It is difficult to do anything quite alone, anything wholly worth the doing. That was what he was thinking. Nearly always some other intrudes, blessedly intrudes, to give conscious, or unconscious, help. A man puts his shoulder to the wheel, and in front of him he sees another shoulder. And the sight gives him courage.
The thought of strenuous activity made him think of Mrs. Chepstow's almost absolute inactivity. He saw her sitting, always sitting, in her room, while life flowed on outside. He saw her pale face. That her face was carefully made pale by art did not occur to him. And then again he thought of Mrs. Browning and of the mountain peaks.
What was he going to do?
He made a strong mental effort, as he would have expressed it, to "get himself in hand." Now, then, he must think it out. And he must "hold up" his enthusiasm, and just be calm and reasonable, and even calculating.
He thought of the girl whom he had loved long ago and who had died. Since her death he had put aside love as a passion. Now and then—not often—a sort of travesty of love had come to him, the spectre of the real. It is difficult for a young, strong man in the pride of his life never to have any dealing either with love or with its spectre. But Isaacson was right. Nigel's life had been much purer than are most men's lives. Often he had fought against himself, and his own natural inclination, because of his great respect for love. Not always had he conquered. But the fights had strengthened the muscles of his will, and each fall had shown him more clearly the sadness, almost the horror, imprinted on the haggard features of the spectre of the real.
Mrs. Chepstow for years had been looking upon, had been living with, that spectre, if what was said of her was true.
And Nigel did not deceive himself on this point. He did not sentimentally exalt a courtesan into an angel, as boys so often do. Mrs. Chepstow had certainly lived very wrongly, in a way to excite disgust, perhaps, as well as pity. Yet within her were delicacy, simplicity, the pride of breeding, even a curious reserve. She had still a love of fine things. She cared for things ethereal. He thought of his first visit to her, the open piano, "Proficiscere, anima Christiana," "The Scarlet Letter," and her quotation. What had she been thinking while she played Elgar's curiously unearthly music, while she read Hawthorne's pitiful book? She had been using art, no doubt, as so many use it, as a means of escape from life. And her escape had been not into filth or violence, not into the salons of wit, or into the salons where secrets are unveiled, but into the airy spaces with the angel, into the forest with Hester and little Pearl.
Why could they not continue friends?
His body spoke in answer, and he laid the blame for the answer entirely on himself. He condemned himself at that moment, was angry with himself, cursed himself. And he cursed himself, not because he was morbid, but because he was healthy-minded, and believed that his evil inclinations had been aroused by his knowledge of Mrs. Chepstow's past. And that fact was a beast, was something to be stamped on. He would never allow himself comfortably to be that sort of man. Yet he was, it seemed, enough that sort of man to make friendship with Mrs. Chepstow difficult, perhaps impossible. If love had led him to such an inclination, he would, being no prude, have understood it as a perfectly natural and perfectly healthy thing. But he did not love Mrs. Chepstow. He would never love, really love, again. For years he had said that to himself, and had believed it. He said it again now. And even if he could renew that strange power, to love, he could not love a woman who was not pure. He felt certain of that. He thought of the dead girl and of Mrs. Chepstow. But to-night he could not recall the dead girl's figure, face, look, exactly. Mrs. Chepstow's he could, of course, recall. He had seen her that very day. And the girl he had loved had been dead for many years. She lived in his memory now rather as a symbol of purity and beauty than as a human being.
Mrs. Chepstow, of course, would never find a man sincerely to love her now.
And yet why not! Suddenly Nigel checked himself, as he generally did when he found himself swiftly subscribing to the general opinion of the great mass of men. Why not? The shoulder to the wheel; it was nearly always the shoulder of love—love of an idea, love of a woman, love of humanity, love of work, love of God. All the men he knew, or very nearly all, would laugh at the idea of Mrs. Chepstow being sincerely loved. But the fact that they would laugh could have no effect on a manly heart or a manly spirit.
He felt almost angry with her for the loneliness and the immobility which pained his chivalry and struck at his sense of pity. If he could think of her as going away, too, as wandering, in Switzerland, in Italy, in some lovely place, he would feel all right. But always he saw her seated in that room, alone, deserted, playing the piano, reading, with no prospect of company, of change. Mrs. Chepstow had acted her part well. She had stamped a lonely image upon the retina of Nigel's imagination.
He was still walking about his room in bare feet. But his cigar had gone out, though it was still between his lips. The hour was very late. He heard a distant clock strike two. And just after he had listened to its chime, followed by other chimes in near and distant places of the city, the night idea of a strong and young man came to him.
If he could not be friends with Mrs. Chepstow, could he be—the other thing to her!
He put up his hand to his lips, took away the cigar, and flung it out of the window violently. And this physical violence was the echo of his mental violence. She might allow such a thing. Often, if half of what was said of her was true, she had entered into a similar relation with other men. He would not believe that "often." He put it differently. She had certainly entered into a similar relation with some men—perhaps with two or three, multiplied by scandal—in the past. Would she enter into it with him, if he asked her? And would he ever ask her?
