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I DON'T know how it is best to put this thing down--whether it
would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it
were a story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it
reached me from the lips of Leonora or from those of Edward
himself.
So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of
the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul
opposite me. And I shall go on talking, in a low voice while the
sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of
wind polishes the bright stars. From time to time we shall get up
and go to the door and look out at the great moon and say: "Why,
it is nearly as bright as in Provence!" And then we shall come
back to the fireside, with just the touch of a sigh because we are
not in that Provence where even the saddest stories are gay.
Consider the lamentable history of Peire Vidal. Two years ago
Florence and I motored from Biarritz to Las Tours, which is in the
Black Mountains. In the middle of a tortuous valley there rises up
an immense pinnacle and on the pinnacle are four castles--Las
Tours, the Towers. And the immense mistral blew down that
valley which was the way from France into Provence so that the
silver grey olive leaves appeared like hair flying in the wind, and
the tufts of rosemary crept into the iron rocks that they might not
be torn up by the roots.
It was, of course, poor dear Florence who wanted to go to Las
Tours. You are to imagine that, however much her bright
personality came from Stamford, Connecticut, she was yet a
graduate of Poughkeepsie. I never could imagine how she did
it--the queer, chattery person that she was. With the far-away look
in her eyes--which wasn't, however, in the least romantic--I mean
that she didn't look as if she were seeing poetic dreams, or looking
through you, for she hardly ever did look at you!--holding up one
hand as if she wished to silence any objection--or any comment
for the matter of that--she would talk. She would talk about
William the Silent, about Gustave the Loquacious, about Paris
frocks, about how the poor dressed in 1337, about Fantin-Latour,
about the Paris-Lyons-Mediterranée train-deluxe, about whether it
would be worth while to get off at Tarascon and go across the
windswept suspension-bridge, over the Rhone to take another look
at Beaucaire.
We never did take another look at Beaucaire, of course--beautiful
Beaucaire, with the high, triangular white tower, that looked as
thin as a needle and as tall as the Flatiron, between Fifth and
Broadway--Beaucaire with the grey walls on the top of the
pinnacle surrounding an acre and a half of blue irises, beneath the
tallness of the stone pines, What a beautiful thing the stone pine
is! . . .
No, we never did go back anywhere. Not to Heidelberg, not to
Hamelin, not to Verona, not to Mont Majour--not so much as to
Carcassonne itself. We talked of it, of course, but I guess Florence
got all she wanted out of one look at a place. She had the seeing
eye.
I haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which
I want to return--towns with the blinding white sun upon them;
stone pines against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all
carved and painted with stags and scarlet flowers and crowstepped
gables with the little saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi
and walled towns a mile or so back from the sea, on the
Mediterranean, between Leghorn and Naples. Not one of them did
we see more than once, so that the whole world for me is like spots
of colour in an immense canvas. Perhaps if it weren't so I should
have something to catch hold of now.
Is all this digression or isn't it digression? Again I don't know. You,
the listener, sit opposite me. But you are so silent. You don't tell
me anything. I am, at any rate, trying to get you to see what sort of
life it was I led with Florence and what Florence was like. Well,
she was bright; and she danced. She seemed to dance over the
floors of castles and over seas and over and over and over the
salons of modistes and over the plages of the Riviera--like a gay
tremulous beam, reflected from water upon a ceiling. And my
function in life was to keep that bright thing in existence. And it
was almost as difficult as trying to catch with your hand that
dancing reflection. And the task lasted for years.
Florence's aunts used to say that I must be the laziest man in
Philadelphia. They had never been to Philadelphia and they had
the New England conscience. You see, the first thing they said to
me when I called in on Florence in the little ancient, colonial,
wooden house beneath the high, thin-leaved elms--the first
question they asked me was not how I did but what did I do. And I
did nothing. I suppose I ought to have done something, but I didn't
see any call to do it. Why does one do things? I just drifted in and
wanted Florence. First I had drifted in on Florence at a Browning
tea, or something of the sort in Fourteenth Street, which was then
still residential. I don't know why I had gone to New York; I don't
know why I had gone to the tea. I don't see why Florence should
have gone to that sort of spelling bee. It wasn't the place at which,
even then, you expected to find a Poughkeepsie graduate. I guess
Florence wanted to raise the culture of the Stuyvesant crowd and
did it as she might have gone in slumming. Intellectual slumming,
that was what it was. She always wanted to leave the world a little
more elevated than she found it. Poor dear thing, I have heard her
lecture Teddy Ashburnham by the hour on the difference between
a Franz Hals and a Wouvermans and why the Pre-Mycenaean
statues were cubical with knobs on the top. I wonder what he
made of it? Perhaps he was thankful.
I know I was. For do you understand my whole attentions, my
whole endeavours were to keep poor dear Florence on to topics
like the finds at Cnossos and the mental spirituality of Walter
Pater. I had to keep her at it, you understand, or she might die. For
I was solemnly informed that if she became excited over anything
or if her emotions were really stirred her little heart might cease to
beat. For twelve years I had to watch every word that any person
uttered in any conversation and I had to head it off what the
English call "things"--off love, poverty, crime, religion and the rest
of it. Yes, the first doctor that we had when she was carried off
the ship at Havre assured me that this must be done. Good God,
are all these fellows monstrous idiots, or is there a freemasonry
between all of them from end to end of the earth? . . . That is what
makes me think of that fellow Peire Vidal.
Because, of course, his story is culture and I had to head her
towards culture and at the same time it's so funny and she hadn't
got to laugh, and it's so full of love and she wasn't to think of love.
