Cecil Dreeme/Chapter XIX

Can This Be Love?
Meantime my intimacy with the Denmans had been growing closer.

With me Mr. Denman laid aside his usual manner, a mixture of reserve and uneasiness. He forgot his preoccupations, and talked with me frankly.

“If I had had a son, Byng,” said he, “I could have wished him a young man like yourself. I suppose you will not quarrel with me if I expend a little fatherliness on you.”

I was touched by this kindness. My distrust of him wore away. It is my nature to think gently and tenderly of others. I was in those relations with Mr. Denman where one sees the better side of character. I shared his liberal hospitality. I perceived that he did not love wealth for itself, but as power; and that he used this power often judiciously, always generously. The vanity of exercising power, the mistake of fancying himself a being of higher order than men of lesser influence, he seemed to have outgrown. And the power, with its duties attached, he often found a weary burden. I saw him a tired and saddened man, thankful for the freshening friendship of his junior. I gave him mine frankly.

Could such a man be called, as Churm had harshly called him, the murderer of his daughter? Surely not! I might believe him to have erred in that business; I could not deem him criminal. And, justifying him, I even did injustice to the memory of the dead Clara. Who knew what undiscovered or unpublished sorrowful motive she might not have had for a suicide? The dead have no friends to justify them.

But there was another reason for my favorable judgment on Mr. Denman. I loved, or thought I loved, or wished that I loved, his daughter.

Ever since my conversation with Cecil Dreeme, I had encouraged this passion. I had seen Emma Denman frequently, then constantly; it was now every day.

Her fascination grew in power. There was a certain effort in it; but what man disputes a woman’s right to make effort to please him? With me her manner was anxious, and even agitated. Other men, now that the blackness of first mourning was past, began to be at the house. Them she treated with civil indifference, or indifferent cordiality, as they merited. With me she seemed always eagerly striving that I should not misapprehend her, always protesting against some possibility of a false impression.

Ah! now that I look back upon it all, how I pity her! No wonder that she grew thin and worn! No wonder that her gayety often struck me as forced or fantastic! When it did so seem, I said to myself that she was determined not to be crushed by that sad tragedy of her sister’s death. I did not dream that her eager moods were tokens of the desperate struggle she was making against the inevitable tragedy of her own life.

Shall I go through all the history of the progress of my passion? Shall I say how, day by day, my sympathy for this motherless, sisterless girl deepened, — how I sorrowed for her that, amid all the splendor of her life, her heart was sad and empty, and so the life a vain show? how I, dreading what might be the fate of her father’s wealth, pleased myself with the thought that, if disaster befell him, I could offer her the home and the heart of a hopeful working-man? Shall I re-edit such an old, old story, with the new illustrations drawn from my own experience?

I shrink from the task of opening an ancient wound.

I shrink, but yet I force myself to the anguish.

And time has changed that bygone grief into a lesson. I must write. No matter how dark, the story shall be told. Every man’s precious or costly experience belongs to every brother-man. No man may be a miser of the sorrows by which he has bought the power to be strong, to be tender, to pardon the weak and the guilty. Perhaps by some warning I here utter I may persuade a young and hesitating soul to shudder back from the brink of sin. Often a timely trifle of a gentle word of admonition has struck a foully fair temptation dead. I know how the recurring fragrance of a flower that childhood loved, how the far-away sound of breakers on a beach where childhood wandered, how a weft of cloud, how the leap of a sunbeam, how the sudden jubilant carol of a bird, how a portrait of the pure Madonna on the wall, how a chance line on an open page, — how any such momentous trifle will save a wavering soul from a treachery or a crime, — will interpose an instant’s check, and rescue the life from a remorse, guarding it for a repentance. Yes; whatever agony it costs me to revive this old history, I do now, after its lesson is fully thought out, of my sober judgment, revive it, — let who will murmur, “Bad taste!” let who will cry out, “Unhealthy!” let who will sigh, “Alas! have we not our own griefs? why burden us with yours?”

