Can Such Things Be [55]
should probably have remained away until nightfall, but by the middle of the afternoon I was back in the little garden, affecting an interest in the few foolish flowers that I had never before observed. My hope was vain; she did not appear. 'To a night of unrest succeeded a day of expec- tation and disappointment, but on the day after, as I wandered aimlessly about the neighbourhood, I met her. Of course I did not repeat my folly of un- covering, nor venture by even so much as too long a look to manifest an interest in her; yet my heart was beating audibly. I trembled and consciously coloured as she turned her big black eyes upon me with a look of obvious recognition entirely devoid of boldness or coquetry. 'I will not weary you with particulars; many times afterward I met the maiden, yet never either addressed her or sought to fix her attention. Nor did I take any action toward making her acquaintance. Perhaps my forbearance, requiring so supreme an effort of self-denial, will not be entirely clear to you. That I was heels over head in love is true, but who can overcome his habit of thought, or reconstruct his character? 'I was what some foolish persons are pleased to call, and others, more foolish, are pleased to be called--an aristocrat; and despite her beauty, her charms and grace, the girl was not of my class. I had learned her name--which it is needless to speak--and something of her family. She was an orphan, a dependent niece of the impossible elderly fat woman in whose lodging-house she lived. My in- come was small and I lacked the talent for marry- ing; it is perhaps a gift. An alliance with that fam- ily would condemn me to its manner of life, part me from my books and studies, and in a social sense reduce me to the ranks. It is easy to deprecate such considerations as these and I have not retained my- self for the defence. Let judgment be entered against me, but in strict justice all my ancestors for genera- tions should be made co-defendants and I be per- mitted to plead in mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate of heredity. To a mesalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in opposition. In brief, my tastes, habits, instinct, with whatever of reason my love had left me--all fought against it. Moreover, I was an irreclaimable sentimentalist, and found a subtle charm in an im- personal and spiritual relation which acquaintance might vulgarize and marriage would certainly dis- pel. No woman, I argued, is what this lovely creature seems. Love is a delicious dream; why should I bring about my own awakening? 'The course dictated by all this sense and senti- ment was obvious. Honour, pride, prudence, preser- vation of my ideals--all commanded me to go away, but for that I was too weak. The utmost that I could do by a mighty effort of will was to cease meeting the girl, and that I did. I even avoided the chance encounters of the garden, leaving my lodg- ing only when I knew that she had gone to her music lessons, and returning after nightfall. Yet all the while I was as one in a trance, indulging the most fascinating fancies and ordering my entire in- tellectual life in accordance with my dream. Ah, my friend, as one whose actions have a traceable rela- tion to reason, you cannot know the fool's paradise in which I lived. 'One evening the devil put it into my head to be an unspeakable idiot. By apparently careless and purposeless questioning I learned from my gossipy landlady that the young woman's bedroom adjoined my own, a party-wall between. Yielding to a sudden and coarse impulse I gently rapped on the wall. There was no response, naturally, but I was in no mood to accept a rebuke. A madness was upon me and I repeated the folly, the offence, but again in- effectually, and I had the decency to desist. 'An hour later, while absorbed in some of my in- fernal studies, I heard, or thought I heard, my signal answered. Flinging down my books I sprang to the wall and as steadily as my beating heart would per- mit gave three slow taps upon it. This time the re- sponse was distinct,