And, as Anthony glanced into the mirror, he said to himself, “I was right!”
He withdrew his eyes from the glass and lit his cigarette. Sergius joined him.
“I'm in the blues to-night,” Anthony said, puffing at his cigarette.
“Are you?”
“Yes—been down in the East End. The misery there is ghastly.”
“It's just as bad in the West End, only different in kind. You're smoking your cigarette all down one side.”
Anthony took it out of his mouth and threw it into the grate. He lit two or three matches, but held them so badly that they went out before he could ignite another cigarette. At last, inwardly cursing his nerves that made his hasty actions belie the determined calm of his face, he dropped the cigarette.
“I don't think I'll smoke before dinner,” he said. “Ah, here it is. And wine—champagne—that's good for you!”
“I shan't drink it. I hate to drink alone.”
“You shan't drink alone then.”
“What d'you mean?”
“I'll drink with you.”
“But you're a teetotaller.”
“I don't care to-night.”
Anthony spoke briefly and firmly. Sergius was amazed.
“What!” he said. “You're going to break your vow? You a parson!”
“Sometimes salvation lies in the breaking of a vow,” Anthony answered as they sat down. “Have you never registered a silent vow?”
Sergius looked at him hard in the eyes.
“Yes,” he said; and in his voice there was the hint of a thrilling note. “But I shan't—I shouldn't break it.”
“I've known a soul saved alive by the breaking of a vow,” Anthony answered. “Give me some champagne.”
Sergius—wondering, as much as the condition of his mind, possessed by one idea, would allow—filled his friend's glass. Anthony began to eat, with a well-assumed hunger. Sergius scarcely touched food, but drank a good deal of wine. The hands of the big oaken-cased clock that stood in a far corner of the room crawled slowly upon their round, recurring tour. Anthony's eyes were often upon them, then moved with a swift directness that was akin to passion to the face of Sergius, which was always strangely rigid, like the painted face of a mask.
“I sat by a woman to-day,” he said presently, “sat by her in an attic that looked on to a narrow street full of rain, and watched her die.”
“This morning?”
“Yes.”
“And now she's been out of the world seven or eight hours. Lucky woman!”
“Ah, Sergius, but the mischief, the horror of it was that she wasn't ready to go, not a bit ready.”
Sergius suddenly smiled, a straight, glaring smile, over the sparkling champagne that he was lifting to his lips.
“Yes; it's devilish bad for a woman or a—man to be shot into another world before they're prepared,” he said. “It must be—devilish bad.”
“And how can we know that any one is thoroughly prepared?”
Sergius' smile developed into a short laugh.
“It's easier to be certain who isn't than who is,” he said.
The eyes of Anthony fled to the clock face mechanically and returned.
“Death terrified me to-day, Sergius,” he said; “and it struck me that the most awful power that God has given to man is the power of setting death—like a dog—at another man.”
Sergius swallowed all the wine in his glass at a gulp. He was no longer smiling. His hand went up to his left side.
“It may be awful,” he rejoined; “but it's grand. By Heaven! it's magnificent.”
He got up, as if excited, and moved about the room, while Anthony went on pretending to eat. After a minute or two Sergius sat down again.
“Power of any kind is a grand thing,” he said.
“Only power for good.”
“You're bound to say that; you're a parson.”
“I only say what I really feel; you know that, Serge.”
“Ah, you don't understand.”
Anthony looked at him with a sudden, strong significance.
“Part of a parson's profession—the most important part—is to understand men who aren't parsons.”
“You think you understand men?”
“Some men.”
“Me, for instance?”
The question came abruptly, defiantly. Anthony seemed glad to answer it.
“Well, yes, Sergius; I think I do thoroughly understand you. My great friendship alone might well make me do that.”
The face of Sergius grew a little softer in expression, but he did not assent.
“Perhaps it might blind you,” he said.
“I don't think so.”
“Well, then, now, if you understand me—tell me—”
Sergius broke off suddenly.
“This champagne is awfully good,” he said, filling his glass again.
“What were you going to say?” Anthony asked.
“I don't know—nothing.”
Anthony tried to conceal his disappointment. Sergius had seemed to be on the verge of over-leaping the barrier which lay between them. Once that barrier was overleapt, or broken down, Anthony felt that the mission he had imposed upon himself would stand a chance of being accomplished, that his gnawing anxiety would be laid to rest. But once more Sergius diffused around him a strange and cold atmosphere of violent and knowing reserve. He went away from the table and sat down close to the fire. From there he threw over his shoulder the remark:—
“No man or woman ever understands another—really.”
Anthony did not reply for a moment and Sergius continued:—
“You, for instance, could never guess what I should do in certain circumstances.”
“Such as—”
“Oh, in a thousand things.”
“I should have a shrewd idea.”
“No.”
Anthony didn't contradict him, but got up from the dinner-table and joined him by the fire, glass in hand.
“I might not let you know how much I guessed, how much I knew.”
Sergius laughed.
“Oh, ignorance always surrounds itself with mystery,” he said.
“Knowledge need not go naked.”
Again the eyes of the two friends met in the firelight, and over the face of Sergius there ran a new expression. There was an awakening of wonder in it, but no uneasiness. Anxiety was far away from him that night. When passion has gripped a man, passion strong enough, resolute enough, to over-ride all the prejudices of civilisation, all the promptings of the coward within us, whose voice, whining, we name prudence, the semi-comprehension, the criticism of another man cannot move him. Sergius wondered for an instant whether Anthony suspected against what his heart was beating. That was all.
While he wondered, the clock chimed the half hour after nine. He heard it.
“I shall have to go very soon,” he said.
“You can't. Just listen to the rain.”
“Rain! What's that got to do with it?”
