Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (256 page)

Oblivion, however, did not follow, but we remained in a benumbed state of torpor, speechless, forgetting everything except the love we bore each other, unconscious of everything save the pleasure of feeling each other’s bodies, which, however, seemed to have lost their own individuality, mingled and confounded as they were together. Apparently we had but one head and one heart, for they beat in such unison, and the same vague thoughts flitted through both our brains.

Why did not Jehovah strike us dead that moment? Had we not provoked Him enough? How was it that the jealous God was not envious of our bliss? Why did He not hurl one of his avenging thunderbolts at us, and annihilate us?

 
— What! and have pitched you both headlong into hell?

 
— Well, what then? Hell, of course, is no excelsior — no place of false aspirations after an unreachable ideal of fallacious hopes and bitter disappointments. Never pretending to be what we are not, we shall find there true contented-ness of mind, and our bodies will be able to develop those faculties with which nature has endowed them. Not being either hypocrites or dissemblers, the dread of being seen such as we really are can never torment us.

If we are grossly bad, we shall at least be truthfully so. There will be amongst us that honesty which here on earth exists only amongst thieves; and moreover, we shall have that genial companionship of fellow-beings after our own heart.

Is hell, then, such a place to be dreaded? Thus, even admitting of an afterlife in the bottomless pit, which I do not, hell would only be the paradise of those whom nature has created fit for it. Do animals repine for not having been created men? No, I think not. Why should we, then, make ourselves unhappy for not having been born angels?

At that moment it seemed as if we were floating somewhere between heaven and earth, not thinking that everything that has a beginning has likewise an end.

The senses were blunted, so that the downy couch upon which we were resting was like a bed of clouds. A deathlike silence was reigning around us. The very noise and hum of the great city seemed to have stopped — or, at least, we did not hear it. Could the earth have stopped in its rotation, and the hand of Time have arrested itself in its dismal march?

I remember languidly wishing that my life could pass away in that placidly dull and dreamy state, so like a mesmeric trance, when the benumbed body is thrown into a death-like torpor, and the mind, Like an ember among fallen ashes, is just wakeful enough to feel the consciousness of ease and of peaceful rest.

All at once we were roused from our pleasant somnolence by the jarring sound of an electric bell.

Teleny jumped up, hastened to wrap himself in a dressing-gown, and to attend to the summons. A few moments afterward he came back with a telegram in his hand.

‘What is it?’I asked.

‘A message from — ,’ he replied, looking at me wistfully, and with a certain trepidation in his voice.

‘And you have to go?’

‘I suppose I must,’ said he, with a mournful sadness in his eyes.

‘Is it so distasteful to you?’

‘Distasteful is not the word; it is unbearable. This is the first parting, and— ‘

‘Yes, but only for a day or two.’

‘A day or two,’ added he, gloomily, ‘is the space that divides life from death:

It is the little rift within the lute, That by-and-by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.’

Teleny, you have had for some days a weight on your mind — something that I cannot fathom. Will you not tell your friend what it is?’

He opened his eyes widely, as if he were looking into the depths of limitless space, while a painful expression was seen upon his lips; and then he added slowly:

‘My fate. Have you forgotten the prophetic vision you had that evening of the charity concert?’

‘What! Adrian mourning over dead Antinous?’

‘Yes.’

‘A fancy bred in my over-heated brain by the conflicting qualities of your Hungarian music, so stirringly sensuous and at the same time so gorgeously mournful.’

He shook his head sadly.

‘No, it was something more than idle fancy.’

‘A change has been taking place in you, Teleny. Perhaps it is the religious or spiritual element of your nature that is predominating just now over the sensual, but you are not what you were.’

‘I feel that I have been too happy, but that our happiness is built on sand — a bond like ours— ‘

‘Not blessed by the Church, repugnant to the nice feelings of most men.’

‘Well — yes, in such a love there is always A little pitted speck in garnered fruit That, rotting inward, slowly smothers all.

Why did we meet — or, rather, why was not one of us born a woman? Had you only been some poor girl— ‘

‘Come, leave aside your morbid fancies, and tell me candidly if you would have loved me more than you do.’

He looked at me sadly, but could not bring himself to utter an untruth. Still, after a while he added, sighing:

‘There is a love that is to last, When the hot days of youth are past.

Tell me, Camille, is such love ours?’

‘Why not? Can you not always be as fond of me as I am of you, or do I only care for you on account of the sensual pleasures you afford me? You know that my heart yearns for you when the senses are satiated and the desire is blunted.’

‘Still, had it not been for me, you might have loved some woman whom you could have married— ‘

‘And have found out, but too late, that I was born with other cravings. No, sooner or later I should have followed my destiny.’

‘Now it might be quite different; satiated with my love, you might, perhaps, marry and forget me.’

‘Never. But come, have you been confessing yourself? Are you going to turn Calvinist? or, like the “Dame aux Camelias,” or Antinous, do you think it necessary to sacrifice yourself on the altar of love for my sake?’

‘Please, don’t joke.’

‘No, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let us leave France. Let us go to Spain, to Southern Italy — nay, let us leave Europe, and go to the East, where I must surely have lived during some former life, and which I have a hankering to see, just as if the land Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine, had been the home of my youth; there, unknown to everyone, forgotten by the world.’

‘Yes, but can I leave this town?’ he said.

I knew that of late Teleny had been dunned a good deal, and that his life had often been rendered unpleasant by usurers.