Do you know the story? Las Tours of the Four Castles had for
chatelaine Blanche Somebody-or-other who was called as a term
of commendation, La Louve--the She-Wolf. And Peire Vidal the
Troubadour paid his court to La Louve. And she wouldn't have
anything to do with him. So, out of compliment to her--the things
people do when they're in love!--he dressed himself up in
wolfskins and went up into the Black Mountains. And the
shepherds of the Montagne Noire and their dogs mistook him for
a wolf and he was torn with the fangs and beaten with clubs. So
they carried him back to Las Tours and La Louve wasn't at all
impressed. They polished him up and her husband remonstrated
seriously with her. Vidal was, you see, a great poet and it was not
proper to treat a great poet with indifference.
So Peire Vidal declared himself Emperor of Jerusalem or
somewhere and the husband had to kneel down and kiss his feet
though La Louve wouldn't. And Peire set sail in a rowing boat
with four companions to redeem the Holy Sepulchre. And they
struck on a rock somewhere, and, at great expense, the husband
had to fit out an expedition to fetch him back. And Peire Vidal fell
all over the Lady's bed while the husband, who was a most
ferocious warrior, remonstrated some more about the courtesy
that is due to great poets. But I suppose La Louve was the more
ferocious of the two. Anyhow, that is all that came of it. Isn't that
a story?
You haven't an idea of the queer old-fashionedness of Florence's
aunts--the Misses Hurlbird, nor yet of her uncle. An
extraordinarily lovable man, that Uncle John. Thin, gentle, and
with a "heart" that made his life very much what Florence's
afterwards became. He didn't reside at Stamford; his home was in
Waterbury where the watches come from. He had a factory there
which, in our queer American way, would change its functions
almost from year to year. For nine months or so it would
manufacture buttons out of bone. Then it would suddenly produce
brass buttons for coachmen's liveries. Then it would take a turn at
embossed tin lids for candy boxes. The fact is that the poor old
gentleman, with his weak and fluttering heart, didn't want his
factory to manufacture anything at all. He wanted to retire. And he
did retire when he was seventy. But he was so worried at having
all the street boys in the town point after him and exclaim: "There
goes the laziest man in Waterbury!" that he tried taking a tour
round the world. And Florence and a young man called Jimmy
went with him. It appears from what Florence told me that
Jimmy's function with Mr Hurlbird was to avoid exciting topics for
him. He had to keep him, for instance, out of political discussions.
For the poor old man was a violent Democrat in days when you
might travel the world over without finding anything but a
Republican. Anyhow, they went round the world.
I think an anecdote is about the best way to give you an idea of
what the old gentleman was like. For it is perhaps important that
you should know what the old gentleman was; he had a great deal
of influence in forming the character of my poor dear wife.
Just before they set out from San Francisco for the South Seas old
Mr Hurlbird said he must take something with him to make little
presents to people he met on the voyage. And it struck him that
the things to take for that purpose were oranges--because
California is the orange country--and comfortable folding chairs.
So he bought I don't know how many cases of oranges--the great
cool California oranges, and half-a-dozen folding chairs in a
special case that he always kept in his cabin. There must have been
half a cargo of fruit.
For, to every person on board the several steamers that they
employed--to every person with whom he had so much as a
nodding acquaintance, he gave an orange every morning. And
they lasted him right round the girdle of this mighty globe of ours.
When they were at North Cape, even, he saw on the horizon, poor
dear thin man that he was, a lighthouse. "Hello," says he to
himself, "these fellows must be very lonely. Let's take them some
oranges." So he had a boatload of his fruit out and had himself
rowed to the lighthouse on the horizon. The folding chairs he lent
to any lady that he came across and liked or who seemed tired and
invalidish on the ship. And so, guarded against his heart and,
having his niece with him, he went round the world. . . .
He wasn't obtrusive about his heart. You wouldn't have known he
had one. He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury for
the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an
extraordinary kind of heart. And the joke of the matter was that,
when, at the age of eighty-four, just five days before poor
Florence, he died of bronchitis there was found to be absolutely
nothing the matter with that organ. It had certainly jumped or
squeaked or something just sufficiently to take in the doctors, hut
it appears that that was because of an odd formation of the lungs. I
don't much understand about these matters.
I inherited his money because Florence died five days after him. I
wish I hadn't. It was a great worry. I had to go out to Waterbury
just after Florence's death because the poor dear old fellow had
left a good many charitable bequests and I had to appoint trustees.
I didn't like the idea of their not being properly handled.
Yes, it was a great worry. And just as I had got things roughly
settled I received the extraordinary cable from Ashburnham
begging me to come back and have a talk with him. And
immediately afterwards came one from Leonora saying, "Yes,
please do come. You could be so helpful." It was as if he had sent
the cable without consulting her and had afterwards told her.
Indeed, that was pretty much what had happened, except that he
had told the girl and the girl told the wife. I arrived, however, too
late to be of any good if I could have been of any good. And then I
had my first taste of English life. It was amazing. It was
overwhelming. I never shall forget the polished cob that Edward,
beside me, drove; the animal's action, its high-stepping, its skin
that was like satin. And the peace! And the red cheeks! And the
beautiful, beautiful old house.
Just near Branshaw Teleragh it was and we descended on it from
the high, clear, windswept waste of the New Forest. I tell you it
was amazing to arrive there from Waterbury. And it came into my
head--for Teddy Ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to
"come and have a talk" with him--that it was unbelievable that
anything essentially calamitous could happen to that place and
those people. I tell you it was the very spirit of peace. And
Leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood
on the top doorstep, with a butler and footman and a maid or so
behind her. And she just said: "So glad you've come," as if I'd run
down to lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having
come half the world over at the call of two urgent telegrams.
The girl was out with the hounds, I think. And that poor devil
beside me was in an agony. Absolute, hopeless, dumb agony such
as passes the mind of man to imagine.
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