He threw himself down again in his arm-chair, and stared at his bare feet planted firmly on the floor. But he saw, not his feet, but the ugly spectre of love, that hideous, damnable ghost, that most pretentious of all pretensions. She had lived with the ghost till she had become pale like a ghost. In the picture of "Progress," which he loved, there was a glow, a glory of light, raying out to a far horizon. It would be putting a shoulder to the wheel to set a glow in the cheeks of a woman, not a glow of shame but of joy. And to be—and then Nigel used to himself that expression of the laughing men in the clubs—"a bad last!" No, that sort of thing was intolerable.
Suddenly the ghost faded away, and he saw his brown feet. They made him think at once of the sun, of work, of the good, real, glowing life.
No, no; none of those intolerable beastlinesses for him. That thought, that imagination, it was utterly, finally done with. He drew a long breath, and stretched up his arms, till the loose sleeves of his night-suit fell down, exposing the strong, brown limbs. And as he had looked at his feet, he looked at them, then felt them, thumped them, and rejoiced in the glory of health. But the health of mind and heart was essential to the complete health of the body. He felt suddenly strong—strong for more than one, as surely a man should be—strong for himself, and his woman, for her who belongs to him, who trusts him, who has blotted out—it comes to that with a woman who loves—all other men for him.
Was he really condemned to an eternal solitude because of the girl who had died so many years ago? For his life was a solitude, as every loveless life is, however brilliant and strenuous. He realized that, and there came to him a thought that was natural and selfish. It was this: How good it must be to be exclusively loved by a woman, and how a woman, whom men and the world have abandoned, must love the man who comes, like a knight through the forest, and carries her away, and takes her into his life, and gives her back self-respect, and a place among women, and, above all, the feeling that of all feelings a woman holds dearest, "Somebody wants me." It must be good to be loved as such a woman would love. His generosity, which instinctively went out to abandoned things, walked hand in hand with man's eternal, indestructible selfishness that night, as he thought of Mrs. Chepstow for the first time as married again to some man who cared not for the world's opinion, or who cared for it so much as to revel in defying it.
How would she love such a man?
He began to wonder about that part of her nature dedicated to, designed for, love.
With him she was always perfectly simple, and seemed extremely frank. But he felt now that in her simplicity she had always been reserved, almost strangely reserved for such a woman. Perhaps that reserve had been her answer to his plainly shown respect. Just because of her position, he had been even more respectful to her than he was to other women, following in this a dictate of his temperament. What would she be like in the unreserve of a great love?
And now a fire was kindled in Nigel, and began to burn up fiercely. He felt, very consciously and definitely, the fascination of this woman. Of course, he had always been more or less subject to it. Isaacson had known that when he saw Nigel draw his chair nearer to hers at the supper-table in the Savoy. But he had been subject to it without ever saying to himself, "I am in subjection." He had never supposed that he was in subjection. The abrupt consciousness of how it was with him excited him tremendously. After the long interval of years, was he to feel again the powerful fever, and for a woman how different from the woman he had loved? She stood, in her young purity, at one end of the chain of years, and Mrs. Chepstow—did she really stand at the other?
He seemed to see these two looking at each other across the space that was set by Time, and for a moment his face contracted. But he had changed while traversing that space. Then he was an eager boy, in the joy of his bounding youth. Now he was a vigorous man. And during the interval that separated boy from man had come up in him his strong love of humanity, his passion for the development of the good that lies everywhere, like the ore in gold-bearing earth. That love had perhaps been given to him to combine the two loves, the altruistic love, and the love for a woman bringing its quick return.
The two faces of women surely softened as they gazed now upon each other.
Such loves in combination might crown his life with splendour. Nigel thought that, with the enthusiasm which was his birthright, which set him so often apart from other men. And, moving beneath such a splendour, how absolutely he could defy the world's opinion! Its laughter would be music, its sneering word only the signal to a smile.
But—he must think—he must think—
He sprang up, pulled up his loose sleeves to his shoulders, tucked them together, and with bared arms leaned out to the night, holding his hands against his cheeks.
Mrs. Chepstow had said to Nigel, "Bring Doctor Isaacson—if he'll come." He had never gone, though Nigel had told him of her words, had told him more than once. Without seeming deliberately to avoid the visit, he had deliberately avoided it. He never had an hour to spare in the day, and Nigel knew it. But he might have gone on a Sunday. It happened that, at present, on Sundays he was always out of town.
He had said to himself, "Cui bono?"
He had the sensitive nature's dislike of mingling intimately in the affairs of others, and moreover he felt instinctively that if he tried to play a true friend's part to Nigel, he might lose Nigel as a friend. His clear insight would be antagonistic to Nigel's blind enthusiasm, his calm worldly knowledge would seem only frigid cruelty to Nigel's generosity and eagerness in pity. And, besides, Isaacson had a strong personal repulsion from Mrs. Chepstow, a repulsion almost physical.
The part of him that was Jewish understood the part of her that was greedy far too well. And he disliked, while he secretly acknowledged, his own Jewishness. He seldom showed this dislike, even subtly, to the world and never showed it crudely, as do many of Jewish blood, by a strange and hideous anti-Semitism. But it was always alive within him, always in conflict with something belonging to his nature's artistic side, a world-feeling to which race-feeling seemed stupid and very small. The triumphs of art aroused this world-feeling within him, and in his love of art he believed that he touched his highest point. As Isaacson's mental unconventionality put himen rapportwith Nigel, his Jewishness, very differently, put himen rapportwith her. There is a communion of repulsion as well as a communion of affection. Isaacson knew that Mrs. Chepstow and he could be linked by their dislike. His instinct was to avoid her, not to let this link be formed. Subsequent circumstances made him ask himself whether men do not often call things towards them with the voices of their fears.
