Twilight - Julia Frankau (free novels to read .txt) 📗

“No, but I am enjoying its unbrageous rest,” I returned. “Reading my papers in the shadows.”

“Shadow enough!”

“That’s right. Mind you go on keeping up my spirits.” She did smile then, but she was obviously dissatisfied, both with me and Dr. Kennedy. I was taking no drugs, doing a little more each day, in the way of moving about. And yet I could not call myself convalescent. My legs were stiff and my back heavy. I had no feeling of returning vigour. What little I did I forced myself to do. I had hardly the energy to finish the letters. Had it not been for Dr. Kennedy I don’t believe, at this stage, I should have finished them! Although the next two or three set me thinking, and I was again visualising the writers. Not that Gabriel Stanton betrayed himself in his letters, as Margaret did in hers. I had to reconcile him with the donnish master of Greek roots, whom I had met and been ignored by, in Greyfriars’ Square. This was his answer to her last effusion.

No. 13. 1 1 8 Greyfriars’ Square,

19th February, 1902.

Dear Mrs. Capel:

I have read your letter ten twenty times; my business day was filled and transformed by it. Now it is midnight and I am alone in the stillness of my room, the routine of the day and the evening over, and my brain, not always very quick, alight with the wonderment of your words, and my restless anxiety to respond. Don’t, I implore you, belittle the possibility of friendship!

Surely the value of it is only proved by its needs? May I not say that in this crisis in your life friendship may be much to you. Can I hope that my privilege may be to fill the need?

Fowhave been so splendidly frank and outspoken. I have suffered all my life from a sort of stupid reticence, probably cowardly. But tonight, and to you, I want to throw off the habit of years and not miss, before it is too late, the luxury of being natural.

Well, I am hot with hatred that you should have been hurt, and yet I am happy that you have told me of your wounds. Tonight I pray that it may be given to me to heal them.

I am writing this because I must though conventionally the shortness of our acquaintance does not justify me. But I have been conventional so long circumstance has ruled and limited my doings. And tonight it comes to me that chance and fate are, or should be, greater than environment. The Gods only rarely offer gifts, and the blackness and blankness of despair follow their refusal. So I cling to the hope that they have now offered me a precious gift, and that in spite of all your pain all the past which now so embitters you, to me may come the chance in some small way of proving to you that in friendship there is healing, and in sympathy and understanding, at least the hope of forgetfulness.

I shall hardly dare to read over what I have written, for I should either be conscious that it is inadequate to express what I have wanted to say to you or that I have presumed too much in writing what is in my mind.

Look upon those Musicians as playing a prelude, not to a dream but to a happier future, and then my pleasure in the little gift will be enormously increased.

It has been a sort of joke in my family that I am over-cautious and too deliberate, but for tonight at least in these still quiet hours I mean to conquer this, and go out to post this letter myself; just as I have written it, with no alteration; yet with confidence in the kindness you have already shown me. And I shall see you at dinner on Thursday.

Yours very sincerely,

GABRIEL STANTON.

A little over a fortnight passed before there was any further correspondence. Meanwhile the two must have met frequently. Her letters were often undated, and her figures even more difficult to read than her handwriting generally. The hieroglyphic over the following looks like 5, but I could not be sure. The intimacy between them must have grown apace, and yet the running away could have been nothing but a ruse. There could have been little fear of so sedate a lover as Gabriel Stanton. I found something artificial in the next letter of hers, recapitulative, as if already she had publication in her mind. Of course it is more difficult for a novelist or a playwright to be genuine and simple with a pen than it is for a person of a different avocation, but I could not help thinking how much better than Margaret Ella would have acted her part, and my sympathy began to flow more definitely toward the inexperienced gentleman, no longer young, to whom she was introducing the game of flirtation under the old name of Platonic friendship.

No. 14. Carbies,

Pineland,

March 5th, 1902.

I have run away, you realise this, don’t you, simply turned tail and run. That long dinner which seemed so short; the British Museum the next day, and your illuminating lecture so abruptly ended that dreadful lunch… boiled fish and ginger beer! Ye Gods! Greek or Roman, how could you appear satisfied, eat with appetite? I sickened in the atmosphere. Thursday at the National Gallery was better. Our taste in pictures is the same if our taste in food differs. But perhaps you did not know what you were given in the refreshment room of the British Museum? I throw out this suggestion as an extenuating circumstance, for I find it difficult to forgive you that languid cod and its egg sauce. Our other two meals together were so different. That first lunch at the Cafe Royal was perfect in its way. As for our dinner, did I not myself superintend the menu, curb the exuberance of the chef and my stepmother; dock the unfashionable sorbet; change Mayonnaise sauce into Hollandaise; duck and green peas into an idealised animal of the same variety, stuffed with foie gras, enriched and decorated with cherries? For you I devoted myself to the decoration of the table, interested myself in the wine list my father produced, discussed vintages with our pompous and absurd butler. I must tell you a story about that butler. You said he looked like an Archdeacon. Can you imagine an Archdeacon in the Divorce Court? No! No! No! Nothing to do with mine. Had it been I could not have written of it, the very thought sets me writhing again.

