rich and festal, almost to the verge of gorgeousness. Had sorrow dared to intrude among such courtly splendors? Carpets thick with the sunburnt flowers of late summer, — had these felt the trailing step that carries grief on to another moment of grief? Heavy crimson curtains, — must these have uttered muffled echoes when a sigh, outward bound, drifted against their folds? And deep-toned pictures, full of victory and jubilee, — could they not outface the pale countenance of mourning in that luxurious room? It made the power of sorrow and the bitterness of death seem far more giant in their strength, that they had crowded in hither, and hung a dim film of funereal black before all this magnificence.

      Crimson was the chief color in carpet, curtains, and СКАЧАТЬ