A little book lay open on her writing-table, a frequent companion. It had comforted her before; she wanted comfort now. She opened it at random, and her eyes fell on these words—"To be fully satisfied shall not be granted thee.... Be valiant in doing as well as suffering things repugnant to nature.... Do that which is against thy inclination and let alone that which thou art inclined to. That which is pleasing to others shall go forward; that thou would'st have shall not succeed. Others shall ask and shall succeed. Thou shalt ask and not obtain.""Others shall ask and shall succeed." That sounded like Farquharson. "Thou shalt ask and not obtain." Was that herself—an omen of the future?She took up her pen to write a note postponing Farquharson's visit that evening. For once she must run counter to her husband's interests; she was in a mood to welcome even the physical roughness with which he was wont to meet her failures to obey him. Just then he entered with a letter, a pencilled note obviously scrawled with great rapidity upon a visiting-card of Dora Beadon's, enclosed in an envelope."I met Miss Beadon just now in the street," Brand said. "She asked me to give you this. She said it was very important, and that she wanted a reply at once by wire."He watched her closely as she read the letter.It was short and to the point—"DEAREST EVELYN,"Will you help me? I have asked the one man in the world I want to meet to dine with us to-night, and he has declined on the score of going to you. Do not suggest putting him off—he will guess that I have asked you. But will you have me too? You have often told me that I ought to marry—well, I've met the one man in the world who could persuade me, and I owe it all to you."Evelyn, you must! I count on you."D.B.""She wants the answer now?" Evelyn repeated dazedly. She put her hand to her head. Calvert's little gesture on the opera night came back to her; a thousand trivial incidents which pointed the way to further possibilities of intimacy between Dora and Farquharson."Here's a telegraph form," said Brand. He pushed it towards her, tapping impatiently on the floor. "Well, what are you waiting for? I thought you were a woman of decision.""Miss Beadon wants to dine here to-night," said Evelyn slowly. The words were wrung from her. Was this the solution of the problem? It was so difficult to judge. She had not meant to see Farquharson again before she left town, but now——"You are to accept," said Brand, with his hand heavy on her shoulder. "To accept—do you hear?"He stood waiting as she wrote her answer, noticing the hesitating, illegible scrawl, that was so utterly unlike Evelyn's usual firm hand."Miss Beadon, 50 Carlton House Terrace, Shall expect you to-night at eight o'clock.—EVELYN.""Good!" he said jubilantly. He took up his hat. "I'll take it myself. Clever woman! We're getting thoroughly well in with the Beadons. Miss Dora's a nice girl, too. What a match she'd be for a man who's starting in his career. She'd get him to the top of the tree in half the time it would take any one else."He left the room whistling. Evelyn, alone, sat on idly at her table, her hands resting upon the book of telegraph forms. Well, she had had her day, a perfect one. No one could take that from her. But there was to-morrow to face, and all the to-morrows still to come.CHAPTER XI"Whether you be men or women you will never do anything in the world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind—next to honour."—J. L. ALLEN.Lady Wereminster put up her lorgnette and looked round Evelyn's cheerful little sitting-room at Bramley with intense dissatisfaction."Comfortable in its way, yes. But, my dear child, why on earth should you come to such a dull place in the height of the season? You must have had some reason for it. Illness, economy? You are not a woman of moods to do things purposelessly or in a temper. And to go away and leave no address too! I tell you every one's talking about it. The charm of the country indeed! The world won't swallow that. It only looks upon the country as a means of wearing a different set of smart clothes, that's all. And you yourself have always waited until August to go to the country until now."I wish you were not so reserved, Evelyn. You've made enemies, you know; women like you always do. You know they say that in a successful play an audience has to be taken into the author's confidence from the first act. Well, the world's like an audience, and wants to know one's secrets too. (It'll betray them at the first opportunity, but no matter.) It doesn't understand you. It calls itself Christian, but it sees Christian principles so seldom that when it comes across them it suspects their probity at once. When it meets a person who helps others for the sheer love of giving help, like you, it says, 'Hallo, there's something behind this; I must set to work at once and rout it out!' And on it switches its most powerful flashlight of envy and malice."Don't contradict me, my dear. When I was young I believed I knew better than any one else, and now I'm sure of it. If I hadn't learnt something of life by seventy-five, I should be a fool. You're quixotic, and quixotry is out of date. Now-a-days we only take trouble because we want to get on, to fill our pockets, or be advertised. Politics—art—we try to excel in these because it will make people talk of us. As for charity——! In nine cases out of ten charity is the refuge of the uncharitable—the means by which elderly spinsters and widows of no social importance foist themselves on the