Sergius spoke with a sudden unutterable contempt.
“Ring for another bottle of champagne,” Anthony replied. “This one is empty.”
“Well—for a parson and a teetotaller, I must say!”
Sergius rang the bell. A second bottle was opened. The servant went out of the room. As he closed the door, the wind sighed harshlyagainst the window panes, driving the rain before it.
“Rough at sea to-night,” Anthony said.
The remark was an obvious one; but, as spoken, it sounded oddly furtive, and full of hidden meaning. Sergius evidently found it so, for he said:
“Why, whom d'you know that's going to sea to-night?”
Anthony was startled by the quick question, and replied almost nervously:—
“Nobody in particular—why should I?”
“I don't know why, but I think you do.”
“People one knows cross the channel every night almost.”
“Of course,” Sergius said indifferently.
He glanced towards the clock and again mechanically his hand went up, for a second, to his left breast. Anthony leaned forward in his chair quickly, and broke into speech. He had seen the stare at the clock-face, the gesture.
“It's strange,” he said, “how people go out of our lives, how friends go, and enemies!”
“Enemies!”
“Yes. I sometimes wonder which exit is the sadder. When a friend goes—with him goes, perhaps for ever, the chance of saying ‘I am your friend.’ When an enemy goes—”
“Well, what then?”
“With him goes, perhaps for ever, too, the chance of saying, ‘I am not your enemy.’”
“Pshaw! Parson's talk, Anthony.”
“No, Sergius, other men forgive besides parsons; and other men, and parsons too, pass by their chances of forgiving.”
“You're a whole Englishman, I'm only half an Englishman. There's something untamed in my blood, and I say—damn forgiveness!”
“And yet you've forgiven.”
“Whom?”
“Olga Mayne.”
The face of Sergius did not change at the sound of this name, unless, perhaps, to a more fixed calm, a more still and pale coldness.
“Olga is punished,” he said. “She is ruined.”
“Her ruin may be repaired.”
Sergius smiled quietly.
“You think so?”
“Yes. Tell me, Sergius”—Anthony spoke with a strong earnestness, a strong excitement that he strove to conceal and hold in check—“you loved her?”
“Yes, I loved her—certainly.”
“You will always love her?”
“Since I'm not changeable, I daresay I shall.”
Anthony's thin, eager face brightened. A glow of warmth burned in his eyes and on his cheeks.
“Then you would wish her ruin repaired.”
“Should I?”
“If you love her, you must.”
“How could it be repaired?”
“By her marriage with—Vernon.”
Anthony's strong voice quivered before he pronounced the last word, and his eyes were alight with fervent anxiety. He was looking at Sergius like a man on the watch for a tremendous outbreak of emotion. The champagne he had drunk—a new experience for him since he had taken orders—put a sort of wild finishing touch to the intensity of the feelings, under the impulse of which he had forced himself upon Sergius to-night. He supposed that his inward excitement must be more than matched by the so different inward excitement of his friend. But he—who thought he understood!—had no true conception of the region of cold, frosty fury in which Sergius was living, like a being apart from all other men, ostracised by the immensity and peculiarity of his own power of emotion. Therefore he was astonished when Sergius, with undiminished quietude, replied:
“Oh, with Vernon, that charming man of fashion, whose very soul, they say, always wears lavender gloves? You think that would be a good thing?”
“Good! I don't say that. I say—as the world is now—the only thing. He is the author of her fall. He should be her husband.”
“And I?”
Anthony stretched out his hand to grasp his friend's hand, but Sergius suddenly took up hischampagne glass, and avoided the demonstration of sympathy.
“You can be nothing to her now, Serge,” Anthony said, and his voice quivered with sympathy.
“You think so? I might be.”
“What?”
“Oh, not her husband, not her lover, not her friend.”
“What then?”
Sergius avoided answering.
“You would have her settle down with Vernon in Phillimore Place?” he said. “Play the wife to his noble husband? Well, I know there's been some idea of that, as I told you yesterday.”
The clock chimed ten. Although Sergius seemed so calm, so self-possessed, Anthony observed that now he paid no heed to the little, devilish note of time. This new subject of conversation had been Anthony's weapon. Desperately he had used it, and not, it seemed, altogether in vain.
“Yes; as you told me yesterday.”
“And it seems good to you?”
“It seems to me the only thing possible now.”
“There are generally more possibilities than one in any given event, I fancy.”
Again Anthony was surprised at the words of Sergius, who seemed to grow calmer as he grew more excited, who seemed, to-night, strangely powerful, not simply in temper, but even in intellect.
“For a woman there is sometimes only one possibility if she is to be saved from ignominy, Serge.”
“So you think that Olga Mayne must become the wife of Vernon, who is a—”
“Coward. Yes.”
At the word coward, Sergius seemed startled out of his hard calm. He looked swiftly and searchingly at Anthony.
“Why do you say coward?” he asked sharply. “I was not going to use that word.”
Anthony was obviously disconcerted.
“It came to me,” he said hurriedly.
“Why?”
“Any man that brings a girl to the dust is a coward.”
“Ah—that's not what you meant,” Sergius said.
Anthony stole a glance at the clock. The hand crawled slowly over the quarter of an hour past ten.
“No, it was not,” he said slowly.
Sergius got up from his chair and stood by the fire. He was obviously becoming engrossed by the conversation. Anthony could at least notice this with thankfulness.
“Anthony, I see you've got a fresh knowledge of Vernon since I was with you yesterday,” Sergius continued; “some new knowledge of his nature.”
“Perhaps I have.”
“How did you get it?”
“Does that matter?”
“You have heard of something about him?”
“No.”
“You have seen him, then; I say, you have seen him?”
