"Isolde. So stürben wir,Um ungetrennt—Tristan. Ewig einig—Isolde. Ohne End'—Tristan. Ohn' Erwachen—Isolde. Ohne Bangen—Tristan. NamenlosIn Leib' umfangen—Isolde. Ganz uns selbst gegeben,Der Liebe nur zu leben?"The spell of the music, rising to that passionate climax of the love song in the second act where Night the Revealer points the way of human transport to culminate in the superb Song of Death, broke the earthly barriers of speculation, and two souls in the audience called to each other as before the judgment seat and became temporarily one. Such things have been since the world came out of chaos, and will be until it returns again to the void. There is but one mate for each man and woman in the world, and until they recognize the fact and learn with patience to await that note of absolute conviction which is the one infallible guide to happiness, marriages will fail as they fail now, and the Church will give its empty blessing to those ill-assorted pairs whom God for ever leaves unblessed."... Traut allein,Ewig heim....Du Isolde,Tristan ich,Nicht mehr Tristan,Nicht Isolde....Endloss ewigEin-bewusst:Heiss erglühter BrustHochste Leibes-Lust!""I always wish that the music ofPeer Gyntcould have been written by Wagner," said Evelyn. "Think what he would have made of Anitas' last words: and the magic of the Troll Kingdom, and the great scene, as eerie in its way as the Brocken scene inFaust—don't you really know it? Towards the end of the play, just before he meets the Button-Moulder, Peer Gynt, the failure, is standing alone on the moor with charred trees and desolation all about him. Mist has risen, and all the world is full of little voices. Tiny thread balls sweep before him—they are the thoughts he should have followed. Dewdrops fall—his unshed tears; withered leaves drift to and fro in his path and dazzle him—watchwords he should have spoken; broken straws lie at his feet—an epitome of his life. It's all so like one's own life, void and valueless. And yet things started well enough. The very trees flowered, the dewdrops were like gold in the sunshine, and one heard pleasant voices in the woods, as a child.""I've been thinking of my childhood too to-night," said Farquharson. "My love for Glune has been with me through everything. Out in Taorna, that night I was waiting in the Place of Sepulchres, I had a dream—a vision, if you like to call it so—and Glune stood before me, as brave, as broken, as courageous as of old. I could see the gorse in bloom and the peewits circling round and round, and Dan waiting patiently as he always waited.... I shall never forget the day that dog died mercifully, it was in my arms. The man who made this music must have been through heaven and hell too in his day. Glune has been through both, and so have most of us Farquharsons.""I sent my soul through the Invisible,Some letters of that after-life to spell;And by and by my soul return'd to meAnd answer'd, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell,'"Evelyn quoted below her breath."Oh, aren't those lovely words?" broke in Dora Beadon, impatient at having been left so long to the companionship of Calvert and her father. "Rossetti's, aren't they? Oh, Omar Khayyám, is it? Well, he's much the same. One of myattachés, a student at the Academy, promised to set them to music for me.""Miss Beadon is a great devotee of music," said Brand gravely; "she has a pianola and three gramophones."Evelyn laughed."Dora dislikes musical people as much as I do. We spread the gramophone story to frighten them away, don't we, Dora?""I shouldn't mind them so much if they were only clean," said Miss Beadon. "Or if they wore better clothes! There's always a ready-made thirty-shilling-the-suit look about them, don't you think, Mr. Farquharson? By the way, Evelyn, you mustn't annex Mr. Farquharson any longer; I really insist upon his coming over here for the last act."Calvert's eyes and Brand's met for once in the intimacy of mutual amusement. Dora Beadon was laying her snares a trifle flagrantly.Well, Richard might do worse, Calvert thought. With so uncompromising a face and figure Miss Beadon should certainly be a docile wife, and she had money and position. Calvert had seen many brilliant matches fail, two stars outshining one another and falling into oblivion. He looked with awakened interest at the girl; the shadow of the box was kind to her, and her pleasure at having drawn Farquharson from Evelyn had given her for once an almost intelligent expression. He smiled benignly and drew Evelyn's attention to the pair, with a genial little nod of approval.It was only at parting that Farquharson got an opportunity of speaking again to Mrs. Brand.Then—"I owe the Albert Hall Meeting to you?" he said, with meaning. "It's another debt. No, don't deny it; you help every one. What was said of Madame Recamier is true of you, 'Elle était pour ses amis la soeur de charité de lour peines, de leur frailtés, el même un peu de leur fautes.'"CHAPTER VIII"The Sacraments are seven—Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Order, Matrimony.... Each has its own particular office: all give grace; but besides ordinary graces, they are intended to bestow the special grace which may be required to meet particular wants."—BISHOP BAGSHAWE."A lady to see you, sir.""Oh, bother!" Cummings took the card impatiently, and then gave a startled exclamation. "Tell her I'll see her in half-a-minute."The sight of Evelyn's card revived old memories; he smiled, absently fingering it for a moment before entering the little sitting-room. It was years since he had seen her. He remembered her as an undisciplined child; a small person with ideals which were never realized, an odd mixture of dreams and contradictions. Knowing Brand and Brand's capabilities as he did, no one was more surprised than Cummings at the marriage.Partly for love of the cause, partly to kill thought, he had done the work of ten in his district, until at last his health gave way completely. A stray bishop paying pastoral visits in the neighbourhood took him in hand, and summarily ordered him away at a moment's notice on a sea-voyage and six months' leave. Medical opinions at home were slightly alarming; on his arrival in London he was packed off to Brighton within twenty-four hours.As he opened the door of the little sitting-room he thought at first that it was the old unchanged Evelyn of childhood who greeted him so warmly. But to read men's souls is part of the priestly office, and there was something in her air of enforced gaiety which made him look at her more closely."You dear!" she said, holding his hands in hers as if they were a source of strength. "Isn't this a nice surprise? Lord Creagh offered to drive me down, and I couldn't resist the chance of routing you out.""You are just one of the few people I wanted to see," said Cummings. "One of my last remaining links with the past. I won't have another soul admitted while you're here. You'll let me smoke, won't you? I want to hear about everything and everybody. I'm going to have my say first, yours comes later. If you talk as much as you used, I shan't get a look in when once you've started."She became more at ease as he spoke. He pulled an arm-chair up to the empty grate, and wedged a shiny black horse-hair cushion at her back."Now begin about home, please. Is my mother's complexion still like a Greuze? How absolutely lovely she was once! Some one told me that my father had sold his hunters and taken to driving out in a governess car behind a fat pony. Surely that isn't true—they've not lost money, have they?""He is very changed," said Evelyn, hesitating. "He has become a total abstainer. Don't look so aghast, Jack; I believe in a way it suits him. A year ago he had a stroke which shook his nerves a good deal, and your mother is a chronic invalid, you know. She was thrown from the box-seat of a coach at the four-in-hand meet three years ago. We think some sort of vertigo must have seized her."She looked pityingly at the bent form of the man beside her."We can't always be young, dear Jack," she said, with her eyes full of pain. "I always think the most obvious compensation of old age is its inability to feel, as we younger people do. The blows which fall on old people scarcely seem to shake their serenity. But they shatter us. Oh yes, it must be nice to be old. Your parents are marvellous considering all they have gone through. And, you see, you were their life, their all, and they won't let themselves be happy in your peace. Oh, my dear boy, don't look like that; things will come right in time—at least that's what I'm always telling other people," she added, faltering a little.Cummings walked up and down the room for a moment or two before answering."Pone, Domini, custodian ori meo....Yes, we say those things to others, but they don't always convince us. There are times when horrible spiritual dryness grips you, and you grope for days and weeks in absolute darkness, knowing that you yourself have raised the veil between you and the light.""Sacrifice and death—somebody said those were the only terms on which the God of life has made life to exist," said Evelyn softly. "The French talk of the soul's secret garden as though it were a place of promise and perfume. I always think one's secret garden is Gethsemane. And sweat broke out even on Christ's brow in Gethsemane, you know. 'All bound together with one chain of darkness, and to themselves more grievous than the darkness.'""But the saints had a very great light," said Cummings. He shook his head back with a characteristic little gesture of decision. "Do you know what it is, Evelyn, suddenly, for no reason, when you are saying the same prayers in the same way, kneeling on the same step, practising the same austerities, whatever they may be, neither more nor less, to have your hardness break down and your heart like a little child's again? That has come before; it will, it must, come again."Evelyn sighed wearily."It seems to me that sometimes one believes with one's heart and sometimes with one's head. I suppose the best of all is when the two work together. One can plant flowers in other people's gardens even when they won't flourish in one's own back yard. It's the same principle as telling a rosary. After you've hammered out half-a-dozen Pater and a hundred or so Aves, they begin to take some meaning, don't they? 