The season was waning fast, was nearly at an end, when one night, very late, Nigel called in Cleveland Square. Isaacson had just come back from dining with the Dean of Waynfleet when the bell rang. He feared a professional summons, and was relieved when a sleepy servant asked if he would see Mr. Armine. They met in a small, upstairs room where Isaacson sat at night, a room lined with books, cosy, but perhaps a little oppressive. As Nigel came in quickly with a light coat over his arm and a crush hat in his hand, a clock on the mantel piece struck one.
"I caught sight of you just now in St. James's Street in your motor, or I wouldn't have come so late," Nigel said. "Were you going straight to bed? Tell me the truth. If you were, I'll be off."
"I don't think I was. I've been dining out, and should have had to read something. That's why you kept your coat?"
"To demonstrate my good intention. Well!"
He put the coat and hat on a chair.
"Will you have anything?"
"No, thanks."
Nigel sat down in an arm-chair.
"I've seen so little of you, Isaacson. And I'm going away to-morrow."
"You've had enough of it?"
"More than enough."
Isaacson was sitting by a table on which lay a number of books. Now and then he touched one with his long and sallow fingers, lifted its cover, then let it drop mechanically.
"You are coming back in the autumn?"
"For some days, in passing through. I'm going to Egypt again."
"I envy you—I envy you."
As he looked at Nigel's Northern fairness, and thought of his own darkness, it seemed to him that he should be going to the sun, Nigel remaining in the lands where the light is pale. Perhaps a somewhat similar thought occurred to Nigel, for he said:
"You ought to go there some day. You'd be in your right place there. Have you ever been?"
"Never. I've often wanted to go."
"Why don't you go?"
Isaacson's mind asked that question, and his Jewishness replied. He made money in London. Every day he spent out of London was a loss of so much money.
"Some day," Nigel continued, "you must take a holiday and see Egypt."
"This winter?" said Isaacson.
He lifted the cover of a book. His dark, shining, almost too intelligent eyes looked at Nigel, and looked away.
"Not this winter," he added, quietly.
"But—why not this winter?"
Nigel spoke with a slight embarrassment.
"I couldn't get away. I have too much work. You'll be in the Fayyūm?"
Nigel was staring at the Oriental carpet. His strong hands lay palm downwards on the arms of his chair, pressing them hard.
"I shall go there," he replied.
"And live under the tent? I met a man last night who knows you, an Egyptian army man on leave, Verreker. He told me you were reclaiming quite a lot of desert."
"I should like to reclaim far more than I ever can. It's a good task."
"Hard work?"
"Deuced hard. That's why I like it."
"I know; man's love of taming the proud spirit."
"Is it that? I don't think I bother much about what prompts me to a thing. But—I say, Isaacson, sometimes it seems to me that you have a devilish long sight into things, an almost uncanny long sight."
He leaned forward.
"But in you I don't mind it."
"I don't say I acknowledge it. But why should you mind it in any one?"
Nigel quoted some words of Mrs. Chepstow, but Isaacson did not know he quoted.
"Hasn't the brain a tendency to overshadow, to brow-beat the heart?" he said. "Isn't it often arrogant in its strength?"
"One must let both have an innings," said Isaacson, smiling at the slang which suited him so little and suited Nigel so well.
"Yes, and I believe you do. That's why—but to go on with what we were saying. You've got a long sight into things. Now, living generally, as you do, here in London, don't you think that men and women living in crowds often get off the line of truth and kindness? Don't you think that being all together, backed up, as it were, by each other—as a soldier is by his regiment when going into battle—they often become hard, brutal, almost get the blood-lust into them at times?"
Isaacson did not reply for a moment.
"Perhaps sometimes they do," he answered at last.
"And don't you think they require sacrifices?"
"Do you mean human sacrifices?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps—sometimes."
"Why have you never been to call on Mrs. Chepstow?"
Again the sallow fingers began to play with the book-covers, passing from one to another, but always slowly and gently.
"I haven't much time for seeing any one, except my patients, and the people I meet in society."
"And of course you never meet Mrs. Chepstow in society."
"Well—no, one doesn't."
"She would have liked a visit from you, and she's very much alone."
"Is she?"
"Are you stopping on much longer in London?"
"Till the twelfth or fifteenth of August."
"She is stopping on, too."
"Mrs. Chepstow! In the dog-days!"
"She doesn't seem to have anywhere special to go to."
"Oh!"
Isaacson opened a book, and laid his hand upon a page. It happened to be a book on poisons and their treatment. He smoothed the page down mechanically and kept his hand there.
"I say, Isaacson, you couldn't have the blood-lust?"
"I hope not. I think not."
"I believe you hate it as I do, hate and loathe it with all your soul. But I've always felt that you think for yourself, and don't care a rap what the world is thinking. I've looked in to-night to say good-bye, and to ask you, if you can get the time, just to give an eye to—to Mrs. Chepstow now and again. I know she would value a visit from you, and she really is infernally lonely. If you go, she won't bore you. She's a clever woman, and cares for things you care for. Will you look in on her now and then?"
Isaacson lifted his hand from the book.
"I will call upon her," he said.
"Good!"
"But are you sure she wishes it?"
