Kisses of fate. (A study of mere human nature)

Front matter

E. Heron “Allen

L I E) HA FLY OF THE

U N I VEILS ITY or ILLINOIS

Part I

False? Ah ! no — hardly that. Dear heart, you are not to blame.

(Who carps at the sun, or the fleeting rain, or the transient evening dew ?)

And I cavil not at your fair young soul that would fain — but could not — be true.

And I love you, aye, the same !

I

We were at Harrow together. I remember so well the first time I ever saw, or spoke to him ! It seems like yester-year instead of a quarter of a century ago. The summer term of the year of grace i8 — was two days old. For two days past the historic hill wheron ‘‘ Lyon of Preston, yeoman John, full many a year ago,” built his school, had been alive with a merry swarm of boys ranging in age from fourteen years upwards, clad lO

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in the jacket of the lower, or the swallowtails of the upper school, and all hatted alike .with the shallow, broad-brimmed straw, kept securely in its place by an elastic behind the head, — the whole constituting the quaint costume in which the authorities and scholars of Harrow-on-the-Hill see nothing ridiculous. The whole place seemed to laugh, as it always did in the early days of a new term, as if amused at its sudden awakening from the quiet weeks of the holidays; and the heat of the young spring sun striking the red brick of the old schools, of the Fourth Form Room, where malefactors received condign punishment, and of Speecher ” (the new speech-room had not then been built), was reflected upon the asphalt of the “ school-yard,” causing it to bubble up and stick to the feet of the enthusiasts who followed one another in a long queue^ bowling yard-balls ” at some champion of the school-yard cricket wicket.

I had walked up the hill, past Sam's,” to the school-yard, with my hands in my pockets

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1 1

— a Harrow boy never under any circumstances takes his hands out of his pockets ; — I had read the first notice-slips of the term fluttering upon the notice-board at the gates; had peered into the cloisters under the old speech-room, and had wandered away to the low wall at the top of the steps leading to the gymnasium, leaning upon which one looks over the disused Milling-ground ” and the racquet-courts, and away, away, away over the fields, past Harrow Weald to Pinner, and Oxhey, and Bushey, and Watford, twenty miles into the blue distance towards great cities in which many of us were destined to play our parts in the drama of life, and towards vast oceans which we should many of us cross before Jong in search of wealth and fame. And whilst I leaned upon the wall and fidgeted with the leaves that peeped inquisitively over the coping, deliberating whether it was worth while to walk down the steps to the gymnasium or no, I became aware of the presence, a few paces distant, of a small boy.

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When I say a small boy ” I do not mean that his stature was less than mine ; he was about my height. Nor do I mean that he was younger than I ; indeed, I subsequently knew that we were of an equal age. I say a small ” boy because I had been a Harrovian ” for two terms already, and felt a veteran — and a gigantic one to boot — by the side of the new fellow ” who stood at ray side. He was of the ordinary height of a boy of his age, neither stunted nor run to seed, as is so frequently the case among school-boys of fourteen. Boy as he was, I remember that he was beautifully made, thin in the flank, deep in the chest, flat in the back, and straight and erect from the lines of the legs to the carriage of the head. He was very decidedly a juvenile swell.” His clothes fitted him with a perfection rare among children at the age when they ‘‘ grow visibly ; ” they were cut after the latest fashion for boys; and I remember that I, who was always an outrageously slovenly person, felt for his attire a mixture of envy

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and contempt ; but his face conquered me — it was beautiful. His broad, white forehead and deep, violet eyes were thrown into shadow by the broad brim of his Harrow hat, from beneath which there escaped the wavy masses of his hair, whose glossy blackness had a tinge of deep purple brown in it which gave to it an effect of wonderful warmth and life. A straight, Greek nose and finely-cut mouth completed the face, which was of a yellowish delicate tint — a perfect ‘‘ blanc mat'" complexion. Young as I was, I was charmed by this juvenile Adonis; and edging along the low, red-brick wall so as to get close up to him, I said :

‘‘ Are you a new fellow ? ”

Yes.’^

What’s your name ? ”

‘‘ Sylvester Gray.”

