Chapter III: The Hunter After Wild Beasts

I

Out of his loneliness, Aubrey Carlyle told me this story one night: not at Malmanor Park, where, with his sister Esther as hostess, he has entertained us all so often, for he said that he could not have told me this story at Malmanor, but in the library of his house in London.

Aubrey Carlyle, who is a man of middle years, had never told this story to any one before, and I can only think he told it to me because I had been a great friend to his wife Gloria. I have not seen Gloria Carlyle for three years, though I have very often wished to, for she is a lady of uncommon quality and was a very loyal friend. Of her George Tarlyon once said that she was a gentleman among women; “And that is a very rare thing,” added Shelmerdene, “for the only advantage most women have over men is in the fact that they are not gentlemen.” But that is as it may be.

The last I heard of Gloria Carlyle was that she had settled in Italy and was living in a villa near Florence. And I saw a vision of Gloria in a very white villa among the myrtle and magnolia and waxen camellias of that country, and walking in lanes where green lizards moved swiftly up grey stone walls--dear Gloria of the tiger-tawny hair and the funny crooked smile like a naughty fairy’s. She was a very sweet and thoughtful woman, and her voice never, never intruded, it was like a hidden stream, quite delicious....

Aubrey Carlyle told me that I could tell or write this story as I wished, saying that it might better the knowledge of men about their womenfolk; “for there are too many men,” he said, “who do not know their jobs as regards their women. And I have learnt mine too late.”

My friend Aubrey is a man of an aloof and almost haughty demeanour, which may have perhaps induced that rather abrupt manner that has repelled many people from him; for though a certain aloofness was thought very proper to the looks of an English gentleman of a past time, it is now held to be quite out of place among the corrupt genialities of the democratic state. A tall, dark-looking man he was, and elegant in a tweedy sort of way. Rich always, he had never been a wastrel, and London bored him to distraction--or “to distinction,” as an American out of Texas once said. A Tory landlord of Liberal sympathies, he was always a model administrator of his properties; and chief among these we, their friends, counted Gloria, for she seemed--how can one suggest these shades of understanding?--more particularly and peculiarly his wife than are the wives of less fortunate men. It is said of the Carlyles that they have always been bad to their women and that there has been no charge on the female estate for more than two hundred years; but Aubrey and Gloria were a charming couple. It was always quite evident that she loved him--tall Gloria of the tiger-tawny hair and the funny crooked smile like a naughty fairy’s; while it was equally evident--to those few, of course, who could look beneath the aloof surface of the man--that he treasured her enormously. And then, one day, she left him; and she never came back.

Now Aubrey despised what he called the “trumpery parlour-tricks” of the countryside. He was not civilised enough, he said. The elegant pastime of killing a pretty fowl of the air without any risk to yourself, or of chasing a scared fox across a county--though that was better, for you at least risked a broken collar-bone--did not amuse him very much. He was a hunter after wild beasts. And because you may not kill wild beasts in England, for they walk on two legs and stern laws protect them, the other four continents knew Aubrey Carlyle for many months in the year. And because Gloria was not a hunter after wild beasts she stayed in England, and was much with us in London, and we sometimes with her at Malmanor. But she was an amazingly still woman.

The war came, and Aubrey was very happy at his pastime, legalised at last, in Flanders, and grew to be a brigadier. And Gloria grew to be a woman, for she had somehow seemed very young until then. The war gasped to conclusion, and soon Aubrey was in South America, in the darkness beyond the upper reaches of the Amazon. And when, one evening, he returned to Malmanor, he found that Gloria was gone.

II

In the vast hall-way of the house, with men tramping about the stone floor bringing in his luggage and his trophies, the butler very silently gave him a slim letter. Aubrey Carlyle looked at the handwriting on the letter, and then at the silent servant.

“When did my wire arrive?”

“At six o’clock last night, sir.”

And then Aubrey knew the letter in his hand to hold the greatest shock of his life. But he was not a dramatic man, he did not take his surprises dramatically. He put the letter into his pocket.

“And then, Hunt?”

“Sir?”

“And then?”

“Madam left by the eleven o’clock London train this morning, sir. She took luggage.”

“I will have a bath now. Very hot, tell Vesey. Dinner at the usual time. Thank you, Hunt.” Twenty-five years had Hunt been with his master; ten years longer than Gloria.

Aubrey had his bath, very hot. And then he put on those nice, slack, black things which so advantage a man’s looks at night; and with them he always wore a soft shirt, for Aubrey would have seen the greatest hostess in the land to blazes rather than be uncomfortable in a stiff one. For a long time he sat on the broad window-seat in his bedroom and looked out on the avenue of tall trees that joined his park to the distant shroud of Carmion Wood. The prospect was very fair in the soft evening light. God is like a woman in the evenings, He makes the land look so shy. And then he heard Gloria’s voice, but it was very distant, for it came from across a wide valley. He just heard Gloria’s voice, but he could not make out what she was saying. And he remembered sudden little phrases of hers in her fine, whispering voice, little broken phrases, and how she would smile very crookedly, and how her great eyes would queerly cloud over.

And then he read the letter. It was a very short letter.

It was after ten o’clock when he passed from the dining-room into the drawing-room. Hunt entered after him to draw the curtains across the French windows, but he was told to let them be; and Hunt switched on the lights, but he was told to switch them off again and that nothing more would be required of him that night.

Again Aubrey read the letter. It was a very short letter. “You know why, dear. Good-bye. Gloria.”