"Quite sure—for she told me so."
The simplicity of this answer made Isaacson's mind smile and something else in him sigh.
"I have to go into the country," Nigel said. "I've got to see Harwich and Zoe, my sister-in-law you know, and my married sister—"
A sudden look of distress came into his eyes. He got up. The look of distress persisted.
"Good-night, Isaacson, old fellow!"
He grasped the Doctor's hand firmly, and his hand was warm and strong.
"Good-night. I like to feel I know one man who thinks so entirely for himself as you do. For—I know you do. Good-bye."
The look of distress had vanished, and his sincere eyes seemed to shine again with courage and with strength.
"Good-bye."
When he was gone, Isaacson stood by the mantel-piece for nearly five minutes, thinking and motionless. The sound of the little clock striking roused him. He lifted his head, looked around him, and was just going to switch off the light, when he noticed the open book on his table. He went to shut it up.
"It must be ever remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and that the same dose, harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated becomes deadly; this peculiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart."
He stood looking at the page.
"This peculiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart."
He moved his head as if in assent. Then he closed the book slowly and switched off the light.
On the August Bank Holiday, one of the most dreadful days of London's year, he set out to call on Mrs. Chepstow.
A stagnant heat pervaded London. There were but few people walking. Few vehicles drove by. Here and there small groups of persons, oddly dressed, and looking vacant in their rapture, stared, round-eyed, on the town. Londoners were in the country, staring, round-eyed, on fields and woods. The policemen looked dull and heavy, as if never again would any one be criminal, and as if they had come to know it. Bits of paper blew aimlessly about, wafted by a little, feverish breeze, which rose in spasms and died away. An old man, with a head that was strangely bald, stared out from a club window, rubbed his enquiring nose, looked back into the room behind him and then stared out again. An organ played "The Manola," resuscitated from a silence of many years.
London was at its summer saddest.
Could Mrs. Chepstow be in it? Soon Isaacson knew. In the entrance hall of the Savoy, where large and lonely porters were dozing, he learnt that she was at home. So be it. He stepped into the lift, and presently followed a servant to her door. The servant tapped. There was no answer. He tapped again more loudly, while Isaacson waited behind him.
"Come in!" called out a voice.
The servant opened the door, announcing:
"Doctor Meyer Isaacson."
Mrs. Chepstow had perhaps been sitting on her balcony, for when Isaacson went in she was in the opening of a window space, standing close to a writing-table, which had its drawers facing the window. Behind her, on the balcony, there was a small arm-chair.
"Doctor Meyer Isaacson!" she said, with an intonation of surprise.
The servant went out and shut the door.
"How quite amazing!"
"But—why, Mrs. Chepstow?"
He had taken and dropped her hand. As he touched her, he remembered holding her wrist in his consulting room. The sensation she had communicated to him then she communicated again, this time perhaps more strongly.
"Why? It is Bank Holiday! And you never come to see me. By the way, how clever of you to divine that I should be in on such a day of universal going out."
"Even men have their intuitions."
"Don't I know it, to my cost? But to-day I can only bless man's intuition. Where will you sit?"
"Anywhere."
"Here, then."
He sat down on the sofa, and she in a chair, facing the light. She was without a hat. Isaacson wondered what she had been doing all the day, and why she was in London. That she had her definite reason he knew, as a woman knows when another woman is wearing a last year's gown. As their eyes met, he felt strongly the repulsion he concealed. Yet he realized that Mrs. Chepstow was looking less faded, younger, more beautiful than when last he had been with her. She was very simply dressed. It seemed to him that the colour of her hair was changed, was a little brighter. But of this he was not sure. He was sure, however, that a warmth, as of hope, subtly pervaded her whole person. And she had seemed hard, cold, and almost hopeless on the day of her visit to him.
A woman lives in the thoughts of men about her. At this moment Mrs. Chepstow lived in Isaacson's thought that she looked younger, less faded, and more beautiful. Her vanity was awake. His thought of her had suddenly increased her value in her own eyes, made her think she could attract him. She had scarcely tried to attract him the first time that she had met him. But now he saw her go to her armoury to select the suitable weapon with which to strike him. And he began to understand why she had calmly faced the light. Never could such a man as Nigel get so near to Mrs. Chepstow as Doctor Meyer Isaacson, even though Nigel should love her and Isaacson learn to hate her. At that moment Isaacson did not hate her, but he almost hated his divination of her, the "Kabala," he carried within him and successfully applied to her.
"What has kept you in this dreary city, Doctor Isaacson," she said. "I thought I was absolutely alone in it."
"People are still thinking they are ill."
"And you are still telling them they are not?"
"That depends!"
"I believe you have adopted that idea, that no one is ill, as a curative method. And really there may be something in it. I fancied I was ill. You told me I was well. Since that day something—your influence, I suppose—seems to have made me well. I think I believe in you—as a doctor."
"Why spoil everything by concluding with a reservation?"
"Oh, but your career is you!"
"You think I have sunk my humanity in ambition?"
"Well, you are in town on Bank Holiday!"
"In town to call on you!"
"You were so sure of finding me on such a day?"
She sent him a look which mocked him.
"But, seriously," she continued, "does not the passion for science in you dominate every other passion? For science—and what science brings you?"
With a sure hand she had touched his weak point. He had the passion to acquire, and through his science of medicine he acquired.