Poor Burden was with the Sylvestres, you remember the case. Everybody defended and it was fought for five interminable days. The papers devoted columns to it, nothing else was discussed in the Clubs, the whole air of London Mayfair end was foetid and foul with it. Burden was a witness, he had seen too much, and his evidence sent poor silly Ann Sylvestre to hide her divorced and disgraced head in Monte Carlo. And can a head properly ondule be said to be divorced? Heavens! how my pen runs on, or away, like me. And I haven’t come to the story, which now I come to think of it is not so very good. I will tell you it in Burden’s own words. He applied for our situation through a registry office, and stood before my stepmother and me, hat in hand, sorrowful, but always dignified, as he answered questions.

“My last situation was with a Mrs. Solomon. I’m sorry, milady, to have to ask you to take up a character from such people. I’d always been in the best service before that… I was hallboy with the Jutes, third and then second with His Grace the Duke of Richland, first footman under the Countess Foreglass. I was five years with the Sylvestres; you know, Ma’am, he was first cousin to the Duke of Trent, near to the Throne itself, as one might say. I’d never lowered myself to an untitled family before. But after the divorce I couldn’t get nothing. Ma’am, I hope you’ll believe me, but from the moment I accepted Mr. Solomon’s place all I was planning to do was to get out of it. They was Jews, if I may mention such a thing to you. I took ten pounds a year less than I’d had at his Lordship’s, but Mr. Solomon, he said in his facetious way that being in the witness box ‘ad knocked at least ten pounds off my value, an’ he ground me down. But I’ll have to ask you to take up my character from him. That’s the worst of it, Ma’am, milady.”

We had to break it to him that we were without titles, but he said sorrowfully that having been in a witness box in the divorce court made it impossible for him to stand out.

Burden and I have always been on good terms. I understand him, you see, his point of view, and his descent in the social scale when he went to live with Jews. What I was going to tell you was, that notwithstanding our friendship he resented my interference in his department when I insisted on selecting the wine for your our dinner party. I am almost sorry I quarrelled with him on your account. He looks at me coldly now, he is remembering my American blood, despising it. And to think I have lost the priceless regard of Burden for a man who can eat boiled and tired cod, masked with egg sauce, washed down with ginger beer!

Where was I? The sculpture at the British Museum; then the next day at the National Gallery. Our spirits kneeled there; we grew small. No, we didn’t, I’m disingenuous. We said so, not meaning it in the least. After twenty minutes we forgot all about the pictures. Rumpelmayer’s, St. James’s Park, out to Coombe.

Did you realise we were seeing each other every day, how much time we spent together?

Am I eighteen or twenty-eight? You’ve a reputation for knowing more about Greek roots than any other Englishman. Should I have run away down here if you had talked about Greek roots? I’m excited, exhausted, bewildered. For three nights sleep failed me. Nothing is so wonderful as a perfect friendship between a man of your age and a woman of mine. Why did you change your mind, or your note, so quickly yesterday? I knew all the time what was happening to us. I think there is -something arrogant in your humility. I am naturally so much more outspoken than you, although my troubles have made me more fearful. You are a strange man. I think you may send me a portrait. When I try to recall you, you don’t always come whole, only bits of you, inconsistent bits, a gleam of humour in your eyes, your stoop, the height that makes us so incongruous together. I like you, Gabriel Stanton, and I’ve run away from you; that’s the truth. That disingenuous aggressive humility of yours is a subtle appeal to my sympathies. I don’t want to sympathise with you overmuch, with the loneliness of your life, or anything about you. We were meeting too often, talking too freely. I curl up and want to hide when I think of some of the things we have said (I have said!!!). I know I am too impulsive.

I’m going to settle down here and start seriously on my Staffordshire Potters. I’ve taken the house for three months. If I had not already written the longest letter ever penned I’d describe it to you. Perhaps I’ll write again if you encourage me. Think of me as a novelist out of work, using up my MS. paper. Down here