Radclyffe Hall - The Oldest Gay Novels

The poetic temperament takes in happiness and good cheer as a bud takes sunshine. Dreeme expanded more and more. His silver laugh flowed free in chastened merriment. He seemed to forget that an hour ago he had been dying, friendless and alone; to forget whatever sorrow or terror had driven him to this unnatural seclusion, up in the shabby precincts of Chrysalis College.

We were a merry trio. Reaction after the anxiety of the evening exhilarated me to my best mood. Locksley too was in high feather. His harangue at Selleridge’s had loosed his tongue, — never in truth a very tight one, — and he vented no end of odd phrases over the banquet.

Stillfleet’s antique flasks and goblets figured decorously at the board. They were spectators rather than actors. The janitor proposed Mr. Dreeme’s health.

“I hardly expected, Locksley,” said I in reply, “when Stillfleet warned you that I would try to introduce the Orgie here, that you were to be my chief abettor.”

“The mildest Orgie ever known!” said Dreeme.

“Rather a feast of thanksgiving. But shall we end it now? I see you grow weary.”

“I do, healthily weary. Ah, Mr. Byng! you cannot conceive the blissful revulsion in my life since last night, when I fell asleep alone and without hope, — over-weary with work, weary to death of life.”

“Would you like me to camp with a blanket on your floor, in case you should need anything?”

“No,” he replied, rather coldly. “I shall do well. I would not incommode you.”

“Good night then, my dear Mr. Dreeme. Pray understand that our new friendship must not be slept out of existence.”

No doubt my tone betrayed that his sudden cold manner had made me fancy such a result.

“O no!” he said ardently. “I am not a person of many professions, but I do not forget. And I need your kindness still, and shall need it. Pray,” continued he, “keep my secret. I do not wish to be known, until my hibernation is over. Locksley has been pretty faithful thus far.”

“Until Mr. Byng arrived to make a traitor of me,” said the janitor, with compunction.

“Such treachery is higher loyalty,” Dreeme rejoined. “You find me hiding my light under a bushel, but don’t suspect me, Mr. Byng, of anything worse than a freak, or an ambitious fancy.”

Not either of these, I was sure, from his unhappy attempt at a smile as he spoke. But he threw himself upon my good faith so utterly, that I resolved never to open my eyes, to shut them even to any flash of suspicion of his secret that any circumstance might reveal.

“Good night!” And so we parted.

“We’ve hit the bull’s-eye true,” said Locksley, as we descended. “You suited him even better than Mr. Churm could have done.”

“Mysterious business! Such an odd place to hide in! And his name on the door, too!”

“Who would think of searching for a runaway in a respectable old den like this. Perhaps the name is not his. A wrong name puts people on the wrong scent. It’s having no name that is suspicious. And if he’d put ‘Panther,’ instead of ‘Painter,’ on his door, it wouldn’t have kept people away any better. Who goes to a young painter’s door? They have trouble enough to get any notice.”

“I believe you are right. Will you come in and let me give you a cigar?”

“No I thank you, sir. Miss Locksley has got a natural nose against tobacco. If I go to bed scented, she’ll wake up and scallop me with questions. Good night, sir.” And we parted at the main staircase.

“A full day,” I thought, as I entered my room. No danger of my being bored, if events crowd in this way in America. Here certainly is romance. Destiny has brought Cecil Dreeme and me together without a break-down on his side of the ceiling, or a pistol-shot from me below. Poor fellow! who knows but, even so young, he has had some cruel experience like Churm’s? But hold! I must not pry into his affairs. I might strike tragedy, and tragedy I do not love. So to bed, and no dreams of Dreeme.

Table of Contents

I slept late after our gentle Orgie, my second night on shore.

A loud rapping awoke me.

I opened. Churm was at the door, stout stick in hand, stout shoes on his feet, stout coat on his back, — the sturdiest man to be seen, search a continent for his fellow! He had the Herculean air of one who has been out giving the world a lift by way of getting an appetite for breakfast.

“Good morning,” said he, marching in. “This will never do, my tallish young Saxon, come home to work!”

“What?”

“Nine A. M., and your day’s task not begun!”

“I worked too late last night.”

“At the mysteries of your trade? I doubt if you encountered a deeper one than I in my watch.”

“Perhaps, and perhaps not. What was yours?”

“The heart of a wrong-doer.”

“That transcends my trade’s methods of analysis.”

“And in this case, my powers.”

“You are speaking of your protégé , Towner,” said I, going on with my toilette.

“Of him. He has a confession to make to me. He dares not quite confess. He comes up timorously, like a weak-kneed horse to his leap; then he seems to see something on the other side; he flinches and sheers into a Serbonian bog of lies.”

“Afraid of the consequences of confession?”

“Not of the ordinary punishment of guilt, nor of any ordinary revenge from his ancient master in evil.”

“Namely, as you allege, Densdeth.”

“Densdeth.”

“I shall grow perverse enough to take Densdeth’s part, and cast my shell to de-ostracize him from his moral ostracism, if I hear him called The Unjust by all the world.”

“Don’t be Quixotic, Byng. There is more vanity than generosity in that.”

“And what dreadful vengeance does your weakling fear?”

“He thinks that, if he betrays his master, he shall never save himself from that master’s clutch. Densdeth will pursue him and debase his soul through all the eternities, as he has done in this life.”

“Quite a metaphysical distress!”

“Don’t laugh at him! It is a real agony with him; and who knows but the danger is real?”

“You do not get at what the poor devil has done in which you are interested?”

“Not at all. And his moral struggle with himself, and defeat, have plunged him back into such pitiable weakness of body, that we have lost all we had gained. The doctor says that it will kill him to see me again for weeks.”

“So Densdeth is respited. Well, I will study him in the interval, and find out for myself whether he is ‘ main de fer, sous patte de velours .’”

“Very well, Byng; I see you are resolved to buy your experience. Densdeth has magnetized you. He does most young men.”

“I don’t know yet whether I shall turn to him my positive or negative pole. He may repel, instead of attracting, as soon as I get within his sphere. I acknowledge that I am drawn to him.”

“Now then, enough of such topics. My vigils have given me an appetite. I want to reverse ‘ qui dort dine ,’ and read ‘ qui déjeune dort .’”

“Where shall we go? Chuzzlewit, Patrick rampant, flannel cakes, and Densdeth?”

“No; a better place. The Minedurt, close by.”

“Unpropitious name!”

“Surnames go by contraries. This is old Knickerbocker. It should read ‘The Grotto of Neatness,’ instead of the ‘Minedurt.’”

An avenue — The Avenue — flows up hill, northward, from the middle of Ailanthus Square. Churm conducted me a few blocks along that channel of wealth. He stopped in front of the Minedurt, a hotel with restaurant attached. Respectable could not have been more distinctly stamped upon a building, if it had been written up in a great label across the front, and in a hundred little labels everywhere, like the big red Ten and the little red tens on a bank-bill.