Did I, or not, love Emma Denman? Why could I not determine this question? I had my friends among men. Closest among these was Cecil Dreeme; his friendship I deemed more precious than the love of women. But among women, no other, none, was at all so charming to me as Emma.

She was to me far more beautiful than any beauty, — infinitely more beautiful, always, than any of those round, full, red beauties who are steadily supplied to the city market, overt or covert, for wives or mistresses to the men who pay money for either, and have nothing but money to give.

She was brilliant, frivolously brilliant perhaps; but we pardon a dash of frivolity in a young woman of fashion, all her life flattered and caressed, and untrained by daily contact with men of strong minds and women of strong hearts.

Emma Denman stood just on the hither brink of genius. It seemed that, if some magnificent emotion, some heart-opening joy or grief, could befall her, she would suddenly be promoted to become herself, and that self a genius. If she could be once in earnest, she would be a noble woman. Such a character has a mighty charm to a lover. He stirs himself with the thought that his love may give the awakening touch; that his passion may supply the ripening flame, and win the bud to bloom.

In music, in art, in thought, I felt that Emma Denman needed but one step to stand on the heights among the inspired. She seemed to feel this also, and to be always pleading tacitly with me to give her the slight aid she needed. She could not pass into the realms of the divine liberty of genius, for some gossamer wall, invisible to all but her, and against her strong as adamant.

I was terrified sometimes by her keenness of insight into bad motives, her comprehension of the labyrinthine causes of bad acts. It is a perilous knowledge. We must pay price for power. How had she bought this unerring perception of the laws of evil? How came she by this aged possession in her first youth?

How? I quelled my uneasiness with the thought that the sensitive touch of innocence is warned away from poisoned blossoms by the clammy airs that hang about them, and so recoils, and will not pluck the flower or gather the fruit. I said that the mere dread of evil will instruct a virgin soul where are those paths of evil it must shun. I said it is better to know sin and shun it, than to half ignore and half evade.

Since our first interview, our relations had grown more and more intimate without check. We named them brotherly and sisterly, as they had been in our childish days. She claimed the sister’s privilege of presiding over my social life, and aiding me to make a choice in love.

Miss Denman led me about the grand round of society. She took me to see the belles for beauty, the belles for money, the belles for wit, the belles for magnetism, the belles for blood. And all of them she drew out to show their most attractive side, in fact, their better and more genuine nature. She persuaded each to reveal that the belle had not addled the woman.

And then she wondered that she could not persuade me to fall in love with one of these ladies.

I could not, of course, if only because her process made her appear superior to them all. I admired the kindliness with which she strove to put sparkle into the stupid girls, to dignify the trifling, to refine the vulgar, — and the teacher was to me an infinitely finer being than her scholars ever could become.

And so I told her, — but never yet with the words of a lover.

And so she insisted I should not think, — not craftily and with systematic coquetry. No, poor child! Ah, no! I acquit her of all such slight wiles and surface hypocrisy. But how could I know that she was sincerely striving to save us both from the tragedy of a mutual love?

And did I love her? The question implied a doubt, where there should be only undoubting conviction and compelling impulse.

Why doubt, Robert Byng?

There was surely no other affection in my heart that I was playing false. Surely none. My heart was free from any love of woman.

And my doubt was based upon a suspicion.

A suspicion! of what?

If I at all stated to myself, however faintly, what, it seemed to me such disloyalty that I despised myself for entertaining the unwholesome thought.

“You are not fit,” I said, “for the society of a pure woman! Densdeth has spoilt you.”

Thus I trained my affection the more tenderly for its weakness. Thus, ignorant and rejecting the sure law of nature, I strove to create the uncreatable, to construct what should have come into being and grown strong without interference, even without consciousness of mine. Thus I began to deem the sentiment I was manufacturing out of ruth and a loyal intention, as genuine, heart-felt love.

Bitter error! And to be punished bitterly!