‘‘ Sylvester Gray,” thought I, what a delightful name ! ” All my life I had longed for such an one, and had envied the “ Ronceval de Courcy’s,” the “ Plantagenet Fitzjames’s,” and the other high-sounding sponsorials and

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patronymics owned by the heroes of inexpensive fiction. My father^s name was Tompkins, and my godfathers and godmothers in my baptism had prefixed thereto the unassuming prenomen of ‘‘John,” an insult which J felt that death alone — my death — could wipe out. I hold firmly to a theory that a man is heavily handicapped, as regards his individuality, by his Christian name. Thus, all the Toms I have known have been good-natured, and rather commonplace. All the Charlies have been delightful “ bad lots,” all the Freds have been rowdy, all the Georges practical, all the Franks prigs, all the Archies good, all the Edwards artistic, and so on. Therefore, to give a boy one of these characteristic names weights him from the start with a certain prescribed individuality. But call a boy Sylvester, or some name of that kind, he has the chance of moulding himself on an unique pattern ; — and his mother has a chance of helping him.

Thus everything about him, save the fact that he had taken on entering the school a

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form above the one I had reached after two terms’ work, attracted me to Sylvester Gray ; and just as the most dissimilar persons often voluntarily cast in their lots in life together, so Sylvester and I swore an eternal friendship in the old school-yard on this sunny afternoon, and strolled oft, arm-in-arm, down the zig-zag pathway of our lives.

Nobody liked me when I was a boy; and looking back at myself after the lapse of never-mind-how-many years, I am really not surprised. In the first place, I was very ugly, and that makes a great deal of difference in the life of a boy ; secondly, I was rather a fiend; I was quiet, morose, taci-. turn ; I hated people of my own age, and got on much better with the masters than with the fellows at school. I didn’t care about games. The hideous combination of colors worn by the Football Team had no attraction for me ; the dark-colored hat of the Cricket Eleven, the badge of the Rifle Team, and the certificate of gymnastic proficiency were not, for me, objects of envy. On half-

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holidays I preferred the cool and quiet of the Vaughan library to the tumult of the cricketfields and the racquet-courts, or better still — as I could always get a master to ‘‘ sign me for bill ” (i. e., to excuse my attendance at the four o’clock calling-over of the schoollist), I loved to wander far afield, to Pinner, and Oxhey, and Sudbury, and Wembley, to Stanmore and Elstree, in search of flowers and ferns, and butterflies, and solitude ; and oftentimes Sylvester Gray would give up the joys of the courts and playing-fields, where he soon became a welcome habitue.^ to accompany me, and then we would talk of home, and of the past and the future.

I was to be a doctor, like my father before me. Sylvester was the orphan son of an officer, who had been an old Harrovian, and who had fallen for his queen and country at Balaclava. I remember Sylvester Gray bursting into tears one day in the school-chapel, as, for the first time, he read his father’s name on the tablets in the south aisle, erected in commemoration of the Harrow boys who had fallen in the

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Crimea. His future would be one of dignified ease, and his mind was divided between going into the army, on the one hand, and being called to the bar and then spending his life travelling about and seeing the world, on the other.

Bright hopes ! Happy future ! Sylvester Gray killed himself one warm spring night in Rome, when he was only thirty ; and I alone, of his countless friends, have ever known the sequence of events that led to this catastrophe, which has been one of the profoundest sorrows of my life.

II

Sylvester Gray and I began at Harrow a friendship that lasted all his life. He became, at school, the periodical companion of my youthful solitude, and took a kind of halftimorous, half-contemptuous interest in my scientific and quasi-scientific manias. He would sit in the reclining-chair in my room, his hands nervously grasping its arms, and watch me with grave, deep eyes whilst I mixed i8

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strange chemicals in a glass mortar or graduated measure, preparatory to the production of some perfume or explosion, destined to surpass all previous efforts in virulence and destructiveness. He would take a queer, puzzled pleasure in looking over my butterflies and dried flowers. He would even bring himself to poke my imprisoned snakes, through the bars of their cage, with a penholder; and, as a result, I confess that, over and above my personal adoration of him,

I was flattered by his interest in my pursuits, for he was popular and a swell ” in the school, whilst I was distinctly the reverse. After school hours it was, as I have said, far more delightful for me to hide myself in the“ Vaughan library, or in my own room, to explore the mysteries of Rees’ Encyclopaedia, or to concoct the experiments aforesaid, than to mix with my fellow-creatures; and this kind of thing does not tend to increase a fellow’s popularity, even if he is a member of the Upper School, ready to give cons” (Anglice: translations) to indolent athletes of

^9 the Shells and Fourth Form; and such appreciation of my schoolfellows as I enjoyed at Harrow was due practically in its entirety to the efforts of Sylvester.