"You cannot expect me to allow that I am dominated by anything," he answered. "A man will seldom make a confession of slavery even to himself, if he really is a man."
"Oh, you really are a man, but you have in you something of the woman."
"How do you know that?"
"I don't know it; I feel it."
"Feeling is woman's knowledge."
"And what is man's?"
"Do women think he has any?"
"Some men have knowledge—dangerous men, like you."
"In what way am I dangerous?"
"If I tell you, you will be more so. I should be foolish to lead you to your weapons."
"You want no leading to yours."
It was, perhaps, almost an impertinence; but he felt she would not think it so, and in this he accurately appraised her taste, or lack of taste. Delicacy, reverence, were not really what she wanted of any man. Nigel might pray to a pale Madonna; Isaacson dealt with a definitely blunted woman of the world. And in his intercourse with people, unless indeed he loved them, he generally spoke to their characters, did not hold converse with his own, like a man who talks to himself in an unlighted room.
She smiled.
"Few women do, if they have any."
"Is any woman without them?"
"Yes, one."
"Name her."
"The absolutely good woman."
For a moment he was silent, struck to silence by the fierceness of her cynicism, a fierceness which had leapt suddenly out of her as a drawn sword leaps from its sheath.
"I don't acknowledge that, Mrs. Chepstow," he said—and at this moment perhaps he was the man talking to himself in the dark, as Nigel often was.
"Of course not. No man would."
"Why not?"
"Men seldom name, even to themselves, the weapons by which they are conquered. But women know what those weapons are."
"The Madame Marneffes, but not the Baroness Hulots."
"A Baroness Hulot never counts."
"Is it really clever of you to generalize about men? Don't you differentiate among us at all?"
He spoke entirely without pique, of which he was quite unconscious.
"I do differentiate," she replied. "But only sometimes, not always. There are broad facts which apply to men, however different they may be from one another. There are certain things which all men feel, and feel in much the same way."
"Nigel Armine and I, for instance?"
A sudden light—was it a light of malice?—flashed in her brilliant eyes.
"Yes, even Mr. Armine and you."
"I shall not ask you what they are."
"Perhaps the part of you which is woman has informed you."
Before she said "woman" she had paused. He felt that the word she had thought of, and had wished to use, was "Jewish." Her knowledge of him, while he disliked it because he disliked her, stirred up the part of him which was mental into an activity which he enjoyed. And the enjoyment, which she felt, increased her sense of her own value. Conversation ran easily between them. He discovered, what he had already half suspected, that, though not strictly intellectual—often another name for boring—she was far more than merely shrewd. But her mentality seemed to him hard as bronze. And as bronze reflects the light, her mentality seemed to reflect all the cold lights in her nature. But he forgot the stagnant town, the bald-headed man at the club window, the organ and "The Manola." Despite her generalizing on men, with its unexpressed avowal of her deep-seated belief in physical weapons, she had chosen aright in her armoury. His brain had to acknowledge it. There again was the link between them. When at last he got up to go, she said:
"I suppose you will soon be leaving London?"
"I expect to get away on the fifteenth. Are you staying on?"
"I dare say I shall. You wonder what I do here?"
"Yes."
"I am out a great deal on my balcony. When you came I was there."
She made a movement towards it.
"Would you like to see my view?"
"Thank you."
As he followed her through the window space, he was suddenly very conscious of the physical charm that clung about her. All her movements were expressive, seemed very specially hers. They were like an integral part of a character—her character. They had almost the individuality of an expression in the eyes. And in her character, in her individuality, mingled with much he hated was there not something that charmed? He asked himself the question as he stood near her on the balcony. And now, escaped from her room, even at this height there came upon him again the hot sluggishness of London. The sun was shining brightly, the air was warm and still, the view was large and unimpeded; but he felt a strange, almost tropical dreariness that seemed to him more dreadful than any dreariness of winter.
"Do you spend much of your time here?" he said.
"A great deal. I sit here and read a book. You don't like it?"
She turned her bright eyes, with their dilated pupils, slowly away from his, and looked down over the river.
"I do. But there's a frightful dreariness in London on such a day as this. Surely you feel it?"
"No. I don't feel such things this summer."
In saying the words her voice had altered. There was a note of triumph in it. Or so Isaacson thought. And that warmth, as of hope, in her had surely strengthened, altering her whole appearance.
"One has one's inner resources," she added, quietly, but with a thrill in her voice.
She turned to him again. Her tall figure—she was taller than he by at least three inches—was beautiful in its commanding, yet not vulgar, self-possession. Her thin and narrow hands held the balcony railing rather tightly. Her long neck took a delicate curve when she turned her head towards him. And nothing that time had left of beauty to her escaped his eyes. He had eyes that were very just.
"Did you think I had none?"
Suddenly he resolved to speak to her more plainly. Till this moment she had kept their conversation at a certain level of pretence. But now her eyes defied him, and he replied to their defiance.
"Do you forget how much I know of you?" he said.
"Do you mean—of the rumours about me?"
"I mean what you told me of yourself."
"When was that? Oh, do you mean in your consulting room? And you believe all a woman tells you?"
She smiled at him satirically.
"I believe what you told me that day in my consulting-room, as thoroughly as I disbelieve what you told me, and Mr. Armine, the night we met you at supper."
"And what are your grounds for your belief and disbelief?"