Anthony hesitated. He pushed the champagne bottle over towards Sergius. It had been placed on a little table near the fireplace.
“No; I don't want to drink. Why on earth don't you answer me, Anthony?”
“I have always felt that Vernon was a coward. His conduct to you shows it. He was—or seemed—your friend. He saw you deeply in love with this—with Olga. He chose to ruin her after he knew of your love. Who but a coward could act in such a way?”
An expression of dark impatience came into the eyes of Sergius.
“You are confusing treachery and cowardice, and you are doing it untruthfully. You have seen Vernon.”
Anthony thought for a moment, and then said:
“Yes, I have.”
“By chance, of course. Why did you speak to him?”
“I thought I would.”
Sergius was obviously disturbed and surprised. The deeply emotional, yet rigid calm in which he had been enveloped all the evening was broken at last. A slight excitement, a distinct surface irritation, woke in him. Anthony felt an odd sense of relief as he observed it. For the constraint of Sergius had begun to weigh upon him like a heavy burden and to move him to an indefinable dread.
“I wonder you didn't cut him,” Sergius said. “You're my friend. And he's—he's—”
“He's done you a deadly injury. I know that. I am your friend, Serge; I would do anything for you.”
“Yet you speak to that—devil.”
“I spoke to him because I'm your friend.”
Sergius sat down again, with a heavy look, the look of a man who has been thrashed, and means to return every blow with curious interest.
“You parsons are a riddle to me,” he said in a low and dull voice. “You and your charity and your loving-kindness, and your turning the cheek to the smiter and all the rest of it. And as to your way of showing friendship—”
His voice died away in something that was almost a growl, and he stared at the carpet. Between it and his eyes once more the mist seemed rising stealthily. It began to curl upwards softly about him. As he watched it, he heard Anthony say:—
“Sergius, you don't understand how well I understand you.”
The big hand of the clock had left the half-hour after ten behind him. Anthony breathed more freely. At last he could be more explicit, more unreserved. He thought of a train rushing through the night, devouring the spaces of land that lie between London and the sea that speaks, moaning, to the South of England. He saw a ship glide out from the dreary docks. Her lights gleamed. He heard the bell struck and the harsh cry of the sailors, and then the dim sigh of a coward who had escaped what he had merited. Then he heard Sergius laugh.
“That again, Anthony!”
“Yes. I didn't meet Vernon by chance at all.”
“What? You wrote to him, you fixed a meeting?”
“I went to Phillimore Place, to his house.”
Sergius said nothing. Strange furrows ploughed themselves in his young face, which was growing dusky white. He remained in the attitude of one devoted entirely to listening.
“You hear, Sergius?”
“Go on—when?”
“To-day. I decided to go after I met you yesterday night—and after I had seen that woman die—unprepared.”
“What could she have to do with it?”
“Much. Everything almost.”
Anthony got up now, almost sprang up from his chair. His face was glowing and working with emotion. There was a choking sensation in his throat.
“You don't know what it is,” he said hoarsely, “to a man with—with strong religious belief to see a human being's soul go out to blackness, to punishment—perhaps to punishment that will never end. It's abominable. It's unbearable. That woman will haunt me. Her despair will be with me always. I could not add to that horror.”
His eyes once more sought the clock. Seeing the hour, he turned, with a kind of liberating relief, to Sergius.
“I couldn't add to it,” he exclaimed, almost fiercely, “so I went to Vernon.”
“Why?”
“Sergius—to warn him.”
There was a dead silence. Even the rain was hushed against the window. Then Sergius said, in a voice that was cold as the sound of falling water in winter:—
“I don't understand.”
“Because you won't understand how I have learnt to know you, Sergius, to understand you, to read your soul.”
“Mine too?”
“Yes; I've felt this awful blow that's comeupon you—the loss of Olga, her ruin—as if I myself were you. We haven't said much about it till yesterday. Then, from the way you spoke, from the way you looked, from what you said, even what you wouldn't say, I guessed all that was in your heart.”
“You guessed all that?”
Sergius was looking directly at Anthony and leaning against the mantelpiece, along which he stretched one arm. His fingers closed and unclosed, with a mechanical and rhythmical movement, round a china figure. The motion looked as if it were made in obedience to some fiercely monotonous music.
“Yes, more—I knew it.”
Sergius nodded.
“I see,” he said.
Anthony touched his arm, almost with an awe-struck gesture.
“I knew then that you—that you intended to kill Vernon. And—God forgive me!—at first I was almost glad.”
“Well—go on!”
Anthony shivered. The voice of Sergius was so strangely calm and level.
“I—I—” he stammered. “Serge, why do you look at me like that?”
Sergius looked away without a word.
“For I, too, hated Vernon, more for what he had done to you even than for what he had doneto Olga. But, Sergius, after you had gone, in the night, and in the dawn too, I kept on thinking of it over and over. I couldn't get away from it—that you were going to commit such an awful crime. I never slept. When at last it was morning, I went down to my district; there are criminals there, you know.”
“I know.”
“I looked at them with new eyes, and in their eyes I saw you, always you; and then I said to myself could I bear that you should become a criminal?”
“You said that?”
The fingers of Sergius closed over the china figure, and did not unclose.
“Yes. I almost resolved then to go to Vernon at once and to tell him what I suspected—what I really knew.”
The clock struck eleven. Anthony heard it; Sergius did not hear it.
“Then I went to sit with that wretched woman. Already I had resolved, as I believed, on the course to take. I had no thought for Vernon yet, only for you. It seemed to me that I did not care in the least to save him from death. I only cared to save you—my friend—from murder. But when the woman died I felt differently. My resolve was strengthened, my desire was just doubled. I had to save not only you, but also him. He was not ready to die.”
