The Translation of a Savage, Complete - Gilbert Parker
He was very angry, but he knew he had no right to be so. He choked back
his wrath and moved on amiably enough, and suddenly the fashion in which
the tables had been turned on him struck him with its tragic comedy, and
he involuntarily smiled. His sense of humour saved him from words and
acts which might possibly have made the matter a pure tragedy after all.
He loosed his arm from Marion's.
"I must bid father and mother good-night. Then I will join you both--'in
the court of the king.'" And he turned and went back, and said to his
father as he kissed his mother: "I am had at an advantage, General."
"And serves you right, my boy. You had the odds with you, but she has
captured them like a born soldier." His mother said to him gently:
"Frank, you blamed us, but remember that we wished only your good. Take
my advice, dear, and try to love your wife and win her confidence."
"Love her--try to love her!" he said. "I shall easily do that. But the
other--?" He shook his head a little, though what he meant perhaps he did
not know quite himself, and then followed Marion and Lali upstairs.
Marion had tried to escape from Lali, but was told that she must stay;
and the three met at the child's cot. Marion stooped down and kissed its
forehead. Frank stooped also and kissed its cheek. Then the wife kissed
the other cheek. The child slept peacefully on. "You can always see the
baby here before breakfast, if you choose," said Lali; and she held out
her hand again in good-night. At this point Marion stole away, in spite
of Lah's quick little cry of "Wait, Marion!" and the two were left alone
again.
"I am very tired," she said. "I would rather not talk to-night." The
dismissal was evident.
He took her hand, held it an instant, and presently said: "I will not
detain you, but I would ask you, Lali, to remember that you are my wife.
Nothing can alter that."
"Still we are only strangers, as you know," she quietly rejoined.
"You forget the days we were together--after we were married," he
cautiously urged.
"I am not the same girl, . . . you killed her. . . We have to start
again. . . . I know all."
"You know that in my wretched anger and madness I--"
"Oh, please do not speak of it," she said; "it is so bad even in
thought."
"But will you never forgive me, and care for me? We have to live our
lives together."
"Pray let us not speak of it now," she said, in a weary voice; then,
breathlessly: "It is of much more consequence that you should love
me--and the child."
He drew himself up with a choking sigh, and spread out his arms to her.
"Oh, my wife!" he exclaimed.
"No, no," she cried, "this is unreasonable; we know so little of each
other. . . . Good-night, again."
He turned at the door, came back, and, stooping, kissed the child on the
lips. Then he said: "You are right. I deserve to suffer. . . .
Good-night."
But when he was gone she dropped on her knees, and kissed the child many
times on the lips also.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
If fumbling human fingers do not meddle with it
Miseries of this world are caused by forcing issues
Reading a lot and forgetting everything
The world never welcomes its deserters
There is no influence like the influence of habit
There should be written the one word, "Wait."
Training in the charms of superficiality
We grow away from people against our will
We speak with the straight tongue; it is cowards who lie
THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 3.
IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES
X. "THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS"
XI. UPON THE HIGHWAY
XII. "THE CHASE OF THE YELLOW SWAN"
XIII. A LIVING POEM
XIV. ON THE EDGE OF A FUTURE
XV. THE END OF THE TRAIL
CHAPTER IX
THE FAITH OF COMRADES
When Francis Armour left his wife's room he did not go to his own, but
quietly descended the stairs, went to the library, and sat down. The
loneliest thing in the world is to be tete-a-tete with one's conscience.
A man may have a bad hour with an enemy, a sad hour with a friend, a
peaceful hour with himself, but when the little dwarf, conscience,
perches upon every hillock of remembrance and makes slow signs--those
strange symbols of the language of the soul--to him, no slave upon the
tread-mill suffers more.
The butler came in to see if anything was required, but Armour only
greeted him silently and waved him away. His brain was painfully alert,
his memory singularly awake. It seemed that the incident of this hour had
so opened up every channel of his intelligence that all his life ran past
him in fantastic panorama, as by that illumination which comes to the
drowning man. He seemed under some strange spell. Once or twice he rose,
rubbed his eyes, and looked round the room--the room where as a boy he
had spent idle hours, where as a student he had been in the hands of his
tutor, and as a young man had found recreations such as belong to
ambitious and ardent youth. Every corner was familiar. Nothing was
changed. The books upon the shelves were as they were placed twenty years
ago. And yet he did not seem a part of it. It did not seem natural to
him. He was in an atmosphere of strangeness--that atmosphere which
surrounds a man, as by a cloud, when some crisis comes upon him and his
life seems to stand still, whirling upon its narrow base, while the world
appears at an interminable distance, even as to a deaf man who sees yet
cannot hear.