'Vain repetitions' have their comfort after all. I heard such a nice story the other day about two dear Evangelical old ladies. At seventy-five and eighty, foreseeing the near approach of death, they began to take lessons on the harp, because they thought the knowledge could be turned to account later on in Paradise."Oh, delicious!" said Cummings. He pulled the blind up, so that the light fell more fully on Evelyn's face. "I've finished whining. Now tell me how the world has been treating you for the last few years."Evelyn moved away restlessly to the window."What a nasty mean trick to let in that glare. You used to tease me as a child," she said from the back of the room. "What made you take these stuffy rooms, Jack? They're very ugly and uncomfortable.""I didn't anticipate the visits of my female friends," said Cummings. "Come here, Evelyn; be a good girl and—you know the rest. No, I'm not chaffing now—you're bothered, aren't you?""I rather wish I hadn't come, Grand Inquisitor," said Evelyn. "Well, put down those glasses then; they worry me." She came and stood behind his chair. "Things are so horribly mixed up, Jack. One thinks perhaps it's—dangerous to go to a special place and see a special person—and then some one who has the right compels one to. Do you think what St. Philip Neri said about the way of escape was true?""Ungrammatical—but fairly concise for a woman. By the bye, I always gave St. Paul the credit of the remark you quote," said Cummings, his eyes twinkling."I wasn't thinking of that obvious text," said Evelyn triumphantly. "Capecelatro says what I mean—'Paradise was not made for cowards.' St. Philip always told one to face foes visible and invisible, as you know. But"—she bowed her head—"there was one particular temptation he told us to fly from the moment we recognized even the barest shadow of possibility of its coming near us."There was a little pause."Yes?""Oh, I can look you in the face," said Evelyn hurriedly, coming forward. "It's not quite a temptation, Jack. A shadow, rather, that I'm flung against.""But a substantial shadow.""I'm shut up in the room with it," said Evelyn. "I believe I'm exaggerating. The whole thing may just be a senseless scruple, or vanity, and yet——""A cloud no bigger than a man's hand on the horizon," said Cummings softly.Evelyn sat down."I suppose I'd better tell you all about it. I believe I meant to from the first. And yet there's nothing really to tell. You remember when I was a child I always wanted to be in everything—at the head of it, as a rule. Well, I honestly have been able to help one or two people since—it's the old childish vanity again, perhaps. There's one special person I've met often, and been a little—only a very little—useful to; everything has combined to bring us together, interest, ambition, sympathy. You see, the man doesn't trust women, but he trusts me—vanity again, I suppose you'll say. Sometimes I make excuses; I say not at home, and then he goes away." She stopped for a moment. "Then a note comes from his great friend, asking some little favour, saying that only I can do for him the special thing that is just wanted at the moment, and so it all begins again. The man's a hard man naturally, and I want to soften him. He's more gentle than he was, and kinder. He doesn't believe in anything; that's another point. I wish he could meet you, or some one like you who has fought battles and found faith. I can't talk about those things—I never have; I don't think born Catholics often do; we're lazier, perhaps, than converts. But he guesses what it all means to me, I fancy."Cummings waited."I feel like a rat in a cage sometimes," said Evelyn passionately. "I gnaw a bar of my cage and make a passage, and then I'm put into another cage with stronger bars and told to stay there.""Come to the light," said Cummings. "Yes, I thought so. You're overwrought and overdone. Well, I say to you as I should say to any other woman, 'Go away.' Remember the accommodation muscles of one's soul need rest just like those of one's eyes. Their focus gets strained too. And there's another point." He hesitated for a moment. This was hard to say under the circumstances, knowing Brand as he did. "Something about marriage. Remember that marriage garments have to be fitted like any others; they don't always suit at the first trial or the last; but, unlike other clothes, you may neither sell them nor give them away."He turned away. His window opened on to a narrow side-street; a hawker selling decayed vegetables and flowers was calling his wares a few doors away. Children, playing hop-scotch on the pavement below, wrangled and screamed over the game. From the Western Road came the jar and clatter of motor omnibuses. Everything was noisy and turbulent."So I'm to go away," Evelyn said at last, blankly, drawing a deep breath. "That's your decision. Well, I suppose you're right. The real country must be very sweet now. Late the other night, coming back from Weybridge, we stopped by the bridge to hear the nightingales in the woods, just about midnight. I know a tiny cottage where I can go quite by myself and be rural. There's a farm near which is kept by the kindest, fattest woman I've ever seen—just like a very amiable porpoise. She has cows and poultry, and once she let me try to milk a cow. It took me a quarter of an hour even to get the bottom of the pail damp. Suppose I go there later, Jack? There's a big meeting at the Albert Hall next week, which I've absolutely promised to do some work for, and go to.""Take your cottage, by all means, but please have mercy on the cows," said Cummings. "You'll get off as soon as you can, won't you?"They stood for a moment looking at each other—friends whose paths might probably never cross again. Then Evelyn went out with bent head. Cummings watched her go. When she was out of sight he made the sign of the cross and sat down wearily in his chair.CHAPTER IX"A woman wishes and believes; a man wills and achieves. The wish of the woman ripens into a faith; the will of the man hardens into a fact."—J. S. BLACKIE.From floor to ceiling the Albert Hall, which normally contains ten thousand people, was packed to overflowing.Tickets for the great Tariff Reform Demonstration had been begged, borrowed and bargained for; it was said that a newly made peer had given a hundred guineas for a box. Orderly files of subdued men and women—the prevailing characteristics of an English crowd are melancholy and dejection—stretched spirally like a huge serpent, outside each separate door, awaiting the remote chance of returned seats. Hawkers had pursued them to the edge of the barrier, chaffing them and harassing them with a motley row of wares—gaudy painted flags and ribbon badges, highly coloured and totally unreliable programmes of the evening's performance, printed on coarse handkerchiefs, Japanese fans and cheap scent, photographs of the leading members of the League, postcard views of their homes and pets, sticks of chocolate, strips of gay-coloured tissue papers tied together with string and known to the initiated as "ticklers." It was a typical crowd except for its magnitude: street loafer, cab-runner, British workman, bank clerk and wide-eyed child who never stopped eating oranges, the suburban man of business with his family, the socialist reformer whose personal habits made his immediate neighbourhood unwholesome, the cynic who complained aloud of his own special wrongs and the evils of the Empire, the people's orator who swelled with importance and big words, and spoke with patronage of the King—all were there.The night was still young, and the policemen, still good-natured, bore with patience the ceaseless effort of the crowd to break down the barriers. Again and again they piloted such privileged beings as had tickets through the seething, jostling lines of massed humanity; no easy matter, in view of momentarily increasing numbers. Good-natured still, they bore the banter and abuse of the great army of the ticketless as the crowd swayed to and fro with love of excitement, that strange passion for "seeing things"—from however uncomfortable a position—which stirs most human breasts."London may have its ten men or its million on the brink of absolute starvation, but while the half-penny papers exist, it can count upon a given number of spectators wasting hour after hour of idleness outside any public building where an important function is in progress," said Lady Wereminster, arriving early.Inside the hall itself, the brilliant gas-jets lit a brilliant throng.The gallery was packed so closely as to suggest a probable need of the nursing sisters and ambulances outside—now and again a solitary figure in the background, man or woman, was lifted upon the shoulders of the person in front to catch a momentary glimpse of the hall below. But nearly everywhere, spaces accustomed to hold one as a rule held two on this occasion; in the body of the hall whole extra rows of stalls were added. The padded arm-chairs in the boxes had been taken out and cane seats substituted, and in the larger boxes so many as twenty or thirty people were assembled. Amongst these were some of the most notable and distinguished men in England. Statesmen, diplomats, men who had helped to uphold or save their country, bishops, admirals, generals, explorers, war-correspondents, critics, leaders of society and commerce. Many women were in evening dress; some wore jewels. Lady Wereminster was holding a reception afterwards to meet the chief speakers of the Tariff Reform League.Almost every opera-glass was focussed upon the central platform where the Executive Committee sat with their friends, eight rows of them all told, each member of whom was notable in his own line, and could be recognized by the man in the street, even without the aid of the printed programme. The entrance of many more immediately prominent than others had been cheered, but, except when the organ pealed out its jubilant marches or national songs, at intervals, during the assembling of the meeting, the tension was so great that hardly a sound