‘We have done very well,’ decided Mrs Birchman as they talked over their bargains on the way home. Moll was quite cheerful again now, ogling the passers by, jesting with the smart women and foppish fellows who dawdled in the arcades, and claiming no small share of attention from the lovers who crowded round Lucy, eager to offer their sorrowful congratulations. Indeed there were many who preferred her more complex charms, her wider experience, her curious knowledge of gallantry and somewhat abandoned type of beauty, and the Curé François, who it must be admitted was quite the most profligate of the roués, wooed her in a manner that was rather more amorous than discreet.

  Mrs Birchman, as she corrected her toilet in the plate-glass window of Madame Elise’s, could not help smiling, and several of the older women of the town, women at the change of life or whose beauty, may be, had been sacrificed early at the shrine of Aphrodite, cast glances of envy, hatred, malice and despair.

  CHAPTER VII

  Count Fanny’s courtship had now lasted three delicious days and on the morrow his passion was to find consummation.

  He had attended at the Confessional, laughed a little with his priest, Father the Reverend Antoine Marie de Confleur, whose virtue, it was rumoured, was even a lighter thing than the penances he imposed, and received absolution for any little sins of which he had been guilty, unknown, mysterious, and often spontaneous excesses, passions lightly conceived and as lightly put aside, curious gratifications, negations, and denials. And now, in these last hours of withering freedom, Count Fanny found himself thinking a little sadly on the future. The phantoms of dead loves, of which he had thought nought remained saving the memory of a few kisses, a few impassioned letters, and a lock or two of hair, rose up before him and lured him with seductive charm. And then there was Sporus, his little favourite, and Monsieur Venus, his new friend, he could hardly hope to see so much of them in the future, and he sighed regretfully at the terrible thought. In the amorous indulgence which he allowed his meditations, anticipation mingled strangely with regret; he shivered, a little terrified, as he recalled some story of strange excesses which had matured upon the marriage bed.

  He thought of other lovers. Of the Curé Gaufridy who had intoxicated all women with the fragrance of his breath.

  Of the curious impurities of St Teresa, St Angela of Foligno, and of St Catherine Emmcrich, who had abandoned themselves as the brides of Christ.

  Of Pope Plus II.

  Of the inimitable memoirs of the Cardinal Dubois.

  Of forgotten romances of the Hermaphroditus of Antonio Beccatelli; of the erotic discourses of Astyanasisa the tire-woman of Helena; of Gower’s Confessio Amantis; of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ‘wherein all human matters are proved to be no more than a dream’; of Les Marguerites de Marguerite, and of the Satyricon of Petronius.

  Of the Seigneur Gilles de Retz, and of the curious cruelties, through the medium of which the Marquis de Sade found expression for his love.

  Of Mdlle de Maupin and of the Vestal Virgins.

  When Monsieur Beau de Monde arrived he found the Count looking flushed and sad.

  On meeting Lucy, however, all his doubts vanished in excess of fondness, and he greeted her with surprising demonstrations of affection, lipping her upon the cheeks and neck, nibbling her ears, and squeezing her damp delicious palms. Monsieur Beau de Monde too grew quite amorous, but Count Fanny was too fond of him to be at all jealous, and the two friends vied with each other in that administration of loving attentions. Lucy was feeling in a romantic mood, so was not at all averse to their twofold attentions. How pretty she looked! She had dressed a little carelessly, knowing that her lover might be expected, and was wearing some real flowers, and a veil to protect her from the sun. Count Fanny vowed that she looked as fresh and dainty as an Elizabethan pastoral!

  She invited the Count to come and see the presents which she had received, tokens of love, admiration, and respect. Amongst them were some white peacocks which Count Fanny declared to be ‘more beautiful than Herod’s’; some gold-fish, whose scales were set with jewels; some blue birds that piped of love, and a dwarf dressed in yellow satin. The little fellow had a hairy skin, long broken nails, a halting speech, and was only twenty-seven inches high.

  ‘Just one inch for every two years of his age,’ Lucy volunteered proudly.