There came home to him at that moment with a force indescribable the
shamelessness of the act he committed four years ago. He had thought to
come back to miserable humiliation. For four years he had refused to do
his duty as a man towards an innocent woman,--a woman, though in part a
savage,--now transformed into a gentle, noble creature of delight and
goodness. How had he deserved it? He had sown the storm, it was but just
that he should reap the whirlwind; he had scattered thistles, could he
expect to gather grapes? He knew that the sympathy of all his father's
house was not with him, but with the woman he had wronged. He was glad it
was so. Looking back now, it seemed so poor and paltry a thing that he, a
man, should stoop to revenge himself upon those who had given him birth,
as a kind of insult to the woman who had lightly set him aside, and
should use for that purpose a helpless, confiding girl. To revenge one's
self for wrong to one's self is but a common passion, which has little
dignity; to avenge some one whom one has loved, man or woman,--and,
before all, woman,--has some touch of nobility, is redeemed by loyalty.
For his act there was not one word of defence to be made, and he was not
prepared to make it.
The cigars and liquors were beside him, but he did not touch them. He
seemed very far away from the ordinary details of his life: he knew he
had before him hard travel, and he was not confident of the end. He could
not tell how long he sat there.--After, a time the ticking of the clock
seemed painfully loud to him. Now and again he heard a cab rattling
through the Square, and the foolish song of some drunken loiterer in the
night caused him to start painfully. Everything jarred on him. Once he
got up, went to the window, and looked out. The moon was shining full on
the Square. He wondered if it would be well for him to go out and find
some quiet to his nerves in walking. He did so. Out in the Square he
looked up to his wife's window. It was lighted. Long time he walked up
and down, his eyes on the window. It held him like a charm. Once he
leaned against the iron railings of the garden and looked up, not moving
for a time. Presently he saw the curtain of the window raised, and
against the dim light of the room was outlined the figure of his wife. He
knew it. She stood for a moment looking out into the night. She could not
see him, nor could he see her features at all plainly, but he knew that
she, like him, was alone with the catastrophe which his wickedness had
sent upon her. Soon the curtain was drawn down again, and then he went
once more to the house and took his old seat beside the table. He fell to
brooding, and at last, exhausted, dropped to a troubled sleep. He woke
with a start. Some one was in the room. He heard a step behind him. He
came to his feet quickly, a wild light in his eyes. He faced his brother
Richard.
Late in the afternoon Marion had telegraphed to Richard that Frank was
coming. He had been away visiting some poor and sick people, and when he
came back to Greyhope it was too late to catch the train. But the horses
were harnessed straightway, and he was driven into town, a three-hours'
drive. He had left the horses at the stables, and, having a latch-key,
had come in quietly. He had seen the light in the study, and guessed who
was there. He entered, and saw his brother asleep. He watched him for a
moment and studied him. Then he moved away to take off his hat, and, as
he did so, stumbled slightly. Then it was Frank waked, and for the first
time in five years they looked each other in the eyes. They both stood
immovable for a moment, and then Richard caught Frank's hand in both of
his and said: "God bless you, my boy! I am glad you are back."
"Dick! Dick!" was the reply, and Frank's other hand clutched Richard's
shoulder in his strong emotion. They stood silent for a moment longer,
and then Richard recovered himself. He waved his hand to the chairs. The
strain of the situation was a little painful for them both. Men are shy
with each other where their emotions are in play.
"Why, my boy," he said, waving a hand to the spirits and liqueurs, "full
bottles and unopened boxes? Tut, tut! here's a pretty how-d'ye-do. Is
this the way you toast the home quarters? You're a fine soldier for an
old mess!"
So saying, he poured out some whiskey, then opened the box of cigars and
pushed them towards his brother. He did not care particularly to drink or
smoke himself, but a man--an Englishman--is a strange creature. He is
most natural and at ease when he is engaged in eating and drinking. He
relieves every trying situation by some frivolous and selfish occupation,
as of dismembering a partridge, or mixing a punch.