or movement broke it.Evelyn, leaning forward in her box, with quickened breath and leaping pulses, wondered if, with the exception of the four great functions of the century, a more impressive sight had ever been seen in England. For like the Jubilee and Coronation and the passing of the quiet dead, this was essentially a "one man's show."Unmoved, and with absolute composure, the veteran leader made his triumphal entry in the midst of men and women who had for once lost all their national calm, whose senses were wrought up to the highest pitch of almost frenzied welcome, whose enthusiasm echoed in cheers so loud that the great building seemed to rock in sympathy. The storm of feeling swept alike from stall to gallery in a wild rush of gesticulation and movement, so that in every part of the house there was a confused blur of white waving arms, of fluttering handkerchiefs and lace scarves, of flags and banners floating triumphantly in welcome. There is still a heartier ring in British cheers than in those of any other nation, although they come but seldom.The moment was over, men and women sat back in their places, physically spent, and a gasp of relief came simultaneously from the hall. Much the same note broke from the men who reached the summit of Dargai, with ranks thinned and broken by the enemy's rolling stones and concentrated fire; one hears such a sound sometimes from a woman who looks upon her child for the first time. Then the audience began to settle down to its practical work of the night.There was a mighty rustling of papers while the agenda was examined by some twenty thousand persons at the same moment.The chairman's opening speech was brief. He left them, he said, to the care of the man who had their interests at heart; a man whose aim was to keep British factories in England, to give to her sons of the Colonies, who had so lately fought and bled for her in South Africa, a preference in trade above that offered to foreign nations whose secret ambition was to lower our flag and dim our glory. He called upon "the man of the evening" to speak; cheers followed. A moment later "the man of the evening" was upon his feet.His first words justified the presence of the great audience. One of his hearers heard them with sickening dread. One by one, straight and to the point, the telling phrases fell, delivered in a quiet voice that carried even to the gallery, as fiery comments from that quarter testified. As an Imperialist, Evelyn rejoiced; the speech was historic, it would live: but as a woman, her heart fell, aware, as only the sensitive are aware, of every point the great leader made and how he made it.What remote chance had Farquharson of making his mark to-night? The ground was being cut under his feet. How hard to follow on an expert speech like this, which seemed to say all that could be said, which dealt sharply and subtly with every argument against Protection in a voice that became ever the gentler and more penetrating after the characteristic pause which, to one versed in the ways of public speakers, invariably heralded some especially telling or sarcastic phrase.Farquharson was to second an important resolution which followed the great Fiscal Reformer's speech, a resolution which Beadon was to propose. The Leader of the Opposition had pleaded influenza as an excuse for dealing with the subject very tersely, and leaving its actual explanation to a man who, should he win his political spurs to-night, would be his colleague in the House. He was giving Farquharson his chance in every sense of the word for Evelyn's sake.And now the long-looked-for moment had come, and she trembled. That critical crowd! So eager to thrust at the one weak point in the armour even of its own knights. How would Farquharson face it? He had told her that he did not excel especially in public speaking; what if he failed? And why—why did it matter so to her of all people?Beadon could always be relied upon to amuse his audience. He did not attempt to meet his leader on his own ground; the aim of his brief speech seemed to be merely to lighten the tension which succeeded the conclusion of the former speech, given in words of solemn warning, rendered the more intense in view of the speaker's having appeared so little in public of late years.As the Leader of the Opposition took his seat a pleasurable flutter of anticipation moved the audience. Like women at a bargain sale, they eagerly watched the advent of the latest novelty. Hare, well to the fore amongst the critics, raised his field-glasses towards the platform. In the arena there was a little hum of expectation. Even the reporters below the platform laid their fountain pens and pencils down to stare up half in curiosity, half in interest, wondering what signs of nervousness the administrator of a place which had never been heard of until ten years ago would show as he rose to confront the largest concourse of people he had addressed, amidst the perfunctory applause of a few friends.But there were no signs of nervousness to detect in Farquharson's assured step as he moved forward or in the glance he flashed over the hall. He had himself in hand from the first. So much Evelyn could see. Not a movement, not a tremor betrayed his emotion, yet the emotion was there, she knew. She knew that his heart beat to it; that, as before the eyes of a drowning man, a vision of past and present opened before him as he looked down upon the audience.Evelyn caught her breath. Only once before had this wave of absolute momentary unconsciousness swept over her, leaving behind a definite physical sensation as though every drop of blood had ebbed from her body and the little torch of life was flickering out. All was dark. For the moment she heard nothing and saw nothing and could do nothing but pray. All her remaining will seemed concentrated on one point, a frantic appeal to God that this man, to whom it meant so much, and who had no near kith or kin at hand to ask for him, should do his best, that the crisis should prove no crisis at all, but triumph.The wave of faintness passed; presently, out of a tangled confusion of sound she distinguished the notes of a voice familiar and yet strange, a voice whose magnetism seemed to have drawn every soul in the hall to one central spot on the platform. Her tired brain righted itself by sheer strength of will. She meant to notice every detail; next morning he would expect her to know just what portions of his speech had told, how the crowd had taken this and that dubious point. She called up every faculty of criticism and judgment in view of his demand, weighing and balancing, like an opponent, the new line Farquharson had taken, his methods, his choice of language, his rare actions—not with those of the average politician, not even with an acknowledged master of debate like Beadon, but with the orator of the evening, the man who, since Gladstone's death, had been known as the best speaker in the House of Commons.And as she listened her thoughts swept back to all that she had read of other statesmen—Pitt, Burke, Peel, Palmerston, Bright, Cobden, Disraeli and Gladstone—men whose names lived still in England, and would live for ever. For Farquharson beat his leader. His was the real gift of oratory, form combined with substance, a flow of eloquence and imagination kept in check by reason—the Heaven-sent inspiration which comes, perhaps, to half-a-dozen men within the century. His audience did not applaud—applause would have interrupted. They listened spell-bound, every thought given up to the quiet figure on the platform, who made use neither of sensational phrase nor dramatic gesture, but held them by sheer force of brain and personality, as he marshalled an array of facts against which there seemed to be no appeal."The mantle of Elijah..." said Lady Wereminster below her breath. But Evelyn did not answer. Through her opera-glasses she saw the tears of pride on Calvert's cheeks and Creagh's delighted expression—"Wasn't I right this time, you fellows?" she could almost hear him say. There was a tender smile on Hare's face as he turned in Evelyn's direction and nodded, bringing the palms of his hands together in noiseless applause at the same time. And she saw more still. A wonderful light had leapt in Farquharson's eyes as he bowed his acknowledgments; the light which, having once seen, no woman can mistake, as he looked straight at her and through her, as though laying his triumph at her feet.There was a voice in her ear."Ex-cel-lent," whispered Brand. "You've done very well, my dear. I'll make it worth your while." He stooped down and patted the disarranged lace of her fichu with the air of a proprietor. "I saw that look. There's not much I don't see, you know. But I'm an amenable husband, and won't interfere; indeed, if you go on playing your hand as well as you're playing it now, I shall have nothing to complain of. Whatever happens, you are to keep in with Farquharson—do you hear? Whatever happens, mind!"Lady Wereminster looked down ruefully at her glove. She had herself in hand again."Good gracious, look at that. Split right across, my dear, with all this clapping. How my maid will scold me! She ran about all over London for them, trying to match the colour of my gown, and in the end we had to order them from Paris. As for that young man, he's wonderful. The eighth wonder of the world—he must have escaped direct from Ephesus. I only hope his head won't be turned after this. Why, Evelyn, what's the matter?" She turned to a young King's messenger at her side. "Here, help Mr. Brand to get his wife out of the box; she's fainting.""Indeed, no; I've never fainted properly in all my life," said Evelyn. But she went outside obediently, summoning wit and courage to her aid. The air was cooler there, the platform hidden. She laughed and talked with the others while Brand waited on her assiduously, the image of a devoted husband, plying her in turn with smelling salts and scent, and Dora Beadon's ever-ready fan.But her thoughts were turbulent; the scruple was no scruple now, but visible danger. A thousand dreads and terrors shaped themselves before her, ghosts of the past, and newer and more terrible phantoms. How far could she trust herself—how far trust him? Then, too, she had looked into a man's heart that night—her husband's; even she, who forgave much, would never forget what she had seen. Cummings was right, she must go at once; escape for a time at least from the hideous knowledge of what her husband was, more clearly defined now than ever before. And meantime and afterwards she must go on living with him, must show herself in public beside him as his possession, must return with him that very night to West Kensington to share his bed and board. She must suffer all, must bear all, insults, wrongs bodily and mental, bracing will and spirit, nerving her frailty to meet such horrors as convention called upon her to endure.This was life, this was duty; this stern uncompromising Catholic ideal of marriage, the Sacrament. It was not true, it was not true! Those whom God had joined together were joined for all eternity, but what had God had to do with her own and many another such marriage?CHAPTER X"Faith is required of thee ... not understanding."