notice of a public which would never have heard of them under any other circumstances, and delude themselves in the belief that they are personages.""I wish you'd have some lunch or something," said Evelyn blankly; "you'd feel ever so much better then."Lady Wereminster chuckled."A polite way of stopping my tongue, eh? But what I've said is for your good, Evelyn, as unpleasant things always are in the view of the person who says them. Every one's discussing this sudden flight of yours, and the world can't talk about anything long without saying something scandalous. And we all miss you so! Creagh's depressed, Wereminster's so irritable that I can hardly face him at meal-times, and as for Dora Beadon, she's more odious than ever.""You dear old impostor, I've only been away a week!""A week, my dear—a day's enough to start a sensation in London, if it's properly spread. You see, try as you will, you can't escape being a personality. You're known, and you're watched. Must I speak plainer? Well, then—when it happens that the motor of a very notorious personage has been waiting outside your house day after day for six weeks or more, and the visits suddenly cease and you run away into the country, the world scents out a quarrel, and begins agitating itself as to the meaning of it all.""I care very little for the world's opinion," said Evelyn."No incense, please," said Lady Wereminster sharply. "Not care for the world—a good-looking woman like you! Stuff and nonsense! You're living in the twentieth century, not the sixteenth. People can't go and stand on pillars like St. Simeon Stylites, and be comparatively disregarded. The telephone has made that impossible. Why, if anybody did such a thing now, within half-an-hour he would have a row of Pressmen at his feet, expecting him to fall off.""But I don't want to sit on a pillar or do anything remarkable," said Evelyn. "I came here because I was tired out. I had a lot of work over that Albert Hall meeting, you know. As for Mr. Farquharson, the one or two things we did together are over now. One doesn't expect a future Prime Minister to go on calling on insignificant people like ourselves day after day.""Umph!" Lady Wereminster looked her up and down critically. "The man's not in Parliament yet, even. So you were tired out? And never let one of your friends know? Is the air supposed to be especially good here, by the bye?""It's the best in Sussex," said Evelyn promptly. "We are I don't know how many hundred feet above the sea. There's no known disease we can't cure in about ten minutes. Didn't you notice the russet-apple faces of the village children as you came?""All I can say is you don't do the air credit," said Lady Wereminster; "you're drawn and pale, and you've got deep lines under your eyes. And yourprotégé, by the way, has scarcely been heard in public since you left. If you don't come back and look after him, people will say the famous Albert Hall speech was his swan-song."Evelyn laughed outright."What utter nonsense! My dear lady, there's nothing that man can't do. If he's quiet now it's for a purpose. He means to show us we can't do without him and so force our hands.""Perhaps you're right," said Lady Wereminster slowly, proceeding once more to enfold herself in a voluminous motor veil. "By the way, you never asked me how I found out your hiding-place. Your husband gave me your address—in the very strictest confidence. I'm not sure he hasn't given it to other people too. I saw him standing in a corner last night at the Beadons' party, with Mr. Farquharson; the future Prime Minister wrote down something on his shirt-cuff as your husband left. It may have been an appointment, I don't know." She turned briskly. "Well, there's the motor. You won't change your mind and let me take you back? Good-bye, then, wilful woman."She was gone. And Evelyn, standing alone at the gate watching her out of sight, found her voice at last and called, "Come back, come back," too late. She even ran a few steps in the direction that the motor had taken before realizing the utter futility of her action.Only one's thoughts can keep pace with a forty horse-power car!Half-indignant, half-despairing, she repeated Lady Wereminster's words. So the world was talking, was it? Well, it had no respect of persons. She was blamed in good company. In days of old, a king's conduct was supposed to be beyond reproach; now-a-days even his Majesty's actions were occasionally called into question by the daily Press to whom he gave the liberty which they thus abused. Surely an insignificant person like herself could afford to let the world say what it would and bide her time. For sooner or later evil tongues bring evil on themselves; they carry their own corruption with them.The poison of asps killed Cleopatra in her day. And souls and reputations are alike easily slain. For herself it did not matter. But Farquharson had his foot on the ladder of success. He was in the thick of enemies; this, the outset of his campaign in England, was the critical period. He must not be checked now, whatever happened.Too late to repair it, she saw the mistake she had made. She had run away like a frightened school-girl—run away from thoughts and fears and memories which had only taken a stronger hold on her in the past week. A little forethought—a hint of enforced economy to Lady Wereminster, and she might have got some post as chaperon to a girl abroad, and let her flat. There was her husband to be reckoned with, of course, but with board and lodging paid for, she herself could have managed