He would carry about in his pockets, and exhibit, the successful results of my more showy experiments ; he would appeal to me as to an authority on matters recondite and abstruse, and would ask my advice on any matters deeper than the ordinary problems of a schoolboy^s existence, that might arise in conversation with ‘‘ his set and in this way I became an object of a certain respect, and went through life rejoicing in the nickname of Professor.’' I was naturally impressed with a kind of gratitude — the gratitude of the physically superior beast,” for the fragile but more popular “ beauty,” and I did my best to share such joys as life possessed . for me with young Gray, whom I was inclined to envy and admire in a public, and patronize in a private, capacity.

I have said that I was more popular with the masters than with the fellows. I had al-

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so many acquaintances among the residents of Harrow, whom I had met at the masters’ houses, and none were greater friends ot mine than the Woosters. In my first conversation with Mrs. Wooster I found that we were in some abstruse way connected with one another ; and whether it was that I adored Mrs. Wooster, or whether it was that I loved to sit and talk to her golden-haired daughter Evelyn, I used to look forward with the liveliest anticipation to tea-time on Thursdays, when, as a regular thing, I used to find my way to their pretty little house, which looked out over the southern slope of the hill towards Edgware and London.

I made their acquaintance during my second term at Harrow, and never knew till many years afterwards why, after my last term at school, our friendship cooled oft, and practically ceased. It is a terrible story, I am afraid, but it is very necessary to the development of this narrative that I should sketch in the main outlines, which outlines it is equally necessary that I should leave my readers to fill in.

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When first I knew her, Evelyn Wooster was a blue-eyed child of fourteen, rather old for her age, as only-children are apt to be, with a glory of sunny hair that fell in a tangled mass far below her waist ; and I suppose she holds in my life the elevated position of my first love. That she should care about me was, I knew, a ridiculous idea ; but the joy of finding a white example of the fritillaria meleagris in a field near Pinner, and the delight of catching a humming-bird hawkmoth on the terrace behind the Chapel and the Vaughan, were increased a thousand-fold by her appreciation of my trouvailles.^ and by her borrowing them for a week to show to her ‘^greatest girl-friend” (how my heart leapt at that qualification, girl-friend ”), and by her repeated subsequent allusions to these feats of prowess in the collecting line. But I never felt so proud of any specimen that I had submitted to her for inspection and approval as I did of Sylvester Gray, whom I took up there to tea one sunny afternoon of his first term at Harrow.

He cut me out completely. When it was a question of what has been justly called the softer, and unjustly the weaker, sex, he always cut everybody out. But I did not mind; I never thought anything could be too good for either him or her, and I gave them to one another without a murmur, and was quite content to sit and talk to Mrs. Wooster, or help her to tend her flowers, whilst Sylvester and Evelyn sat together and talked on the verandah that ran round the house, or, in winter, at the piano in their cosy little drawing-room.

And so the best part of five years crept by. It was our last term at Harrow. We were both in the Sixth Form, and I was a monitor. Sylvester wasn’t, but he was in the Cricket Eleven and the Shooting Team, and he played racquets for the school, and helped us materially to beat Eton at Lord’s cricket ground, and to win the Ashburton Shield and the Racquet Cup at Wimbledon and Prince’s. Evelyn Wooster was a lovely young woman of eighteen, and she and Sylvester Gray were

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reciprocally “ hard hit.” Well, well ! he was eminently ^‘eligible,” and my nineteen-yearold experience enabled me to detect a distinct satisfaction in the glances which Mrs. Wooster occasionally directed at the handsome pair, whilst we — she and I — walked about the garden as we had done for four years past, and talked horticulture and home.

I ? Ah, what of that ? So long as Sylvester and Evelyn were happy, what did my feelings on the subject matter ? Nothing to anybody but myself, did they? Very well, then ! They are both dead now, and I am still a miserable, buttonless bachelor !

Nearly five years ! And during that time we had seen a good deal of one another — Sylvester, Evelyn, and I. Sylvester had been a beautiful boy — now he was a superlatively handsome young man. A silky, sable moustache decorated his upper lip, and his whole bearing was full of that graceful strength which signalizes the healthy, pure-bred gentleman. The more hypercritical used to object that his face was somewhat too delicately

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formed; that it was too womanish in the softness of its outlines, with its languorous violet eyes and long lashes. To me, as to all men who were not envious, he was always an object of unquestioning admiration ; whilst among women he was always a kind of Admirable Crichton. Almost without exception they fell in love with him, and he would accept their homage quite as though it were a matter of course. Entre deux amants, il y a toujours I’un qui baise et I’autre qui tend la joue;” and Sylvester was always the one “ qui tendait la joue.” The only woman I ever knew him to worry himself about was Evelyn Wooster, and her he simply adored.

