Radclyffe Hall - The Oldest Gay Novels

“Denman shivered as Densdeth concluded his curt, business-like statement.

“‘Yes, yes, Churm!’ said he again. ‘I did my best. Do not say murder, again! Do not be so harsh with an old friend! Tell him, Densdeth, tell him how we spent care and time and money to recover the poor child. Do not let him think anything was neglected.’

“He looked feebly from Densdeth to me. Then he turned to his daughter.

“‘Speak, Emma!’ said he, almost peevishly. ‘Why do you not help justify your father? Tell Mr. Churm that your sister’s death is only a misery, no fault of ours.’

“Emma made no reply, but sobbed uncontrollably behind her veil.”

“Poor girl!” I interjected, as Churm paused to look at his watch. “A dark beginning of life for her! I pity her most tenderly.”

“It is almost eleven,” said Churm. “I must go to my patient, Towner, without delay. And now I can say to you, that I believe he knows something of Clara’s tragedy. When he speaks, I shall learn where the guilt lies.”

“You suspect guilt then?” I asked. “The facts do not satisfy you? Have you a theory on the subject?”

“I have no doubt the final facts are as Densdeth gave them. But what are the precedent facts? What crazed my child? What unbalanced her healthy organization of mind and body? No trifling influenza. No bashful bridal panic of a girl. No, Byng; among them, they had hurt her heart and soul. There is the murder! Her father I believe to be in Densdeth’s power.”

“How?” I asked.

“How I can only divine from parallel cases. Denman has perhaps overstepped honesty to clutch wealth. Densdeth knows it. Densdeth has said, ‘Give me your daughter, or be posted as a rogue!’ Denman has made the common mistake, that, if he could elude the shame of detection, he would escape the remorse of guilt.”

“So they took advantage of your absence to use quasi force with the lady?”

“Yes; and they belied me, or Clara would have awaited my protection. Ah, Robert, I dread some crushing infamy was revealed to her in that house. No common shame, no common sorrow, would have maddened her to wander off and die. And now good night, Robert! Keep this tragedy in mind — in both its parts. One such story, well meditated with the characters in view, may be the one needful lesson and warning of a life. And let the whole be a sacred confidence with you alone!”

“It shall be. Good night.”

He wrung my hand and went out.

Let me recall him as he turns away.

A sturdy, not clumsy, man of middle height; fair skin, ruddy, not too red; nose resolute, not despotic; firm upper lip, gentle lower; glance keen, not astute, nor vulpine; expression calm, not cold; smile humorous and sympathetic; voice and laugh of the heart, hearty; a thoroughly lovable man, — the man of all others to be husband and father.

Besides, a man of vast ability and scope. Nature seemed to have no secrets from him. He handled the mechanic forces, he wielded social forces, with the same masterly grasp. Wherever civilization went, it bore his name as an inventor, an organizer and benefactor to man-kind. He was skill, order, and love.

And yet he lived alone and weary; his life, as he had told me to-night, all desolated by the shadow of a sin.

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Churm’s steps went echoing along the corridor, echoing down the stairs. The front door of Chrysalis clanged to after him. Rumbling echoes of the clang marched to and fro along the halls, and fumbled for quiet nooks in the dark distances of the building. There I could hear them lie down to repose, and whisper, ‘Silence.’

Silence and sleep reigned.

I was little disposed to sleep. I lighted a fresh cigar and fell into a revery.

Why, I first asked myself, had Churm so urged the history of his unhappy love personally upon me? Why was he so earnest and emphatic in his warning? The two tragedies were detached. He might have simply recalled the fact of his guardianship, and then described the fate of his ward. But he had gone back and forced himself to uncover his wound, — why? Not for my sympathy. No; he had outlived the need of sympathy. Besides, no loyal man would betray the error of a woman once loved, for pity’s sake. No; some strong sense of duty had compelled him to take a father’s place, and say to me, “Beware!”

I puzzled myself awhile, inquiring, What did he see in my temperament or my circumstances to make this warning needful? No solution of the question came to me. I dismissed the subject, and thought with a livelier interest over the Denman tragedy.

I began to perceive how much I had unconsciously counted upon the friendship of the Denmans. It was a rough shock to learn that I must doubt of Denman’s thorough worth. He, too, was a friend of my father. His was an important figure in the background of my boyish recollections. A large, handsome man I remembered him, a little conscious in his bearing, but courteous, hospitable, open-handed, using wealth splendidly, — in fact, my ideal of what a rich man should be. It was a grave disappointment to me to be forced to dismiss this personage, and set up instead in my mind the Denman Churm had described. My hero was, in plain words, a rogue, a coward, and a slave.

I perceived, too, that half unconsciously I had kept alive pretty little romantic fancies about Emma and Clara. Living so many years in Italy and France, among women with minds deflowered by the confessional, and among the homely damsels of Germany, I was eager for the society of fresh, frank, graceful, girlish girls at home. The Denmans had often visited my imagination, companions of my sunniest memories of childhood. The earliest pleasure of my return I had looked for in the revival of this intimacy. But now I found one dead mysteriously, the other’s life clouded by a tragedy. My pretty fancies all perished.

I began to dread my interview with Emma Denman to-morrow. Densdeth to be my usher!

What if she, like her father, had deteriorated under Densdeth’s influence?

To cure myself of this sorry thought, I looked up among my treasures the letter which the two girls had written me several years ago, upon my father’s death. It came to me in a friendless, foreign land, one desolate summer, while I was convalescing from an attack of the same fever that orphaned me.

Precious little childish epistle, now yellow with age! I remembered how I read it, slowly and feebly, one sultry Italian day, when the sluggish heat lay clogged and unrippled in the streets of the furnace-like city. I recalled how I read it, pausing between the sentences, and feeling each as sweet as the cool, soothing touch of the hand of love on a throbbing forehead.

I unfolded the letter, and re-read it reverently, and with a certain tragic interest. Clara was the scribe. These were her quaint, careful characters, her timid, stiff, serious, affectionate phrases.

I pictured to myself the two girls signing this sisterly missive, blushing perhaps with a maidenly shyness, smiling with maidenly confidence, sobered by their gentle sympathy for my grief.

Then, with a sudden shifting of the scenes, there came up before me a picture of the sad drama so lately enacted in Mr. Denman’s house. Clara driven to madness or despair, Emma bereaved, Denman lost to self-respect, Churm belied; and in the background a malignant shadow, — Densdeth.

All at once a peremptory knock at my door disturbed me.

A stout knock, thrice repeated. The visitor meant to be heard and answered.

I was fresh from the French theatres, where three great blows behind the curtain announce its lifting.

“What!” thought I, “does the drama march? Is a new act beginning? Am I playing a part in the Denman trilogy? And what new character appears at midnight in the dusky halls of Chrysalis? Who follows Densdeth and Churm? Who precedes Emma Denman?”