RACK AND THUMBSCREW.
Haviland Dumaresq sat long on the bank, with his head in his hands, sobbing like a child. Then he rose wearily, and plodded home alone, his head aching and his heart heavy at the downfall of that mad momentary opium dream for his beloved Psyche.
Without and within, indeed, the day had changed. Dull weather was springing up slowly from the west, where the sun had buried itself behind a rising fog-bank. The philosopher made his way, with stumbling steps, across the open Downs — those prosaic Downs so lately mountains — and lifting the latch of the garden gate, entered the house and walked aimlessly into his bare little study.
A dozen books lay open on the plain deal table — books of reference for the subject at which he was just then working — a series of papers on mathematical and astronomical questions for the ‘Popular Instructor.’ He sat down in his place and tried to compose. It was for bread, for bread, for bread, for Psyche. But even that strong accustomed spur could not goad him on to work this dreary afternoon. He gazed vacantly at the accusing sheet of virgin-white foolscap: not a thought surged up in that teeming brain; not a picture floated before those dim inner eyes; he couldn’t fix himself for a moment upon the declination of Alpha Centauri: with all the universe of stars and nebulæ and constellations and systems careering madly in wild dance around him to the music of the spheres, his mind came back ever to one insignificant point in space, on the surface of that petty planet he so roundly despised — the point occupied by a tiny inconspicuous organic result of cosmic energies, by name Psyche. At last he flung down his pen in despair, and opening the door half ajar in his hand, called up the stairs to her, ‘Psyche, Psyche, Psyche!’
‘Yes, papa,’ Psyche answered, jumping up at the call from the tiny couch in her own bedroom, and running down the steep and narrow cottage staircase. ‘You weren’t in for lunch. I was so sorry. You’ve had one of those horrid headaches again, I’m sure. I can tell it by your eyes. I see the pupils look so big and heavy.’
Haviland Dumaresq drew one palm across his forehead, and gazed hard at his daughter’s eyes in return. Though she had bathed them well in cold water, they still bore evident traces of crying.
‘My darling,’ he said, laying his hand on her shoulder with tender care, and drawing her over caressingly to the one armchair in that bare little workshop, ‘something’s been troubling you too. You’re not yourself at all to-day, I can see. You look pale and troubled. Psyche, we two have never had secrets from one another up to this: don’t let’s begin to have any now. Tell me what it is. Tell me what’s worrying my dear little daughter.’ He spoke wistfully.
Psyche gazed up at him half doubtful for a moment; then she answered with a flush:
‘You can read everything. You know already what it is, father.’
Dumaresq, trembling, took her little hand in his and stroked it tenderly.
‘We must expect it so now,’ he said in an undertone, as if half to himself, with dreamy persistence— ‘we must expect it so now, I suppose: the Epoch has come for it. In the essentially artificial state of society in which we human atoms now live and move and have our being, feelings that are natural at certain turns of life as song to the bird or play to the kitten must be sternly repressed at Society’s bidding; and they can only be suppressed by being turned inward; they must find vent at last, if in nothing else, in these hysterical longings, and tears, and emotions. I must expect them all, no doubt; I must expect these outbursts. But it’s hard to see them, for all that, however inevitable. My little girl has been crying — alone. It wrings my heart to see her eyes so red. Psyche, Psyche, you must try to dismiss it.’
‘I can’t,’ Psyche answered, making no attempt to conceal the subject that floated uppermost in both their thoughts. Father and daughter were too nearly akin to allow of any flimsy pretences between them. ‘I can’t dismiss it — and, papa, I don’t want to.’
‘Not for my sake, Psyche?’ he asked sadly.
The girl rose, the peach-blossom flush in her cheek now more crimson than ever, and flinging herself wistfully on her father’s shoulder, answered without faltering, or sobbing, or crying:
‘Anything but that, father; anything on earth but that; for your sake, anything; but that, never!’
The old man disengaged her softly from his neck, and seating her down in the big armchair, where she let her face hang, all shame and blushes, without venturing to raise her eyes to his, surveyed her long and anxiously in pitying silence. Then he cried at last, clasping his hands tight:
‘I didn’t think it had gone as far as this, my darling. If I’d dreamt it was going as far as this, I’d have spoken and warned you long ago, Psyche!’
