Part 22

“I have always considered it as both cruel and ironical of nature that she should have bestowed upon the daughters of this drunkard and madman, a little of his own originality--divinity, that taint of genius, which brought him to the gutter. Look at me well, my deliverer, and you will see what I mean. If you choose you may read my dreadful secret in my eyes; in the shape of my lips; in the expanse of my nostril. It is there still, although drink and the gutter have defaced its bloom. Look at me, I say, and you will read my poor father’s history. You will see in my face that ambition for which he sought an anodyne in the drinking of drams. Sometimes when he grew tired of painting himself he would have me to sit to him, and he would tell me I was amazingly like him in his youth. He would also take my younger sister as his model, but she did not interest him as much as I. ‘Polly is destined for middle courses,’ he would say. ‘She is neither good fowl, fish, nor flesh. One of these days she will effect a compromise, and will be admitted to membership of the Great Trades Union.’

“‘As for thee, thou little slattern of a wench,’ he would say, running his fingers through my hair, as he cuffed me affectionately, ‘I am afraid to cast thy horoscope. I cannot predict what will become of thee. Such a face as thine, thou dirty one, is born to a dreadful and cynical hatred of things as they are. I can see a bitter scorn in thee for those hare-hearted rogues who run the show. Like thy illustrious father thou wilt live to be a thorn in the bowels of the canaille.’ I was too young at that time to understand what was the meaning of my illustrious parent, but often since, as I have sunk from one stratum of my calling to another--there are degrees in this profession of mine--have I recalled his words, and I have marvelled at his power of seeing into the future.

“It was this father of ours, who before he deferred to the hand of death, launched my sister and myself upon our respective careers in the world. There was nothing hypocritical or pharisaical about this painter and lyric poet. In his heart he never aspired to those principles which he denounced with his lips. He sent our beauty to market as soon as it had reached the age of puberty. He caused us to cease the scrubbing of floors, lest it should roughen our hands. We were turned out upon the streets with rouge on our cheeks; for it seemed to dawn upon him all at once, in one of his Titanic flashes of inspiration, that there was a rational way of obtaining money to buy the brandy for which he craved during every hour of the day.

“After my father’s death, my younger sister grew into a charming, accomplished, and beautiful woman. In the course of time she aspired to the prizes of her trade. For several years she lived in refinement and luxury with a judge of the High Court; and upon his demise was able to claim the interest of a prosperous and clever criminal lawyer of the name of Whitcomb.

“For many years now I have been dead to my sister’s knowledge, for brutalized and sordid as I have grown, she was the one thing in the world besides myself I have ever been able to pity. Even when I descended below my poor father’s level, I could never find it in my heart to ‘queer her pitch’ as we say in the gutter. She grew happy and prosperous, and forgot her childhood and all the sores that festered upon her name. Long ago she achieved the beatitude of that condition of mental and moral nullity as predicted by her distinguished parent; while I, as also predicted by that seer, was destined for sterner things.

“In those lucid intervals when drugs and drams had left me the use of my faculties, I sought to appease my cynicism by preying upon society. I cannot reveal to you the cold rage I nourished against the cosmogony that had been evolved by I know not how many generations of Pharisees. The lode-star of my father’s ambition was art for the sake of art; that of her he had nurtured upon it became crime for the sake of crime. Not that I was wanton or petty in the workings of my creed; like my father, I had usually some large aim in view. Yet again like my father, it was not to myself that material prosperity accrued from the exercise of my gift, but to the crimps and bullies by whom I was surrounded. It was one of these, a base, cold-blooded, brutal, calculating ruffian, whom so treacherously I did to death.

“I think I should enact that crime again; although when my guilt was fastened upon me, and I was brought into prison, my fear of the gallows was terrible. It was even stronger than my poor father’s dread of criticism of his works. And yet as I lay under the shadow of a fate that I did not know how to obtain the fortitude to accept, I amused myself with a stroke of that wantonness which has sometimes delighted my associates, and on occasions has even rendered them respectful. I chose Mr. Whitcomb to undertake my defence. My poverty and evil repute made him reluctant to accept the office, but like my father, I retain a little of the artist’s power of seeing into the future. In my dreams a voice whispered to me that he alone could ensure my safety. And to my importunity he yielded. He yielded to that importunity which when I have felt called upon to exert it, no man has ever been able to resist.