"Well, Frank," said his brother, "now what have you to say for yourself?
Why didn't you come long ago? You have played the adventurer for five
years, and what have you to show for it? Have you a fortune?" Frank shook
his head, and twisted a shoulder. "What have you done that is worth the
doing, then?"
"Nothing that I intended to do, Dick," was the grave reply.
"Yes, I imagined that. You have seen them, have you?" he added, in a
softer voice.
Frank blew a great cloud of smoke about his face, and through it he said:
"Yes, I have seen a damned sight more than I deserved to see."
"Oh, of course; I know that, my boy; but, so far as I can see, in another
direction you are getting quite what you deserve: your wife and child are
upstairs--you are here."
He paused, was silent for a moment, then leaned over, caught his
brother's arm, and said, in a low, strenuous voice: "Frank Armour, you
laid a hateful little plot for us. It wasn't manly, but we forgave it and
did the best we could. But see here, Frank, take my word for it, you have
had a lot of luck. There isn't one woman out of ten thousand that would
have stood the test as your wife has stood it; injured at the start,
constant neglect, temptation--" he paused. "My boy, did you ever think of
that, of the temptation to a woman neglected by her husband? The
temptation to men? Yes, you have had a lot of luck. There has been a
special providence for you, my boy; but not for your sake. God doesn't
love neglectful husbands, but I think He is pretty sorry for neglected
wives."
Frank was very still. His head drooped, the cigar hung unheeded in his
fingers for a moment, and he said at last: "Dick, old boy, I've thought
it all over to-night since I came back--everything that you've said. I
have not a word of defence to make, but, by heaven! I'm going to win my
wife's love if I can, and when I do it I'll make up for all my cursed
foolishness--see if I don't."
"That sounds well, Frank," was the quiet reply. "I like to hear you talk
that way. You would be very foolish if you did not. What do you think of
the child?"
"Can you ask me what I think? He is a splendid little fellow."
"Take care of him, then--take good care of him: you may never have
another," was the grim rejoinder. Frank winced. His brother rose, took
his arm, and said: "Let us go to our rooms, Frank. There will be time
enough to talk later, and I am not so young as I once was."
Truth to say, Richard Armour was not so young as he seemed a few months
before. His shoulders were a little stooped, he was greyer about the
temples. The little bit of cynicism which had appeared in that remark
about the care of the child showed also in the lines of his mouth; yet
his eyes had the same old true, honest look. But a man cannot be hit in
mortal places once or twice in his life without its being etched on his
face or dropped like a pinch of aloe from his tongue.
Still they sat and talked much longer, Frank showing better than when his
brother came, Richard gone grey and tired. At last Richard rose and
motioned towards the window. "See, Frank," he said, "it is morning." Then
he went and lifted the blind. The grey, unpurged air oozed on the glass.
The light was breaking over the tops of the houses. A crossing-sweeper
early to his task, or holding the key of the street, went pottering by,
and a policeman glanced up at them as he passed. Richard drew down the
curtain again.
"Dick," said Frank suddenly, "you look old. I wonder if I have changed as
much?"
Six months before, Frank Armour would have said hat his brother looked
young.
"Oh, you look young enough, Frank," was the reply. "But I am a good deal
older than I was five years ago. . . Come, let us go to bed."
CHAPTER X
THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS
And Lali? How had the night gone for her? When she rose from the child's
cot, where her lips had caught the warmth that her husband had left on
them, she stood for a moment bewildered in the middle of the room. She
looked at the door out of which he had gone, her bosom beating hard, her
heart throbbing so that it hurt her--that she could have cried out from
mere physical pain. The wifedom in her was plundering the wild stores of
her generous soul for the man, for--as Richard had said that day, that
memorable day!--the father of her child. But the woman, the pure
translated woman, who was born anew when this frail life in its pink and
white glory crept out into the dazzling world, shrank back, as any girl
might shrink that had not known marriage. This child had come--from
what?--She shuddered now--how many times had she done so since she first
waked to the vulgar sacrilege of her marriage? She knew now that every
good mother, when her first child is born, takes it in her arms, and, all
her agony gone, and the ineffable peace of delivered motherhood come,
speaks the name of its father, and calls it his child. But--she
remembered it now--when her child was born, this little waif, the fruit
of a man's hot, malicious hour, she wrapped it in her arms, pressed its
delicate flesh to the silken folds of her bosom, and weeping, whispered
only: "My child, my little, little child!"