Anthony trembled with a passion of emotion. Sergius remained always perfectly calm, the china figure prisoned in his hand.
“So—so I went to him, Sergius.”
“Yes.”
“I saw him. Almost as I entered he received your letter, saying that you forgave him, that you would call to-night after eight o'clock to tell him so, and to urge on his marriage with Olga. When he had read the letter—I interpreted it to him; and then I found out that he was a coward. His terror was abject—despicable; he implored my help; he started at every sound.”
“To-night he'll sleep quietly, Anthony.”
“To-night he has gone. Before morning he will be on the sea.”
The sound of the wind came to them again, and Sergius understood why Anthony had said: “Rough at sea to-night.”
Suddenly Sergius moved; he unclosed his fingers: the ruins of the china figure fell from them in a dust of blue and white upon the mantelpiece.
“No—it's too late, Sergius. He went at eleven.”
Sergius stood quite still.
“You came here to-night to keep me here till he had gone?”
“Yes.”
“That's why you—”
He stopped.
“That's why I came. That's why I broke my pledge. I thought wine—any weapon to keep you from this crime. And, Sergius, think. Vernon dead could never have restored Olga to the place she has lost. That, too, must have driven me to the right course, though I scarcely thought of it till now.”
Sergius said, as if in reply: “So you have understood me!”
“Yes, Sergius. Friendship is something. Let us thank God, not even that he is safe, but that you—you are safe—and that Olga—”
“Hush! Has she gone with him?”
“She will meet him. He has sworn to marry her.”
The hand of Sergius moved to his left breast. Anthony's glowing eyes were fixed upon him.
“Ah, yes, Sergius,” Anthony cried. “Put that cursed, cursed thing down, put it away. Now it can never wreck your life and my peace.”
Sergius drew out the revolver slowly and carefully. Again the mist rose around him. But it was no longer white; it was scarlet.
There was a report. Anthony fell, without a word, a cry.
Then Sergius bent down, and listened to the silence of his friend's heart—the long silence of the man who intervened.
Inhis gilded cage, above the window-boxes that were full of white daisies, the canary chirped with a desultory vivacity. That was the only near sound that broke the silence in the drawing-room of No. 100 Mill Street, Knightsbridge, in which a man and a woman stood facing one another. Away, beyond his twittering voice, sang in the London streets the muffled voice of the season. The time was late afternoon, and rays of mellow light slanted into the pretty room, and touched its crowd of inanimate occupants with a radiance in which the motes danced merrily. The china faces of two goblins on the mantelpiece glowed with a grotesque meaning, and their yellow smiles seemed to call aloud on mirth; but the faces of the man and woman were pale, and their lips trembled, and did not smile.
She was tall, dark, and passionate-looking, perhaps twenty-eight or thirty. He was a few years older, a man so steadfast in expression that silly people, who spring at exaggeration as saints spring at heaven, called him stern, and even said he looked forbidding—at balls.
At last the song of the canary was broken upon by a voice. Sir Hugh Maine spoke, very quietly. “Why not?” he said.
“I don't think I can tell you,” Mrs. Glinn answered, with an obvious effort.
“You prefer to refuse me without giving a reason?”
“I have a right to,” she said.
“I don't question it. You cannot expect me to say more than that.”
He took up his hat, which lay on a chair, and smoothed it mechanically with his coat-sleeve.
The action seemed to pierce her like a knife, for she started, and half-extended her hand. “Don't!” she exclaimed. “At least, wait one moment. So you belong to the second class of men.”
“What do you mean?”
“Men are divided into two classes—those who refuse to be refused, and those who accept. But don't be too—too swift in your acceptance. After all, a refusal is not exactly a bank-note.”
She tried to smile.
“But I am exactly a beggar,” he answered, still keeping the hat in his hand. “And if you have nothing to give me, I may as well go.”
“And spend the rest of your life in sweeping the old crossing?”
“And spend the rest of my life as I can,” he said. “That need not concern you.”
“A woman must be all to a man, or nothing?”
“You must be all to me, or nothing.”
She sat down in an arm-chair in that part of the room that was in shadow. She always sat instinctively in shadow when she wanted to think.
“Well?” Sir Hugh said. “What are you thinking?”
She glanced up at him. “That you don't look much like a beggar,” she said.
“It is possible to feel tattered in a frock-coat and patent-leather boots,” he answered. “Good-bye. I am going back to my crossing.” And he moved towards the door.
“No, stop!” she exclaimed. “Before you go, tell me one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Will you ever ask me to marry you again?”
He looked hard into her eyes. “I shall always want to, but I shall never do it,” he said slowly.
“I am glad you have told me that. We women depend so much on a repetition of the offence, when we blame a man for saying he loves us, and ask him not to do it again. If you really mean only to propose once, I must reconsider my position.”
She was laughing, but the tears stood in her eyes.
“Why do you want to make this moment a farcical one?” he asked rather bitterly.
“Oh, Hugh!” she answered, “don't you see?Because it is really—really so tragic. I only try to do for this moment what we all try to do for life.”
“Then you love me?” he said, moving a step forward.
“I never denied that,” she replied. “I might as well deny that I am a woman.”
He held out his arms. “Eve—then I shall never go back to the crossing.”
But she drew back. “Go—go there till to-morrow! To-morrow afternoon I will see you; and if you love me after that—”
“Yes?”
She turned away and pressed the bell. “Good-bye,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to him.
He came nearer, and touched her hand; but she drew it away.
“You may kiss me,” she said.
“Eve!”
“After to-morrow.”
The footman came in answer to the bell. Mrs Glinn did not turn round. “I only rang for you to open the door for Sir Hugh,” she said. “Good-bye then, Sir Hugh. Come at five.”
“I will,” he answered, wondering.