  ‘What an odd person,’ said Count Fanny, catching sight of the little creature to whom Lucy had become entirely devoted. She lifted him up and fondled him, and encouraged him to behave in the most forward manner. The Count pouted a little, as he pulled off his gloves, and corrected the indiscretions in his cravatte of flowered muslin, and laughed nervously in his efforts to conceal the agitation which the sight of such liberties caused him.

  ‘Naughty, naughty,’ exclaimed Mrs Birchman, taking the little fellow from Lucy and folding him in her arms. She had some sweetmeats concealed about her person in a manner that surely might have rendered them secure from pilfering hands; however, Gombellino displaying a most precocious knowledge, quickly discovered them, and when Lucy and the Count slipped away into the alluring darkness of the trees, he was feasting upon the delicious fondants, laughing and clapping his hands, and behaving in quite the happiest manner.

  Lucy turned before she disappeared into the wood and blew him a dozen kisses, and the absurd creature shrieked with delight. Poor Gombellino, he was a loving creature, but plain – plain as the women one has wearied of loving.

  The twilight had now cloaked the garden in a purple veil, and the woods were filled with romantic shadows and mysterious sounds. The moths and creeping things were already awake or stirring in their dreams, eager for the delicious banquet of juice laden poppies, luscious berries, and honey flavoured flowers; some were even already fighting together over the savoury viands. The air was heavy with the damp odours of mosses and of flowers, which bowed under the footsteps of the lovers, surrendering their perfumes which rose and mingled with their full lipped kisses. The moonlight had cast her white shroud over the meadows and made them like pale fields of lilies. In places too it had pierced the dark shadows of the wood and illuminated the mysterious recesses with patches of silver.

  The lovers came across such a little island, and the flowers, which but a moment before had been hidden in the darkness stood out clear and crisp as the floral foreground of a Botticelli. The moths were moving from blossom to blossom, flying in fantastic curves, engaging in many an amorous sally, and fighting with each other in the prosecution of their passions. In the trees the night birds warbled softly passionate songs of illicit love.

  Romance had come into her kingdom!

  The lovers were alone.

  The image of Pan, mute upon his ivory pedestal, smiled at the excesses of these wanderers from another world who seemed so happy in the sublime consciousness of solitude of immunity – and of love.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The sun had long since risen upon the nuptial morn, and was shining through the stained glass windows of the little Chapel of the Magdalene, as though inquisitive of the pleasures of the day. And of a truth the scene it discovered was pretty enough, aisles and nave alike being happy with a hundred bright colours, the floral decorations, rich silks, and large hats of the women producing a wholly pastoral effect.

  Nor had the altar been neglected, and, from a representation of the Annunciation, the Virgin smiled down upon pale leaves of lilies. It was a curious canvas. It seemed as though the artist had wandered but for a few brief moments, and unwillingly at that, within the confines of the Gallilean, and, faithful ever to Olympus, had portrayed Aphrodite in the Virgin’s garb, the long feverish hands, the moist lips, the drooping lids of the Madonna being the outcome of a wholly Pagan art. The Angels too, who attended upon the Blessed Mother, knew nought of the solemnity of prayer, but danced around, their voluptuous figures swaying to a wanton measure, or reclined on rich stuffs in graceful, if somewhat abandoned, attitudes of ease.

  The church was already crowded with guests who awaited nervously the advent of the bride. The women were whispering together, making short exclamations, giggling, recalling episodes, or muttering doubles entendres suitable to the occasion. Moll was full of reminiscences and Mrs Birchman, looking ‘quite the lady’, was talking with Monsieur Beau de Monde in a distant corner. They were discussing the possibility of proving the immaculate conception by the somewhat obscure principle of eliptic functions, and as their arguments became more heated their voices rose, and Mrs Birchman perspired a little even freely.

  Of course she was not angry really, for she and Monsieur Beau de Monde were great friends – in fact she hardly spoke to Erotion now.