‘It hasn’t gone far at all, papa,’ Psyche answered truthfully. ‘It hasn’t begun even. It’s all within. I don’t so much as know’ — she paused for a moment, then she added in a very low tone, tremulously— ‘whether he cares the least little bit in the world for me.’
‘It has gone far,’ the old man corrected with a very grave air: ‘far, far, too far — in your heart, Psyche. And your own heart is all I care about. I ought to have foreseen it. I ought to have suspected it. I ought to have guarded my treasure, my beautiful treasure in an earthen vessel, far more carefully. What matters is not whether he cares for you, but that you should care at all for him, my darling.’
Psyche looked down and answered nothing.
‘You think yourself in love with him,’ her father went on, accenting the think with a marked emphasis.
‘I never said so,’ Psyche burst out, half defiantly.
Dumaresq took a little wooden chair from the corner by the window, and drawing it over by Psyche’s side, seated himself close to her and laid her passive hand in his with fatherly gentleness. Psyche’s blank eyes looked straight in front of her. The philosopher, gazing down, hesitated and reflected half a minute. Stars and worlds are such calculable bodies to deal with: they move along such exactly measurable orbits: but a woman! — who shall tell what attractions and repulsions deflect her from her course? who shall map out her irregular and irresponsible movements? And since the last six weeks or so, Psyche was a woman. She had found out her own essential womanhood with a burst, as girls of her type always do — at the touch of a man’s hand. Her father gazed at her in doubt. How to begin his needful parable?
At last words came. ‘My darling,’ he said very slowly and gravely, ‘you are all I have left to care for in the world, and I love you, Psyche, as no man ever yet loved his daughter. You are all the world to me, and the rest is nothing. Looking back upon my own past life, I don’t attempt to conceal from myself for a moment the fact that, as a man, I have been a failure — an utter failure. The failure was a splendid one, I frankly admit; nay, more, perhaps, a failure worth making — for one man, once in the world’s history — but none the less, for all that, an utter failure. No, don’t interrupt me, my child, for I know what I’m saying. Am I a man to palter with the truth or to hide from myself my own great weaknesses? Have I not taken my own gauge like all other gauges — accurately and dispassionately? From beginning to end, my life has been all wrong; an error from the outset: like the universe itself, a magnificent blunder. Not that I regret it; I regret nothing. I am myself, not any other. I must follow out the law of my own being unopposed, though it bring me in the end nothing but blank disappointment.’
He paused a moment, and ran his hand abstractedly through her long fair hair: then he went on again in a soft musing undertone: ‘But you, Psyche, it is for you to profit by my sad experience. I have learnt once for all, myself vicariously for all our race — learnt in a hard school, a hard lesson, to be transmitted from me to every future Dumaresq, for individuality runs too strong in the current of our blood — learnt that the world is right, and that the individual does unwisely and ill to cast himself away for the sake of humanity. Humanity will owe him no thanks for his sacrifice. My child, I want you to be happy — happy — happier far than ever I have been. I could never bear to see you condemned to a life of drudgery. I want you to be all that I have missed. I want you to be what I could never have been. I want you to be comfortable — at your ease — happy.’
Psyche caught at his meaning by pure hereditary sympathy. She glanced back at him with her proud free face, tenderly, indeed, but almost reproachfully. How could he ever think it of her? ‘Papa,’ she said in a very firm voice, ‘I am your daughter. Individuality, as you say, runs strong in the blood. As you are, I am. But being the actual man you are yourself — why, how can you ever expect your daughter to be any otherwise?’
‘You despise money too much, Psyche,’ the old man said, in a tone of conviction.
‘Do you despise it?’ Psyche answered simply with a straight home-thrust. ‘Papa, you know you do — as much as I do.’
Haviland Dumaresq’s lips half relaxed in spite of himself. ‘True,’ he replied; ‘very true, little one. But then I’m a man. I can bear all that — poverty, drudgery, misery. I know what it means. Whereas you, my darling — —’
‘I — am your daughter,’ Psyche repeated proudly.
‘Then you mean,’ her father said in a heart-broken voice, ‘that if he asks you, you mean to marry Mr. Linnell?’
‘He hasn’t asked me,’ Psyche answered with a deeper flush.
‘But if he does, Psyche — my darling, my daughter, promise me, oh! promise me, that you’ll give him no answer till you’ve spoken to me about it.’
Psyche looked him back in the eyes sorrowfully. ‘I can’t,’ she answered, faltering. ‘Oh, anything but that, papa! I didn’t know it myself even till you began to ask me. But I know it now. I love him, I love him too dearly.’