—THOMAS À KEMPIS.Public praise does not always come to him who has legitimately earned it. A man gives his life to extend the commercial resources of his native town, and hears the devotion and sacrifice of some man of means who has just presented a handsome donation to the fund openly acclaimed at local meetings. By twelve o'clock next day the steps of No. 50 Carlton House Terrace were besieged by a crowd of district messengers and telegraph boys with an array of communications for Miss Beadon. Everybody believed her to be the one behind Farquharson's success of the previous evening, and Dora was the last woman in the world to deny a rumour so obviously to her advantage. Indeed, by the time she had mastered the contents of all her numerous congratulations, she had persuaded herself that the young man owed his appearance on the Albert Hall platform to her, and to her alone.And now she set to work seriously to weigh the pros and cons of the situation. Miss Beadon, remember, was no longer adébutante. She realized that her name had appeared sufficiently often in daily papers with the same prefix. There is a limit to public credulity—it is difficult to believe that one woman has refused every eligible suitor in the marriage market. But Miss Beadon had still to find that convenient person who would add to, instead of detracting from, her present position.Farquharson, who, virile and determined, had a fighting spirit and a great capacity for work, seemed to solve the problem. Dora realized that to gain her point she must lay siege to Farquharson before his position was established. She had heard her father and other ex-ministers talk openly of his talents; had heard the wildest predictions of infatuated women taken seriously even by men like Hare and Creagh.If she were ever to hold him, the chain must be forged soon. But how to deal with such a man? Dora had, of course, no doubt as to her personal charms, but Farquharson was a misogynist. He had made as many enemies as friends by his aloofness. So ordinary wiles and ruses would probably leave him cold, and she must summon stronger forces to her aid. Her father was naturally the trump-card in her hand; moral suasion or dissuasion, in politics, is often a synonym of social blackmail.Evelyn must be confided in, naturally,—one went to Evelyn for sympathy as one went to Paquin for frocks—both supplied "the superior article." Evelyn, all the same, had done her best to commandeer Farquharson—Dora supposed he pitied her. The Brands were so very badly off. There could be no question of rivalry, of course, where Evelyn was concerned; nor was Dora likely to be jealous. Even had Evelyn not been married and a Catholic, one is not jealous of a woman who has to go through the season with three frocks, and turn last winter's gowns, Miss Beadon mused. Evelyn had a tiresome knack of pandering to men's vanity, though—or why should they all combine to rave so idiotically about her?Only the generous appreciate generosity. And gratitude is an ephemeral bloom which flowers in too few gardens.The capture of Farquharson—from a different aspect—was the object of Brand's thoughts too. Eminently practical, he was the first to acknowledge what a mistake he had made the night before. If he knew Evelyn at all, she would avoid Farquharson for the future; religious women were like that—they always ran off at a tangent when you tried to pull them up. Somehow or other she must be conciliated; must be made to meet the man again on some plea impossible to withstand.Appeal to Evelyn's love of help and you won her at once. Unluckily, in the present instance Farquharson seemed rather in the way of conferring than of receiving favours. Other means must be used, as powerful, if less obvious.It was precisely at this crisis in his thoughts that, sauntering slowly in the direction of Hyde Park Corner, Brand came face to face with Dora Beadon.Farquharson's pressure of work, which had been rapidly increasing for the last few days, came to a climax on the morning after the Albert Hall meeting. Acquaintances with whose name he was scarcely familiar telegraphed congratulations; his friends thronged to his flat in relays. The Taornian Council cabled a long code message; the Stock Exchange and Wall Street felt the movement. His secretaries were kept so busily employed that he was forced to send his valet with a handful of notes to interview the representatives of the less important Press, who had been found upon his doorstep with the morning milk.But Farquharson was not openly exhilarated or depressed. He was too sure of himself to be easily surprised. Last night his pulses had beaten a trifle quicker, of course; conflict braced him. But it was the pride of moving men, not doubt of his ability to move them, which thrilled him. The Albert Hall meeting was a matter of course; a thing he had worked for, and planned. Christmas Day falls on the 25th of December; he was as certain of his success as that the festival would not be altered.Calvert, entering his room at the luncheon hour, found him cool and collected, absolutely unruffled by events which might legitimately have stirred him.So busy was he that it was not until comparatively late in the afternoon that he had time to think of Evelyn. Perhaps he took her rather for granted, too. His faith, after all, was based on surer reasons than the average man's trust; he had proved her loyalty and endurance more in a month than most men would in a lifetime. From her alone of his friends there was no morning greeting, but he was not disappointed. Even in small matters it was impossible to mistake her. He was to dine that evening at the Brands'; she would tell him then what she could scarcely say in a letter.The last few weeks had altered him more than he knew. Between him and Calvert there was now a sympathy and tenderness which had never existed in Taorna. Farquharson had been a machine then, a magnificent machine which could be relied upon to produce the best work—nothing more. Now he was human.Too human, probably, he thought suddenly, realizing in a flash how his work was tending to the moment when he would reach the Brands'. "Peace after Toyle" was what Evelyn brought, absolute rest of mind and body. A dangerous quality to come in contact with when it belonged to the wife of one's neighbour.For primitive man may be awakened in even the most hardened diplomatist. And Farquharson was not naturally hard. Love of victory, too, counts—the spirit which makes a man want to carry off the woman he loves in face of danger, and put her before him on his horse and look back laughing with bullets whizzing about them, and a precipice ahead, for sheer love of devilry and adventure and desire to possess the thing he wants.To Evelyn, counting the hours till dawn, and saddened when dawn came because it brought the parting of the ways, it seemed that life, so broad and beautiful only yesterday, had narrowed again into the old grey road without a turning. All that had made life so sweet lately must go now: the little plans, the little projects to help Farquharson, their daily meetings, ...; all that had brought colour into the monotonous road, had made it fragrant and glowing—how fragrant, how glowing she had never realized till now when she must make up her mind to stand aside for evermore; hardest of all, perhaps, possibly to watch another woman in her place.For she could no longer cheat herself with half-truths, and talk of vanity and imagination. Last night the very beating of her heart betrayed her. In the strange inconsequence of memory, her mind went back to five years before, when two Glasgow engineers, who were building a temporary bridge at Comrie, talked slightingly in her presence of "little Highland burns," when wise men of the neighbourhood told them that their bridge was built too low, and that they had not allowed for the rising of the floods. For those same little burns took counsel together, biding their time, waiting until a night when all was still, when they suddenly drew the forces of the mountain and swept down the hillside in a mighty torrent, gathering strength as they went, carrying all before them, undismayed, until at last they reached the temporary bridge and tore it from its moorings, to play with it in mid-stream as children play with a broken fragment of wood.So love, once recognized, sweeps all before it, honour, loyalty, faith, a torrent that nothing can withstand, nothing compel or alter but the will of God....
"Isolde. So stürben wir,Um ungetrennt—Tristan. Ewig einig—Isolde. Ohne End'—Tristan. Ohn' Erwachen—Isolde. Ohne Bangen—Tristan. NamenlosIn Leib' umfangen—Isolde. Ganz uns selbst gegeben,Der Liebe nur zu leben?"
"Isolde. So stürben wir,Um ungetrennt—Tristan. Ewig einig—Isolde. Ohne End'—Tristan. Ohn' Erwachen—Isolde. Ohne Bangen—Tristan. NamenlosIn Leib' umfangen—Isolde. Ganz uns selbst gegeben,Der Liebe nur zu leben?"
"Isolde. So stürben wir,
Um ungetrennt—
Um ungetrennt—
Um ungetrennt—
Tristan. Ewig einig—
Isolde. Ohne End'—
Isolde. Ohne End'—
Tristan. Ohn' Erwachen—
Isolde. Ohne Bangen—
Isolde. Ohne Bangen—
Tristan. Namenlos
In Leib' umfangen—Isolde. Ganz uns selbst gegeben,Der Liebe nur zu leben?"
