The Deceased Wife's Sister, and My Beautiful Neighbour, v. 3

I found Martelli to be more useful to me than I could have expected. He had called himself practical, and he was practical. He was used to the punctilious regularity of schools, to the difficult inattention of pupils; and the habits these experiences had engendered well qualified him in one sense for the post I had offered. In one sense I say: by which I mean my need of an influence to direct my studies and keep me to them. But in him I missed what I had sought, and would have taken in preference, could I have found. Sympathies he had in abundance, but they were commonplace. He shone indeed; but rather with the borrowed light of letters than the luminous atmosphere of imagination. He could not comprehend me, though he would never appear puzzled. He would miss a delicate implication. In taste he was a sensualist, esteeming the full-blooded, florid, and passionate conceptions of art above her chaste aerial hints and tender moonlit beauties. Yet he was a good and sound scholar. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was singularly exact. He was deeply read in modern literature; and his surprising memory enabled him to display to the utmost advantage the various and carefully stored treasures of his mind. But though his erudition might have enabled him to have edited with accuracy the most obscure work in the whole range of ancient literature, his imagination would not have yielded him five lines of poetry.

When together in the library, he would often extort a smile from me by the recollection he excited of my school days. Brisk in his movements, energetic in his actions, pungent and austere in his resolute directions, he recalled to me a French tutor, whom, of all my early tutors, I most hated for his severity. But the task conned, the subject discussed, the book closed, his manner would change; he would be ceremoniously courteous, with almost a hint of obsequiousness in his behaviour, as though he wished me to understand that his sturdy discharge of his duty did not prevent him from appreciating the difference of position between us.

I should have benefited more from his counsels had my thoughts been less preoccupied with the subject which was hardly ever absent from my mind.

But I found it impossible wholly to surrender my attention to my tasks. Memory persistently reverted to the strange and beautiful apparition that had startled me in my midnight saunter. Every day, nay, every hour, was increasing my desire to know her. Yet I could hit upon no means of introduction. To have hung about her house, to have loitered near her garden, even had the absence of my companion rendered such a device practicable, would have been unwise; since, if now from no apparent cause she shunned intrusion or inspection, greater would be her efforts to maintain her privacy when she discovered a stranger sought to violate it.

One thing I could not hide from myself--I was in love with her. I am well aware that under the circumstances the feeling was most absurd; but I could not help it. The memory of her beauty took shape before me at all hours, in all moods. And my love was illustrated and confirmed by my wish to meet, to know, to speak with her.

Martelli noticed my abstraction. More than once I had remarked his dusky eyes glowing on me with a gaze of interrogative inspection. But he carefully repressed his curiosity. No observation ever escaped him to hint his perception of inattentive moods.

Once, meeting his eyes, it occurred to me to take him into my confidence.

"The Italians," I mused, "are famous for their handling of love matters. They at least bear the reputation of being subtle and secret in such adventures. They wind into the most tortuous intrigues like a snake through the intricacies of a forest. Why not tell him my story? A young man in love with a woman whom he has seen but once, is an object neither remarkable nor unique. He might aid me by procuring an introduction, at all events; and if he can do this, he has my full consent to think what he likes of the business."

It was evening. We were seated at a table in the library, near the window, which was wide open to admit the still and sultry air. There was no moon; but the stars, large, full and liquid, lent a pale radiance to the gloom. I rose, took a cigar from the mantel-piece and lighted it.

"Let us close these books for to-night," I said. "The air is oppressive; and those sweet stars seem to chide us for preferring the inspiration of other things to theirs."

He smiled, drew a meerschaum from his pocket, and began to smoke. I pushed the table aside that I might seat myself more fully in the window.

"There is a line in one of Keats's poems--'Hyperion,'" I said.

"I know it," he interrupted. "A noble poem."

"Noble, indeed. There is a line in that poem which I do not think I ever thoroughly understood until now. I refer to the line in which he speaks of

--'tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars.'

Look at those round, moony orbs, tremulous like tears wept by the gods; the trees yonder seem spell-bound beneath them."

"Truly," he answered.

"Surely theirs is a magical repose: a deeper calm than that of sleep. Oh, I can forgive much to the superstition of astrology. Those planets deserve to be influences if they are not. The malignant heart would of course make their shine sinister; but a generous nature must deem those clear rays benignant. I do. But it is the common effect of Beauty on me. I warm, I dilate in her presence. She is a glorious spirit."

"Ay, to a man of taste."

"Beauty of course is a spirit interpenetrating all that delights and elevates. But she is incarnate too, sometimes; falling, I suppose, from the heavens like that meteor there," I said, pointing to an exhalation that rushed with yellow tresses streaming through the dark; "and taking the shape of a woman when she touches the earth."

"But is not innocence a condition of beauty?" he inquired, turning his dusky gaze upon me.

"It should be."

"Then do not make your spirit take the shape of woman."

I laughed. "What shape would you have her?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I hardly know," he answered: "unless you make her a new-born babe."

"I fear you have the scholar's contempt for the tendre passion," said I. "But listen now to a strange story. Do you see those trees yonder?"

"Yes, Sir."

"One night--it was clear with moonlight--I strolled out to breathe the air. My excursion extended to those fields you can see from your bedroom window. There I lingered. The village clock struck two. Hardly had the silvery notes died, when----"

I paused.

"You returned home, Sir?"

"No. But looking, I perceived the Spirit of Beauty walking beneath the starlight, draped in white, with eyes deep and beautiful, in which the moon hid itself for love, with a face of marble, passionless as the feature of the mother of Paphus ere the sculptor's adoration made her rosy with life."

He showed his gleaming teeth in a smile of which he thought the gloom would hide the contempt.

"Sir," he said, "you are talking the language of the romancist."

"I am talking the language of truth."

"At two o'clock in the morning," he exclaimed, blowing a white cloud on the air, "the female shapes one meets abroad are seldom spiritual. How they may look in the country, and by starlight, I do not know; but by gaslight their cadaverous complexion is commonly cloaked with paint; and if their eyes are bright, it is rather with a spirituous than a spiritual ray."

"Ah, Martelli, you are a cynic--by which I mean, a practical, astute man, who makes the root and not the flower of fact or fancy his business. A commendable quality! All the same, I would not part with my love of illusion. This essential difference of character will make us get on well together; though, to be plain, before I knew you, my opinion was that if I hoped to please or be pleased, my comrade must be a man of sympathies identical with my own."

"A common and generous error," he replied; "but time corrects those crudities."

"As a proof, I like you none the worse for the misanthropic pleasure you take in extinguishing the candle in the magic-lantern of fancy--at the moment when the panoramic reflections most delight me. But respecting this apparition--here is no illusion; for I have found out who she is."

He smoked in silence.

"Her name is Mrs. Fraser. She is a widow. She lives in that house yonder, where the light shines through the trees. I have only seen her once, and the circumstances of that meeting may have served to exaggerate my impression of her. But the recollection I carried away with me is that of a woman of a beauty whose mysteriousness defies description."