Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection. Radclyffe Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ grasp a bigger share than his neighbors; and so there is never any considerable wrong done to any one; — no wrong, and consequently hearts never break, and there can be no need of mercy, pity, or pardon.”

      “Why, Byng! life without shade, life all bald, garish steady sunshine, may do to swell wheat and puff cabbage-heads; but man needs something other than monotony of comfort, something keener than the stolid pleasures of deaconish respectability. Byng,” said my Florentine, Heidelberg, or Parisian comrades, each in their own language and manner, “Byng, you will actually starve for poetry and romance in that detestably new country.”

      I confess that I had had some fears on this subject, myself.

      I had made up my mind to drop into systematic existence, cut fancy, eschew romance, banish dreams, and occupy my digestion solely on a diet of commonplace facts.

      I might have known that man cannot live on corporeal, mundane facts alone, unless he can persuade his immortality to forget him, and leave him to crawl a mere earth-worm, dirt to dirt, until he is dust to dust.

      As to romance, I might have known, if I had considered the subject, that wherever youth and maiden are, there is the certainty of romance and the chance of tragedy. I might have known that the important thing in a drama is, what the characters are, and what they do, not the scenes where they stand while they are acting. In the theatre, people are looking at the lover and the lady, not at the balustrade and the tower.

      But though I might have known that the story of Life and Love is just as potent to create itself a fitting background when it is acted anew on a new stage, as when it is announced for repetition with the old familiar, musty properties, I had, indeed, been somewhat bullied by the unreflecting talk just quoted. I had fancied that the play could not go on without antiquated stuff to curtain it, dry-rotted boards for it to tread, and a time-worn drop for it to stand out against. I was sceptical as to the possibility of a novel and beautiful development of romance under the elms of a new land, in the streets of its new cities. I had adopted the notion of Europe, and Europe-tainted America, that my country was indeed very big, very busy, very prosperous, but monstrously dull, tame, and prosaic.

      Error! Worse, — mere stupid blindness!

      My first plunge into life at home proved it. See how my very first day became over-crowded with elements of interest and romance, — nay, of mysterious and tragic excitement!

      Even the ancient scenery, whether important or not to the progress of the drama, had packed itself up, and followed my travels. Stillfleet’s chambers were an epitome of the whole Past, — that is to say, of the Past as leading to the Present and interpreting it. Stillfleet had concentrated the essence of all the ages in his informal museum. I had but to glance about, and I had travelled over all terrestrial space, and lived through all human centuries. He had relics from all the famous camps in the great march of mankind. He had examples, typical objects, to show what every age and every race had contributed to the common stock. By art on his walls, by books in the library, by objects of curious antiquity, even by the grotesque fabrics and contrivances of savages and transitory tribes of men, all distributed about in orderly disorder, I could study history at a glance, or rather absorb history with unconscious eyes.

      Scenery! I need but to look into the Egyptian corner of my chamber, and, if I took any interest in the life of the Pharaohs, there it was in a pictured slab from the Memnonium; or in the dead Pharaoh, there himself was grinning in a mummy-case, — a very lively corpse, — unpleasantly lively, indeed, when nights were dark, and matches flashed brimstone and refused to burn.

      Scenery! Greece and Rome, Dark Ages, Crusades, Middle Ages, Moorish Conquest, ’88 in England, Renaissance, ’89 in France, every old era and the last new era, — all were so thoroughly represented here, by model of temple, cast of statue, vase, picture, tapestry, suit of armor, Moslem scymitar, bundle of pikes, rusty cross-bow or arquebuse, model of guillotine, — by some object that showed what the age had most admired, most used, or most desired, — that there, restored before me, rose and spread the age itself, and called its heroes and its caitiffs forward in review.

      If I preferred to live in the Past, I had only to shut myself up at home, and forget that eager Present about me, — that stirring life of America, urged on by the spirit of the Past, and unburdened by its matter.

      Romance, too! Romance had come to me, whether I would or no. Without any permission of mine, asked or granted, I was become an actor, with my special part to play, perforce, among mysteries.

      Cecil Dreeme.

      Emma Denman.

      Densdeth.

      My connection with these three characters grew daily closer. I do not love mystery. Ignorance I do not hate; for ignorance is the first condition of knowledge. Mystery I recoil from. It generally implies the concealment of something that should not be concealed, for the sake of delusion or deception; or if not for these, because tragedy will follow its revelation.

      Cecil Dreeme continued to me a profound mystery. He kept himself utterly secluded by day, working hard at his art. He knew no one but myself. No one ever saw him except myself and Locksley, or Locksley’s children. Only at night, wrapped in his cloak, did he emerge from his seclusion, and wander over the dim city.

      I became his companion in these walks whenever my engagements allowed; but such night wandering seemed unhealthy for him in his delicate state.

      “Are you wise, Dreeme,” said I to him, one morning, in his studio, after we had become intimate, “to live this nocturnal life? Sunshine and broad daylight are just as indispensable to man as they are to flower or plant. I might give you good chemical reasons for my statement.”

      “There are night-blooming flowers, — the Cereus, and others,” said he, avoiding my question.

      “Yes, but they owe their blossom to the day’s accumulation of sunshine. Botany refuses to protect you.”

      “Plants grow by night.”

      “In night that follows sunny day.”

      “I accept the analogy. I have accumulated sunshine enough, I hope, for growth, and perhaps for a pallid kind of bloom, in my past sunny days. My rank growth went on vigorously enough in the daylight. I am conscious of a finer development in the dark.”

      “But I do not like this voluntary prison.”

      “Few escape a forced imprisonment, longer or shorter, in their lives. Illness or sorrow shut us in away from the world’s glare, that we may see colors as they are, and know gold from pinchbeck. Why should I not go to prison, of my own accord, for such teaching, and other reasons?”

      “And other reasons? Tell me, Dreeme, before our friendship goes further, — before 1 utterly and irrecoverably give you my confidence.”

      “Go on.”

      “No! I cannot go on.”

      “I understand, and am not insulted. You mean to ask whether I am hiding here because I have picked a pocket, or pillaged a till, or basely broken a heart, or perhaps because I have a blood-stain to wear out.”

      “My imagination had not put its suspicion, if any existed, into any such crude charges.”

      “So I saw, and stated the question blankly. You could not connect me with vulgar or devilish crime. At the same time, you had a certain uneasiness about me, undefined and misty, but real. You will not deny it,” and he СКАЧАТЬ