In Leib' umfangen—
In Leib' umfangen—
Isolde. Ganz uns selbst gegeben,
Der Liebe nur zu leben?"
Der Liebe nur zu leben?"
The spell of the music, rising to that passionate climax of the love song in the second act where Night the Revealer points the way of human transport to culminate in the superb Song of Death, broke the earthly barriers of speculation, and two souls in the audience called to each other as before the judgment seat and became temporarily one. Such things have been since the world came out of chaos, and will be until it returns again to the void. There is but one mate for each man and woman in the world, and until they recognize the fact and learn with patience to await that note of absolute conviction which is the one infallible guide to happiness, marriages will fail as they fail now, and the Church will give its empty blessing to those ill-assorted pairs whom God for ever leaves unblessed.
"... Traut allein,Ewig heim....Du Isolde,Tristan ich,Nicht mehr Tristan,Nicht Isolde....Endloss ewigEin-bewusst:Heiss erglühter BrustHochste Leibes-Lust!"
"... Traut allein,Ewig heim....
"... Traut allein,
Ewig heim....
Du Isolde,Tristan ich,Nicht mehr Tristan,Nicht Isolde....
Du Isolde,
Tristan ich,
Nicht mehr Tristan,
Nicht Isolde....
Endloss ewigEin-bewusst:Heiss erglühter BrustHochste Leibes-Lust!"
Endloss ewig
Ein-bewusst:
Heiss erglühter Brust
Hochste Leibes-Lust!"
"I always wish that the music ofPeer Gyntcould have been written by Wagner," said Evelyn. "Think what he would have made of Anitas' last words: and the magic of the Troll Kingdom, and the great scene, as eerie in its way as the Brocken scene inFaust—don't you really know it? Towards the end of the play, just before he meets the Button-Moulder, Peer Gynt, the failure, is standing alone on the moor with charred trees and desolation all about him. Mist has risen, and all the world is full of little voices. Tiny thread balls sweep before him—they are the thoughts he should have followed. Dewdrops fall—his unshed tears; withered leaves drift to and fro in his path and dazzle him—watchwords he should have spoken; broken straws lie at his feet—an epitome of his life. It's all so like one's own life, void and valueless. And yet things started well enough. The very trees flowered, the dewdrops were like gold in the sunshine, and one heard pleasant voices in the woods, as a child."
"I've been thinking of my childhood too to-night," said Farquharson. "My love for Glune has been with me through everything. Out in Taorna, that night I was waiting in the Place of Sepulchres, I had a dream—a vision, if you like to call it so—and Glune stood before me, as brave, as broken, as courageous as of old. I could see the gorse in bloom and the peewits circling round and round, and Dan waiting patiently as he always waited.... I shall never forget the day that dog died mercifully, it was in my arms. The man who made this music must have been through heaven and hell too in his day. Glune has been through both, and so have most of us Farquharsons."
"I sent my soul through the Invisible,Some letters of that after-life to spell;And by and by my soul return'd to meAnd answer'd, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell,'"
"I sent my soul through the Invisible,Some letters of that after-life to spell;And by and by my soul return'd to meAnd answer'd, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell,'"
"I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letters of that after-life to spell;
Some letters of that after-life to spell;
And by and by my soul return'd to me
And answer'd, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell,'"
And answer'd, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell,'"
Evelyn quoted below her breath.
"Oh, aren't those lovely words?" broke in Dora Beadon, impatient at having been left so long to the companionship of Calvert and her father. "Rossetti's, aren't they? Oh, Omar Khayyám, is it? Well, he's much the same. One of myattachés, a student at the Academy, promised to set them to music for me."
"Miss Beadon is a great devotee of music," said Brand gravely; "she has a pianola and three gramophones."
Evelyn laughed.
"Dora dislikes musical people as much as I do. We spread the gramophone story to frighten them away, don't we, Dora?"
"I shouldn't mind them so much if they were only clean," said Miss Beadon. "Or if they wore better clothes! There's always a ready-made thirty-shilling-the-suit look about them, don't you think, Mr. Farquharson? By the way, Evelyn, you mustn't annex Mr. Farquharson any longer; I really insist upon his coming over here for the last act."
Calvert's eyes and Brand's met for once in the intimacy of mutual amusement. Dora Beadon was laying her snares a trifle flagrantly.
Well, Richard might do worse, Calvert thought. With so uncompromising a face and figure Miss Beadon should certainly be a docile wife, and she had money and position. Calvert had seen many brilliant matches fail, two stars outshining one another and falling into oblivion. He looked with awakened interest at the girl; the shadow of the box was kind to her, and her pleasure at having drawn Farquharson from Evelyn had given her for once an almost intelligent expression. He smiled benignly and drew Evelyn's attention to the pair, with a genial little nod of approval.
It was only at parting that Farquharson got an opportunity of speaking again to Mrs. Brand.
Then—"I owe the Albert Hall Meeting to you?" he said, with meaning. "It's another debt. No, don't deny it; you help every one. What was said of Madame Recamier is true of you, 'Elle était pour ses amis la soeur de charité de lour peines, de leur frailtés, el même un peu de leur fautes.'"
CHAPTER VIII
"The Sacraments are seven—Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Order, Matrimony.... Each has its own particular office: all give grace; but besides ordinary graces, they are intended to bestow the special grace which may be required to meet particular wants."—BISHOP BAGSHAWE.
"A lady to see you, sir."
"Oh, bother!" Cummings took the card impatiently, and then gave a startled exclamation. "Tell her I'll see her in half-a-minute."
The sight of Evelyn's card revived old memories; he smiled, absently fingering it for a moment before entering the little sitting-room. It was years since he had seen her. He remembered her as an undisciplined child; a small person with ideals which were never realized, an odd mixture of dreams and contradictions. Knowing Brand and Brand's capabilities as he did, no one was more surprised than Cummings at the marriage.
Partly for love of the cause, partly to kill thought, he had done the work of ten in his district, until at last his health gave way completely. A stray bishop paying pastoral visits in the neighbourhood took him in hand, and summarily ordered him away at a moment's notice on a sea-voyage and six months' leave. Medical opinions at home were slightly alarming; on his arrival in London he was packed off to Brighton within twenty-four hours.
As he opened the door of the little sitting-room he thought at first that it was the old unchanged Evelyn of childhood who greeted him so warmly. But to read men's souls is part of the priestly office, and there was something in her air of enforced gaiety which made him look at her more closely.
"You dear!" she said, holding his hands in hers as if they were a source of strength. "Isn't this a nice surprise? Lord Creagh offered to drive me down, and I couldn't resist the chance of routing you out."
"You are just one of the few people I wanted to see," said Cummings. "One of my last remaining links with the past. I won't have another soul admitted while you're here. You'll let me smoke, won't you? I want to hear about everything and everybody. I'm going to have my say first, yours comes later. If you talk as much as you used, I shan't get a look in when once you've started."
She became more at ease as he spoke. He pulled an arm-chair up to the empty grate, and wedged a shiny black horse-hair cushion at her back.
"Now begin about home, please. Is my mother's complexion still like a Greuze? How absolutely lovely she was once! Some one told me that my father had sold his hunters and taken to driving out in a governess car behind a fat pony. Surely that isn't true—they've not lost money, have they?"
"He is very changed," said Evelyn, hesitating. "He has become a total abstainer. Don't look so aghast, Jack; I believe in a way it suits him. A year ago he had a stroke which shook his nerves a good deal, and your mother is a chronic invalid, you know. She was thrown from the box-seat of a coach at the four-in-hand meet three years ago. We think some sort of vertigo must have seized her."
She looked pityingly at the bent form of the man beside her.
"We can't always be young, dear Jack," she said, with her eyes full of pain. "I always think the most obvious compensation of old age is its inability to feel, as we younger people do. The blows which fall on old people scarcely seem to shake their serenity. But they shatter us. Oh yes, it must be nice to be old. Your parents are marvellous considering all they have gone through. And, you see, you were their life, their all, and they won't let themselves be happy in your peace. Oh, my dear boy, don't look like that; things will come right in time—at least that's what I'm always telling other people," she added, faltering a little.
Cummings walked up and down the room for a moment or two before answering.
"Pone, Domini, custodian ori meo....Yes, we say those things to others, but they don't always convince us. There are times when horrible spiritual dryness grips you, and you grope for days and weeks in absolute darkness, knowing that you yourself have raised the veil between you and the light."