When he had gone, Mrs Glinn sat down in a chair and took up a French novel. It was by Gyp. She tried to read it, with tears running over her cheeks. But at last she laid it down.
“After to-morrow,” she murmured. “Ah,why—why does a woman ever love twice?” And then she sobbed.
But the canary sang, and the motes danced merrily in the sunbeams. And on the table where she had put it down lay “Le Mariage de Chiffon.”
That evening, when Sir Hugh Maine came back to his rooms in Jermyn Street after dining out, he found a large man sprawling in one of his saddle-back chairs, puffing vigorously at a pipe that looked worn with long and faithful service. The man took the pipe out of his mouth and sprang up.
“Hullo, Maine!” he cried. “D'you recognise the tobacco and me?”
Hugh grasped his hand warmly. “Rather,” he said. “Neither is changed. At least—h'm—I think you both seem a bit stronger even than usual. Who would have thought of seeing you, Manning? I did not know you were in Europe.”
“I came from Asia. I thought I should like to hear Melba before the end of the season. And it was getting sultry out there. So here I am.”
“And were those your only reasons?”
“Give me a brandy-and-soda,” said the other.
Maine did as he was bid, lit a cigar, and sat down,stretching out his long legs. The other man took a pull at his glass, and spoke again.
“I am very fond of music,” he said; “and Melba sings very well.”
“Ah!”
“Look here, Maine,” Manning broke out suddenly, “you are right—I had another reason. Kipling says that those who have heard the East a-calling never heed any other voice. He's wrong though. The West has been calling me, or, at least, a voice in the West, and I have resisted it for a deuce of a time. But at last it became imperative.”
“A woman's voice, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what is itstimbre, if you care to.”
“I will. You're an old friend, and I can talk to you. But you tell me one thing first: Is a man really a fool to marry a woman with a past?”
“You are going to?”
“I have tried not to. I have been trying not to for three years. Listen! When I was travelling in Japan I met her. She was with an American called Glinn.”
“What?”
“You knew him?”
“No! It's all right. I was surprised, because at the moment I was thinking of that very name.”
“Oh! Well, she passed as Mrs Glinn; but, somehow, it got out that she was something else.The usual story, you know. People fought shy of her; but I don't think she cared much. Glinn was devoted to her, and she loved him, and was as true to him as any wife could have been. Then the tragedy came.”
“What was it?”
“Glinn died suddenly in Tokio, of typhoid. She nursed him to the end. And when the end came her situation was awful, so lonely and deserted. There wasn't a woman in the hotel who would be her friend; so I tried to come to the rescue, arranged her affairs, saw about the funeral, and did what I could. She was well off; Glinn left her nearly all his money. He would have married her, only he had a wife alive somewhere.”
“And you fell in love with her, of course?”
“That was the sort of thing. If you knew her you would not wonder at it. She was not a bad woman. Glinn had been the only one. She loved him too much; that was all. She came to Europe, and lived in Paris for a time, keeping the name of Mrs Glinn. I used to see her sometimes, but I never said anything. You see, there was her past. In fact, I have been fighting against her for three years. I went to India to get cured; but it was no good. And now, here I am.”
“And she is in Paris?”
“No, in London at present; but I didn't know her address till to-day. I think she had her doubts of me, and meant to give me the slip.”
“How did you find it out?”
“Quite by chance. I was walking in Mill Street, Knightsbridge, and saw her pass in a victoria.”
Maine got up suddenly, and went over to the spirit-stand. “In Mill Street?” he said.
“Yes. The carriage stopped at No. 100. She went in. A footman came out and carried in her rug.Ergo, she lives there.”
“How hot it is!” said Maine in a hard voice. He threw up one of the windows and leaned out. He felt as if he were choking. A little way down the street a half-tipsy guardsman was reeling along, singing his own private version of “Tommy Atkins.” He narrowly avoided a lamp-post by an abrupt lurch which took him into the gutter. Maine heard some one laugh. It was himself.
“Well, old chap,” said Manning, who had come up behind him, “what would you advise me to do? I'm in a fix. I'm in love with Eve—that's her name; I can't live without her happily, and yet I hate to marry a woman with a—well, you know how it is.”
Maine drew himself back into the room and faced round. “Does she love you?” he asked; and there was a curious change in his manner towards his friend.
“I don't know that she does,” Manning said, rather uncomfortably. “But that would come right. She would marry me, naturally.”
“Why?”
“Well, I mean the position. Lady Herbert Manning could go where Mrs Glinn could not, and all that sort of thing.”
“The only question is whether you can bring yourself to ask her?”
“My dear chap, you don't put it too pleasantly.”
“It's the fact, though.”
Lord Herbert hesitated. Then he said dubiously, “I suppose so.”
Maine lit another cigar and sat down again. His face was very white. “You're rather conventional, Manning,” he said presently.
“Conventional! Why?”
“You think her—this Mrs Glinn—a good woman. Isn't that enough for you?”
“But, besides Eve and myself, there is a third person in the situation.”
“How on earth did you find out that?” exclaimed Maine.
The other looked surprised. “How did I find out? I don't understand you.”
Maine recollected himself. He had made the common mistake of fancying another might know a thing because he knew it.
“Who is this third person?” he asked.
“Society.”
“Ah! I said you were conventional.”
“Every sensible man and woman is.”
“I don't know that I agree. But the third person does certainly complicate the situation. What are you going to do then?”
Lord Herbert put down his pipe. It was not smoked out. “That's what I want to know,” he answered.
“Of course, there's the one way—of being unconventional. Then, there's the way of being conventional but unhappy. Is there any alternative?”
Lord Herbert hesitated obviously, but at length he said: “There is, of course; but Mrs Glinn is a curious sort of woman. I don't quite know—”
He paused, looking at his friend. Maine's face was drawn and fierce.