on very little money, and long experience had shown her that Brand well paid was Brand well satisfied.In solitude, in contemplation, the heart sounds the depths of its own bitterness. Solitude brings peace for the worker who has a task to fulfil which its special conditions make imperative, or for the mystic, already detached so far from earth that human longings can no longer reach him. But in the restless and passionate spirit, it breeds new restlessness and passion. Only the glare of the world can blot out certain dreams and visions, only the hum of Vanity Fair stifle the voice that calls in darkness.Bareheaded, her hair stirred by the light breeze, hardly conscious of where she was going, Evelyn walked on and on, looking neither to right nor left. Dusk deepened and found her still searching aimlessly for peace which had for ever escaped her. She had eaten nothing since morning, and now it was nearly nine o'clock. Physically spent and broken by the struggle, exhausted and fainting, she knew suddenly that she could not walk a step further. There was an opening in the little wood beyond which offered temporary shelter. She was making her way to it, blindly groping in the darkness, when from behind she saw two great lights sweep rapidly upon her, like an animal on its prey. She gave a startled cry. The car slowed down; the man who was driving it got down. It was Farquharson.How did he guess who it was? Trembling, she turned to meet him. He lit a match and held it in front of her, looking straight into her eyes as it burned out. He was pale, and his mouth was set in the determined lines she knew."So you thought you could escape me!" he said, laughing.It seemed to Evelyn afterwards that years passed in the moment he held her to him, stifling her fluttering cry with the torrent of his words."You ran away, did you? That was very cowardly, Eve. Didn't you know I should move heaven and earth to find you? As a matter of fact, no heroics were necessary; I asked Brand for your address last night and got it at once." The explanation was so typical! "I have been trying to get to you all day; I came here, in fact, two hours ago, but they didn't know at the cottage where you had gone, so since then I've been chasing you all over the county." He took her face in his hands; he could not see its expression, but he felt her quiver. "I've learnt a lot of things since I saw you last, Evelyn," he said, very gently. "You can't go on living with your husband, that's one thing. I can't go on living without you, that's another. Where are the matches?" He let go of her to light up again; even in that moment it struck her how unlike the things that happen in real life are to the scenes in books. His eyes were alight with triumph; there was no tragedy here, only joy. He asked no questions, he was sure of himself and sure of her, strong in the hope of victory."Career—did I hear you say something about my career? Careers don't depend upon conventional morality. Besides, it's only a question of shifting the scene. If England won't have anything to do with us, there's always Taorna, my own place with my own laws. Or if we want a bigger field—America. They let one have the courage of one's own opinions there."He stopped. His eyes looked past her, on into the world he had never seen where they could begin life together. The darkness hid his face or she would at once have wept and rejoiced at its look of half-boyish exaltation. He had had to wait and work and fight for things all his life; but they had come to him. Unconsciously from childhood he had waited and worked and fought for this—so surely it was his.Voiceless still, she swayed in his slackened clasp, and he bent down, wondering. His voice softened."Still nothing to say for yourself, Eve? Won't you even tell me that you're glad? Try to understand. It's you who are living a lie, not I. Real adultery is to live your life with the wrong man, as you are now. You're made for me, and I for you. The world shan't dare to throw a stone at you—I'll see to that. We'll win through everything, hands down. Love's the fulfilling of the law. Sinning against it is the one unpardonable crime. It's when a man does that, that he deserves the hell to which he's probably already sent the woman who loves him.""Wait," said Evelyn at last. "Let me think—I must think." She put out her hand to warn him back. She was face to face with naked facts; it had never been Farquharson's way to lie to those he trusted; he was not lying now. There would be no concealment in his actions now or ever, so far as she was concerned; he would take and keep her in view of the world, because he thought she was his by right of love. So strong, indeed, was he that he might even wrest a certain sympathy from the world for his courage and daring.His words had driven away her faintness; they were, after all, but the echo of those she had already stifled in her own heart. Weakened and unnerved by the day's fast, they sounded in her ear like a trumpet call. Here, beside him, away from husband and friends and priests and confessors, there swept before her a sudden glorious vision of they two together defying the world and yet trampling upon it. Were they strong enough to point the way, to sacrifice themselves openly and without shame that the great truth behind his words might reach mankind and help others, weaker than they, to see the exquisite sanctity of a tie that would be to them for ever sacred?But what of faith, what of religion? She might defy the world's judgment, there was still God's to