“What a sanctuary did this prison with its indescribable gloom offer to me! All the days of my life had been cast with drunkards, madmen, thieves, panders, and prostitutes. They had rendered the very breath of heaven unclean. From one slum to another slum, from one gutter to another gutter had my steps been traced. Will it astonish you that what after all was a powerful nature had founded its grand passion upon an irreconcilable hatred of its kind? Yet I was brought into prison, and for the first time I tasted the breath of the living God.

“It was the horror of my doom, I think, giving to a life that had never had any finite knowledge the certainty of the surgeon’s knife, which had the power to touch me for the first time with the instinct of beauty. I am sure I know not whether such was the case; but a pall was lifted from my brain, a stealthy drug seemed to evaporate out of my pores. There were times when I lay behind the bars of this prison in which I could have cried aloud for gladness. The open sores in my nature began to heal. All those dark mysteries, that had pressed me down like a curse, were spread out before me luminous with meaning at those hours when the dawn stole into my cell. Ere long I would lie awake all night to watch for its appearance, for I knew that every time it came to me I should gain in knowledge. I began to understand why the sun was warm, why the birds sang, why the rain was wet. I began to understand that to breathe, to move, to do, to think, to say ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ to wield despotic powers, to do battle with that underworld, that reflex action, to which I had always been so ready to succumb, were all acts of splendor and grace, all parts of a living idea that was a noble solution of my perplexity.

“As I lay behind the bars of my prison I dreamed again and again of some mighty and enfolding power that would take the whole of my trembling irresolution in its arms and bend me into the mould of its all-powerful will. I foresaw that some young god would emerge out of those clouds about heaven, which for the first time in my life my enraptured eyes had perceived, that he would break into my cell, that he would make me the bride of that majestic loveliness which had caused my sight to shed its first tears.

“When you came and spoke to me in darkness in the prison I knew who you were. I knew that my dreams had yielded a reality; and that the new birth which had unfolded itself in my nature had already found a shape. From that hour of our meeting I thought no longer of my doom. Now that such a one had consented to plead for me I knew that none could do me hurt. Even the dock itself was powerless to touch me with fear; although until you rose to speak I could neither hear nor see, and I did not know where I was. But at the first sound of your voice I sat entranced. I forgot that my wicked and degraded life was in your hands; I forgot that a subject so foul was the source of your beautiful words. I had never known before what the living voice of poetry was like. I had never beheld those heights to which a great and noble nature is able to aspire.

“As you spoke in the court and all my enemies hung upon your words, you became a part of this miracle which had happened in myself. You were the breathing embodiment of those august shapes which emerged in all their order and beauty from behind the dark curtains of my nature. Hour by hour, as I listened to the enchantments of your voice, it seemed to steal over me that you, my deliverer, in the empire of your youth would not only free me out of prison, but also you would deliver me out of the bondage of my own soul. Such a tumult of joy came upon me then as I could not believe could visit any human creature. The music of your lips was not only the earnest of my dreams, it was the consolation of my stains.”

When the woman had finished her story she rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. Northcote, who had followed so strange a recital with an interest which its attendant circumstances even rendered intense, felt no longer able to withhold an ample meed of pity. And how unfathomable it appeared to him that his defence, which had been inspired at a time when all was darkness concerning her, should yet be vindicated so completely by the facts of her life. Such an intuition was an uncanny weapon. Who could wonder that this buffeted, arrested, slowly maturing, late-developing creature should see in its transactions the revelation of a supernatural power? She was base and foul, yet she was suffused with the inspiration of his strength--with a strength that had been used in ignorance, with a sordid end in view. She must indeed engage his pity, she who had prostrated herself before a chimera, she the thrice unhappy one who had prostrated herself before an idol with feet of clay.

In looking at her now she had lost half of her strangeness, half of her mystery. The foulness and ugliness that must recently have been stamped upon her was now effaced. He could not doubt that since she had been brought into prison her nature had been sanctified by a new birth. This squalid criminal whom life had pressed out of the ranks had actually gained eyes to see and ears to hear. Such a confession was not a charlatan’s trick; this enkindling experience of the divine beauty was a true renascence; a cleansing of a fœtid heart by the instinct of joy. Faith in its childlike naïveté had appeared by some miracle amid that expanse of corruption. It was as though a violet had raised its head in a sewer.

