CHAPTER XV

He slept. Near upon morning he roused with his tender fit strong on him,

but speechless in the waking as it had been dreamless in sleep. It was a

happy load on his breast, a life about to be born, and he thought that a

wife beside him would give it language. She should have, for she would

call out, his thousand flitting ideas now dropped on barren ground for

want of her fair bosom to inspire, to vivify, to receive. Poetry laid a

hand on him: his desire of the wife, the children, the citizen's good

name--of these our simple civilized ambitions--was lowly of the earth,

throbbing of earth, and at the same time magnified beyond scope of speech

in vast images and emblems resembling ranges of Olympian cloud round the

blue above earth, all to be decipherable, all utterable, when she was by.

What commoner word!--yet wife seemed to him the word most reverberating

of the secret sought after by man, fullest at once of fruit and of

mystery, or of that light in the heart of mystery which makes it

magically fruitful.

He felt the presence of Clotilde behind the word; but in truth the

delicate sensations breeding these half-thoughts of his, as he lay

between sleeping and waking, shrank from conjuring up the face of the

woman who had wounded them, and a certain instinct to preserve and be

sure of his present breathing-space of luxurious tranquillity kept her

veiled. Soon he would see her as his wife, and then she would be she,

unveiled ravishingly, the only she, the only wife! He knew the cloud he

clasped for Clotilde enough to be at pains to shun a possible prospect of

his execrating it. Oh, the only she, the only wife! the wild man's

reclaimer! the sweet abundant valley and channel of his river of

existence henceforward! Doubting her in the slightest was doubting her

human. It is the brain, the satanic brain which will ever be pressing to

cast its shadows: the heart is clearer and truer.

He multiplied images, projected visions, nestled in his throbs to drug

and dance his brain. He snatched at the beauty of a day that outrolled

the whole Alpine hand-in-hand of radiant heaven-climbers for an assurance

of predestined celestial beneficence; and again, shadowily thoughtful of

the littleness of the thing he exalted and claimed, he staked his reason

on the positive blessing to come to him before nightfall, telling himself

calmly that he did so because there would be madness in expecting it

otherwise: he asked for so little! Since he asked for so little, to

suppose that it would not be granted was irrational. None but a very

coward could hesitate to stake his all on the issue.

Singularly small indeed the other aims in life appeared by comparison

with this one, but his intellect, in the act of pleading excuses for his

impatience, distinguished why it should be so. The crust, which is not

much, is everything to the starving beggar; and he was eager for the

crust that he might become sound and whole again, able to give their just

proportion to things, as at present he acknowledged himself hardly able

to do. He could not pursue two thoughts on a political question, or grasp

the idea of a salutary energy in the hosts animated by his leadership.

There would have to be an end of it speedily, else men might name him

worthless dog!

Morning swam on the lake in her beautiful nakedness, a wedding of white

and blue, of purest white and bluest blue. Alvan crossed the island

bridges when the sun had sprung on his shivering fair prey, to make the

young fresh Morning rosy, and was glittering along the smooth

lake-waters. Workmen only were abroad, and Alvan was glad to be out with

them to feel with them as one of them. Close beside him the vivid genius

of the preceding century, whose love of workmen was a salt of heaven in

his human corruptness, looked down on the lake in marble. Alvan cherished

a worship of him as of one that had first thrilled him with the feeling

of our common humanity, with the tenderness for the poor, with the

knowledge of our frailty. Him, as well as the great Englishman and a

Frenchman, his mind called Father, and his conscience replied to that

progenitor's questioning of him, but said 'You know the love of woman: He

loved indeed, but he was not an amatory trifler. He too was a worker, a

champion worker. He doated on the prospect of plunging into his work; the

vision of jolly giant labours told of peace obtained, and there could be

no peace without his prize.