confront. Hell would be to bring punishment on another; her own soul might go, but what if she plunged his into everlasting fires? Suddenly Cummings' words came back to her; the boy's words, not the priest's."You're not playing the game, Evelyn," he had said once, more gravely than occasion seemed to warrant, when she had just successfully evaded some trivial rule he had been at pains to teach her. "One must always play the game in life, however trivial it may seem.""One must always play the game in life, however trivial it may seem."Perhaps she said the words aloud; she never knew. He started."My dear, my dear," she said, "I can't!" She hid her head on his shoulder, not daring to face him. She heard him draw a deep breath, and stand tense and rigid. She drew back. "You don't want heroics, nor do I. I am not afraid of the world or you. You'd be good to me for ever, and the best of our friends would be friends still, whatever happened. As for you, you're too big a man for me to harm you here—your career, I mean. But that's not all. There's God and there's eternity. They frighten me, not for myself, but you.""Eve——!"She put out her hand again."Don't—don't dear, have some pity!" The anguish of her tone arrested him midway to her. He stopped short, a man who had received a mortal blow."No—never again. It will all be harder for you because you're a man and I'm a woman," she said, "but you've got to get on without me, and you will, you will! That's the beginning and the end of it. Oh, there's not a spark of all your generosity to me that I don't love and worship. And it will all be dreadful in the future. But it's just got to be.... And we must meet, too, ordinarily, in front of people and by ourselves, as if to-day had never come to us, as if we'd made a mark and crossed it from our lives. We shall do it, and get through—because we've got to, because we're strong, because we love each other."She heard the beating of his heart, she felt its pulses against her hand as he drew her to him for a moment in spite of what she had said, in voiceless pleading while they clung together, and she wondered, with a little smile, if death would be more bitter.Silence again. He understood he could not move her. Then darkness, full and complete.She heard him go from her, heavily; the car throbbed. Presently there was a flash of light as it whirled past. It was well, perhaps, that he did not see her look of dumb agony as she stood alone, shaking from head to foot, straining her ears to hear the last echo of the car, making herself ready to face the long walk back and the long life ahead.PART IIITHE BETRAYAL"Iniquity shall bring all the earth to a desert, and wickedness ... o'verthrow the thrones of the mighty."—Wisdom(Douay Version).CHAPTER I"As for them whose heart walketh after their scandals, I will lay their way upon their head, saith the Lord God."—ECCLESIASTICUS."Black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them." ... "Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."—MRS. HODGSON BURNETT."After all," said Miss Beadon solemnly, "there's nothing like a man's sympathy. Men are so much more helpful than women. With women, some outside element always seems to spoil the completeness of sympathy. Jealousy as a rule, of course. How much I've suffered from that no one will ever know.""So one would naturally imagine," said Brand gravely. "The gods have been unusually kind to you, Miss Beadon."Dora smiled consciously."Oh, I dare say I have as many disadvantages as other women really. Of course I've come in contact with a great many interesting men, that's in my favour; I always think experience broadens one's point of view. Most women are so extraordinarily petty. Now look at Evelyn, even. I used to think she was my best friend, but she hardly helps me now. Since that night I dined at your house, and you guessed how matters stood with Mr. Farquharson and me, and put things before me with such wonderful delicacy and tact, she has never invited me once, unless I deliberately asked her to do so. And he's such a busy man now—he has very little time to come here. Besides, of course it's a little awkward when every time a man dines with you the papers get hold of it. Now with Evelyn it's different. The public eye isn't always upon her as it is upon me.""No man worth calling a man would willingly compromise a woman he cared for," said Brand.He leant back in his chair and looked at Miss Beadon critically. Beadon had married beneath him, of course; all the world guessed as much, and Brand knew every detail of the story. Dora was pre-eminently her mother's daughter; she had fallen an easy prey to Brand's flattery. Little by little he had made himself indispensable to her for the last few weeks. She consulted him now about her engagements and her gowns. He had made her the means of paying off many an outlying score which had rankled for years. Little by little, he told himself, his luck was turning; he was regaining his old power and position. In time, if things went on as well as they were doing, he would again become a force to be reckoned with. If he could but obtain some permanent hold on Miss Beadon, the conquest of a great portion of the social world would be easy, and if he could but marry her to Farquharson——But Farquharson himself was a stumbling-block in the plan. He had got on, not slowly and surely as other men may, but in leaps and bounds. Lady Wereminster declared that he had signed a bond with Satan. Brand saw no way of pointing out how valuable an asset a charming and tactful