Dumaresq looked at her with melting regret. ‘My child,’ he said, faltering in his turn, ‘you will break my heart for me. Psyche, I’ve had but one day-dream in my life — one long day-dream that I’ve cherished for years for you. I’ve seen you growing up and unfolding like a flower-bud, becoming every day sweeter and daintier and more beautiful than ever, flitting like a butterfly through this dull gray life of mine — and I’ve said to myself in my own heart: “If I’ve nothing else to give my child, I can give her at least the dower of being Haviland Dumaresq’s only daughter. I can introduce her to a world where my name at any rate counts for something. There she will be noticed, admired, courted: there her beautiful face and her beautiful soul will both be rated at their true value. There some man who is worthy of her, by birth and position, will make her happy, as she richly deserves to be.” I saw you in my own mind surrounded by comfort, honour, luxury. That was my day-dream, Psyche, the only day-dream of my sad long life. Don’t break it down ruthlessly for me, I beseech you, by marrying a penniless man, who will drag you, by slow degrees of decline, down, down, down, to poverty, drudgery, wretchedness, misery. Don’t let me see you a pale, careworn wife, harassed with debt, and many children, and endless rounds of household worries. Don’t break my heart by spoiling your own life for me. Oh, for my sake, Psyche, promise me, do promise me, for the present to say “No” to him.’
‘Papa, papa,’ Psyche cried, ‘you’ve said it yourself; if you’ve nothing else on earth to give me, you’ve given me the dower of being Haviland Dumaresq’s daughter. I’ve always been proud of your own grand life, and of the way you’ve flung it so grandly away for humanity. Do you think I’m not proud enough to fling my own away too — for love? I’d rather bear drudgery with the one man I care for, than share wealth and position and titles and honours with any other man in all England.’
Her father gazed down at her with remorseful eyes. He was proud of her, but heart-broken. ‘You’re very young, Psyche,’ he murmured again, holding both her hands in his, and pleading hard for his day-dream. ‘You’re only beginning your course through life. You’ll meet many other men in your way through the world whom you can love as truly as you love Linnell. This is but the first slight scratch. Don’t fancy, as girls will do, it’s the deepest of wounds, the one grand passion. You’ll find penniless young painters are as plentiful as blackberries on your path through life. I’ve seen women marry before now for pure, pure love, and marry a man who loved them truly; yet lead such lives, such unhappy lives of sordid shifts and squalid household tasks, that all the romance — yes, and all the health and strength and spirit too — was crushed clean out of them. Don’t rush headlong at once on such a fate as that. Wait awhile, my child; I ask you no more: just a brief delay: wait and make your mind up.’
He meant it in the kindest possible way — the way of fathers; but he had mistaken his hearer. Psyche looked up at him with a great fact dawning ever clearer on her half-childish understanding. She had realized it but dimly and uncertainly before; she saw it now, under stress of opposition, in all its vivid and undeniable distinctness.
‘Papa,’ she cried, with profound conviction, ‘I may wait and wait, as long as you like, but I shall love him for ever, and him only.’
He had forced it out of her. He had forced it into her almost. Without the spur of his searching question, she could never have put it so plainly, even to herself. But she knew it now. She was quite certain of it. She saw it as a simple fact of Nature. She loved Linnell, and she was not ashamed of it. She had forgotten by this time all her girlish bashfulness — her modesty — her reserve — and she looked her father full in the face as she repeated fervently: ‘I love him! I love him!’
The old man flung himself back in his chair with a groan.
‘Psyche, Psyche,’ he cried, ‘you’ll kill me — you’ll kill me! Was it for this I longed and dreamed in secret? Was it for this I worked and flung my life away? You’ll bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave. To see you drudging as a poor man’s slave in some wretched lodging! For your father’s sake, oh, take pity on yourself — refuse him, refuse him!’
‘I can’t,’ Psyche answered firmly— ‘I can’t do it, papa. My tongue wouldn’t obey me. He hasn’t asked me yet, and for your sake I hope he won’t ask me; but if he does, I can’t refuse him; I must say “Yes;” I can never say “No” to him.’
