Rest Harrow | Page 8

for that, a European name. In three weeks his work absorbed him; within that time she knew that she was no mate for him. You can't be picturesque for ever, she thought. She had never reckoned with his incredible simplicity, and never for a moment connected his talk with his acts. Perhaps this Jack was the only really logical man in the world. Now she found that in talking of Poverty as the only happiness, he literally and really believed it so. He would own nothing but the barest necessities--neither pictures, nor furniture, neither clothes nor books. Pictures, furniture? Why, he had no roof to shelter them! Clothes? Where was he to carry them, if not on his back? Books? He had half-dozen, which contained all the wisdom of the world. So he used to cry. Now, this might be as it was; but when he seemed to expect her to be of the same mind and behaviour, you will see that he must needs be mad.
Yet so it was. He had lived in a tent for twenty years, so took his tent to Germany, and went on living in it. In that, with complete gravity, he received the Grand Duke of Baden, and several uniformed high officials, who wore plumed headgear and incredibly high collars, and glittering boots of patent leather. Folded superbly in cloaks of milky blue, they looked to Mary like gods; to Senhouse they were amusing fellow-creatures, interested in his plants and plans. He spread maps on the ground and followed his racing finger with racing speech. His German was faulty, but exceedingly graphic. His words shook the tent curtains. Within half-an-hour, such was the infection of his eloquence, he had most of his company on their knees beside him, and the Grand Duke, accommodated with a camp-stool, buried his hand in his beard and followed every line without a breath. Of all in that tent, she, Mary Germain, had been the only person to feel the indescribable squalor in the situation--and she the only one who might have been born to it; for her upbringing had been humble, and her rise in the world sudden and short of durance. But she knew now that she had hardly been able to live it out for very shame.
Directly the visitors had departed there had been a scene--she in tears of vexation which scalded, and he concerned at her trouble, but unable for the life of him to see what it was all about. He had been kindness itself. He always was the kindest and gentlest creature. If she wanted a house, hotel or what not, she should have it. In fact, he got her one, installed her, and undertook to keep her there. She bit her lip now to remember that she had agreed--and the ensuing difficulties. He had no money, and would have none of his own, and he refused to live under a roof on any terms whatsoever. Of ten thousand marks a year, which he was to receive from his Grand Duke, half was to be hers; he would see her when she would, and she might follow him about as she would--or not, if she would not. He could not see that there was anything extraordinary in these propositions. To him it was the simplest thing in the world that two people should do as they pleased. Society? What in the name of God had society to do with it? She remembered her tears, and his blank dismay when he saw them. He thought that she was unhappy, and so she was; but she was grievously angry also, that she could not make him see what things would "do" and what things "never do."
His work had inflamed him; he had marched from place to place, unencumbered and without a thought or care in the world--inspired with his scheme, in which plants stood for the words in a poem. He slept out many nights on the Felsenberg, on the ground, wrapped in a cloak. He disappeared for weeks at a time in impenetrable forests, sharing the fires of charcoal-burners, mapping, planning, giving orders to a secretary from the Botanical Department, as wild as a disciple should be. There was nothing for her, poor lady, but to sit about in hotel saloons--as the widow of an English gentleman, occasionally visited by an eccentric friend. So she put it for the benefit of society; but this had not been her idea of things when she had tumbled into Senhouse's arms--nor had it been his.
Her ruling idea in these days of disenchantment and discomfort--and it was her ruling idea still--was to preserve appearances. The great, invincible, fundamental instinct of the class from which she had sprung--to keep oneself unspotted by the world. The variation upon the text