wife would be; for that matter neither adjective applied to Dora. The two men seldom came in contact now; they had nothing in common, and Farquharson's reserve and courtesy were more baffling than open antagonism.Occupied with public affairs, and in much social request, it was difficult to think of Farquharson as having either time or inclination to play the part of a modern suitor—to woo the object of his affections with lunch at one restaurant and tea at another, and dinner at a third and supper at a fourth, after the modern mode. Indeed, so far as Miss Beadon was concerned, he scarcely seemed to recognize her existence. But for Brand, one doubted if even Dora could have construed his "good-mornings" and "good-nights" into the protestations of undying love.A clever and unscrupulous woman can usually get what she wants without help. But Dora was not clever. Her platitudes, her plainness, told against her. Things seemed at a deadlock. It is not much use to have written what you think is a successful comedy if all the leading characters refuse to play the parts you have assigned to them.As well attempt to influence the elements themselves as Farquharson. Unless Evelyn could be made to intervene. But Evelyn, once so tractable, was unmoved now by threats or pleading; nothing would induce her to meet Farquharson voluntarily.Ah, but what if she could be used unconsciously? Suddenly Brand saw light. What had he told Miss Beadon just now? "A man will never willingly compromise the woman he cares for." If Farquharson could be made to think that he had put Evelyn in a false position, he would take the readiest means of disproving the statement. And the announcement of a man's engagement or marriage to one woman is the best public contradiction of his interest in another. Once Evelyn's name was called into the question, Farquharson was the man to act quickly. Let Miss Beadon be but near at such a moment, and she would seem the easiest solution of the difficulty."I may be able to help you," Brand said after a pause. "It won't be easy—it may give me and those I love infinite pain. But friendship isn't worth much if one isn't willing to risk a great deal for it, and I am sure you are the last woman in the world to forget such a kindness."He spoke meaningly. Dora held out her hand. Her vanity was piqued, and as much of her heart as such a woman can give was involved. Generally, to set her heart on anything meant that it became hers very shortly. These unaccustomed barriers had completely unnerved her; she would have taken any means to secure Brand's help."You can count on me," she said, ready at that moment to promise him anything he asked. "There's nothing you can ask of me that I won't do for you in the future if you'll only help me now. I mean it; and I never break my word."Brand smiled."Oh, well, it won't be a very serious matter. Perhaps I shall ask you to do some little service for me later on, but I don't suppose it will tax your resources as wife of—the Prime Minister, shall we say?"They were walking in the direction of Knightsbridge. The clock at the Guards' Barracks struck the hour."Suppose you go and see Evelyn now? I see a way of helping you which must be put in train at once." He lifted his hat, and, crossing to Hyde Park Corner, hailed a hansom. "TheCrystaloffices, Fleet Street," he said."Mr. Brand,Mr. Brand, did you say? What on earth can the man want with me? Take him to the library, James, and say I'll come as soon as I can."Lady Wereminster, erect and stately, gave Henry Brand the mere tips of her fingers, and withered him with her most disconcerting stare. She knew that to meet an unwelcome guest in complete silence puts him at the most serious disadvantage. Her quick eye took in every detail of Brand's faultlessly arranged air of distress. "Good Heavens, the man looks like a mourner; even his tie-pin is in keeping. Has he come to borrow money, or what?" she wondered."Lady Wereminster, forgive me. May I sit down?"The voice was low and broken. Lady Wereminster raised her eyebrows, allowing but one word to escape from her tightly pursed lips."Certainly."Brand hesitated."I have come to consult you about a matter that is very near my heart, Lady Wereminster. A matter that concerns Evelyn's welfare. Otherwise I should never have dreamed of intruding upon you.""The time between half-past two and a quarter to three is usually spent in idleness," said Lady Wereminster grimly. "Go on, please.""I shall go straight to the point," said Brand. "I am in great trouble, I've heard rumours——" He stopped again, choked by emotion, while Lady Wereminster watched him with a look of stone. "A man can fight his own battles, good or ill scarcely matter where his character is concerned. But when the name of the woman one loves best——" He corrected himself hastily, seeing his hostess's momentary expression of surprise. "When one's wife's name is spoken with ever such slight levity, it's another matter." He paused, shielding his face with his hands, pent-house fashion, as though utterly overcome.Lady Wereminster looked rather pale."To what, pray, are you alluding?" she asked.Brand looked up desperately."Have you seen this week'sCrystal, Lady Wereminster? It came half-an-hour ago. I've kept it from Evelyn till now. You know those accursed problems that they print weekly—one's meant to read between the lines. The ghastly part of them is that they are veiled under so damnable and complete a cloak of anonymity.""Will you kindly oblige me by being more explicit?" asked Lady Wereminster, after a glacial pause.Brand turned, at bay, his eyes flashing. He was really playing his part excellently."There's something about Evelyn!