  All the Mashers and rejected lovers were present, nervous, agitated and exquisitely self-conscious as they displayed their rings, wiped away a speck of dust, or readjusted a patch that had become displaced.

  There was quite an excitement when Lucy arrived and even Gombellino and ‘Little Albert’ looked up for a moment from their game of dice.

  ‘How pretty she is,’ they exclaimed as they sighed regretfully.

  Lucy was dressed in all her finery, foll-lolls and the rest. She wore a dress of real satin, velvet shoes sewn with pearls, and scarlet stockings with long tapering clocks. She was nervous and pale, and her twin breasts, cruelly concealed as becomes the modesty of a bride, palpitated visibly with suppressed emotion; from time to time she moistened her lips in the most delicious manner.

  Count Fanny was dressed in the height of fashion, a little flushed – Armande had hurried him in the fifth hour of the toilet – and accompanied by Sporus who never left him now.

  Lucy was made a little unhappy by the somewhat immodest nature of the marriage service but her confusion soon vanished in excess of joy. Ave Maria, but the lovers made a handsome pair! Everybody crowded round them after the ceremony, eager to offer their congratulation, and overwhelm them with good wishes.

  ‘The pretty dear,’ exclaimed Madame Plumsein, after feeling Lucy all over, and pronouncing her to be ‘plump as a partridge, and full of delights’.

  ‘The nice creature,’ said Mrs Birchman addressing herself to the Count.

  ‘Just the man to make a good woman happy,’ said a motherly old creature with a false chin.

  As the church emptied, the treble voices of the Castrati rose in an anthem to the Virgin, and with curious paradox hymned the impatience of the bride.

  The wedding breakfast was full of delights and lasted far into the night.

  ‘How greedy they all are,’ exclaimed Count Fanny at length, wearied with the long display of unheard-of dishes and symbolic fruits. Presently accompanied by Lucy, and little Sporus, he left the guests and the feast proceeded as merrily as ever. Wine was upset, glasses were broken, shoes were lost in the strangest manner, décolleté costumes were carelessly cast aside, lovers made impatient gestures, and the couples became most fond.

  Outside in the moonlight below Lucy’s casement the roués and rejected lovers were singing their ‘Lament’. The voices of hybrid youths chorused their mournful strains and echoed them far out into the night – sad and sorrowful as broken flowers, as perished ideals, as Hoffmann’s third ‘Tale’, or as women at the change of life.

  The peacocks in the wood heard their canticle and cried out in terror; the love-birds shivered and nestled closer; the golden carp in the lake crept under the scarlet water-lilies, or darted across the calm waters and hid themselves from the moon; even the Cantharides flies hovering in the passion-flowers ceased for a moment to think of love. Lucy heard the music.

  ‘The absurd creatures,’ she exclaimed, and smiled a little cruelly at the extravagance of their grief.

  Count Fanny coined a paradox upon the softness of the linen. It was the swan-song of her perishing virginity.

  THE LAST GENERATION

  James Elroy Flecker (1908)

  INTRODUCTION

  I had been awake for I know not how many hours that summer dawn while the sun came over the hills and coloured the beautiful roses in my mother’s garden. As I lay drowsily gazing through the window, I thought I had never known a morning so sultry, and yet so pleasant. Outside not a leaf stirred; yet the air was fresh, and the madrigal notes of the birds came to me with a peculiar intensity and clearness.

  I listened intently to the curious sound of trilling, which drew nearer and nearer, until it seemed to merge into a whirring noise that filled the room and crowded at my ears.

  At first I could see nothing, and lay in deadly fear of the unknown; but soon I thought I saw rims and sparks of spectral fire floating through the pane. Then I heard some one say, “I am the Wind.” But the voice was so like that of an old friend whom one sees again after many years that my terror departed, and I asked simply why the Wind had come.

  “I have come to you,” he replied, “because you are the first man I have discovered who is after my own heart. You whom others call dreamy and capricious, volatile and headstrong, you whom some accuse of weakness, others of unscrupulous abuse of power, you I know to be a true son of Æolus, a fit inhabitant for those caves of boisterous song.”

