The Trespasser, Volume 3.

G >> Gilbert Parker >> The Trespasser, Volume 3.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

This eBook was produced by David Widger

[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]

THE TRESPASSER

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 3.

XII. HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
XIII. HE JOURNEYS AFAR
XIV. IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED
XV. WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN
XVI. WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S
XVII. THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE
XVIII. "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!"

CHAPTER XII

HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

The next morning he went down to the family solicitor's office. He had
done so, off and on, for weeks. He spent the time in looking through old
family papers, fishing out ancient documents, partly out of curiosity,
partly from an unaccountable presentiment. He had been there about an
hour this morning when a clerk brought him a small box, which, he said,
had been found inside another box belonging to the Belward-Staplings, a
distant branch of the family. These had asked for certain ancient papers
lately, and a search had been made, with this result. The little box was
not locked, and the key was in it. How the accident occurred was not
difficult to imagine. Generations ago there had probably been a
conference of the two branches of the family, and the clerk had
inadvertently locked the one box within the other. This particular box
of the Belward-Staplings was not needed again. Gaston felt that here was
something. These hours spent among old papers had given him strange
sensations, had, on the one hand, shown him his heritage; but had also
filled him with the spirit of that by-gone time. He had grown further
away from the present. He had played his part as in a drama: his real
life was in the distant past and out in the land of the heathen.

Now he took out a bundle of papers with broken seals, and wound with a
faded tape. He turned the rich important parchments over in his hands.
He saw his own name on the outside of one: "Sir Gaston Robert Belward."
And there was added: "Bart." He laughed. Well, why not complete the
reproduction? He was an M. P.--why not a, Baronet? He knew how it was
done. There were a hundred ways. Throw himself into the arbitration
question between Canada and the United States: spend ten thousand pounds
of--his grandfather's--money on the Party? His reply to himself was
cynical: the game was not worth the candle. What had he got out of it
all? Money? Yes: and he enjoyed that--the power that it gave--
thoroughly. The rest? He knew that it did not strike as deep as it
ought: the family tradition, the social scheme--the girl.

"What a brute I am!" he said. "I'm never wholly of it. I either want
to do as they did when George Villiers had his innings, or play the gipsy
as I did so many years."

The gipsy! As he held the papers in his hand he thought as he had done
last night, of the gipsy-van on Ridley Common, and of--how well he
remembered her name!--of Andree.

He suddenly threw his head back, and laughed. "Well, well, but it is
droll! Last night, an English gentleman, an honourable member with the
Treasury Bench in view; this morning an adventurer, a Romany. I itch for
change. And why? Why? I have it all, yet I could pitch it away this
moment for a wild night on the slope, or a nigger hunt on the Rivas.
Chateau-Leoville, Goulet, and Havanas at a bob?--Jove, I thirst for a
swig of raw Bourbon and the bite of a penny Mexican! Games, Gaston,
games! Why the devil did little Joe worry at being made 'move on'? I've
got 'move on' in every pore: I'm the Wandering Jew. Oh, a gentleman born
am I! But the Romany sweats from every inch of you, Gaston Belward!
What was it that sailor on the Cyprian said of the other? 'For every
hair of him was rope-yarn, and every drop of blood Stockholm tar!'"

He opened a paper. Immediately he was interested. Another; then,
quickly, two more; and at last, getting to his feet with an exclamation,
he held a document to the light, and read it through carefully. He was
alone in the room. He calmly folded it up, put it in his pocket, placed
the rest of the papers back, locked the box, and passing into the next
room, gave it to the clerk. Then he went out, a curious smile on his
face. He stopped presently on the pavement.

"But it wouldn't hold good, I fancy, after all these years. Yet Law is
a queer business. Anyhow, I've got it."

An hour later he called on Mrs. Gasgoyne and Delia. Mrs. Gasgoyne was
not at home. After a little while, Gaston, having listened to some
extracts from the newspapers upon his "brilliant, powerful, caustic
speech, infinite in promise of an important career," quietly told her
that he was starting for Paris, and asked when they expected to go abroad
in their yacht. Delia turned pale, and could not answer for a moment.
Then she became very still, and as quietly answered that they expected to
get away by the middle of August. He would join them? Yes, certainly,
at Marseilles, or perhaps, Gibraltar. Her manner, so well-controlled,
though her features seemed to shrink all at once, if it did not deceive
him, gave him the wish to say an affectionate thing. He took her hand
and said it. She thanked him, then suddenly dropped her fingers on his
shoulder, and murmured with infinite gentleness and pride:

"You will miss me; you ought to!"