—about Evelyn!—in the paper.""An unopened copy is on the table beside you," said Lady Wereminster. "Will you kindly read me the paragraph to which you refer?"Holding the table for support, Brand read on slowly, giving each word its full significance."'A woman who contemplates an eventual ménage à trois is wise not to marry an athletic husband.'"'Gratitude is a virtue, remember, though it does not always lead to virtue where politics are concerned.'"'He was lately seen in Sussex, where she had temporarily taken up her residence.'"'After all, more ways than one lead to the Divorce Court.'"There was a long pause."And you mean to tell me," Lady Wereminster began very slowly. Then she stopped, her voice was shaking.Brand bowed his head."Unmistakable. I heard a man laugh at it just now in the club. 'Farquharson and——' he said. Then he saw me."Lady Wereminster put out a warning hand."No names, please; it's not safe even here. Oh, if I were a man!" Her eyes blazed. "Couldn't one horsewhip the editor? or—no, that would make a scandal at once. That's where people like these have everything in their hands. Nothing is so easy to spread as a lie about a woman. One word of suspicion and you could blacken Una herself. This must be stopped—but how? What can we do?"For the first time in her life she was identifying herself with Brand, even consulting him on mutual terms."They are bound to go on meeting. And now at every turn there will be eyes to watch and lips to sneer. If I had my way, I'd have the people who spread lies like these stand naked in a public pillory. There's a jealous woman or women behind it, of course. Trace any scandal to its source, and you will find that the one man or woman from whom it originally emanated was the one who would benefit by its being spread. In a question of work, you will find it is the woman beaten in her own field by a younger woman, socially superior, who starts the scandal; in love, the vanquished rival. Scandal can't create itself; there's always at least one pair of lying lips to bring it into being.""What if the man were to—but then he never would——" Brand faltered.Lady Wereminster threw up her hands with a cry."You have it," she said; "there's only one way he can stop it. He must marry. People must think that she has been his confidante throughout—has known about it from the first. She's not the kind of woman to stand up against a stab in the dark like this. It would kill her!""But is Farquharson likely to marry? Is there any one with whom his name is associated?" said Brand doubtfully. "He never seemed to me a marrying man.""That's not the question," said Lady Wereminster decidedly. "The whole point is that he must save her. Good Heavens, that Evelyn should be the talk of any club!" She rang the bell violently. "Give me the paper. I shall go and see Mr. Farquharson myself at once, and put the matter straight before him. He owes everything to Evelyn, and he's brought this upon her. They say it's always the woman who goes to the wall in these matters. Well, she shan't in this case, if I have to take the man to the church myself. Good-bye, and thank you."She extended a hurried forefinger and waved him to the door. He bowed, well satisfied."Order the victoria at once, James; I'm in a hurry."Taking out her glasses, Lady Wereminster re-read the paragraph line by line."Oh, if I had but seen Evelyn lately! But meeting Miss Beadon when I ran in the other morning stopped my going for a week. 'Sussex'—and 'politics'!—Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn!"CHAPTER II"The cleverest of all devils is opportunity."—VIELAND."Evelyn, you must help me," said Miss Beadon angrily. "How can you say no, and be so horribly cruel? It's such a tiny favour to ask; it shan't cost you a penny, I promise, if you'll only come. I'll let the carriage pick you up." She was on the verge of tears.Evelyn, to whom tears came with difficulty, thought that they caused other women acute mental agony like her own.She held out her hand."Please don't cry, Dora. There's more in this than you know. I've got to think things out. Be quiet for a minute, dear."On the face of it it was a small thing Miss Beadon was asking, merely that Evelyn should make a point of accompanying her to the last reunion that night in Hare's rooms before he left town. Evelyn had already accepted the invitation tentatively, meaning only to go if she heard that Farquharson would not be present. At large parties they were able to avoid each other easily. They had never been much together in public. But at so small and intimate a gathering as this—Hare was expecting only ten or twelve people—they must infallibly be thrown together and meet as though things were on the old footing, before their bitter-sweet secret had drawn them near.But now Dora had come to demand Evelyn's help, and she was made to confront the very thought which she most dreaded. Dora wanted to marry Farquharson. Evelyn shut her eyes and tried to think what life would be under such changed conditions. If the idea was no longer new, it was none the less terrible. Spiritual forces may be called up to battle with many foes successfully, but there are times when spiritual forces fail, when foes from within, the very roots of our nature, take arms against us. It seemed to Evelyn at that moment that the civil war within her was sapping the very life in her body. She could have stood aside to watch Farquharson rise