"Suppose I said my instinct?"
"I should answer, by all means trust it, if you like. Only do not expect every one to trust it, too."
Her last words sounded almost like a half-laughing menace.
"Why should I want others to trust it?" he asked, quietly.
"I leave your instinct to tell you that, my dear Doctor," she answered gently, with a smile.
"Well," he said, "I must say good-bye. I must leave you to your inner resources. You haven't told me what they are."
"Can't you imagine?"
"Spiritual, I suppose!"
"You've guessed it—clever man!"
"And your gospel of Materialism, which you preached to me so powerfully, gambling, yachting, racing, motoring, theatre-going, eating and drinking, in the 'for to-morrow we die' mood: those pleasures of the typical worldly life of to-day which you said you delighted in? You have replaced them all satisfactorily with 'inner resources'?"
"With inner resources."
Her smiling eyes did not shrink from his. He thought they looked hard as two blue and shining jewels under their painted brows.
"Good-bye—and come again."
While Isaacson walked slowly down the corridor, Mrs. Chepstow opened her writing-table drawer, and took from it a packet of letters which she had put there when the servant first knocked to announce the visitor.
The letters were all from Nigel.
Isaacson did not visit Mrs. Chepstow again before he left London for his annual holiday. More than once he thought of going. Something within him wanted to go, something that was perhaps intellectually curious. But something else rebelled. He felt that his finer side was completely ignored by her. Why should he care what she saw in him or what she thought about it? He asked himself the question. And when he answered it, he was obliged to acknowledge that she had made upon his nature a definite impression. This impression was unfavorable, but it was too distinct. Its distinctness gave a measure of her power. He was aware that, much as he disliked Mrs. Chepstow, much as he even shrank from her, with a sort of sensitive loathing, if he saw her very often he might come to wish to see her. Never had he felt like this towards any other woman. Does not hatred contain attraction? By the light of his dislike of Mrs. Chepstow, Isaacson saw clearly why she attracted Nigel. But during those August days, in the interior combat, his Jewishness conquered his intellectual curiosity, and he did not go again to the Savoy.
His holiday was spent abroad on the Lake of Como, and quite alone. Each year he made a "retreat," which he needed after the labours of the year, labours which obliged him to be perpetually with people. He fished in the green lake, sketched in the lovely garden of the almost deserted hotel, and passed every day some hours in scientific study.
This summer he was reading about the effects of certain little-known poisons. He spent strange hours with them. He had much imagination, and they became to him like living things, these agents of destruction. Sometimes, after long periods passed with them, he would raise his head from his books, or the paper on which he was taking notes, and, seeing the still green waters of the lake, the tall and delicate green mountains lifting their spires into the blue, he would return from his journey along the ways of terror, and, dazed, like a tired traveller, he would stare at the face of beauty. Or when he worked by night, after hours during which the swift action of the brain had rendered him deaf to the sounds without, suddenly he would become aware of the chime of bells, of bells in the quiet waters and on the dreaming shores. And he would lift his head and listen, till the strangeness of night, and of the world with its frightful crimes and soft enchantments, stirred and enthralled his soul. And he compared his two lives, this by the quiet lake, alone, filled with research and dreams, and that in the roar of London, with people streaming through his room. And he seemed to himself two men, perhaps more than two.
Soon the four weeks by the lake were gone. Then followed two weeks of travel—Milan, Munich, Berlin, Paris. And then he was home again.
He had heard nothing of Nigel, nothing of Mrs. Chepstow.
September died away in the brown arms of October, and at last a letter came from Nigel. It was written from Stacke House, a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and spoke of his speedy return to the South.
"I am shooting with Harwich," he wrote, "but must soon be thinking about my return to Egypt. I didn't write to you before, though I wanted to thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow. You can't think how she appreciated it. She was delighted by your brilliant talk and sense of humour, but still more delighted by your cordiality and kindness. Of late she hasn't had very much of the latter commodity, and she was quite bowled over. By Jove, Isaacson, if men realized what a little true kindness means to those who are down on their luck, they'd have to 'fork out,' if only to get the return of warm affection. But they don't realize.
"I sometimes think the truest thing said since the Creation is that 'They know not what they do.' Add, 'and what they leave undone,' and you have an explanation of most of the world's miseries. Good-bye, old chap. I shall come to Cleveland Square directly I get to London. Thank you for that visit. Yours ever, Nigel Armine."
Nigel's enthusiasm seemed almost visibly to exhale from the paper as Isaacson held the letter in his hands. "Your cordiality and kindness." So that had struck Mrs. Chepstow—the cordiality and kindness of his, Isaacson's manner! Of course she and Nigel were in correspondence. Isaacson remembered the occasional notes almost of triumph in her demeanour. She had had letters from Nigel during his absence from London. His letters—the hope in her face. Isaacson saw her on the balcony looking out over the river. Had she not looked out as the human soul looks out upon a prospect of release? In the remembrance of them her expression and her attitude became charged with more definite meaning. And he surely grasped that meaning, which he had wondered about before.
Yet Nigel said nothing. And all this time he had been away from Mrs. Chepstow. Such an absence was strange, and seemed unlike him, quite foreign to his enthusiastic temperament, if Isaacson's surmise was correct. But perhaps it was not correct. That well-spring of human kindness which bubbled up in Nigel, might it not, perhaps, deceive?