He drew the hand down.

"I could not forget you, Delia," he said.

Her eyes came up quickly, and she looked steadily, wonderingly at him.

"Was it necessary to say that?"

She was hurt--inexpressibly,--and she shrank. He saw that she
misunderstood him; but he also saw that, on the face of it, the phrase
was not complimentary. His reply was deeply kind, effective. There was
a pause--and the great moment for them both passed. Something ought to
have happened. It did not. If she had had that touch of abandon shown
when she sang "The Waking of the Fire," Gaston might, even at this
moment, have broken his promise to his uncle; but, somehow, he knew
himself slipping away from her. With the tenderness he felt, he still
knew that he was acting; imitating, reproducing other, better, moments
with her. He felt the disrespect to her, but it could not be helped--it
could not be helped.

He said that he would call and say good-bye to her and Mrs. Gasgoyne at
four o'clock. Then he left. He went to his chambers, gave Jacques
instructions, did some writing, and returned at four. Mrs. Gasgoyne had
not come back. She had telegraphed that she would not be in for lunch.
There was nothing remarkable in Gaston's and Delia's farewell. She
thought he looked worn, and ought to have change, showing in every word
that she trusted him, and was anxious that he should be, as she put it
gaily, "comfy." She was composed. The cleverest men are blind in the
matter of a woman's affections; and Gaston was only a mere man, after
all. He thought that she had gone about as far in the way of feeling as
she could go.

Nevertheless, in his hansom, he frowned, and said: "I oughtn't to go.
But I'm choking here. I can't play the game an hour longer without a
change. I'll come back all right. I'll meet her in the Mediterranean
after my kick-up, and it'll be all O. K. Jacques and I will ride down
through Spain to Gibraltar, and meet the Kismet there. I shall have got
rid of this restlessness then, and I'll be glad enough to settle down,
pose for throne and constitution, cultivate the olive branch, and have
family prayers."

At eight o'clock he appeared at Ridley Court, and bade his grandfather
and grandmother good-bye. They were full of pride, and showed their
affection in indirect ways--Sir William most by offering his opinion on
the Bill and quoting Gaston frequently; Lady Belward, by saying that next
year she would certainly go up to town--she had not done so for five
years! They both agreed that a scamper on the Continent would now be
good for him. At nine o'clock he passed the rectory, on his way, strange
to note, to the church. There was one light burning, but it was not in
the study nor in Alice's window. He supposed they had not returned.
He paused and thought. If anything happened, she should know. But what
should happen? He shook his head. He moved on to the church. The doors
were unlocked. He went in, drew out a little pocket-lantern, lit it, and
walked up the aisle.

"A sentimental business this: I don't know why I do it," he thought.

He stopped at the tomb of Sir Gaston Belward, put his hand on it, and
stood looking at it.

"I wonder if there is anything in it?" he said aloud: "if he does
influence me? if we've got anything to do with each other? What he did
I seem to know somehow, more or less. A little dwarf up in my brain
drops the nuts down now and then. Well, Sir Gaston Belward, what is
going to be the end of all this? If we can reach across the centuries,
why, good-night and goodbye to you. Good-bye."

He turned and went down the aisle. At the door a voice, a whispering
voice, floated to him: "Good-bye."

He stopped short and listened. All was still. He walked up the aisle,
and listened again.-Nothing! He stood before the tomb, looking at it
curiously. He was pale, but collected. He raised the light above his
head, and looked towards the altar.--Nothing! Then he went to the door
again, and paused.--Nothing!

Outside he said

"I'd stake my life I heard it!"

A few minutes afterwards, a girl rose up from behind the organ in the
chancel, and felt her way outside. It was Alice Wingfield, who had gone
to the church to pray. It was her good-bye which had floated down to
Gaston.

CHAPTER XIII

HE JOURNEYS AFAR

Politicians gossiped. Where was the new member? His friends could not
tell, further than that he had gone abroad. Lord Faramond did not know,
but fetched out his lower lip knowingly.

"The fellow has instinct for the game," he said. Sketches, portraits
were in the daily and weekly journals, and one hardy journalist even
gave an interview--which had never occurred. But Gaston remained a
picturesque nine-days' figure, and then Parliament rose for the year.