"Sacrifice and death—somebody said those were the only terms on which the God of life has made life to exist," said Evelyn softly. "The French talk of the soul's secret garden as though it were a place of promise and perfume. I always think one's secret garden is Gethsemane. And sweat broke out even on Christ's brow in Gethsemane, you know. 'All bound together with one chain of darkness, and to themselves more grievous than the darkness.'"
"But the saints had a very great light," said Cummings. He shook his head back with a characteristic little gesture of decision. "Do you know what it is, Evelyn, suddenly, for no reason, when you are saying the same prayers in the same way, kneeling on the same step, practising the same austerities, whatever they may be, neither more nor less, to have your hardness break down and your heart like a little child's again? That has come before; it will, it must, come again."
Evelyn sighed wearily.
"It seems to me that sometimes one believes with one's heart and sometimes with one's head. I suppose the best of all is when the two work together. One can plant flowers in other people's gardens even when they won't flourish in one's own back yard. It's the same principle as telling a rosary. After you've hammered out half-a-dozen Pater and a hundred or so Aves, they begin to take some meaning, don't they? 'Vain repetitions' have their comfort after all. I heard such a nice story the other day about two dear Evangelical old ladies. At seventy-five and eighty, foreseeing the near approach of death, they began to take lessons on the harp, because they thought the knowledge could be turned to account later on in Paradise.
"Oh, delicious!" said Cummings. He pulled the blind up, so that the light fell more fully on Evelyn's face. "I've finished whining. Now tell me how the world has been treating you for the last few years."
Evelyn moved away restlessly to the window.
"What a nasty mean trick to let in that glare. You used to tease me as a child," she said from the back of the room. "What made you take these stuffy rooms, Jack? They're very ugly and uncomfortable."
"I didn't anticipate the visits of my female friends," said Cummings. "Come here, Evelyn; be a good girl and—you know the rest. No, I'm not chaffing now—you're bothered, aren't you?"
"I rather wish I hadn't come, Grand Inquisitor," said Evelyn. "Well, put down those glasses then; they worry me." She came and stood behind his chair. "Things are so horribly mixed up, Jack. One thinks perhaps it's—dangerous to go to a special place and see a special person—and then some one who has the right compels one to. Do you think what St. Philip Neri said about the way of escape was true?"
"Ungrammatical—but fairly concise for a woman. By the bye, I always gave St. Paul the credit of the remark you quote," said Cummings, his eyes twinkling.
"I wasn't thinking of that obvious text," said Evelyn triumphantly. "Capecelatro says what I mean—'Paradise was not made for cowards.' St. Philip always told one to face foes visible and invisible, as you know. But"—she bowed her head—"there was one particular temptation he told us to fly from the moment we recognized even the barest shadow of possibility of its coming near us."
There was a little pause.
"Yes?"
"Oh, I can look you in the face," said Evelyn hurriedly, coming forward. "It's not quite a temptation, Jack. A shadow, rather, that I'm flung against."
"But a substantial shadow."
"I'm shut up in the room with it," said Evelyn. "I believe I'm exaggerating. The whole thing may just be a senseless scruple, or vanity, and yet——"
"A cloud no bigger than a man's hand on the horizon," said Cummings softly.
Evelyn sat down.
"I suppose I'd better tell you all about it. I believe I meant to from the first. And yet there's nothing really to tell. You remember when I was a child I always wanted to be in everything—at the head of it, as a rule. Well, I honestly have been able to help one or two people since—it's the old childish vanity again, perhaps. There's one special person I've met often, and been a little—only a very little—useful to; everything has combined to bring us together, interest, ambition, sympathy. You see, the man doesn't trust women, but he trusts me—vanity again, I suppose you'll say. Sometimes I make excuses; I say not at home, and then he goes away." She stopped for a moment. "Then a note comes from his great friend, asking some little favour, saying that only I can do for him the special thing that is just wanted at the moment, and so it all begins again. The man's a hard man naturally, and I want to soften him. He's more gentle than he was, and kinder. He doesn't believe in anything; that's another point. I wish he could meet you, or some one like you who has fought battles and found faith. I can't talk about those things—I never have; I don't think born Catholics often do; we're lazier, perhaps, than converts. But he guesses what it all means to me, I fancy."
Cummings waited.
"I feel like a rat in a cage sometimes," said Evelyn passionately. "I gnaw a bar of my cage and make a passage, and then I'm put into another cage with stronger bars and told to stay there."
"Come to the light," said Cummings. "Yes, I thought so. You're overwrought and overdone. Well, I say to you as I should say to any other woman, 'Go away.' Remember the accommodation muscles of one's soul need rest just like those of one's eyes. Their focus gets strained too. And there's another point." He hesitated for a moment. This was hard to say under the circumstances, knowing Brand as he did. "Something about marriage. Remember that marriage garments have to be fitted like any others; they don't always suit at the first trial or the last; but, unlike other clothes, you may neither sell them nor give them away."
He turned away. His window opened on to a narrow side-street; a hawker selling decayed vegetables and flowers was calling his wares a few doors away. Children, playing hop-scotch on the pavement below, wrangled and screamed over the game. From the Western Road came the jar and clatter of motor omnibuses. Everything was noisy and turbulent.
"So I'm to go away," Evelyn said at last, blankly, drawing a deep breath. "That's your decision. Well, I suppose you're right. The real country must be very sweet now. Late the other night, coming back from Weybridge, we stopped by the bridge to hear the nightingales in the woods, just about midnight. I know a tiny cottage where I can go quite by myself and be rural. There's a farm near which is kept by the kindest, fattest woman I've ever seen—just like a very amiable porpoise. She has cows and poultry, and once she let me try to milk a cow. It took me a quarter of an hour even to get the bottom of the pail damp. Suppose I go there later, Jack? There's a big meeting at the Albert Hall next week, which I've absolutely promised to do some work for, and go to."
"Take your cottage, by all means, but please have mercy on the cows," said Cummings. "You'll get off as soon as you can, won't you?"
They stood for a moment looking at each other—friends whose paths might probably never cross again. Then Evelyn went out with bent head. Cummings watched her go. When she was out of sight he made the sign of the cross and sat down wearily in his chair.
CHAPTER IX
"A woman wishes and believes; a man wills and achieves. The wish of the woman ripens into a faith; the will of the man hardens into a fact."—J. S. BLACKIE.
From floor to ceiling the Albert Hall, which normally contains ten thousand people, was packed to overflowing.
Tickets for the great Tariff Reform Demonstration had been begged, borrowed and bargained for; it was said that a newly made peer had given a hundred guineas for a box. Orderly files of subdued men and women—the prevailing characteristics of an English crowd are melancholy and dejection—stretched spirally like a huge serpent, outside each separate door, awaiting the remote chance of returned seats. Hawkers had pursued them to the edge of the barrier, chaffing them and harassing them with a motley row of wares—gaudy painted flags and ribbon badges, highly coloured and totally unreliable programmes of the evening's performance, printed on coarse handkerchiefs, Japanese fans and cheap scent, photographs of the leading members of the League, postcard views of their homes and pets, sticks of chocolate, strips of gay-coloured tissue papers tied together with string and known to the initiated as "ticklers." It was a typical crowd except for its magnitude: street loafer, cab-runner, British workman, bank clerk and wide-eyed child who never stopped eating oranges, the suburban man of business with his family, the socialist reformer whose personal habits made his immediate neighbourhood unwholesome, the cynic who complained aloud of his own special wrongs and the evils of the Empire, the people's orator who swelled with importance and big words, and spoke with patronage of the King—all were there.
The night was still young, and the policemen, still good-natured, bore with patience the ceaseless effort of the crowd to break down the barriers. Again and again they piloted such privileged beings as had tickets through the seething, jostling lines of massed humanity; no easy matter, in view of momentarily increasing numbers. Good-natured still, they bore the banter and abuse of the great army of the ticketless as the crowd swayed to and fro with love of excitement, that strange passion for "seeing things"—from however uncomfortable a position—which stirs most human breasts.
"London may have its ten men or its million on the brink of absolute starvation, but while the half-penny papers exist, it can count upon a given number of spectators wasting hour after hour of idleness outside any public building where an important function is in progress," said Lady Wereminster, arriving early.
Inside the hall itself, the brilliant gas-jets lit a brilliant throng.