His friendship for the Woosters had communicated itself to his sole relations, an aunt and a sister, who lived in a beautiful old Tudor mansion belonging to Sylvester by inheritance, near Staplehurst, in the County of Kent. During the summer of the year i8 — Mrs. Wooster, Evelyn, and I were all spending a few weeks with them at his beautiful old home before we should severally part to

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pursue our ways along the different paths marked out for us in life. Sylvester and I had left Harrow a few weeks before, and on the last Thursday before the school broke up we had met as usual at the little cottage on tke hill ; and, as it had been a rather affecting little meeting, we had to get up our spirits by projecting this visit to Idlesse — such was the old-world name of Sylvester’s Kentish home.

I had been there more than once during the five y^ars of our school days, but I thought it had never looked so pretty as it did when, at the close of a summer afternoon, I drove up to the house through the winding grounds that hid it from the Staplehurst road, and saw it bathed in the splendour of an August sunset, with Sylvester, in the most neglige of attitudes and costumes, and Evelyn, in the freshest and prettiest of frocks, standing in the porch to welcome me. Sylvester’s fox terrier, who sat in front of them, making good practice at the flies that investigated him — a grave dog, who rejoiced in the fas-

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cinating name of Mr. Smith ’’ — gave me one searching glance to satisfy himself of my identity, and then went into hysterics over me as I sprang from the dog-cart. The air was heavy with the perfume of the evening primroses that grew round the porch, and the Marechale Niel roses that straggled all over it ; and as I shook Sylvester and Evelyn by the hand I was overwhelmed by a sensation which I could not understand at the time, but which, looking back at that August evening, I know now was simply pure happiness.

Then there followed three perfect weeks spent among the orchards and the hopgardens of the neighborhood. The five years that had passed since my story had opened had not altered my disposition very materially, and I was still disposed to be quiet. Besides, I had my preliminary medical examination to look forward to ; and with the enthusiasm that we all of us feel, when first we leave school, to reach as quickly as possible the dignity of a “ profes-

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sion,” I had brought down with me some of my bran-new medical books to read up. They were not much read, but they lay about a good deal, and when one day Sylvester’s aunt looked into one of them and nearly frightened herself into fits, I felt that the troubles of transportation were, in a measure, compensated for. At any rate, I studied botany with Sybil Gray, Sylvester’s pretty sister, and really we gathered a lot of flowers together, and I dried some of them — that ^he found; but when I congratulated her, and indirectly myself, on the progress of our botanical studies, it was horrid of her to ask me what were the toxicological properties of Marechale Niel roses, and what was the active alkaloid principle of the forget-menot.

Meanwhile Sylvester and Evelyn lived in a fool’s paradise of their own. They disappeared usually after breakfast, and turned up at lunch, with an appearance of unconscious virtue, to talk volubly of plans for the afternoon, embracing the entire party. After lunch they disappeared again, to return in time to dress for dinner, looking supremely foolish, but assuring us all that they had not been outside the grounds, and — Heaven forgive them ! — that they had been looking for us everywhere. We used to laugh at them — it was an understood thing” — but they were both young enough in all conscience. The future before them was as bright as it was long. Sometimes Sylvester would allude to it vaguely in the smoking-room before we went to bed. What aTuture it would be !

Well, well ! She died long ago, and Sylvester Gray killed himself in Rome ten years later. Ah — yi!

III

The three weeks ran by like a summer afternoon. The Woosters were to leave in two days, and Evelyn and Sylvester seemed to forget that we others even existed. They ran about together, or walked up and down the terrace arm-in-arm nearly all the time.

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The last but one was one of those frightfully hot days that we have sometimes in England at the end of August. It had been sultry and oppressive since early morning ; the lovers had been away all day, wandering in the woods at the back of the house, and had arrived home at tea-time, flushed, silent, preoccupied, it seemed to me. During the interval before dinner and during the meal they scarcely took their eyes off one another, and I confess that their silent, constrained manner gave me an undefined sensation of uneasiness, which I could not have accounted for even to myself

After dinner we — that is, Sybil and I, and Evelyn and Sylvester — went out on to the terrace, and wandered up and down in the stifling heat, which even the dew had been powerless to moderate. At intervals we would stop and stand at the terrace wall to watch the summer lightning in the horizon — lightning which was almost incessant, and more vivid than I ever remember to have seen it before or since. Sybil and I kept up

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a continual chatter, as we always did ; but the other two were strangely silent, and would stand for ten minutes at a time against the wall, looking into the distance without saying a word, their fingers closely intertwined as their hands hung listlessly by their sides. There was, after all, something peculiarly unrefreshing in the air of this summer night, and presently, Evelyn's white frock having turned a corner at the end ot the terrace and disappeared in the direction of the rose garden, Sybil and I turned to enter the house. As we did so she turned to me suddenly, and said :

‘^Jack, I don’t know why, but I feel so uneasy about those two. It’s a dreadful idea to have, but you have been our best friend for so long that you’re the only person I can talk to about it. Sylvester is so impulsive and wild-hearted, and Evelyn adores him so absolutely, that I’m dreadfully frightened. Do go down to the rosery and tell them to come in and have some music.”