Meanwhile he was in Paris, and every morning early he could be seen with
Jacques riding up the Champs Elysee and out to the Bois de Boulogne.
Every afternoon at three he sat for "Monmouth" or the "King of Ys" with
his horse in his uncle's garden.

Ian Belward might have lived in a fashionable part; he preferred the
Latin Quarter, with incursions into the other at fancy. Gaston lived for
three days in the Boulevard Haussman, and then took apartments, neither
expensive nor fashionable, in a quiet street. He was surrounded by
students and artists, a few great men and a host of small men:
Collarossi's school here and Delacluse's there: models flitting in and
out of the studios in his court-yard, who stared at him as he rode, and
sought to gossip with Jacques--accomplished without great difficulty.

Jacques was transformed. A cheerful hue grew on his face. He had been
an exile, he was now at home. His French tongue ran, now with words in
the patois of Normandy, now of Brittany; and all with the accent of
French Canada, an accent undisturbed by the changes and growths of
France. He gossiped, but no word escaped him which threw any light on
his master's history.

Soon, in the Latin Quarter, they were as notable as they had been at
Ridley Court or in London. On the Champs Elysee side people stared at
the two: chiefly because of Gaston's splendid mount and Jacques's strange
broncho. But they felt that they were at home. Gaston's French was not
perfect, but it was enough for his needs. He got a taste of that freedom
which he had handed over to the dungeons of convention two years before.
He breathed. Everything interested him so much that the life he had led
in England seemed very distant.

He wrote to Delia, of course. His letters were brief, most interesting,
not tenderly intimate, and not daily. From the first they puzzled her a
little, and continued to do so; but because her mother said, "What an
impossible man!" she said, "Perfectly possible! Of course he is not
like other men; he is a genius."

And the days went on.

Gaston little loved the purlieus of the Place de l'Opera. One evening at
a club in the Boulevard Malesherbes bored him. It was merely Anglo-
American enjoyment, dashed with French drama. The Bois was more to his
taste, for he could stretch his horse's legs; but every day he could be
found before some simple cafe in Montparnasse, sipping vermouth, and
watching the gay, light life about him. He sat up with delight to see an
artist and his "Madame" returning from a journey in the country, seated
upon sheaves of corn, quite unregarded by the world; doing as they listed
with unabashed simplicity. He dined often at the little Hotel St. Malo
near the Gare Montparnasse, where the excellent landlord played the host,
father, critic, patron, comrade--often benefactor--to his bons enfants.
He drank vin ordinaire, smoked caporal cigarettes, made friends, and was
in all as a savage--or a much-travelled English gentleman.

His uncle Ian had introduced him here as at other places of the kind,
and, whatever his ulterior object was, had an artist's pleasure at seeing
a layman enjoy the doings of Paris art life. Himself lived more
luxuriously. In an avenue not far from the Luxembourg he had a small
hotel with a fine old-fashioned garden behind it, and here distinguished
artists, musicians, actors, and actresses came at times.

The evening of Gaston's arrival he took him to a cafe and dined him, and
afterwards to the Boullier--there, merely that he might see; but this
place had nothing more than a passing interest for him. His mind had the
poetry of a free, simple--even wild-life, but he had no instinct for vice
in the name of amusement. But the later hours spent in the garden under
the stars, the cheerful hum of the boulevards coming to them distantly,
stung his veins like good wine. They sat and talked, with no word of
England in it at all, Jacques near, listening.

Ian Belward was at his best: genial, entertaining, with the art of the
man of no principles, no convictions, and a keen sense of life's sublime
incongruities. Even Jacques, whose sense of humour had grown by long
association with Gaston, enjoyed the piquant conversation. The next
evening the same. About ten o'clock a few men dropped in: a sculptor,
artists, and Meyerbeer, an American newspaper correspondent--who,
however, was not known as such to Gaston.

This evening Ian determined to make Gaston talk. To deepen a man's love
for a thing, get him to talk of it to the eager listener--he passes from
the narrator to the advocate unconsciously. Gaston was not to talk of
England, but of the North, of Canada, of Mexico, the Lotos Isles. He did
so picturesquely, yet simply too, in imperfect but sufficient French.
But as he told of one striking incident in the Rockies, he heard Jacques
make a quick expression of dissent. He smiled. He had made some mistake
in detail. Now, Jacques had been in his young days in Quebec the village
story-teller; one who, by inheritance or competency, becomes semi-
officially a raconteur for the parish; filling in winter evenings,
nourishing summer afternoons, with tales, weird, childlike, daring.