The gallery was packed so closely as to suggest a probable need of the nursing sisters and ambulances outside—now and again a solitary figure in the background, man or woman, was lifted upon the shoulders of the person in front to catch a momentary glimpse of the hall below. But nearly everywhere, spaces accustomed to hold one as a rule held two on this occasion; in the body of the hall whole extra rows of stalls were added. The padded arm-chairs in the boxes had been taken out and cane seats substituted, and in the larger boxes so many as twenty or thirty people were assembled. Amongst these were some of the most notable and distinguished men in England. Statesmen, diplomats, men who had helped to uphold or save their country, bishops, admirals, generals, explorers, war-correspondents, critics, leaders of society and commerce. Many women were in evening dress; some wore jewels. Lady Wereminster was holding a reception afterwards to meet the chief speakers of the Tariff Reform League.
Almost every opera-glass was focussed upon the central platform where the Executive Committee sat with their friends, eight rows of them all told, each member of whom was notable in his own line, and could be recognized by the man in the street, even without the aid of the printed programme. The entrance of many more immediately prominent than others had been cheered, but, except when the organ pealed out its jubilant marches or national songs, at intervals, during the assembling of the meeting, the tension was so great that hardly a sound or movement broke it.
Evelyn, leaning forward in her box, with quickened breath and leaping pulses, wondered if, with the exception of the four great functions of the century, a more impressive sight had ever been seen in England. For like the Jubilee and Coronation and the passing of the quiet dead, this was essentially a "one man's show."
Unmoved, and with absolute composure, the veteran leader made his triumphal entry in the midst of men and women who had for once lost all their national calm, whose senses were wrought up to the highest pitch of almost frenzied welcome, whose enthusiasm echoed in cheers so loud that the great building seemed to rock in sympathy. The storm of feeling swept alike from stall to gallery in a wild rush of gesticulation and movement, so that in every part of the house there was a confused blur of white waving arms, of fluttering handkerchiefs and lace scarves, of flags and banners floating triumphantly in welcome. There is still a heartier ring in British cheers than in those of any other nation, although they come but seldom.
The moment was over, men and women sat back in their places, physically spent, and a gasp of relief came simultaneously from the hall. Much the same note broke from the men who reached the summit of Dargai, with ranks thinned and broken by the enemy's rolling stones and concentrated fire; one hears such a sound sometimes from a woman who looks upon her child for the first time. Then the audience began to settle down to its practical work of the night.
There was a mighty rustling of papers while the agenda was examined by some twenty thousand persons at the same moment.
The chairman's opening speech was brief. He left them, he said, to the care of the man who had their interests at heart; a man whose aim was to keep British factories in England, to give to her sons of the Colonies, who had so lately fought and bled for her in South Africa, a preference in trade above that offered to foreign nations whose secret ambition was to lower our flag and dim our glory. He called upon "the man of the evening" to speak; cheers followed. A moment later "the man of the evening" was upon his feet.
His first words justified the presence of the great audience. One of his hearers heard them with sickening dread. One by one, straight and to the point, the telling phrases fell, delivered in a quiet voice that carried even to the gallery, as fiery comments from that quarter testified. As an Imperialist, Evelyn rejoiced; the speech was historic, it would live: but as a woman, her heart fell, aware, as only the sensitive are aware, of every point the great leader made and how he made it.
What remote chance had Farquharson of making his mark to-night? The ground was being cut under his feet. How hard to follow on an expert speech like this, which seemed to say all that could be said, which dealt sharply and subtly with every argument against Protection in a voice that became ever the gentler and more penetrating after the characteristic pause which, to one versed in the ways of public speakers, invariably heralded some especially telling or sarcastic phrase.
Farquharson was to second an important resolution which followed the great Fiscal Reformer's speech, a resolution which Beadon was to propose. The Leader of the Opposition had pleaded influenza as an excuse for dealing with the subject very tersely, and leaving its actual explanation to a man who, should he win his political spurs to-night, would be his colleague in the House. He was giving Farquharson his chance in every sense of the word for Evelyn's sake.
And now the long-looked-for moment had come, and she trembled. That critical crowd! So eager to thrust at the one weak point in the armour even of its own knights. How would Farquharson face it? He had told her that he did not excel especially in public speaking; what if he failed? And why—why did it matter so to her of all people?
Beadon could always be relied upon to amuse his audience. He did not attempt to meet his leader on his own ground; the aim of his brief speech seemed to be merely to lighten the tension which succeeded the conclusion of the former speech, given in words of solemn warning, rendered the more intense in view of the speaker's having appeared so little in public of late years.
As the Leader of the Opposition took his seat a pleasurable flutter of anticipation moved the audience. Like women at a bargain sale, they eagerly watched the advent of the latest novelty. Hare, well to the fore amongst the critics, raised his field-glasses towards the platform. In the arena there was a little hum of expectation. Even the reporters below the platform laid their fountain pens and pencils down to stare up half in curiosity, half in interest, wondering what signs of nervousness the administrator of a place which had never been heard of until ten years ago would show as he rose to confront the largest concourse of people he had addressed, amidst the perfunctory applause of a few friends.
But there were no signs of nervousness to detect in Farquharson's assured step as he moved forward or in the glance he flashed over the hall. He had himself in hand from the first. So much Evelyn could see. Not a movement, not a tremor betrayed his emotion, yet the emotion was there, she knew. She knew that his heart beat to it; that, as before the eyes of a drowning man, a vision of past and present opened before him as he looked down upon the audience.
Evelyn caught her breath. Only once before had this wave of absolute momentary unconsciousness swept over her, leaving behind a definite physical sensation as though every drop of blood had ebbed from her body and the little torch of life was flickering out. All was dark. For the moment she heard nothing and saw nothing and could do nothing but pray. All her remaining will seemed concentrated on one point, a frantic appeal to God that this man, to whom it meant so much, and who had no near kith or kin at hand to ask for him, should do his best, that the crisis should prove no crisis at all, but triumph.
The wave of faintness passed; presently, out of a tangled confusion of sound she distinguished the notes of a voice familiar and yet strange, a voice whose magnetism seemed to have drawn every soul in the hall to one central spot on the platform. Her tired brain righted itself by sheer strength of will. She meant to notice every detail; next morning he would expect her to know just what portions of his speech had told, how the crowd had taken this and that dubious point. She called up every faculty of criticism and judgment in view of his demand, weighing and balancing, like an opponent, the new line Farquharson had taken, his methods, his choice of language, his rare actions—not with those of the average politician, not even with an acknowledged master of debate like Beadon, but with the orator of the evening, the man who, since Gladstone's death, had been known as the best speaker in the House of Commons.
And as she listened her thoughts swept back to all that she had read of other statesmen—Pitt, Burke, Peel, Palmerston, Bright, Cobden, Disraeli and Gladstone—men whose names lived still in England, and would live for ever. For Farquharson beat his leader. His was the real gift of oratory, form combined with substance, a flow of eloquence and imagination kept in check by reason—the Heaven-sent inspiration which comes, perhaps, to half-a-dozen men within the century. His audience did not applaud—applause would have interrupted. They listened spell-bound, every thought given up to the quiet figure on the platform, who made use neither of sensational phrase nor dramatic gesture, but held them by sheer force of brain and personality, as he marshalled an array of facts against which there seemed to be no appeal.
"The mantle of Elijah..." said Lady Wereminster below her breath. But Evelyn did not answer. Through her opera-glasses she saw the tears of pride on Calvert's cheeks and Creagh's delighted expression—"Wasn't I right this time, you fellows?" she could almost hear him say. There was a tender smile on Hare's face as he turned in Evelyn's direction and nodded, bringing the palms of his hands together in noiseless applause at the same time. And she saw more still. A wonderful light had leapt in Farquharson's eyes as he bowed his acknowledgments; the light which, having once seen, no woman can mistake, as he looked straight at her and through her, as though laying his triumph at her feet.
There was a voice in her ear.
"Ex-cel-lent," whispered Brand. "You've done very well, my dear. I'll make it worth your while." He stooped down and patted the disarranged lace of her fichu with the air of a proprietor. "I saw that look. There's not much I don't see, you know. But I'm an amenable husband, and won't interfere; indeed, if you go on playing your hand as well as you're playing it now, I shall have nothing to complain of. Whatever happens, you are to keep in with Farquharson—do you hear? Whatever happens, mind!"
Lady Wereminster looked down ruefully at her glove. She had herself in hand again.