"Feeling is woman's knowledge." Isaacson had said that. Now mentally he added, "And sometimes it is man's." He felt too much about Nigel, but he strove to put his feeling away.
Presently he would know. Till then it was useless to debate. And he had very much to do.
Not till nearly the end of October did Nigel return to London. The leaves were falling in battalions from the trees. The autumn winds had come, and with them the autumn rain, that washes sadly away the last sweet traces of summer. Everywhere, through country and town, brooded that grievous atmosphere of finale which in England seldom or never fails to cloud the waning year.
The depression that is characteristic of this season sent many people to doctors. Day after day Isaacson sat in his consulting-room, prescribing rather for the minds of men than for their bodies, living rather with their misunderstood souls than with their physical symptoms. And this year his patients reacted on him far more than usual. He felt almost as if by removing he received their ills, as if their apprehensions were communicated to his mind, as germs are communicated to the body, and as if they stayed to do evil. He told himself that his holiday had not rested him enough. But he never thought for a moment of diminishing his work. Success swept him ever onward to more exertion. As his power grew, his appetite for it grew. And he enjoyed his increasing fortune.
At last Nigel rang at his door. Isaacson could not see him, but sent out word to make an appointment for the evening. They were to meet at eight at an orchestral concert in Queen's Hall.
Isaacson was a little late in keeping this engagement. He came in quickly and softly between two movements of Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic Symphony," found Nigel in his stall, and, with a word, sat down beside him. The conductor raised his baton. The next movement began.
In the music there was a throbbing like the throbbing of a heart, that persisted and persisted with a beautiful yet terrible monotony. Often Isaacson had listened to this symphony, been overwhelmed by the two effects of this monotony, an effect of loveliness and an effect of terror that were inextricably combined. To-night, either because he was very tired or for some other reason, the mystery of the sadness of this music, which floats through all its triumph, appealed to him more than usual, and in a strangely poignant way. The monotonous pulsation was like the pulse of life, that life in which he and the man beside him were for a time involved, from which presently they would be released, whether with or against their wills. The pulse of life! Suddenly from the general his mind passed to the particular. He thought of a woman's pulse, strong, regular, inexorable. He seemed to feel it beneath his fingers, the pulse of Mrs. Chepstow. And he knew that he had thought of her because Nigel Armine was thinking of her, that he connected her with this music because Nigel was doing the same. This secretly irritated Isaacson. He strove to detach his mind from this thought of Mrs. Chepstow. But his effort was in vain. Her pulse was beneath his fingers, and with every stroke of it he felt more keenly the mystery and cruelty of life. When the movement was finished, he did not speak a word. Nor did he look at Nigel. Even when the last note of the symphony seemed to fade and fall downwards into an abyss of misery and blackness, he did not speak or move. He felt crushed and overwhelmed, like one beaten and bruised.
"Isaacson!"
"Yes?"
He turned a little in his seat.
"Grand music! But it's all wrong."
"Why?"
"Wrong in its lesson."
The artist in Isaacson could not conceal a shudder.
"I don't look for a lesson; I don't want a lesson in it."
"But the composer forces it on one—a lesson of despair. Give it all up! No use to make your effort. The Immanent Will broods over you. You must go down in the end. That music is a great lie. It's splendid, it's superb, but it's a lie."
"Shall we go out? We've got ten minutes."
They made their way to the corridor and strolled slowly up and down, passing and repassing others who were discussing the music.
"Such music puts my back up," Nigel continued, with energy; "makes me feel I won't give in to it."
Isaacson could not help smiling.
"I can't look at Art from the moral plane."
"But surely Art often makes you think either morally or immorally. Surely it gives you impulses which connect themselves with life, with people."
Isaacson looked at him.
"I don't deny it. But these impulses are like the shadowy spectres of the Brocken, mere outlines which presently, very soon, dissolve into the darkness. Though great music is full of form, it often creates chaos in those who hear it."
"Then that music should call up in you a chaos of despair."
"It does."
"It makes me want to fight."
"What?"
"All the evil and the sorrow of the world. I hate despair."
Isaacson glanced at him again, and noticed how strong he was looking, and how joyous.
"Scotland has done you good," he said. "You look splendid to-night."
Secretly he gave a special meaning to the ordinary expression. To-night there was a splendour in his friend which seemed to be created by an inner strength radiating outward, informing, and expressing itself in his figure and his features.
"I'm looking forward to the winter."
Isaacson thought of the note of triumph in Mrs. Chepstow's voice when she said to him, "I don't feel such things this summer." Surely Nigel now echoed that note.
An electric bell sounded. They returned to the concert-room.
They stayed till the concert was over, and then walked away down Regent Street, which was moist and dreary, full of mist and of ugly noises.
"When do you start for Egypt?" said Meyer Isaacson.
"In about ten days, I think. Do you wish you were going there?"
"I cannot possibly escape."
"But do you wish to?"
For a moment Isaacson did not answer.
"I do and I don't," he said, after the pause. "Work holds one strangely, because, if one is worth anything as a worker, its grip is on the soul. Part of me wants to escape, often wants to escape."
He remembered a morning ride, his desire of his "own place."
"The whole of me wants to escape," Nigel replied.
He looked about him. People were seeking "pleasure" in the darkness. He saw them standing at street corners, watchfully staring lest they should miss the form of joy. Cabs containing couples rolled by, disappeared towards north and south, disappeared into the darkness.