“What's the row?” Lord Herbert asked.
“Nothing; only I shouldn't advise you to try the alternative. That's all.”
“Maine, what do you mean?”
“Just this,” replied the other. “That I know Mrs Glinn, that I agree with you about her character—”
“You know her? That's odd!”
“I have known her for a year.”
They looked each other in the eyes while a minute passed. Then Lord Herbert said slowly, “I understand.”
“What?”
“That I have come to the wrong man for advice.”
There was a silence, broken only by the tickingof a clock and the uneasy movements of Maine's fox-terrier, which was lying before the empty grate and dreaming of departed fires.
At last Maine said: “To-day I asked Mrs Glinn to marry me.”
The other started perceptibly. “Knowing what I have told you?” he asked.
“Not knowing it.”
“What—what did she say?”
“Nothing. I am to see her to-morrow.”
Lord Herbert glanced at him furtively. “I suppose you will not go—now?” he said.
“Yes, Manning, I shall,” Maine answered.
“Well,” the other man continued, looking at his watch and yawning, “I must be going. It's late. Glad to have seen you, Maine. I am to be found at 80 St James's Place. Thanks; yes I will have my coat on. My pipe—oh! here it is. Good-night.”
The door closed, and Maine was left alone.
“Will she tell me to-morrow, or will she be silent?” he said to himself. “That depends on one thing: Has love of truth the largest half of her heart, or love of me?”
He sighed—at the conventionality of the world, perhaps.
“I am not at home to any one except Sir Hugh Maine,” Mrs Glinn said to the footman. “You understand?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
He went out softly and closed the door.
The English summer had gone back upon its steps that afternoon, and remembered the duty it owed to its old-time reputation. The canary, a puffed-out ball of ragged-looking feathers in its cage, seemed listening with a depressed attention to the beat of the cold rain against the window. The daisies, in their boxes, dripped and nodded in the wind. There was a darkness in the pretty room, and the smile of the china goblins was no longer yellow. Like many people who are not made of china, they depended upon adventitious circumstances for much of their outward show. When they were not gilded there was a good deal of the pill apparent in their nature.
Mrs Glinn was trying not to be restless. She was very pale, and her dark eyes gleamed with an almost tragic fire; but she sat down firmly on the white sofa, and read Gyp, as Carmen may have read her doom in the cards. One by one the pages were turned. One by one the epigrams were made the property of another mind. But through all the lightness and humour of the storythere crept like a little snake a sentence that Gyp had not written:—
“Can I tell him?”
And no answer ever came to that question. When the door-bell at last rang, Mrs Glinn laid down her novel carefully, and mechanically stood up. A change of attitude was necessary to her.
Sir Hugh came in, and was followed by tea. They sat down by the tiny table, and discussed French literature. Flaubert and Daudet go as well with tea as Fielding and Smollett go with supper.
But, when the cups were put down, Maine drove the French authors in a pack out of the conversation.
“I did not come here to say what I can say to every woman I meet who understands French,” he remarked.
And then Mrs Glinn was fully face to face with her particular guardian devil.
“No?” she said.
She did not try to postpone the moment she dreaded. For she had a strong man to deal with, and, being a strong woman at heart, she generally held out her hand to the inevitable.
“You have been thinking?” Maine went on.
“Yes. What a sad occupation that is sometimes—like knitting, or listening to church-bells at night!”
“Eve, let us be serious.”
“God knows I am,” she answered. “But modern gravity is dressed in flippancy. No feeling must go quite naked.”
“Don't talk like that,” he said. “As there is a nudity in art that may be beautiful, so there is a nudity in expression, in words, that may be beautiful. Eve, I have come to hear you tell me something. You know that.” He glanced into her face with an anxiety that she did not fully understand. Then he said: “Tell it me.”
“There is—is so much to tell,” she said.
“Yes, yes.”
“He does not understand,” she thought.
He thought, “She does not understand.”
“And I am not good at telling stories.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
She tried to smile, but she was trembling. “Of course. Why should I not?” She hesitated, and then added, with a forced attempt at petulance, “But there is nothing so awkward as giving people more than they expect. Is there?”
He understood her question, despite its apparent inconsequence, and his heart quickened its beating: “Give me everything.”
“I suppose I should be doing that if I gave you myself,” she said nervously.
“You know best,” he answered; and for a moment she was puzzled by not catching the affirmative for which she had angled.
“Do you want me very, very much?” she asked.
“So much that, as I told you yesterday, I could not ask for you twice. Don't you understand?”
“Yes. I could not marry a man who had bothered me to be his wife. One might as well be scolded into virtue. You want me, then, Hugh, and I want you. But—”
Again she stopped, with sentences fluttering, as it seemed, on the very edges of her lips. Her heart was at such fearful odds with her conscience, that she felt as if he must hear the clashing of the swords. And he did hear it. He would fain have cheered on both the combatants. Which did he wish should be the conqueror? He hardly knew.
“Yes?” he said.
“It is always so difficult to finish a sentence that begins with ‘but,’” she began; and for the first time her voice sounded tremulous. “When two people want each other very much, there is always something that ought to keep them apart—at least, I think so. God must love solitude; it is His gift to so many.” There were tears in her eyes.
“Why should we keep apart, Eve?”
“Because we should be too happy together, I suppose.”
He leaned suddenly forward and took both her hands in his. “How cold you are!” he said, startled.
The words seemed to brace her like a sea-breeze.
“Hugh,” she said, “I wish to tell you something. There is a ‘but’ in the sentence of my life.”