Now Gaston turned and said to Jacques:

"Well, Brillon, I've forgotten, as you see; tell them how it was."

Two hours later when Jacques retired on some errand, amid ripe applause,
Ian said:

"You've got an artist there, Cadet: that description of the fight with
the loop garoo was as good as a thing from Victor Hugo. Hugo must have
heard just such yarns, and spun them on the pattern. Upon my soul, it's
excellent stuff. You've lived, you two."

Another night Ian Belward gave a dinner, at which were present an
actress, a singer of some repute, the American journalist, and others.
Something that was said sent Gaston's mind to the House of Commons.
Presently he saw himself in a ridiculous picture: a buffalo dragging the
Treasury Bench about the Chamber; as one conjures things in an absurd
dream. He laughed outright, at a moment when Mademoiselle Cerise was
telling of a remarkable effect she produced one night in "Fedora,"
unpremeditated, inspired; and Mademoiselle Cerise, with smiling lips and
eyes like daggers, called him a bear. This brought him to him self, and
he swam with the enjoyment. He did enjoy it, but not as his uncle wished
and hoped. Gaston did not respond eagerly to the charms of Mademoiselle
Cerise and Madame Juliette.

Was Delia, then, so strong in the barbarian's mind? He could not think
so, but Gaston had not shown yet, either for model, for daughter of joy,
or for the mademoiselles of the stage any disposition to an amour or a
misalliance; and either would be interesting and sufficient! Models went
in and out of Ian's studio and the studios of others, and Gaston chatted
with them at times; and once he felt the bare arm and bare breast of a
girl as she sat for a nymph, and said in an interested way that her flesh
was as firm and fine as a Tongan's. He even disputed with his uncle on
the tints of her skin, on seeing him paint it in, showing a fine eye for
colour. But there was nothing more; he was impressed, observant,
interested--that was all. His uncle began to wonder if the Englishman
was, after all, deeper in the grain than the savage. He contented
himself with the belief that the most vigorous natures are the most
difficult to rouse. Mademoiselle Cerise sang, with chic and abandon very
fascinating to his own sensuous nature, a song with a charming air and
sentiment. It was after a night at the opera when they had seen her in
"Lucia," and the contrast, as she sang in his garden, softly lighted,
showed her at the most attractive angles. She drifted from a sparkling
chanson to the delicate pathos of a song of De Musset's.

Gaston responded to the artist; but to the woman--no. He had seen a new
life, even in its abandon, polite, fresh. It amused him, but he could
still turn to the remembrance of Delia without blushing, for he had come
to this in the spirit of the idler, not the libertine. Mademoiselle
Cerise said to Ian at last:

"Enfin, is the man stone? As handsome as a leopard, too! But, it is no
matter."

She made another effort to interest him, however. It galled her that he
did not fall at her feet as others had done. Even Ian had come there in
his day, but she knew him too well. She had said to him at the time:
"You, monsieur? No, thank you. A week, a month, and then the brute in
you would out. You make a woman fond, and then--a mat for your feet, and
your wicked smile, and savage English words to drive her to the vitriol
or the Seine. Et puis, dear monsieur, accept my good friendship; nothing
more. I will sing to you, dance to you, even pray for you--we poor
sinners do that sometimes, and go on sinning; but, again, nothing more."

Ian admired her all the more for her refusal of him, and they had been
good friends. He had told her of his nephew's coming, had hinted at his
fortune, at his primitive soul, at the unconventional strain in him, even
at marriage. She could not read his purpose, but she knew there was
something, and answering him with a yes, had waited. Had Gaston have
come to her feet she would probably have got at the truth somehow, and
have worked in his favour--the joy vice takes to side with virtue, at
times--when it is at no personal sacrifice. But Gaston was superior in a
grand way. He was simple, courteous, interested only. This stung her,
and she would bring him to his knees, if she could. This night she had
rung all the changes, and had done no more than get his frank applause.
She became petulant in an airy, exacting way. She asked him about his
horse. This interested him. She wanted to see it. To-morrow? No, no,
now. Perhaps to-morrow she would not care to; there was no joy in
deliberate pleasure. Now--now--now! He laughed. Well then, now, as she
wished!