"I want to get into the light."
"Well, there it is before us."
Isaacson pointed to the brilliant illumination of Piccadilly Circus.
"I want to get into the real light, the light of the sun, and I want every one else to get into it too."
"You carry your moral enthusiasm into all the details of your life," exclaimed Isaacson. "Would you carry the world to Egypt?"
Nigel took his arm.
"It seems so selfish to go alone."
"Are you going alone?"
The question was forced from Isaacson. His mind had held it all the evening, and now irresistibly expelled it into words.
Nigel's strong fingers closed more tightly on his arm.
"I don't want to go alone."
"I would far rather be alone than not have the exactly right companion—some one who could think and feel with me, and in the sort of way I feel. Any other companionship is destructive."
Isaacson spoke with less than his usual self-possession, and there were traces of heat in his manner.
"Don't you agree with me?" he added, as Nigel did not speak.
"People can learn to feel alike."
"You mean that when two natures come together, the stronger eventually dominates the weaker. I should not like to be dominated, nor should I like to dominate. I love mutual independence combined with perfect sympathy."
Even while he was speaking, he was struck by his own exigence, and laughed, almost ironically.
"But where to find it!" he exclaimed. "Those are right who put up with less. But you—I think you want more than I do, in a way."
He added that lessening clause, remembering, quite simply, how much more brilliant he was than Nigel.
"I like to give to people who don't expect it," Nigel said. "How hateful the Circus is!"
"Shall we take a cab to Cleveland Square?"
"Yes—I'll come in for a little."
When they were in the house, Nigel said:
"I want to thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow."
He spoke abruptly, as a man does who has been for some time intending to say a thing, and who suddenly, but not without some difficulty, obeys his resolution.
"Why on earth should you thank me?"
"Because I asked you to go."
"Is Mrs. Chepstow still in London?"
"Yes. I saw her to-day. She talks of coming to Egypt for the winter."
"Cairo, I suppose?"
"I think she is sick of towns."
"Then no doubt she'll go up the Nile."
There was a barrier between them. Both men felt it acutely.
"If she goes—it is not quite certain—I shall look after her," said Nigel.
Meyer Isaacson said nothing; and, after a silence that was awkward, Nigel changed the conversation, and not long after went away. When he was gone, Isaacson returned to his sitting-room upstairs and lit a nargeeleh pipe. He had turned out all the electric burners except one, and as he sat alone there in the small room, so dimly lighted, holding the long, snake-like pipe-stem in his thin, artistic hands, he looked like an Eastern Jew. With a fez upon his head, Europe would have dropped from him. Even his expression seemed to have become wholly Eastern, in its sombre, glittering intelligence, and in the patience of its craft.
"I shall look after her."
Said about a woman like Mrs. Chepstow by a man of Nigel's youth, and strength, and temperament, that could only mean one of two things, a liaison or a marriage. Which did it mean? Isaacson tried to infer from Nigel's tone and manner. His friend had seemed embarrassed, had certainly been embarrassed. But that might have been caused by something in his, Isaacson's, look or manner. Though Nigel was enthusiastic and determined, he was not insensitive to what was passing in the mind of one he admired and liked. He perhaps felt Isaacson's want of sympathy, even direct hostility. On the other hand, he might have been embarrassed by a sense of some obscure self-betrayal. Often men talk of uplifting others just before they fall down themselves. Was he going to embark on a liaison with this woman whom he pitied? And was he ashamed of the deed in advance?
A marriage would be such madness! Yet something in Isaacson at this moment almost wished that Nigel contemplated marriage—his secret admiration of the virtue in his friend. Such an act would be of a piece with Nigel's character, whereas a liaison—and yet Nigel was no saint.
Isaacson thought what the world would say, and suddenly he knew the reality of his affection for Nigel. The idea of the gossip pained, almost shocked him; of the gossip and bitter truths. A liaison would bring forth almost disgusted and wholly ironical laughter at the animal passions of man, as blatantly shown by Nigel. And a marriage? Well, the verdict on that would be, "Cracky!"
Isaacson's brain could not dispute the fact that there would be justice in that verdict. Yet who does not secretly love the fighter for lost causes?
"I shall look after her."
The expression fitted best the cruder, more sordid method of gaining possession of this woman. And men seem made for falling.
The nargeeleh was finished, but still Isaacson sat there. Whatever happened, he would never protest to Nigel. Thefeu sacréin the man would burn up protest. Isaacson knew that—in a way loved to know it. Yet what tears lay behind—the tears for what is inevitable, and what can only be sad! And he seemed to hear again the symphony which he had heard that night with Nigel, the unyielding pulse of life, beautiful, terrible, in its monotony; to hear its persistent throbbing, like the beating of a sad heart—which cannot cease to beat.
Upon the window suddenly there came a gust of wild autumn rain. He got up and went to bed.
Very seldom did Meyer Isaacson allow his heart to fight against the dictates of his brain; more seldom still did he, presiding over the battle, like some heathen god of mythology, give his conscious help to the heart. But all men at times betray themselves, and some betrayals, if scarcely clever, are not without nobility. Such a betrayal led him upon the following day to send a note to Mrs. Chepstow, asking for an appointment. "May I see you alone?" he wrote.
In the evening came an answer: