The Tragic Comedians: A Study in a Well-known Story. Complete. George Meredith
bearing said; and Clotilde’s acquiesced; and the worthy couple following them had to exhibit a copy of the same, much wondering. Partly by habit, and of his natural astuteness, Alvan peremptorily usurped a lead that once taken could not easily be challenged, and would roll him on a good tideway strong in his own passion and his lady’s up against the last defences—her parents. A difficulty with them was foreseen. What is a difficulty!—a gate in the hunting-field: an opponent on a platform: a knot beneath a sword: the dam to waters that draw from the heavens. Not desiring it in this case—it would have been to love the difficulty better than the woman—he still enjoyed the bracing prospect of a resistance, if only because it was a portion of the dowry she brought him. Good soldiers (who have won their grades) are often of a peaceful temper and would not raise an invocation to war, but a view of the enemy sets their pugnacious forces in motion, the bugle fills their veins with electrical fire, till they are as racers on the race-course.—His inmost hearty devil was glad of a combat that pertained to his possession of her, for battle gives the savour of the passion to win, and victory dignifies a prize: he was, however, resolved to have it, if possible, according to the regular arrangement of such encounters, formal, without snatchings, without rash violence; a victory won by personal ascendancy, reasoning eloquence.
He laughed to hear her say, in answer to a question as to her present feelings: ‘I feel that I am carried away by a centaur!’ The comparison had been used or implied to him before.
‘No!’ said he, responding to a host of memories, to shake them off, ‘no more of the quadruped man! You tempt him—may I tell you that? Why, now, this moment, at the snap of my fingers, what is to hinder our taking the short cut to happiness, centaur and nymph? One leap and a gallop, and we should be into the morning, leaving night to grope for us, parents and friends to run about for the wits they lose in running. But no! No more scandals. That silver moon invites us by its very spell of bright serenity, to be mad: just as, when you drink of a reverie, the more prolonged it is the greater the readiness for wild delirium at the end of the draught. But no!’ his voice deepened—‘the handsome face of the orb that lights us would be well enough were it only a gallop between us two. Dearest, the orb that lights us two for a lifetime must be taken all round, and I have been on the wrong side of the moon.
I have seen the other face of it—a visage scored with regrets, dead dreams, burnt passions, bald illusions, and the like, the like!—sunless, waterless, without a flower! It is the old volcano land: it grows one bitter herb: if ever you see my mouth distorted you will know I am revolving a taste of it; and as I need the antidote you give, I will not be the centaur to win you, for that is the land where he stables himself; yes, there he ends his course, and that is the herb he finishes by pasturing on. You have no dislike of metaphors and parables? We Jews are a parable people.’
‘I am sure I do understand…’ said Clotilde, catching her breath to be conscientious, lest he should ask her for an elucidation.
‘Provided always that the metaphor be not like the metaphysician’s treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise!—You were going to add?’
‘I was going to say, I think I understand, but you run away with me still.’
‘May the sensation never quit you!’
‘It will not.’
‘What a night!’ Alvan raised his head: ‘A night cast for our first meeting and betrothing! You are near home?’
‘The third house yonder in the moonlight.’
‘The moonlight lays a white hand on it!’
‘That is my window sparkling.’
‘That is the vestal’s cresset. Shall I blow it out?’
‘You are too far. And it is a celestial flame, sir!’
‘Celestial in truth! My hope of heaven! Dian’s crescent will be ever on that house for me, Clotilde. I would it were leagues distant, or the door not forbidden!’
‘I could minister to a good knight humbly.’
Alvan bent to her, on a sudden prompting:
‘When do father and mother arrive?’
‘To-morrow.’
He took her hand. ‘To-morrow, then! The worst of omens is delay.’
Clotilde faintly gasped. Could he mean it?—he of so evil a name in her family and circle!
Her playfulness and pleasure in the game of courtliness forsook her.
‘Tell me the hour when it will be most convenient to them to receive me,’ said Alvan.
She stopped walking in sheer fright.
‘My father—my mother?’ she said, imaging within her the varied horror of each and the commotion.
‘To-morrow or the day after—not later. No delays! You are mine, we are one; and the sooner my cause is pleaded the better for us both. If I could step in and see them this instant, it would be forestalling mischances. Do you not see, that time is due to us, and the minutes are our gold slipping away?’
She shrank her hand back: she did not wish to withdraw the hand, only to shun the pledge it signified. He opened an abyss at her feet, and in deadly alarm of him she exclaimed: ‘Oh! not yet; not immediately.’ She trembled, she made her petition dismal by her anguish of speechlessness. ‘There will be such… not yet! Perhaps later. They must not be troubled yet—at present. I am… I cannot—pray, delay!’
‘But you are mine!’ said Alvan. ‘You feel it as I do. There can be no real impediment?’
She gave an empty sigh that sought to be a run of entreaties. In fear of his tongue she caught at words to baffle it, senseless of their imbecility: ‘Do not insist: yes, in time: they will—they—they may. My father is not very well… my mother: she is not very well. They are neither of them very well: not at present!—Spare them at present.’
To avoid being carried away, she flung herself from the centaur’s back to the disenchanting earth; she separated herself from him in spirit, and beheld him as her father and mother and her circle would look on this pretender to her hand, with his lordly air, his Jew blood, and his hissing reputation—for it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and the geese of the world. She saw him in their eyes, quite coldly: which imaginative capacity was one of the remarkable feats of cowardice, active and cold of brain even while the heart is active and would be warm.
He read something of her weakness. ‘And supposing I decide that it must be?’
‘How can I supplicate you!’ she replied with a shiver, feeling that she had lost her chance of slipping from his grasp, as trained women of the world, or very sprightly young wits know how to do at the critical moment: and she had lost it by being too sincere. Her cowardice appeared to her under that aspect.
‘Now I perceive that the task is harder,’ said Alvan, seeing her huddled in a real dismay. ‘Why will you not rise to my level and fear nothing! The way is clear: we have only to take the step. Have you not seen tonight that we are fated for one another? It is your destiny, and trifling with destiny is a dark business. Look at me. Do you doubt my having absolute control of myself to bear whatever they put on me to bear, and hold firmly to my will to overcome them! Oh! no delays.’
‘Yes!’ she cried; ‘yes, there must be.’
‘You say it?’
The courage to repeat her cry was wanting.
She trembled visibly: she could more readily have bidden him bear her hence than have named a day for the interview with her parents; but desperately she feared that he would be the one to bid; and he had this of the character of destiny about him, that she felt in him a maker of facts. He was her dream in human shape, her eagle of men, and she felt like a lamb in the air; she had no resistance, only terror of his power, and a crushing new view of the nature of reality.
‘I see!’ said he, and his breast fell. Her timid inability to join with him for instant action reminded him that he carried many weights: a bad name among her people and class, and chains in private. He was old enough to strangle