higher and higher, alone, unhampered, even although every step took him further from her, but how could she bear to see him live his life out with another woman, reaping the small domestic joys, gathering in time, perhaps, even the perfect fruit of the tree of life?"Thou shalt ask and not obtain." The words came back to her. This was, perhaps, what God demanded of her, the penalty for having come near sin. Daily crucifixion—not a mere seven hours agony, but one which would endure to her life's end.And yet the horrible selfishness of the point of view! What right had she to deny him such little gifts as he might secure from life, which is so rarely bountiful? His inward life, all its purposes and ambitions, would be hers, and in a career like his there must inevitably be dark moments when home comfort and joys, which he had never had, might brace him to meet his difficulties, and nerve him, by sheer force of reaction, for future battles.She looked at Dora critically. Perhaps they had all misjudged her. Her heart seemed to be set upon her object with absolute determination; and if she loved Farquharson enough, nothing else mattered. Love was what he needed—love near at hand, love wrapping him round. The love which "feels no burthen, gives all for all and is all in all, which watches and, sleeping, slumbers not, when weary is not tired.""You love Mr. Farquharson—you want me to understand that you really love him?" she said at last. "Love is such a big thing, Dora, I often wonder if girls understand it. Modern men and women take more trouble to choose a housekeeper than they give to the choice of a life-long companion. Marriage is all give and take—and there's more in those words than you will ever realize until you've gone right through the marriage service, and come out at the other side. It's a thing of deadly gravity, marriage, not a mere shifting of responsibility, or the prospect of a better position, or the escape from home discomfort. You are one of the lucky people to whom none of these three incentives need appeal. Oh, Dora, there are so many unhappy marriages in this world, and I'm so tired of them! Do make up your mind that yours shall be a beautiful success, not just a brilliant one.""You always take things so seriously," Dora said tartly. "Of course I love him. Why should I want to marry him rather than any one else? It's not as if he were the only one. I'm only asking you to chaperon me for this one evening, not a lifetime, and it's nothing to make such a fuss about, after all. I never get an opportunity of saying a word to him without everybody seeing. Even servants may be reporters in disguise. It makes even me unlike myself; and I know it's only the fear of being seen and watched that keeps him from speaking to me. When he was not so important he used to talk to me quite a lot, and quite intimately. I remember one night at the Wereminsters' when he spoke of you—implied he liked you, but said you weren't his style, or something of the sort. For such a man that meant a lot. I'm not a woman to make confidences, as you know, so I appreciate reserve in others. I've come to you because you've seen everything from the first. You're married, you've got all you want; why can't you help me by giving me one or two of the opportunities nobody else in the whole world knows that I long for?"This sounded plausible enough. Dora's ways were not as Evelyn's, but that was perhaps a mere matter of temperament. And the glow of sacrifice burns with so white a flame that it illuminates even those trivial objects that it falls upon."I'll come," said Evelyn, sighing. "What time shall I be ready?""We ought to be there at half-past nine," said Dora. "Will you be with us at nine-fifteen? Then we can have a talk first. By the way, you'd better take a cab, Evelyn, after all—you do live such an awfully long way out.""Thanks. Then you don't think me an interfering old woman?" said Lady Wereminster."I think you are very kind," said Farquharson courteously. His tone was final. He rose and held out his hand, and Lady Wereminster, who was known amongst her circle of intimate friends as "The Social Tyrant," meekly acquiesced and left him."The man's extraordinarily reassuring," she told herself as she drove away. "He says very little. But he's a man of his word, and he'll do as I want. There's nothing he wouldn't do for Evelyn. I didn't dare even say I was sorry for him. And these are matters that the world would tell you you might not even pray about!" ...Farquharson, left mercifully alone, went back to the table in his study and sat down heavily. Blue Books, pamphlets, the records of his work lay all about him, in orderly piles; Farquharson was nothing if not scrupulously neat; his life lay there. Methodical, orderly, brilliant, complete—which adjective best described it?Yet in that moment it all seemed to him of little worth, little real value. After all, to have your name in men's mouths for a season, what is it? Success and enmity go hand in hand; the man or woman who finds the highest is beset by a thousand treacheries and betrayals. The little bank clerk, with his hundred and fifty pounds a year, setting out to his work in the morning unnoticed, and unenvied, and returning to the woman he loves at the close of office hours, has a happier lot than the most important statesman in the empire. His small cup is full to the brim with wholesome wine and water; that of the other is mixed with vinegar and gall.What had Farquharson's country done for him that he should work for it? It had given