Jacques was called. She said to him:

"Come here, little comrade." Jacques came. "Look at me," she added.
She fixed her eyes on him, and smiled. She was in the soft flare of the
lights.

"Well," she said after a moment, "what do you think of me?"

Jacques was confused. "Madame is beautiful."

"The eyes?" she urged.

"I have been to Gaspe, and west to Esquimault, and in England, but I have
never seen such as those," he said. Race and primitive man spoke there.

She laughed. "Come closer, little man."

He did so. She suddenly rose, dropped her hands on his shoulders, and
kissed his cheek.

"Now bring the horse, and I will kiss him too."

Did she think she could rouse Gaston by kissing his servant? Yet it did
not disgust him. He knew it was a bit of acting, and it was well done.
Besides, Jacques Brillon was not a mere servant, and he, too, had done
well. She sat back and laughed lightly when Jacques was gone. Then she
said: "The honest fellow!" and hummed an air:

"'The pretty coquette
Well she needs to be wise,
Though she strike to the heart
By a glance of her eyes.

"'For the daintiest bird
Is the sport of the storm,
And the rose fadeth most
When the bosom is warm.'"

In twenty minutes the gate of the garden opened, and Jacques appeared
with Saracen. The horse's black skin glistened in the lights, and he
tossed his head and champed his bit. Gaston rose. Mademoiselle Cerise
sprang to her feet and ran forward. Jacques put out his hand to stop
her, and Gaston caught her shoulder. "He's wicked with strangers,"
Gaston said. "Chat!" she rejoined, stepped quickly to the horse's head
and, laughing, put out her hand to stroke him. Jacques caught the
beast's nose, and stopped a lunge of the great white teeth.

"Enough, madame, he will kill you!"

"Yet I am beautiful--is it not so?"

"The poor beast is ver' blind."

"A pretty compliment," she rejoined, yet angry at the beast.

Gaston came, took the animal's head in his hands, and whispered. Saracen
became tranquil. Gaston beckoned to Mademoiselle Cerise. She came. He
took her hand in his and put it at the horse's lips. The horse whinnied
angrily at first, but permitted a caress from the actress's fingers.

"He does not make friends easily," said Gaston. "Nor does his master."

Her eyes lifted to his, the lids drooping suggestively. "But when the
pact is made--!"

"Till death us do part?"

"Death or ruin."

"Death is better."

"That depends!"

"Ah! I understand," she said.

"On--the woman?"

"Yes."

Then he became silent. "Mount the horse," she urged.

Gaston sprang at one bound upon the horse's bare back. Saracen reared
and wheeled.

"Splendid!" she said; then, presently: "Take me up with you."

He looked doubting for a moment, then whispered to the horse.

"Come quickly," he said.

She came to the side of the horse. He stooped, caught her by the waist,
and lifted her up. Saracen reared, but Gaston had him down in a moment.

Ian Belward suddenly called out:

"For God's sake, keep that pose for five minutes--only five!" He caught
up some canvas. "Hold candles near them," he said to the others. They
did so. With great swiftness he sketched in the strange picture. It
looked weird, almost savage: Gaston's large form, his legs loose at the
horse's side, the woman in her white drapery clinging to him.

In a little time the artist said:

"There; that will do. Ten such sittings and my 'King of Ys' will have
its day with the world. I'd give two fortunes for the chance of it."

The woman's heart had beat fast with Gaston's arm around her. He felt
the thrill of the situation. Man, woman, and horse were as of a piece.

But Cerise knew, when Gaston let her to the ground again, that she had
not conquered.

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED

Next morning Gaston was visited by Meyerbeer the American journalist, of
whose profession he was still ignorant. He saw him only as a man of raw
vigour of opinion, crude manners, and heavy temperament. He had not been
friendly to him at night, and he was surprised at the morning visit. The
hour was such that Gaston must ask him to breakfast. The two were soon
at the table of the Hotel St. Malo. Meyerbeer sniffed the air when he
saw the place. The linen was ordinary, the rooms small; but all--he did
not take this into account--irreproachably clean. The walls were covered
with pictures; some taken for unpaid debts, gifts from students since
risen to fame or gone into the outer darkness,--to young artists' eyes,
the sordid moneymaking world,--and had there been lost; from a great
artist or two who remembered the days of his youth and the good host who
had seen many little colonies of artists come and go.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6