"Good gracious, look at that. Split right across, my dear, with all this clapping. How my maid will scold me! She ran about all over London for them, trying to match the colour of my gown, and in the end we had to order them from Paris. As for that young man, he's wonderful. The eighth wonder of the world—he must have escaped direct from Ephesus. I only hope his head won't be turned after this. Why, Evelyn, what's the matter?" She turned to a young King's messenger at her side. "Here, help Mr. Brand to get his wife out of the box; she's fainting."
"Indeed, no; I've never fainted properly in all my life," said Evelyn. But she went outside obediently, summoning wit and courage to her aid. The air was cooler there, the platform hidden. She laughed and talked with the others while Brand waited on her assiduously, the image of a devoted husband, plying her in turn with smelling salts and scent, and Dora Beadon's ever-ready fan.
But her thoughts were turbulent; the scruple was no scruple now, but visible danger. A thousand dreads and terrors shaped themselves before her, ghosts of the past, and newer and more terrible phantoms. How far could she trust herself—how far trust him? Then, too, she had looked into a man's heart that night—her husband's; even she, who forgave much, would never forget what she had seen. Cummings was right, she must go at once; escape for a time at least from the hideous knowledge of what her husband was, more clearly defined now than ever before. And meantime and afterwards she must go on living with him, must show herself in public beside him as his possession, must return with him that very night to West Kensington to share his bed and board. She must suffer all, must bear all, insults, wrongs bodily and mental, bracing will and spirit, nerving her frailty to meet such horrors as convention called upon her to endure.
This was life, this was duty; this stern uncompromising Catholic ideal of marriage, the Sacrament. It was not true, it was not true! Those whom God had joined together were joined for all eternity, but what had God had to do with her own and many another such marriage?
CHAPTER X
"Faith is required of thee ... not understanding."—THOMAS À KEMPIS.
Public praise does not always come to him who has legitimately earned it. A man gives his life to extend the commercial resources of his native town, and hears the devotion and sacrifice of some man of means who has just presented a handsome donation to the fund openly acclaimed at local meetings. By twelve o'clock next day the steps of No. 50 Carlton House Terrace were besieged by a crowd of district messengers and telegraph boys with an array of communications for Miss Beadon. Everybody believed her to be the one behind Farquharson's success of the previous evening, and Dora was the last woman in the world to deny a rumour so obviously to her advantage. Indeed, by the time she had mastered the contents of all her numerous congratulations, she had persuaded herself that the young man owed his appearance on the Albert Hall platform to her, and to her alone.
And now she set to work seriously to weigh the pros and cons of the situation. Miss Beadon, remember, was no longer adébutante. She realized that her name had appeared sufficiently often in daily papers with the same prefix. There is a limit to public credulity—it is difficult to believe that one woman has refused every eligible suitor in the marriage market. But Miss Beadon had still to find that convenient person who would add to, instead of detracting from, her present position.
Farquharson, who, virile and determined, had a fighting spirit and a great capacity for work, seemed to solve the problem. Dora realized that to gain her point she must lay siege to Farquharson before his position was established. She had heard her father and other ex-ministers talk openly of his talents; had heard the wildest predictions of infatuated women taken seriously even by men like Hare and Creagh.
If she were ever to hold him, the chain must be forged soon. But how to deal with such a man? Dora had, of course, no doubt as to her personal charms, but Farquharson was a misogynist. He had made as many enemies as friends by his aloofness. So ordinary wiles and ruses would probably leave him cold, and she must summon stronger forces to her aid. Her father was naturally the trump-card in her hand; moral suasion or dissuasion, in politics, is often a synonym of social blackmail.
Evelyn must be confided in, naturally,—one went to Evelyn for sympathy as one went to Paquin for frocks—both supplied "the superior article." Evelyn, all the same, had done her best to commandeer Farquharson—Dora supposed he pitied her. The Brands were so very badly off. There could be no question of rivalry, of course, where Evelyn was concerned; nor was Dora likely to be jealous. Even had Evelyn not been married and a Catholic, one is not jealous of a woman who has to go through the season with three frocks, and turn last winter's gowns, Miss Beadon mused. Evelyn had a tiresome knack of pandering to men's vanity, though—or why should they all combine to rave so idiotically about her?
Only the generous appreciate generosity. And gratitude is an ephemeral bloom which flowers in too few gardens.
The capture of Farquharson—from a different aspect—was the object of Brand's thoughts too. Eminently practical, he was the first to acknowledge what a mistake he had made the night before. If he knew Evelyn at all, she would avoid Farquharson for the future; religious women were like that—they always ran off at a tangent when you tried to pull them up. Somehow or other she must be conciliated; must be made to meet the man again on some plea impossible to withstand.
Appeal to Evelyn's love of help and you won her at once. Unluckily, in the present instance Farquharson seemed rather in the way of conferring than of receiving favours. Other means must be used, as powerful, if less obvious.
It was precisely at this crisis in his thoughts that, sauntering slowly in the direction of Hyde Park Corner, Brand came face to face with Dora Beadon.
Farquharson's pressure of work, which had been rapidly increasing for the last few days, came to a climax on the morning after the Albert Hall meeting. Acquaintances with whose name he was scarcely familiar telegraphed congratulations; his friends thronged to his flat in relays. The Taornian Council cabled a long code message; the Stock Exchange and Wall Street felt the movement. His secretaries were kept so busily employed that he was forced to send his valet with a handful of notes to interview the representatives of the less important Press, who had been found upon his doorstep with the morning milk.
But Farquharson was not openly exhilarated or depressed. He was too sure of himself to be easily surprised. Last night his pulses had beaten a trifle quicker, of course; conflict braced him. But it was the pride of moving men, not doubt of his ability to move them, which thrilled him. The Albert Hall meeting was a matter of course; a thing he had worked for, and planned. Christmas Day falls on the 25th of December; he was as certain of his success as that the festival would not be altered.
Calvert, entering his room at the luncheon hour, found him cool and collected, absolutely unruffled by events which might legitimately have stirred him.
So busy was he that it was not until comparatively late in the afternoon that he had time to think of Evelyn. Perhaps he took her rather for granted, too. His faith, after all, was based on surer reasons than the average man's trust; he had proved her loyalty and endurance more in a month than most men would in a lifetime. From her alone of his friends there was no morning greeting, but he was not disappointed. Even in small matters it was impossible to mistake her. He was to dine that evening at the Brands'; she would tell him then what she could scarcely say in a letter.
The last few weeks had altered him more than he knew. Between him and Calvert there was now a sympathy and tenderness which had never existed in Taorna. Farquharson had been a machine then, a magnificent machine which could be relied upon to produce the best work—nothing more. Now he was human.
Too human, probably, he thought suddenly, realizing in a flash how his work was tending to the moment when he would reach the Brands'. "Peace after Toyle" was what Evelyn brought, absolute rest of mind and body. A dangerous quality to come in contact with when it belonged to the wife of one's neighbour.
For primitive man may be awakened in even the most hardened diplomatist. And Farquharson was not naturally hard. Love of victory, too, counts—the spirit which makes a man want to carry off the woman he loves in face of danger, and put her before him on his horse and look back laughing with bullets whizzing about them, and a precipice ahead, for sheer love of devilry and adventure and desire to possess the thing he wants.
To Evelyn, counting the hours till dawn, and saddened when dawn came because it brought the parting of the ways, it seemed that life, so broad and beautiful only yesterday, had narrowed again into the old grey road without a turning. All that had made life so sweet lately must go now: the little plans, the little projects to help Farquharson, their daily meetings, ...; all that had brought colour into the monotonous road, had made it fragrant and glowing—how fragrant, how glowing she had never realized till now when she must make up her mind to stand aside for evermore; hardest of all, perhaps, possibly to watch another woman in her place.
For she could no longer cheat herself with half-truths, and talk of vanity and imagination. Last night the very beating of her heart betrayed her. In the strange inconsequence of memory, her mind went back to five years before, when two Glasgow engineers, who were building a temporary bridge at Comrie, talked slightingly in her presence of "little Highland burns," when wise men of the neighbourhood told them that their bridge was built too low, and that they had not allowed for the rising of the floods. For those same little burns took counsel together, biding their time, waiting until a night when all was still, when they suddenly drew the forces of the mountain and swept down the hillside in a mighty torrent, gathering strength as they went, carrying all before them, undismayed, until at last they reached the temporary bridge and tore it from its moorings, to play with it in mid-stream as children play with a broken fragment of wood.
So love, once recognized, sweeps all before it, honour, loyalty, faith, a torrent that nothing can withstand, nothing compel or alter but the will of God....