Now that the young man had become the witness of the phenomenon that he himself had wrought he was abashed, yet also he was sensible of recompense. Not in vain had he suffered those creative pangs by which so strange a thing was born. Fame and money were the only guerdons he had sought to compensate his gifts in their highest walk; yet that travail of the mind, that expenditure of spirit were to receive emolument more fitting. This wanton, with her crimes and her sores upon her, whom he had delivered from the last indignity her fellows could devise, would issue from Gehenna healed and purified into the mellow light of the afternoon.

Northcote had suffered extreme misgiving throughout that day, but now as he stood to gaze upon her who was undergoing a resurrection by the wand of his genius, he felt an exquisite joy in this special and peculiar gift that heaven had vouchsafed to him. It had wrought beyond his knowledge. This genie which had derided and tormented him had achieved an intrinsic glory in allowing itself to be called to the highest, the most disinterested of human offices. Here was the apologia for the art he had practised. The black magic in which he had dealt, the shame of which had stricken him, had actually wrought a divine miracle. In the light of its sanction he need repine no more.

“It is truly wonderful,” the woman muttered softly as if to herself, “to live forty years without knowledge and without curiosity, and then to awake in a night to the seas of color, the harmonies of music that make the enchantments of the life we have never perceived.”

“You are like a bird,” said the young man, “who has been born in a cage, yet who contrives at last to break through its bars. It flies into heaven, mounting rapturously into the void, and it sees the sun, the tops of the trees, the green fields, the fleecy clouds, and it tastes the bright air.”

“Yes; and hears for the first time the free and joyous songs of its kind.”

They seemed to pause to look upon one another with violently beating hearts: the man in his strength, in his insolent domination; the woman in her weakness, in her pitiful need.

“Strange, is it not,” said the young advocate, speaking aloud his thought involuntarily, “that I should not be acquainted with your history when I made my appeal?”

“Would it have been made had you known all?”

“Indeed, yes,” said Northcote, with a fervor in which he tried to rejoice; “your baseness is now less in my sight than it then was.”

The fierceness of the woman’s breathing arrested her speech.

“You force me to believe,” she cried in choking accents, “you show me what faith is, you unfold the meaning of affirmation. Never again can I be nourished by denial. You are, indeed, the Cloud-dweller who in my vision I saw break forth out of the stars.”

The sword with which these words pierced the advocate was too sharp for his fortitude. His wounds of that day had left him faint and spent with the blood that had flowed from his veins. He grew frail and numb.

“You had better hear the truth,” he said, gasping. “It is the death-knell of us both, but there is a limit to mortal endurance. I would have you divorce the instrument from his works. Your Cloud-dweller is not a god, but even as yourself a thing of dross and clay.”

“I deny it, I deny it,” said the woman, in a voice of passion.

The man seemed to cower before the anguish of her eyes.

“You owe your deliverance to an unworthy instinct which rendered me invulnerable.”

“Unworthy, my deliverer!”

“A thousand times unworthy, poor deluded one. It was not for the sake of the abandoned wretch who was presented to my mind, that I bought her life and freedom. It was not for her, it was not even for her cause that I spent the last drop of my power.”

“It was not, then, a divine magnanimity that taught you to forget my stains?”

“No.”

“It was not that you drew your sword for a marvellous gospel--for a gospel that dazzled the poor outcast in the dock with its magnificence?”

“No, no.”

“Then why did your voice seem to wail like a flute? Why did you pluck the back of your hands until the blood flowed from them? Why did you conclude in a whisper so gentle that it could only be heard by the spirit?”

“I was in a frenzy of avarice. I was fighting for myself.”

“No, no! Your words were inspired from heaven.”

“No, no! It was no more than the baleful power of the earth. I was fighting for a roof over my head, regular meals, a reputation, material needs.”

A thrill passed through the eyes of the woman. They seemed suddenly to be blinded by a thousand black thoughts she had half-forgotten. She sprang to her feet, possessed by an excitement that he who had made his pitiful confession was afraid to plumb. She placed her hands on his shoulders and peered into his face; and he did not shrink from contact with her, for by some occult power, which was her own genie, her own special and peculiar gift, he was disarmed.

“You have the voice, the bearing, of a god,” she said, quivering with terror, “but your speech belongs to the underworld whence I have come. Persist in it and we return to it together, walking hand in hand.”