He was angry, because he didn’t know why; he had not the faintest idea why. But anger is no sort of a weapon with which to fight solitude, and this was the most solitary moment of Aubrey Carlyle’s life, he who had hunted wild beasts in the loneliest places of the Americas.

He threw wide open the three French windows and prowled about the large dim room. “You know why.” God in Heaven, what was she talking about! How could he know why?--and what was there to know? He prowled about the room....

They had been good friends, amazingly good friends. He had relied on her to understand that. Good Lord, everything he had done to her or had not done to her had been in friendship! Surely she had understood that.... She had seemed to.... Fourteen, fifteen years.... Why, she couldn’t have expected him to behave like an impassioned lover all the time! Fifteen years.... There were moments.... When he came back from any of his travels and saw her, he loved her madly. It was like a choke in the heart when he saw her on his returns, that marvellous tawny Gloria with the funny crooked smile. Oh, child, child, what have you done? He had treated her like a friend.... And what was the use of having a great friend if you had to write letters to her? He never wrote letters when he was abroad; he hated writing letters. Of course she had understood that....

And he prowled about the large dim room, through the clear throbbing stillness, for the face of the moon hung over distant Carmion Wood and leered genially into the room. He did not understand.... At last he sat down in a great chair by the fireplace, and as he sat there he thought how, after his many returns, he had sat on that chair and taken Gloria to his knee and loved her. And Aubrey Carlyle cried for the first time in his life....

III

He sat there, a very solitary man, and his eyes wandered vaguely through the open windows over the bewitched countryside, his gardens and his park and his acres and his forests, shrouded all in a clear gloom as though God was peering at them in the light of a taper. And the heavy moon climbed the heavens. He saw the twisted shapes of tall flowers in the garden, flowers he did not know, for his head-gardener was a man of invention in August. And then, among the tall shapes of the August flowers, he saw one in particular, and this one was the tallest among them, and it moved. But he sat very still and solemn in his chair, watching the shape of the moving flower, between him and the heavy moon. And then it wavered and stood; for a long time it stood, a shadow in the wan countryside. Perhaps it was afraid, all alone there among the flowers. He watched. And then it was framed in the open window, a soft slim shadow. But he did not move.

“What sort of a play is this,” he heard his voice ask, “in which a woman goes away like a coward and comes back like a wraith?”

And into the room she came, and with a sigh she sat down in a chair by the window.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I am so tired....”

His heart was so torn with gladness that for a long time he could not move, he could not speak. And then he walked across the room and stood above her chair. She turned up her little face under the tiger-tawny hair and smiled her funny crooked smile like a naughty fairy’s.

“Poor Aubrey!” she whispered. “Poor Gloria!...”

But he did not touch her.

“Listen, Gloria,” he whispered. “When I found you had gone, my life cracked like an earthenware cup....” And Aubrey Carlyle stopped, amazed by what he had said; for he had never said a thing like that before.

“And now,” he said, “you have mended it again.”

“Have I?” she cried queerly; and the weight of her eyes on him bore him to his knees by her chair. He had not seen her for eight months, but still he did not touch her.

“And _my_ life, Aubrey?”

“But your life is mine, Gloria! We are together!”

And Gloria, the soft, lovely Gloria smiled into his absorbed face....

“Of course,” she said. “Of course! An Englishman and his wife....”

But he was not listening.

“And did you know why, Aubrey?” she asked.

He shook his head. He had not seen her for eight months.

“I just thought you had gone mad, Gloria. Tell me, are you mad?”

“No, dear; I am very sane. And very tired.” And she said that in a voice which seemed to come from the depths of a very deep bowl, the softest voice that a man ever heard, and it broke the poise of his restraint. He had not seen her for eight months. He was very strong, and a lawless man. He carried her away into the depths of the room. She said nothing.

IV

And then, again, they were by the open windows. But a cloud with a satin fringe hid the moon, and it was so dark that the shine of her eyes was all he could see of her face. And Gloria was so tall that her eyes were almost level with his.

“And so you didn’t know why, in my letter?” she asked miserably.

He humoured her....

“Well, why?”

“You hunt wild beasts, don’t you, Aubrey?”

“And I bring the skins for you to walk on, Gloria.”

“And when you come back from your hunting, you ravage me like a wild beast----”

He cried out sharply in amazement, but she went on, like a sibyl:

“And then you go away again. And then again you come back, to ravage me----”

“Gloria, you are mad!”

“No, I am very sane. And very tired. I loved you, Aubrey. I shall never love any one else. I am clotted with your passions, Aubrey. I wanted love, but you ravaged me like a wild beast. And what is left of me now, I want to preserve. Oh, I want to! _Please_ understand ... just a little! All last night I wondered what I would do. I saw you coming back, my dear, the hunter coming back to his fireside and his wife and his holiday--oh, yes, I am your holiday, Aubrey!--and then I saw you going away again, leaving me.... Oh, Aubrey, how you have sinned against love! And so I went away, because of the horror of it. And I have come back, because of the horror of your loneliness. I, who am used to loneliness! And I also came back to see if you were--different....”

“If,” she whispered, “we were living in a past time, I should go into a nunnery, to get assoiled. But as it is, dear, I shall go for a walk....”

“Let me come with you,” he begged humbly.

“No, Aubrey. I’d like to walk quite alone. Towards the moon and back.” But the moon was behind a cloud with a satin fringe.

He watched her as she walked across the garden and was lost in darkness. He waited for a long time, but he knew she would not return. She has never returned.