She had never, as many a wife far from her husband has done, talked to
her child of its father, told it of his beauty and his virtues, arrayed
it day by day in sweet linen and pretty adornments, as if he were just
then knocking at her door; she had never imagined what he would say when
he did come. What could such a father think of his child, born of a woman
whose very life he had intended as an insult? No, she had loved it for
father and mother also. She had tried to be good, a good mother, living a
life unutterably lonely, hard in all that it involved of study, new duty,
translation, and burial of primitive emotions. And with all the care and
tearful watchfulness that had been needed, she had grown so proud, so
exacting--exacting for her child, proud for herself.
How could she know now that this hasty declaration of affection was
anything more than the mere man in him? Years ago she had not been able
to judge between love and insult--what guarantee had she here? Did he
think that she could believe in him? She was not the woman he had
married, he was not the man she had married. He had deceived her
basely--she had been a common chattel. She had been miserable
enough--could she give herself over to his flying emotions again so
suddenly?
She paced the room, her face now in her hands, her hands now clasping and
wringing before her. Her wifely duty? She straightened to that. Duty! She
was first and before all a good, unpolluted woman. No, no, it could not
be. Love him? Again she shrank. Then came flooding on her that afternoon
when she had flung herself on Richard's breast, and all those hundred
days of happiness in Richard's company--Richard the considerate, the
strong, who had stood so by his honour in an hour of peril.
Now as she thought of it a hot wave shivered through all her body, and
tingled to her hair. Her face again dropped in her hands, and, as on that
other day, she knelt beside the cot, and, bursting into tears, said
through her sobs: "My baby, my own dear baby! Oh, that we could go
away--away--and never come back again!"
She did not know how intense her sobs were. They waked the child from its
delicate sleep; its blue eyes opened wide and wise all on the instant,
its round soft arm ran up to its mother's neck, and it said: "Don't c'y!
I want to s'eep wif you! I'se so s'eepy!"
She caught the child to her wet face, smiled at it through her tears,
went with it to her own bed, put it away in the deep whiteness, kissed
it, and fondled it away again into the heaven of sleep. When this was
done she felt calmer. How she hungered over it! This--this could not be
denied her. This, at least, was all hers, without clause or reservation,
an absolute love, and an absolute right.
She disrobed and drew in beside the child, and its little dewy cheek
touching her breast seemed to ease the ache in her soul.
But sleep would not come. All the past four years trooped by, with their
thousand incidents magnified in the sharp, throbbing light of her mind,
and at last she knew and saw clearly what was before her, what trials,
what duty, and what honour demanded--her honour.
Richard? Once for all she gently put him away from her into that infinite
distance of fine respect which a good woman can feel, who has known what
she and Richard had known--and set aside. But he had made for her so high
a standard, that for one to be measured thereby was a severe challenge.
Could Frank come even to that measure? She dared not try to answer the
question. She feared, she shrank, she grew sick at heart. She did not
reckon with that other thing, that powerful, infinite influence which
ties a woman, she knows not how or why, to the man who led her to the
world of motherhood. Through all the wrongs which she may suffer by him,
there runs this cable of unhappy attraction, testified to by how many
sorrowful lives!
But Lali was trying to think it out, not only to feel, and she did not
count that subterranean force which must play its part in this new
situation in her drama of life. Could she love him? She crept away out of
the haven where her child was, put on her dressing-gown, went to the
window, and looked out upon the night, all unconscious that her husband
was looking at her from the Square below. Love him?--Love him?--Love him?