Caring, therefore, but little what people might think of me — besides, who has not a good opinion of the man that pays? — I had called all his creditors toqether, and, unknown to him, I had settled all his debts. I was about to tell him so, and relieve him from the weight that was oppressing him, when Fate — blind, inexorable, crushing Fate — sealed my mouth.

There was again a loud ring at the door. Had that bell been rung a few seconds later, how different his life and mine would have been! But it was Kismet, as the Turks say.

It was the carriage that had come to take him to the station. While he was getting ready, I helped him to pack up his dress suit and some other little things he might require. I took up, by chance, a small matchbox containing French letters, and smiling, said:

‘Here, I’ll put them in your trunk; they might be useful.’

He shuddered, and grew deathly pale.

‘Who knows?’ said I; ‘some beautiful lady patroness— ‘

‘Please, don’t joke,’ he retorted, almost angrily.

‘Oh! now I can afford to do so, but once — do you know that I was even jealous of my mother?’

Teleny at that moment dropped the mirror he was holding, which, as it fell, was shivered to pieces.

For a moment we both looked aghast. Was it not a dreadful omen?

Just then the clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour. Teleny shrugged his shoulders.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘there’s no time to lose.’

He snatched up his portmanteau, and we hurried downstairs.

I accompanied him to the terminus, and before leaving him when he alighted from the carriage, my arms were clasped around him, and our lips met in a last and lingering kiss. They clung fondly to one another, not with the fever of lust, but with a love all fraught with tenderness, and with a sorrow that gripped the muscles of the heart.

His kiss was like the last emanation of a withering flower, or like the sweet scent shed at evening tide by one of those delicate white cactus blossoms that open their petals at dawn, follow the sun in its diurnal march, then droop and fade away with the planet’s last rays.

At parting from him I felt as if I had been bereft of my soul itself. My love was like a Nessus shirt, the severing of which was as painful as having my flesh torn from me piecemeal. It was as if the joy of my life had been snatched away from me.

I watched him as he hurried away with his springy step and feline grace. When he had reached the portal he turned round. He was deathly pale, and in his despair he looked like a man about to commit suicide. He waved a last farewell, and quickly disappeared.

The sun had set for me. Night had come over the world. I felt like a soul belated;

In hell and heaven unmated;

and, shuddering, I asked myself, what morn would come out of all this darkness?

The agony visible on his face struck a deep terror within me; then I thouqht how foolish we both were in giving each other such unnecessary pain, and I rushed out of the carriage after him.

All at once a heavy country lout ran up against me, and clasped me in his arms.

‘Oh, — !’ I did not catch the name he said— ‘what an unexpected pleasure! How long have you been here?’

‘Let me go — let me go! You are mistaken!’ I screamed out, but he held me fast.

As I wrestled with the man, I heard the signal bell ring. With a strong jerk I pushed him away, and ran into the station. I reached the platform a few seconds too late, the train was in motion, Teleny had disappeared.

Nothing was then left for me to do but to post a letter to this friend of mine, begging him to forgive me for having done what he had often forbidden me to do; that is, to have given an order to my attorney to collect all his outstanding accounts, and pay all those debts that had so long been weighing upon him. That letter, however, he never got.

Ijumped back into the cab, and was whirled away to my office through the crowded thoroughfares of the town.

What a jarring bustle there was everywhere! How sordid and meaningless this world appeared!

A garishly-dressed, smirking female was casting lewd glances at a lad, and tempting him to follow her. A one-eyed satyr was ogling a very young girl — a mere child. I thought I knew him. Yes, it was that loathsome school fellow of mine, Bion, only he looked even more of a pimp than his father used to look. A fat, sleek-headed man was carrying a cantaloup melon, and his mouth seemed to be watering at the prospect of the pleasure he would have in eating it after the soup, with his wife and children. I asked myself if ever man or woman could have kissed that slobbering mouth without feeling sick?

I had during these last three days quite neglected my office, and my manager was ill. I therefore felt it my duty to set to work and do what had to be done. Notwithstanding the sorrow gnawing in my heart, I began answering letters and telegrams, or giving the necessary directions as to how they were to be answered. I worked feverishly, rather like a machine than a man. For a few hours I was quite absorbed in complicated commercial transactions, and although I worked and reckoned clearly, still my friend’s face, with his mournful eyes, his voluptuous mouth with its bitter smile, was ever before me, while an aftertaste of his kiss lingered on my lips.

The hour for shutting up the office came, and yet not half of my task was done. I saw, as in a dream, the rueful faces of my clerks kept back from their dinners orfrom their pleasures. They had all somewhere to go to. I was alone, even my mother was away. I therefore bade them go, saying I should remain with the head bookkeeper. They did not wait to be told twice; in a twinkling the offices were empty.

As for the accountant, he was a commercial fossil, a kind of living calculating machine; grown so old in the office that all his limbs creaked like rustvhinqes everv time he moved, so that he hardly ever did move. Nobody had ever seen him anywhere else but on his high stool; he was always at his place before any of the junior clerks came in, he was still there when they went off. Life for him had only one aim — that of making endless additions.

Feeling rather sick, I sent the office boy for a bottle of dry sherry and a box of vanilla- wafers. When the lad returned I told him he could go.

I poured out a glass of wine for the bookkeeper, and handed him the box of biscuits. The old man took up the glass with his parchment-colored hand, and held it up to the light as if he were calculating its chemical properties or its specific weight. Then he sipped it slowly with evident gusto.

As for the wafer he looked at it carefully, just as if it had been a draft he was going to register.

Then we both set to work again, and at about ten, all the letters and dispatches having been answered, I heaved a deep sigh of relief.