Her father rocked himself to and fro in his chair in speechless misery. If Psyche were to marry that penniless painter he would feel that his life was indeed a failure. His house would in truth be left unto him desolate. The ground would be cut from under his very feet. He had dreamed his dream of happiness for Psyche so long that he had come to live on it now altogether. It was his future, his world, his one interest in existence. It had intertwined itself alike in his opium ecstasies and in his soberer, saner, waking hours, till each form of the dream had only seemed to heighten and fortify the other. And now Psyche, for whose sake he had dreamt it all, was going herself deliberately to crush his hopes under foot by flinging herself away, and accepting that penniless, struggling painter.
He rocked himself to and fro in his chair with tears in his eyes. They rolled slowly down his weather-beaten cheek, and Psyche, watching them, let her own keep them company in solemn silence. One heart or the other must surely break. Which heart should it be? that was the question. Big drops stood upon the old man’s brow. It was clear the disappointment wrung his very soul. The opium-fever made him see things ever in extremes. If Linnell wasn’t rich, then Linnell was a beggar, and would drag down his Psyche to the grave or the workhouse. His agony stood out visibly in every line of his face. At last Psyche could stand the sight no longer. She flung herself upon him with tears and sobs.
‘Papa,’ she cried piteously, ‘my dear, darling father; I love you, I love you, very, very dearly!’
‘I know it, Psyche,’ the old man answered in heart-broken tones, with his hand on his heart— ‘I know it; I know it.’
‘Ask me anything but that, papa,’ Psyche burst out, all penitent, ‘and I’ll gladly do it.’
The philosopher soothed her fair hair with his hand.
‘Psyche,’ he murmured once more, after a long pause, ‘he’s coming to-morrow to finish the picture. After that, I believe, he’s not coming again. I think — he’s going away altogether from Petherton.’
Psyche’s face was as white as a ghost’s.
‘Well, papa?’ she asked, in a voice that trembled audibly with a quivering tremor.
‘Well, I want you to do one thing for me,’ her father went on, ‘one thing only. I won’t ask you to give him up: not to give him up entirely. I see that’s more than I could ask of you at present. The wound has gone too deep for the moment. But young hearts heal much faster than old ones. I do ask you, therefore, to wait and think. Remember how young you are! You’re only seventeen. In four years more you’ll be your own mistress. If in four years from now you love Linnell still, and he loves you still, then well and good — though it break my heart, I will not oppose you. Even now, my darling, I do not oppose you. I only say to you — and I beg of you — I implore you — wait and try him.’
Psyche looked back at him, cold and white as marble.
‘I will wait, papa,’ she answered, in a very clear voice. ‘I can wait, if you wish it. I can wait, and wait, and wait for ever. But, four years or forty years, I shall always love him.’
Dumaresq smiled. That’s the way with the young. The present love is to them always the unalterable one.
‘If you’ll wait for my sake,’ he said, holding her hand tight, ‘I’ll let you do as you will in four short years. In three years, even, I’ll give you law. You’re young, very young. I never thought these things had come near you yet. If I had thought so, I’d have guarded you better, far better. But I want you to promise me now one other thing — say nothing of all this to Linnell to-morrow.’
‘Papa!’ Psyche cried, rising in her horror, ‘am I to let him go away without even saying good-bye to him? without bidding him farewell? without telling him how sorry I am to lose him, and why — why I must be so terribly different now to him? Suppose he asks me, what must I answer him?’
‘My child,’ the old man said in a soothing voice, ‘he will not ask you. He’ll pass it by in silence. But for my sake, I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you — try to say nothing to him. Let him go in peace. Oh, Psyche, don’t break my poor old heart for me outright! I’m an old man — a broken-down man. If I have time, perhaps I may get over this blow. But give me time! I’m very feeble — worn out before my day. Let him go to-morrow without telling your whole heart to him.’
Psyche stood still and answered nothing.
‘Will you?’ her father asked once more imploringly.
Psyche, white as a sheet, still held her peace.
‘For Heaven’s sake, promise,’ the old man cried again, with an agonized look. It was crushing his heart. He couldn’t bear to think that Linnell should drag her down to those imagined depths of Bohemian poverty.
The poor girl gazed at him with a fixed, cold face. She looked more like a marble statue than a human figure as she stood there irresolute. The heart within her was divided two ways, and frozen hard with horror. But her father’s attitude moved her to despair. He was an old man, as he said, and to refuse him now would clearly be his death-warrant.
‘I promise,’ she murmured slowly, and stood there rooted. Three years, three years — three long, long years! and she dared not even so much as tell him.