Radclyffe Hall - The Oldest Gay Novels

“Spare me the dread of their condemnation! Keep my little gift to yourself, at present! Here is my heap of drawings. Look at them, and judge with your usual kindness!”

“So these were the thoughts too hot for your brain to hold. These represent what you must say, not what you chose to say. I perceive that the bent of your mind is not toward tragedy.”

Very masterly sketches they were! A fine fancy, a subtle imagination, a large heart, had conceived them, an accurate and severe artistic sense had controlled and developed the thought, and an unerring hand had executed it. Dreeme was a youth, certainly not more than twenty-one; and yet here was the maturity of complete manhood. Whether he had had opportunities for studying classic art, or whether his genius had seized in common life that fine quality which we name “classic,” these drawings of his would have stood the test with the purest of the Italian masters, in the days before Italian art had suffered blight, — that blight which befell it when progress ceased in the land, and a tyrannical Church bade the nation pause and let the world go by.

Dreeme’s female figures were not drawn with the liberal and almost riotous fancy of youth, which loves floating and flaunting draperies and a bold display of the nude. A chaster feeling had presided over the studies of this fine genius. There was a severe simplicity in his drawings of women. He seemed to have approached the purer sex with a loving reverence, never with that coarse freedom which debases the work of many able men, nullifying all spiritual beauty One would say that the artist of these drawings had taken his mother and his sisters as models for the elevated and saintly beings, whom he had placed in scenes of calm beauty, and engaged in tender offices of mercy, pity, and pardon. I could safely name him Raphael-Angelico, — the title saves me longer criticism.

Strangely enough, — and here I recognized either a wound in Dreeme’s life or a want in his character, — there was not one scene of love — that is, the love Cupid manages — in the collection. Not one scene where lovers, happy or hapless, figured. No pretty picture of consent and fondness. Not one of passion and fervor.

Now, a young man or a young maiden, in the early twenties, in whose mind love is not the primal thought, is a monstrosity, and must be studied and analyzed with a view to cure.

Either Dreeme’s nature was still in the crude, green state, unripened by passion, or he had suffered so bitterly from some treachery in love that he could not reawaken the memory. Either he was ignorant of love’s sweet torture, or he had felt the agony, without the healing touch.

I suspected the latter.

Often, recently, as my relations with Dreeme grew closer, I had been conscious of a peculiar jealous curiosity. I was now his nearest friend. But had he not had a nearer? If not in my sex, in the other? It was under the influence of this jealousy, that I said, —

“It seems almost an impertinence, Dreeme, to suggest a negative fault in this collection of admirable drawings; but I perceive a want. The subject of love, — the love that presses hands and kisses lips, the tender passion, — had you nothing to say of it?”

“No,” said he, “I am too young.”

“Bah! you are past twenty.”

“Twenty-one — the very day of your coming.”

“Too young! why, as for me, I was in love while my upper lip was only downy. The passion increased as that feature began to be districted off with hairs, stalwart, but sporadic. And ever since I have grown up to a real moustache, with ends that can be twirled, I have been in love, or just out and waiting to jump or tumble in again, the whole time.”

“How is it now?”

“I hardly know. In love? or almost in? Which? In, I believe. I am tempted to offer you a confidence.”

“I would rather not,” said Dreeme, uneasily.

“O yes; you shall interpret my feelings. I admire a woman, whom it seems to me that I should love devotedly, if she were a little other than she is, — herself touched with a diviner delicacy, — her own sister self, a little angelized.”

Dreeme evaded my questioning look, and made no reply. I paused a moment, while he painted a jewel, flashing on the white neck of his Goneril.

“Come” said I, “my Mentor, do not dodge responsibility! Your reply may affect my destiny.”

He met my glance now, and replied, without hesitation, “Love that admits questions is no love.”

“Perhaps I am suffering the penalty for the inconstant mood I have permitted myself heretofore. Perhaps I only want a steady and sincere purpose to love and trust, and I shall do so.”

“Beware such perilous doubts!” said he earnestly. “With a generous character like yours, they lead to illusions. You will presently, out of self-reproach for at all doubting the woman you fancy, pass into a blind confidence, and so win some miserable shock, perhaps too late.”

“Cassandra again! Cassandra in the other sex.”

“Do not say Cassandra! that proves you intend to disdain my warning.”

“Dear me! what solemn business we are making of my little flirtation! — a flirtation all on my side, by the way. In fact, I really believe I have cleared my head of my vague doubts of the unknown lady in question. They only needed to be put into words, in presence of a third party, to seem, as you say, utterly ungenerous.”

“I am sorry that you forced the confidence upon me, — very sorry! But you would have it so.”

“You talk as if you knew the lady, and considered her unfitted for me.”

“Believe that I have discernment enough, knowing you, to know the class of woman who in this phase of your life will necessarily attract you. I can divine whom, — that is, what manner of person you will choose for a love, since you have characterized the man you are fascinated by as an intimate.”

“Oh! you mean Densdeth.”

“Yes; while you allow him to dominate you, — and mind, I take my impression from yourself, — you will naturally seek a counterpart of his in the other sex.”

I grew ill at ease under this penetrating analysis of my secret feelings.

It was, of course, of Emma Denman that I had spoken.

Emma Denman was the woman I deemed myself on the verge of loving.

It was she whom I felt that I did not love, and yet ought to love. It was she whom I should have loved, without any shadow of hesitation, if she had been herself touched with a diviner feminineness, her own sister self, a thought more angelic.

I had sometimes had a painful lurking consciousness that if I were nobler than I was, — if my mind were more resolutely made up and unwavering on the side of virtue, — I should have applied the test of a higher and purer nature on my side to Emma Denman, and found her in some way fatally wanting. But whenever this injurious fancy stirred within me, I quelled it, saying, “If I were nobler, I should not have morbid notions about others. How can you learn to trust women while you allow yourself daily to listen, and only carelessly to protest, when Densdeth urges his doctrine, that women and men only wait opportunity to be base?”

In fact, in violation of an instinct, I was going through the process of resolving to love Emma Denman, because I distrusted her, and such vague distrust seemed an unchivalric disloyalty, a cruel wrong to a friend.

The strange coincidence of Dreeme’s warning determined me to banish my superstitions. No more of this weakness! I would cultivate, or, as I persuaded myself, frankly yield to my passion for my childish flame, love her, and do my best to win her. I saw now how baseless were my doubts, when they came to be stated in words. Indeed, there was no name for one of these misty beings of the mind.