He drew her closer to him, with a strange impulse to be nearer the soul that was about to prove itself as noble as he desired. But that very act prevented the fulfilment of his wish. The touch of his hands, the eagerness of his eyes, gave the victory to her heart. She shut the lips that were speaking, and he kissed them. Kisses act as an opiate on a woman's conscience. Only when Eve felt his lips on hers did she know her own weakness. Sir Hugh having kissed her, waited for the telling of the secret. At that moment he might as well have sat down and waited for the millennium.
“What is it?” he said at last.
“Nothing,” she answered, “nothing.” She spoke the word with a hard intonation.
Hugh held her close in his arms, with a sort of strange idea that to do so would crush his disappointment. She was proving her love by her silence. Why, then, did he wish that she should speak? At last she said, in a low voice:—
“There is one thing you ought to know. If I marry you, I marry you a beggar. I shall lose my fortune. I am not obliged to lose it, but I mean to give it up. Don't ask me why.”
He had no need to. He waited, but she wassilent. So that was all. He kissed her again, loosened his arms from about her and stood up.
“I have enough for both,” he said.
He did not look at her, and she could not look at him.
“Are you going?” she said.
“Yes; but I will call this evening.”
He was at the door, and had half-opened it when he turned back, moved by a passionate impulse.
“Eve!” he cried, and his eyes seemed asking her for something.
“Yes?” she said, looking away.
There was a silence. Then he said “Good-bye!” The door closed upon him.
Mrs Glinn stood for a moment where he had left her. In her mind she was counting the seconds that must elapse before he could reach the street. If she could be untrue to herself till then, she could be untrue to herself for ever. Would he walk down the stairs slowly or fast? She wanted to be a false woman so much, so very much, that she clenched her hands together. The action seemed as if it might help her to keep on doing wrong. But suddenly she unclasped her hands, darted across the room to the door, and opened it. She listened, and heard Hugh's footsteps in the hall. He picked up his umbrella, and unfolded it to be ready for the rain. Thefrou-frouof the silk seemed to stir her to action.
“Hugh!” she cried in a broken voice.
He turned in the hall, and looked up.
“Come back,” she said.
He came up the stairs three steps at a time.
“Hugh,” she said, leaning heavily on the balustrade, and looking away, “I have a secret to tell you. I have tried to be wicked to-day, but somehow I can't. Listen to the truth.”
“I need not,” he answered. “I know it already.”
Then she looked at him, and drew in her breath: “You know it?”
“Yes.”
“How you must love me!”
There was a ring at the hall door. The footman opened it, held a short parley with some one who was invisible, shut the door, and came upstairs with a card.
Mrs Glinn took it, and read, “Lord Herbert Manning.”
He had decided to be unconventional too late.
Thedoor of the long, dreary room, with its mahogany chairs, its littered table, its motley crew of pale, silent people, opened noiselessly. A dreary, lean footman appeared in the aperture, bowing towards a corner where, in a recess near a forlorn, lofty window, sat a tall, athletic-looking man of about forty-five years of age, with a strong yet refined face, clean shaven, and short, crisp, dark hair. The tall man rose immediately, laying down an old number ofPunch, and made his way out, watched rather wolfishly by the other occupants of the room. The door closed upon him, and there was a slight rustle and a hiss of whispering.
Two well-dressed women leaned to one another, the feathers in their hats almost mingling as they murmured: “Not much the matter with him, I should fancy.”
“He looks as strong as a horse; but modern men are always imagining themselves ill. He has lived too much, probably.”
They laughed in a suppressed ripple.
At the end of the room near the door, under thebig picture of a grave man in a frock-coat, holding a double eye-glass tentatively in his right hand as if to emphasise an argument—a young girl bent towards her father, who said to her in a low voice:
“That man who has just left the room is Brune, the great sculptor.”
“Is he ill?” the girl asked.
“It seems so, since he is here.”
Then a silence fell again, broken only by the rustle of turned pages and the occasional uneasy shifting of feet.
Meanwhile, in a small room across the hall, by a window through which the autumn sun streamed with a tepid brightness, Reginald Brune lay on a narrow sofa. His coat and waistcoat were thrown open; his chest was bared. Gerard Fane, the great discoverer of hidden diseases, raised himself from a bent posture, and spoke some words in a clear, even voice.
Brune lifted himself half up on his elbow, and began mechanically to button the collar of his shirt. His long fingers did not tremble, though his face was very pale.
He fastened the collar, arranged his loose tie, and then sat up slowly.
A boy, clanking two shining milk-cans, passed along the pavement, whistling a music-hall song. The shrill melody died down the street, and Brune listened to it until there was a silence. Then helooked up at the man opposite to him, and said, as one dully protesting, without feeling, without excitement:—
“But, doctor, I was only married three weeks ago.”
Gerard Fane gave a short upward jerk of the head, and said nothing. His face was calmly grave. His glittering brown eyes were fastened on his patient. His hands were loosely folded together.
Brune repeated, in a sightly raised voice:—
“I was married three weeks ago. It cannot be true.”
“I am here to tell the truth,” the other replied.
“But it is so—so ironic. To allow me to start a new life—a beautiful life—just as the night is coming. Why, it is diabolical; it is not just; the cruelty of it is fiendish.”
A spot of gleaming red stained each of the speaker's thin cheeks. He clenched his hands together, riveting his gaze on the doctor, as he went on:—
“Can't you see what I mean? I had no idea—I had not the faintest suspicion of what you say. And I have had a very hard struggle. I have been poor and quite friendless. I have had to fight, and I have lost much of the good in my nature by fighting, as we often do. But at last I have won the battle, and I have won more. I have won goodness to give me back some of my illusions. I had begun to trust life again. I had—”
He stopped abruptly. Then he said:—
“Doctor, are you married?”