The advocate strove feebly to escape from the demonic faculty which already had been exerted upon him. She resisted him mournfully.

“You cannot put me off, my deliverer. Henceforward your ways are my ways. I go with you to the bright fields of your native kingdom, or I return to the horrors of my own. I beseech you to take me by the hand and lead me along the golden paths to those mountain fastnesses in which you were born, in which the sun shines forever. You know how I have been dreaming that some saint and hero would lead me to them; you must make my dreams come true again, my deliverer, as you did but yesterday.”

“Oh, why did you come to me?” cried Northcote weakly, as he strove in vain to free himself of the yoke that was already on his neck.

He seemed hardly to understand that he had to deal with a desperate gambler who was staking all upon a final cast.

“Do not let me perish,” cried the woman. “Do not say this is an illusion upon which I have built my miraculous faith. Do not tell me that the gods walk the earth no more!”

The tragic distension of her countenance filled the young man with horror, yet also with a sense of its weird poetry.

“You must not hurl me back into the abyss out of which I have crawled with bare life,” she cried, seizing his hands with an astounding passion. “You are the god who has breathed upon the poor outcast who knows no heaven apart from your nobility; you cannot, you must not, reject her.”

Again the wretched creature sank down upon her knees before him.

XXXV

DELILAH

As Northcote gazed upon her, despair beat him down like a flail. It was not for him, man of genius as he was, to heal this outcast with his touch. Only a perfect chastity could do that; and this was the jewel with which he had parted two days before to save her from the gallows. If he touched her now, it would be as the inhabitant of her own level. She cried for the living god, yet now he was become a counterfeit of arid clay. She had asked for bread, and he had only a stone to yield.

“You must go,” he said, and the words seemed to thicken as they fell from his throat. “You must fly from me. I have nothing to offer you.”

The woman shuddered and clasped him by the ankles, but otherwise made no sign that she had heard.

“My power is gone,” he said. “I am no longer the strong and valiant one, but the poor outcast even as are you. Two days ago I flung my birthright away.”

“Will you send me back to the charnel-house?” said the woman with a low moan.

Northcote drew up his body rigidly, erectly.

“I have no choice,” were the words that were forced from between his lips.

Vein by vein the creature before him was invaded by death. She crouched lower and lower upon the ground until she was no more than a shapeless and ignominious mass on the bare boards in front of the fire. Every line of her body was merged and outspread into something amorphous, without form. Her helplessness was too complete to arouse pity. Such a flaccidity was greater than that of an infant, whose frame is too puny even to allow it to crawl.

Northcote had no disgust. He had too sharp a sense of horror that the power should be denied to him to succor such an invertebrate thing. Presently, by an effort which seemed to shatter her flesh, the creature was able to move. She rose from her knees, issuing from the state of coma with all the heavy and desperate pangs of one who attempts to throw off the fumes of a deadly venom. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, and folded her arms in front of her.

“If you could have touched me once with the hem of your garment you would have healed me. As it is, I walk back with my wounds into the world.”

A singular change had occurred in the voice of the suppliant. It was far other than that which had clothed the language of entreaty which had previously fallen from her lips. In the ear of Northcote the change wrought relief. Yet even as he imbibed this clear, this definite, this pungent tone with the eagerness of one who presses cold water to his throat at a time when the pangs of his thirst have become insupportable, a rapid and bewildering transformation took place in her who confronted him. She who a minute ago had presented the appearance of a nebula, suddenly broke out all over into light like a star. Out of the sprawling shapelessness there was seen to issue something as strong, graceful, and agile as a leopard. The hue of her skin became luminous as though a fire had been kindled beneath it; and her eyes, which so lately had been dull and without nascency, shot forth a lustre that added light to the room.

There was nothing baleful or malevolent in an apparition so profoundly wonderful. In standing aside to witness the evolutions of any force, in the act of obeying the laws by which it is governed, however inimical its operations may be to our personal safety, the feeling of repulsion bears no part. The spring of the tiger, the long white teeth of the wolf, the pinions of the eagle, the motions of the serpent, are in themselves beautiful, for in them are manifested the free and unconquerable expression of that force which nature has taken for its highest gospel. The wide and curving nostrils of the prostitute were the mansion of a subtle but brutally dominating power.