Flames | Page 3

the causes of love. Don't, for goodness' sake, let your intellect triumph over your humanity, Valentine. Of all modern vices, that seems to me the most loathsome. But you could never fall into anything loathsome. You are sheeted against that danger with plate armour."
"Nonsense!"
"But you are. It sometimes seems to me that you and I are like Elijah and Elisha, in a way. But I am covetous of your mantle."
"Then you want me to be caught from you into heaven?"
"No. I should like you to give me your mantle, your powers, your nature, that is, and to stay here as well."
"And send the chariot of fire to the coach-house, and the horses of fire to the nearest stables?"
"Exactly!"
"Well, but give me a reason for this rascally craving."
"A reason! Oh, I hate my nature and I love yours. What a curse it is to go through life eternally haunted by one's self; worse than being married to an ugly and boring wife."
"Now you are being morbid."
"Well, I'm telling you just how I feel."
"That is being morbid. Recording to some people who claim to direct Society."
"The world's County Council, who would like to abolish all the public bars."
"And force us to do our drinking in the privacy of our bedrooms."
"You would never do any drinking, Valentine. How could you, the Saint of Victoria Street?"
"I begin to hate that nickname."
And he frowned slowly. Tall, fair, curiously innocent-looking, his face was the face of a blonde ascetic. His blue eyes were certainly not cold, but nobody could imagine that they would ever gleam with passion or with desire as they looked upon sin. His mouth seemed made for prayer, not for kisses; and so women often longed to kiss it. Over him, indeed, intellectuality hung like a light veil, setting him apart from the uproar which the world raises while it breaks the ten commandments. Julian, on the other hand, was brown, with bright, eager eyes, and the expression of one who was above all things intensely human. Valentine had ever been, and still remained, to him a perpetual wonder, a sort of beautiful mystery. He actually reverenced this youth who stood apart from all the muddy ways of sin, too refined, as it seemed, rather than too religious, to be attracted by any wile of the devil's, too completely artistic to feel any impulse towards the subtle violence which lurks in all the vagaries of the body. Valentine was to Julian a god, but in their mutual relations this fact never became apparent. On the contrary, Valentine was apt to look up to Julian with admiration, and the curious respect often felt by those who are good by temperament for those who are completely human. And Julian loved Valentine for looking up to him, finding in this absurd modesty of his friend a crowning beauty of character. He had never told Valentine the fact that Valentine kept him pure, held his bounding nature in leash, was the wall of fire that hedged him from sin, the armour that protected him against the assaults of self. He had never told Valentine this secret, which he cherished with the exceeding and watchful care men so often display in hiding that which does them credit. For who is not a pocket Byron nowadays? But to-night was fated by the Immortals to be a night of self-revelation. And Valentine led the way by taking a step that surprised Julian not a little. For as Valentine frowned he said:
"Yes, I begin to hate my nickname, and I begin to hate myself."
Julian could not help smiling at the absurdity of this bemoaning.
"What is it in yourself that you hate so much?" he asked, with a decided curiosity.
Valentine sat considering.
"Well," he replied at length, "I think it is my inhumanity, which robs me of many things. I don't desire the pleasures that most men desire, as you know. But lately I have often wished to desire them."
"Rather an elaborate state of mind."
"Yet a state easy to understand, surely. Julian, emotions pass me by. Why is that? Deep love, deep hate, despair, desire, won't stop to speak to me. Men tell me I am a marvel because I never do as they do. But I am not driven as they are evidently driven. The fact of the matter is that desire is not in me. My nature shrinks from sin; but it is not virtue that shrinks: it is rather reserve. I have no more temptation to be sensual, for instance, than I have to be vulgar."
"Hang it, Val, you don't want to have the temptation, do you?"
Valentine looked at Julian curiously.
"You have the temptation, Julian?" he said.
"You know I have--horribly."
"But you fight it and conquer it?"
"I fight it, and now I am beginning to conquer it, to get it under."
"Now?