He listened to the workmen's foot-falls. The solitary sound and steady

motion of their feet were eloquent of early morning in a city, not less

than the changes of light in heaven above the roofs. With the golden

light came numbers, workmen still. Their tread on the stones roused some

of his working thoughts, like an old tune in his head, and he watched the

scattered files passing on, disciplined by their daily necessities,

easily manageable if their necessities are but justly considered. These

numbers are the brute force of earth, which must have the earth in time,

as they had it in the dawn of our world, and then they entered into

bondage for not knowing how to use it. They will have it again: they have

it partially, at times, in the despot, who is only the reflex of their

brute force, and can give them only a shadow of their claim. They will

have it all, when they have illumination to see and trust to the

leadership of a greater force than they--in force of brain, in the

spiritual force of ideas; ideas founded on justice; and not the justice

of these days of the governing few whose wits are bent to steady our

column of civilized humanity by a combination of props and jugglers'

arts, but a justice coming of the recognized needs of majorities, which

will base the column on a broad plinth for safety-broad as the base of

yonder mountain's towering white immensity--and will be the guarantee for

the solid uplifting of our civilization at last. 'Right, thou!' he

apostrophized--the old Ironer, at a point of his meditation. 'And right,

thou! more largely right!' he thought, further advanced in it, of the

great Giuseppe, the Genoese. 'And right am I too, between that metal-rail

of a politician and the deep dreamer, each of them incomplete for want of

an element of the other!' Practically and in vision right was Alvan, for

those two opposites met fusing in him: like the former, he counted on the

supremacy of might; like the latter, he distinguished where it lay in

perpetuity.

During his younger years he had been like neither in the moral curb they

could put on themselves--particularly the southern-blooded man. He had

resembled the naturally impatient northerner most, though not so supple

for business as he. But now he possessed the calmness of the Genoese; he

had strong self-command now; he had the principle that life is too short

for the indulgence of public fretfulness or of private quarrels; too

valuable for fruitless risks; too sacred, one may say, for the shedding

of blood on personal grounds. Oh! he had himself well under, fear not.

He could give and take from opposition. And rightly so, seeing that he

confessed to his own bent for sarcastically stinging: he was therefore

bound to endure a retort. Speech for speech, pamphlet for pamphlet, he

could be temperate. Nay, he defied an adversary to produce in him the

sensation of intemperateness; so there would not be much danger of his

being excited to betray it. Shadowily he thought of the hard words hurled

at him by the Rudigers, and of the injury Clotilde's father did him by

plotting to rob him of his daughter. But how had an Alvan replied?--with

the arts of peaceful fence victoriously. He conceived of no temptation to

his repressed irascibility save the political. A day might come for him

and the vehement old Ironer to try their mettle in a tussle. On that day

he would have to be wary, but, as Alvan felt assured, he would be more

master of himself than his antagonist. He was for the young world, in the

brain of a new order of things; the other based his unbending system on

the visions of a feudal chief, and would win a great step perchance, but

there he would stop: he was not with the future!

This immediate prospect of a return to serenity after his recent

charioteering, had set him thinking of himself and his days to come,

which hung before him in a golden haze that was tranquillizing. He had a

name, he had a station: he wanted power and he saw it approaching.

He wanted a wife too. Colonel von Tresten took coffee with him previous

to the start with Dr. Storchel to General von Rudiger's house. Alvan

consequently was unable any longer to think of a wife in the abstract. He

wanted Clotilde. Here was a man going straight to her, going to see her,

positively to see her and hear her voice!--almost instantly to hear her

voice, and see her eyes and hair, touch her hand. Oh! and rally her,

rouse her wit; and be able to tell him the flower she wore for the day,

and where she wore it--at her temples, or sliding to the back hair, or in

her bosom, or at her waist! She had innumerable tricks of indication in

these shifty pretty ways of hers, and was full of varying speech to the

cunning reader of her.

'But keep her to seriousness,' Alvan said. 'Our meeting must be early

to-day--early in the afternoon. She is not unlikely to pretend to trifle.

She has not seen me for some time, and will probably enough play at

emancipation and speak of the "singular impatience of the seigneur

Alvan." Don't you hear her? I swear to those very words! She "loves her

liberty," and she curves her fan and taps her foot. "The seigneur Alvan

appears pressed for time:" She has "letters to write to friends to-day."

Stop that! I can't join in play: to-morrow, if she likes; not to-day. Or

not till I have her by the hand. She shall be elf and fairy, French

coquette, whatever she pleases to-morrow, and I'll be satisfied. All I

beg is for plain dealing on a business matter. This is a business matter,

a business meeting. I thoroughly know the girl's heart, and know that in

winning the interview I win her. Only'--he pressed his friend's

arm--'but, my dear Tresten, you understand. You're a luckier fellow than

I--for the time, at all events. Make it as short as you can. You'll find

me here. I shall take a book--one of the Pandects. I don't suppose I

shall work. I feel idle. Any book handy; anything will interest me. I

should walk or row on the lake, but I would rather be sure of readiness

for your return. You meet Storchel at the General's house?'