Could she? Did he love her? Her eyes wandered over the Square. Nowhere
else was there a light, but a chimney-flue was creaking somewhere. It
jarred on her so that she shrank. Then all at once she smiled to think
how she had changed. Four years ago she could have slept amid the hammers
of a foundry. The noise ceased. Her eyes passed from the cloud of trees
in the Square to the sky-all stars, and restful deep blue. That--that was
the same. How she knew it! Orion and Ashtaroth, and Mars and the
Pleiades, and the long trail of the Milky Way. As a little child hanging
in the trees, or sprawled beside a tepee, she had made friends with them
all, even as she learned and loved all the signs of the earth
beneath--the twist of a blade of grass, the portent in the cry of a
river-hen, the colour of a star, the smell of a wind. She had known
Nature then, now she knew men. And knowing them, and having suffered, and
sick at heart as she was, standing by this window in the dead of night,
the cry that shook her softly was not of her new life, but of the old,
primitive, child-like.
'Pasagathe, omarki kethose kolokani vorgantha pestorondikat Oni.'
"A spear hath pierced me, and the smart of the nettle is in my wound.
Maker of the soft night, bind my wounds with sleep, lest I cry out and be
a coward and unworthy."
Again and again, unconsciously, the words passed from her lips
'Vorganthe, pestorondikat Oni.'
At last she let down the blind, came to the bed, and once more gathered
her child in her arms with an infinite hunger. This love was hers--rich,
untrammelled, and so sacred. No matter what came, and she did not know
what would come, she had the child. There was a kind of ecstasy in it,
and she lay and trembled with the feeling, but at last fell into a
troubled sleep.
She waked suddenly to hear footsteps passing her door. She listened. One
footstep was heavier than the other--heavier and a little stumbling; she
recognised them, Frank and Richard. In that moment her heart hardened.
Frank Armour must tread a difficult road.
CHAPTER XI
UPON THE HIGHWAY
Frank visited the child in the morning, and was received with a casual
interest. Richard Joseph Armour was fastidious, was not to be won at the
grand gallop. Besides, he had just had a visit from his uncle, and the
good taste of that gay time was yet in his mouth. He did not resent the
embraces, but he did not respond to them, and he straightened himself
with relief when the assault was over. Some one was paying homage to him,
that was all he knew; but for his own satisfaction and pleasure he
preferred as yet his old comrades, Edward Lambert, Captain Vidall,
General Armour, and, above all, Richard. He only showed real interest at
the last, when he asked, as it were in compromise, if his father would
give him a sword. No one had ever talked to him of his father, and he had
no instinct for him so far as could be seen. The sword was, therefore,
after the manner of a concession. Frank rashly promised it, and was
promptly told by Marion that it couldn't be; and she was backed by
Captain Vidall, who said it had already been tabooed, and Frank wasn't to
come in and ask for favours or expect them.
The husband and wife met at breakfast. He was down first. When his wife
entered, he came to her, they touched hands, and she presently took a
seat beside him. More than once he paused suddenly in his eating, when he
thought of his inexplicable case. He was now face to face with a reversed
situation. He had once picked up a pebble from the brown dirt of a
prairie, that he might toss it into the pool of this home life; and he
had tossed it, and from the sweet bath there had come out a precious
stone, which he longed to wear, and knew that he could not--not yet. He
could have coerced a lower being, but for his manhood's sake--he had
risen to that now, it is curious how the dignity of fatherhood helps to
make a man--he could not coerce here, and if he did, he knew that the
product would be disaster.
He listened to her talk with Marion and Captain Vidall. Her voice was
musical, balanced, her language breathed; it had manner, and an
indescribable cadence of intelligence, joined to a deliberation, which
touched her off with distinction. When she spoke to him--and she seemed
to do that as by studied intention and with tact at certain
intervals--her manner was composed and kind. She had resolved on her
part. She asked him about his journey over, about his plans for the day,
and if he had decided to ride with her in the Park,--he could have the
general's mount, she was sure, for the general was not going that
day,--and would he mind doing a little errand for her afterwards in
Regent Street, for the child--she feared she herself would not have time?
Just then General Armour entered, and, passing behind her, kissed her on
the cheek, dropping his hand on Frank's shoulder at the same time with a
hearty greeting. Of course, Frank could have his mount, he said. Mrs.
Armour did not come down, but she sent word by Richard, who entered last,
that she would be glad to see Frank for a moment before he left for the
Park. As of old, Richard took both Lali's hands in his, patted them, and
cheerily said:
"Well, well, Lali, we've got the wild man home again safe and sound,
haven't we--the same old vagabond? We'll have to turn him into a
Christian again--'For while the lamp holds out to burn'--"