Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection. Radclyffe Hall

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      “Be at rest, then! There is not a man or a woman in the world, whom I cannot look in the eyes without blenching. You need not be ashamed of me. You may trust me, without any fear of that harshest of all the shocks our life can feel, loss of faith in a friend’s honor.”

      “Well, we will never speak of this again. Live by your own laws, in the dark or the light! I demand unquestioned freedom for myself. I am the last man to refuse it to another.”

      “Really,” said Dreeme, “since your projection into my orbit, I no longer need personal contact with the outer world.”

      “You find me a good enough newsman.”

      “The artistic temperament does not love to bustle about in the crowd, to shoulder and hustle for its facts. You give me the cream of what the world says and does. But, by and by, when you tire of the novelty of a tyro-artist’s society, you will drop me.”

      “Never! so long as you consent to be my in-door man. I often feel, now, as I stir about among men, collecting my budget of daily facts, that I only get them for the pleasure of hearing your remarks when I unpack in the evening.”

      “I must try to be a wiser and wittier critic.”

      “You return me far more than I bring. I train my mental muscle with other people. You give me lessons in the gymnastics of finer forces. My worldling nature shrivels, the immortal Me expands under your artistic touch.”

      “I am happy to be accused of such a power,” Dreeme said, with his sweet, melancholy smile. “It is the noblest one being can exercise over another, and needed much in this low world of ours.”

      “Yes, Dreeme, your fresh, brave, earnest character I begin to regard as my guardian influence. With you I escape from the mean ambitions, the disloyal rivalries, the mercenary friendships of men, — from the coarseness, baseness, and foulness of the world. You neutralize to me all the evil powers.”

      “That Mr. Densdeth, of whom you have once or twice spoken, — is he one of them?”

      “Perhaps so.”

      “Are you still intimate with him?”

      “Intimate? Hardly. Intimacy implies friendship.”

      “Familiar, then?”

      “Familiar, yes. He seeks my society. We are thrown together by circumstances. He interests me greatly. I know no man of such wide scope of information, such knowledge, such wit, such brilliancy, — no one at all to compare with him, now that my friend Churm is absent.”

      “Those two fraternize, I suppose.”

      “Churm and Densdeth?”

      “Yes; you seem to make one a substitute for the other.”

      “‘How happy could I be with either!’ O no! You strangely misapprehend Mr. Churm. The two are as much asunder in heart as in looks.”

      “Ah!” said Dreeme.

      “You seem incredulous. But let me tell you that Churm’s knowledge of Densdeth gives the same result as these clairvoyant intuitions of yours. I suppose I am a perverse fellow for not obeying everybody’s ‘Fœnum habet in cornu’ of Densdeth; but I have Cato’s feeling for the weaker side, or at least the side assailed. Besides, I have a scientific experiment with this terrible fellow. I let him bite, and clap on an antidote before the brain is benumbed. I play with Densdeth, who really seems to me like an avatar of the wise Old Serpent himself, and then, before he has quite conquered me with his fascination, I snatch myself away, and come to you, to be aroused and healed.”

      “I am glad to be an antidote to poison. But have you no fears of such baleful intercourse?”

      “None. As a man of the world, I must know the perilous as well as the safe among my race. How am to become as wise as the serpent, unless I study the serpent? I find Densdeth a most valuable preceptor. He has sounded every man’s heart, in life or history, and can state the depth of evil there in fathoms, feet, and inches. I could no more do without him for that side of my education, than I could spare your dove-like teaching to make me harmless as a dove. Pardon my giving you this unmasculine office.”

      “You speak lightly, Mr. Byng. I fear you are a man who has not yet fully made up his mind.”

      “What? As to the great choice, — Hercules’s choice? Virtue or Vice? yes, I am absolutely committed. Virtue has me fast. In fact, I am deemed quite a Puritan, as men go; I should be so not to shame my ancestors.”

      “Forgive me if I ask, Do you know what Evil is?”

      “I suppose so; as much as is to be known.”

      “O, you cannot! You would not trifle with it, if you dreamed how it soils. You would fly it.”

      “Not face it?”

      “Never, unless duty commanded you to face and crush it. Those who know Evil best fly farthest, hide deepest, dread its approach, shudder at the thought of its pursuit. It is so terribly subtle. The bravest are not brave before it; the strongest are not strong; the purest are not pure. It makes cowards of the brave, it paralyzes the strong, it taints the pure. No one is safe, — no one, until personal agony has made him hate Evil worse than death. Mr. Byng, you have a noble soul; but no soul can safely palter with a bad man. Palter! I use strong words. I mean to use them. You have spoken lightly and pained me. To a bad man — to some bad men — every pure soul is a perpetual reproach, and must be sullied. You speak plainly of this Densdeth; you understand his bad influence, and yet you deal with him as if he were some inert chemical combination, which you could safely handle and analyze. Such a being is never inert; the less active he seems, the more he is likely to be insidiously at work to ruin. Forgive me, my dear friend, that I warn you so eagerly against this fatal curiosity!”

      He had spoken with fervid energy and eloquence. In fact, there was in this strange young genius a passionate ardor, always latent, only waiting to flame forth, when his heart was touched. And when some deeper interest stirred him, — when he had some protest to utter against wrong, — his large, melancholy eyes grew intense, his voice lost its pensive sadness; color came to his thin, sallow cheeks. It was so now. For a moment, he was almost beautiful with this sudden evanescent inspiration.

      I paused after his eager outburst, watching him with such admiration as we give to a great actor, and then — for I confess that my conceit was somewhat offended by this good advice, from one in years so much my junior — I said, with a confident smile: “You talk like a Cassandra. What do you foresee so very terrible, as about to befall me? Pray do not be uneasy! I am an old stager. I have managed to make my way thus far in my life without being worse than my fellows. ‘I am indifferent honest.’ I will try to remain so, despite of the seductions of Bugaboo. And then, you know, I cannot go far wrong with you for Mentor.”

      My tone seemed to pain him. He painted some moments in silence on his Lear.

      While he painted, I observed him, — interested much in the picture of his creation, more in the creator. “Raphael-Angelico,” I thought, “he merits the name fully. What a delicate being! The finest organization I have ever seen in man. How strangely his personality affects me! And every moment fancies drift across my mind that I actually know his secret, and am blind, purposely blind to my knowledge, because I promised him when we first met that I would be so.”

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