“No,” the other answered; and there was a note of pity in his voice.
“Then you can't understand what your verdict means to me. Is it irrevocable?”
Gerard Fane hesitated.
“I wish I could hope not; but—”
“But—?”
“It is.”
Brune stood up. His face was quite calm now and his voice, when he spoke again, was firm and vibrating.
“I have some work that I should wish to finish. How long can you give me?”
“Three months.”
“One will do if my strength keeps up at all. Good-bye.”
There was a thin chink of coins grating one against the other. The specialist said:—
“I will call on you to-morrow, between four and five. I have more directions to give you. To-day my time is so much taken up. Good-bye.”
The door closed.
In the waiting-room, a moment later, Brune was gathering up his coat and hat.
The two ladies eyed him curiously as he took them and passed out.
“He does look a little pale, after all,” whispered one of them. A moment later he was in the street.
From the window of his consulting-room, Gerard Fane watched the tall figure striding down the pavement.
“I am sorry that man is going to die,” he said to himself.
And then he turned gravely to greet a new patient.
Gerard Fane's victoria drew up at the iron gate of No. 5 Ilbury Road, Kensington, at a quarter past four the following afternoon. A narrow strip of garden divided the sculptor's big red house from the road. Ornamental ironwork on a brick foundation closed it in. The great studio, with its huge windows and its fluted pillars, was built out at one end. The failing sunlight glittered on its glass, and the dingy sparrows perched upon the roof to catch the parting radiance as the twilight fell. The doctor glanced round him and thought, “How hard this man must have worked! In London this is a little palace.”
“Will you come into the studio, sir, please?” said the footman in answer to his summons. “Mr Brune is there at present.”
“Surely he cannot be working,” thought the doctor, as he followed the man down a glass-covered paved passage, and through a high doorway across which a heavy curtain fell. “If so, he must possess resolution almost more than mortal.”
He passed beyond the curtain, and looked round him curiously.
The studio was only dimly lit now, for daylight was fast fading. On a great open hearth, with dogs, a log-fire was burning; and beside it, on an old-fashioned oaken settle, sat a woman in a loose cream-coloured tea-gown. She was half turning round to speak to Reginald Brune, who stood a little to her left, clad in a long blouse, fastened round his waist with a band. He had evidently recently finished working, for his hands still bore evident traces of labour, and in front of him, on a raised platform, stood a statue that was not far from completion. The doctor's eyes were attracted from the woman by the log-fire, from his patient, by the lifeless, white, nude figure that seemed to press forward out of the gathering gloom. The sculptor and his wife had not heard him announced, apparently, for they continued conversing in low tones, and he paused in the doorway, strangely fascinated—he could scarcely tell why—by the marble creation of a dying man.
The statue, which was life size, represented the figure of a beautiful, grave youth, standing with one foot advanced, as if on the point of steppingforward. His muscular arms hung loosely; his head was slightly turned aside as in the attitude of one who listens for a repetition of some vague sound heard at a distance. His whole pose suggested an alert, yet restrained, watchfulness. The triumph of the sculptor lay in the extraordinary suggestion of life he had conveyed into the marble. His creature lived as many mollusc men never live. Its muscles seemed tense, its body quivering with eagerness to accomplish—what? To attack, to repel, to protect, to perform some deed demanding manfulness, energy, free, fearless strength.
“That marble thing could slay if necessary,” thought Gerard Fane, with a thrill of the nerves all through him that startled him, and recalled him to himself.
He stepped forward to the hearth quietly, and Brune turned and took him by the hand.
“I did not hear you,” the sculptor said. “The man must have opened the door very gently. Sydney, this is Dr Gerard Fane, who is kindly looking after me.”
The woman by the fire had risen, and stood in the firelight and the twilight, which seemed to join hands just where she was. She greeted the specialist in a girl's young voice, and he glanced at her with the furtive thought, “Does she know yet?”
She looked twenty-two, not more.
Her eyes were dark grey, and her hair was bronze. Her figure was thin almost to emaciation;but health glowed in her smooth cheeks, and spoke in her swift movements and easy gestures. Her expression was responsive and devouringly eager. Life ran in her veins with turbulence, never with calm. Her mouth was pathetic and sensitive, but there was an odd suggestion of almost boyish humour in her smile.
Before she smiled, Fane thought, “She knows.”
Afterwards, “She cannot know.”
“Have you a few moments to spare?” Brune asked him. “Will you have tea with us?”
Fane looked at Mrs Brune and assented. He felt a strange interest in this man and this woman. The tragedy of their situation appealed to him, although he lived in a measure by foretelling tragedies. Mrs Brune touched an electric bell let into the oak-panelled wall, and her husband drew a big chair forward to the hearth.
As he was about to sit down in it, Gerard Fane's eyes were again irresistibly drawn towards the statue; and a curious fancy, born, doubtless, of the twilight that invents spectres and of the firelight that evokes imaginations, came to him, and made him for a moment hold his breath.
It seemed to him that the white face menaced him, that the white body had a soul, and that the soul cried out against him.
His hand trembled on the back of the chair. Then he laughed to himself at the absurd fancy, and sat down.
“Your husband has been working?” he said to Mrs Brune.
“Yes, all the day. I could not tempt him out for even five minutes. But then, he has had a holiday, as he says, although it was only a fortnight. That was not very long for—for a honeymoon.”
As she said the last sentence she blushed a little, and shot a swift, half-tender, half-reproachful glance at her husband. But he did not meet it; he only looked into the fire, while his brows slightly contracted.
“I think Art owns more than half his soul,” the girl said, with the flash of a smile. “He only gives to me the fortnights and to Art the years.”
There was a vague jealousy in her voice; but then the footman brought in tea, and she poured it out, talking gaily.