  “Are you the North Wind or the East Wind?” said I. “Or do you blow from the Atlantic? Yet if those be your feathers that shine upon the pane like yellow and purple threads, and if it be through your influence that the garden is so hot to-day, I should say you were the lazy South Wind, blowing from the countries that I love.”

  “I blow from no quarter of the Earth,” replied the voice. “I am not in the compass. I am a little unknown Wind, and I cross not Space but Time. If you will come with me I will take you not over countries but over centuries, not directly, but waywardly, and you may travel where you will. You shall see Napoleon, Cæsar, Pericles, if you command. You may be anywhere in the world at any period. I will show you some of my friends, the poets....”

  “And may I drink red wine with Praxiteles, or with Catullus beside his lake?”

  “Certainly, if you know enough Latin and Greek, and can pronounce them intelligently.”

  “And may I live with Thais or Rhodope, or some wild Assyrian queen?”

  “Unless they are otherwise employed, certainly.”

  “Ah, Wind of Time,” I continued with a sigh, “we men of this age are rotten with booklore, and with a yearning for the past. And wherever I asked to go among those ancient days, I should soon get dissatisfied, and weary your bright wings. I will be no pillar of salt, a sterile portent in a sterile desert. Carry me forward, Wind of Time. What is there going to be?”

  The Wind put his hand over my eyes.

  I : AT BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL

  “This is our first stopping place,” said a voice from the points of flame.

  I opened my eyes expecting to see one of those extravagant scenes that imaginative novelists love to depict. I was prepared to find the upper air busy with aeroplanes and the earth beneath given over to unbridled debauch. Instead, I discovered myself seated on a tall electric standard, watching a crowd assembled before what I took to be Birmingham Town Hall. I was disappointed in this so tame a sight, until it flashed across me that I had never seen an English crowd preserve such an orderly and quiet demeanour; and a more careful inspection assured me that although no man wore a uniform, every man carried a rifle.

  They were obviously waiting for some one to come and address them from the balcony of the Town Hall, which was festooned with red flags. As the curtains were pulled aside I caught a momentary glimpse of an old person whose face I shall never forget, but apparently it was not for him that the breathless crowd was waiting. The man who finally appeared on the balcony was an individual not more than thirty years old, with a black beard and green eyes. At the sound of acclamation which greeted him he burst out into a loud laugh; then with a sudden seriousness he held up his hand and began to address his followers:—

  “I have but few words for you, my army, a few bitter words. Need I encourage men to fight who have staked their existence to gain mastery? We cannot draw back; never will the cries of the slaughtered thousands we yearned to rescue from a more protracted, more cruel misery than war, make us forget the myriads who still await the supreme mercy of our revenge.

  “For centuries and for centuries we endured the march of that Civilisation which now, by the weapons of her own making, we have set forth to destroy. We, men of Birmingham, dwellers in this hideous town unvisited by sun or moon, long endured to be told that we were in the van of progress, leading Humanity year by year along her glorious path. And, looking around them, the wise men saw the progress of civilisation, and what was it? What did it mean? Less country, fewer savages, deeper miseries, more millionaires, and more museums. So to-day we march on London.

  “Let us commemorate, my friends, at this last hour, a great if all unwitting benefactor, the protomartyr of our cause. You remember that lank follower of the Newest Art, who lectured to us once within these very walls? He it was who first expounded to us the beauty of Birmingham, the artistic majesty of tall chimneys, the sombre glory of furnaces, the deep mystery of smoke, the sad picturesqueness of scrap-heaps and of slag. Then we began to hate our lives in earnest; then we arose and struck. Even now I shudder when I think of that lecturer’s fate, and with a feeling of respect I commemorate his words to-day.

  “On, then! You need not doubt of my victory, nor of my power. Some of you will die, but you know that death is rest. You do not need to fear the sombre fireworks of a mediæval Hell, nor yet the dreary dissipations of a Methodist Heaven. Come, friends, and march on London!”