'The appointment was at the house,' Tresten said.

'I have not seen him this morning. I know of nothing to prepare him for.

You see, it was invariable with her: as soon as she met me she had twice

her spirit: and that she knows;--she was a new woman, ten times the

happier for having some grains of my courage. So she'll be glad to come

to terms and have me by to support her. Press it, if necessary; otherwise

she might be disappointed, my dear fellow. Storchel looks on, and

observes, and that 's about all he can do, or need do. Up Mont Blanc

to-day, Tresten! It's the very day for an ascent:--one of the rare

crystalline jewels coming in a Swiss August; we should see the kingdoms

of the earth--and a Republic! But I could climb with all my heart in a

snowstorm to-day. Andes on Himalayas! as high as you like. The Republic

by the way, small enough in the ring of empires and monarchies, if you

measure it geometrically! You remember the laugh at the exact elevation

of Mount Olympus? But Zeus's eagle sat on it, and top me Olympus, after

you have imagined the eagle aloft there! after Homer, is the meaning.

That will be one of the lessons for our young Republicans--to teach them

not to give themselves up to the embrace of dead materialism because, as

they fancy, they have had to depend on material weapons for carving their

way, and have had no help from other quarters. A suicidal delusion! The

spiritual weapon has done most, and always does. They are sons of an

idea. They deny their parentage when they scoff at idealism. It's a

tendency we shall have to guard against; it leads back to the old order

of things, if we do not trim our light. She is waiting for you! Go. You

will find me here. And don't forget my instructions. Appoint for the

afternoon--not late. Too near night will seem like Orpheus going below,

and I hope to meet a living woman, not a ghost--ha! coloured like a

lantern in a cavern, good Lord! Covered with lichen! Say three o'clock,

not later. The reason is, I want to have it over early and be sure of

what I am doing; I'm bothered by it; I shall have to make arrangements

. . . a thousand little matters . . . telegraph to Paris, I daresay; she's

fond of Paris, and I must learn who's there to meet her. Now start. I'll

walk a dozen steps with you. I think of her as if, since we parted, she

had been sitting on a throne in Erebus, and must be ghastly. I had a

dream of a dead tree that upset me. In fact, you see I must have it over.

The whole affair makes me feel too young.'

Tresten advised him to spend an hour with the baroness.

'I can't; she makes me feel too old,' said Alvan. 'She talks. She

listens, but I don't want to speak. Dead silence!--let it be a dash of

the pen till you return. As for these good people hurrying to their

traffic, and tourists and loungers, they have a trick for killing time

without hurting him. I wish I had. I try to smother a minute, and up the

old fellow jumps quivering all over and threatening me body and soul.

They don't appear as if they had news on their faces this morning. I've

not seen a newspaper and won't look at one. Here we separate. Be formal

in mentioning me to her but be particularly civil. I know you have the

right tone: she's a critical puss. Days like these are the days for her

to be out. There goes a parasol like one I 've seen her carry. Stay--no!

Don't forget my instructions. Paris for a time. It may be the Pyrenees.

Paris on our way back. She would like the Pyrenees. It's not too late for

society at Luchon and Cauterets. She likes mountains, she mounts well: in

any case, plenty of mules can be had. Paris to wind up with. Paris will

be fuller about the beginning of October.'

He had quitted Tresten, and was talking to himself, cheating' himself,

not discordantly at all. The poet of the company within him claimed the

word and was allowed by the others to dilate on Clotilde's likings, and

the honeymoon or post-honeymoon amusements to be provided for her in

Pyrenean valleys, and Parisian theatres and salons. She was friande of

chocolates, bon-bons: she enjoyed fine pastry, had a real relish of good

wine. She should have the best of everything; he knew the spots of the

very best that Paris could supply, in confiseurs and restaurants, and in

millinery likewise. A lively recollection of the prattle of Parisian

ladies furnished names and addresses likely to prove invaluable to

Clotilde. He knew actors and actresses, and managers of theatres, and

mighty men in letters. She should have the cream of Paris. Does she hint

at rewarding him for his trouble? The thought of her indebted lips, half

closed, asking him how to repay him, sprang his heart to his throat.