She had noticed it too ! I walked rapidly

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down the gravelled terrace, and turned off on to the soft grass walks of the rose garden. I could not see the lovers anywhere, and started to walk rapidly round the beds in search of them. I found them suddenly — — too suddenly — as I turned a corner, beneath a trellised archway. They were standing motionless, locked in one another’s arms. Her head lay upon his shoulder, and she seemed to have lost consciousness of the whole world beneath the spell of his kiss. I sprang back and retraced my steps some twenty yards, and then advanced once more, whistling to apprise them of my approach. They turned the corner arm-in-arm and advanced to meet me. I delivered my message, and we regained the house in silence.

The ladies retired early, and as Sylvester did not want to smoke, we went to our rooms also. I looked in on Sylvester on my way to mine, and talked with him for a few minutes— no longer, for he evidently did not want me to remain. His face "was whiter than usual, but his hand, as we said Good-

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night/’ was burning hot. I looked into his eyes^ and said :

Syl, old fellow, there’s something wrong. What is it ?”

Wrong!” he exclaimed, wrong ! How can anything be wrong with a man who is loved as I am, and by such a woman ? Why Jack, old man, I am so deliriously happy that I don’t know what to do. We love one another so passionately that it is almost more than we can bear. Don’t be uneasy on my account; if anything is wrong it is a case of extremes meeting, of my being so happy that I don’t know what to do with myself.”

‘‘ Sylvester,” I cried, “ for God’s sake, take care! You are not going to marry for a couple of years at least. Is it right for you two to be so much alone together as you have been ? — to separate yourselves so entirely from the world as you do ? Surely not.”

My dear Jack, don’t worry yourself about me— or us; we can take care of ourselves. And now — good-night !”

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And with that I left him.

What a night it was ! I felt suffocated, though I had opened all my windows. At last I got up and opened my door, and, cooled a little by the draught, fell into an uneasy slumber. Suddenly I woke. Surely I heard a footstep passing my open door — a stealthy, gliding footstep, like that of a robber ; and the idea of burglars instantly occurred to my city-bred mind, as I thought of the massive Queen Anne plate which lay about on the sideboard in the dining-room, day and night. I lay still for a few moments, and then quietly rising and putting on a dressing-gown, felt my way down the corridor to Sylvester’s room. The moon had hidden herself behind a cloud, and it was pitch dark. As I crept along, the clock in the hall struck half past two ; I turned the handle of Sylvester’s door, and went in.

He was out of bed, standing at the window, also in a dressing-gown. He turned upon me and said, in a voice which seemed

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to me to be choking with suppressed fury : ‘‘ In God’s name, what are you prowling about the place for ?”

Sylvester,” I replied, 1 heard footsteps in the house, and thought you were being robbed, and might not have been wakened up. I see you were, though. Is everything all right ?”

His face was in the shadow, but his voice was natural again as he replied,

‘‘Yes, yes, all right! I heard footsteps myself, or fancied I did, and went out to investigate. I found everything safe; if I hadn’t I should have come to rouse you. It was probably me that you heard coming back to my room.”

Undoubtedly that was it. I regained my room and went back to bed to fall into a feverish, confused sleep, in which I dreamed a ghastly dream, wherein Sylvester and Evelyn were engaged struggling with a loathsome monster, which crushed her in its iron jaws, despite the efforts of Sylvester to save her, whilst I was paralyzed a few

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paces off, powerless to raise a finger in his assistance. When I awoke it was broad daylight.

Evelyn did not come down to breakfast. Mrs. Wooster said that her daughter had passed a bad night and was feverish ; the frightful heat of the day before had been too much for her. Sylvester was in despair; it seemed so hard that she should be unwell her last day at Idlesse, and after breakfast he fidgeted around the house waiting for her to come down. We were sitting together on the terrace when she made her appearance at the drawing-room window, looking very pale and fragile in her white morningwrapper. We rose to go to her at once, and it seemed to me that there was something singularly subdued in her manner as she answered our anxious enquiries. She was still suffering a little ; she had a headache, and was generally not up to the mark f but she had made a point of coming down for her last day in the country.