him a legacy of dishonour, it had torn his heritage from him. Why should he sow in blood, that the wastrel and incompetent should reap the fruit of his toil in ease? Why should he spend himself that England, who reared heroes only to spit upon them, should put him on that pedestal which had so often, of late years, turned to a pillory? And yet other men had braved and achieved so much more than he.His mind leapt back to Kabul; to the doings of a little Corps of Guides, Hamilton, Jenkyns, Kelly and the rest. Who remembered those deathless heroes now? Hamilton, the most intrepid, he who had charged over two thousand of the enemy, first with four men, and then with three, and last of all alone, had his memorial in stone at Dublin. But stone cannot speak or glow. Cold and immovable, it is the symbol of a nation's heart.Yet the call of one's country is strong. Now, at this moment, when he, the strong man, wavered between allegiance to her service and denial of her claims, weighing duty in the scale with happiness, her voice rose with the calm insistence which drives a man to do the thing he would not—to achieve what, humanly speaking, we should call impossible. Peace and ease might have been Farquharson's in Taorna—life with the woman he loved. He knew his power; he underrated Evelyn's. He faced again in that moment the temptation to take her away against her will, maybe, strong in the certainty that he could satisfy her, that they would find together something which the average man and woman could never attain.But the voice of the nation spoke, implacably. "I want you. You must stay. I shall bruise and break you. No matter, you are dust, you can return to the dust from which you came. You may ride in my car of progress day and night, neither sleeping nor resting so long as your wits are keen and your intellect alert. Once your eyes fail or your hand trembles, I shall have no further use for you. From nothing you came, to nothing you may then return. But my car will go on, and you will have driven it for a little time."Yes, he must stay. And if he stayed, he must make this sacrifice for Evelyn; he must give up his dearest dream. For, grimly as he faced life as a whole, he had always cherished the thought of marriage as his one hope of human salvation. What he had said to Evelyn was true; not mere words, but conviction. He believed that a man should only give himself in marriage to the one woman who could make an equal gift of mind, body and soul, the supreme trinity of surrender. Marriage was a sacrament—marriage as God instituted it, not the false union that convention recognized."And now the dream must go," he said aloud. His thoughts went back to the old phrase of the picture gallery when he had spoken to Dan. "Yes, dreams are only made to break, I suppose." He got up. "Since one woman is as much or as little to me as another, if I can't have Eve as my wife—I'll leave it to chance, and propose to the first unmarried woman, if she will let me, who speaks to me to-night at Hare's."
A little book lay open on her writing-table, a frequent companion. It had comforted her before; she wanted comfort now. She opened it at random, and her eyes fell on these words—
"To be fully satisfied shall not be granted thee.... Be valiant in doing as well as suffering things repugnant to nature.... Do that which is against thy inclination and let alone that which thou art inclined to. That which is pleasing to others shall go forward; that thou would'st have shall not succeed. Others shall ask and shall succeed. Thou shalt ask and not obtain."
"Others shall ask and shall succeed." That sounded like Farquharson. "Thou shalt ask and not obtain." Was that herself—an omen of the future?
She took up her pen to write a note postponing Farquharson's visit that evening. For once she must run counter to her husband's interests; she was in a mood to welcome even the physical roughness with which he was wont to meet her failures to obey him. Just then he entered with a letter, a pencilled note obviously scrawled with great rapidity upon a visiting-card of Dora Beadon's, enclosed in an envelope.
"I met Miss Beadon just now in the street," Brand said. "She asked me to give you this. She said it was very important, and that she wanted a reply at once by wire."
He watched her closely as she read the letter.
It was short and to the point—
"DEAREST EVELYN,
"Will you help me? I have asked the one man in the world I want to meet to dine with us to-night, and he has declined on the score of going to you. Do not suggest putting him off—he will guess that I have asked you. But will you have me too? You have often told me that I ought to marry—well, I've met the one man in the world who could persuade me, and I owe it all to you.
"Evelyn, you must! I count on you.
"D.B."
"She wants the answer now?" Evelyn repeated dazedly. She put her hand to her head. Calvert's little gesture on the opera night came back to her; a thousand trivial incidents which pointed the way to further possibilities of intimacy between Dora and Farquharson.
"Here's a telegraph form," said Brand. He pushed it towards her, tapping impatiently on the floor. "Well, what are you waiting for? I thought you were a woman of decision."
"Miss Beadon wants to dine here to-night," said Evelyn slowly. The words were wrung from her. Was this the solution of the problem? It was so difficult to judge. She had not meant to see Farquharson again before she left town, but now——
"You are to accept," said Brand, with his hand heavy on her shoulder. "To accept—do you hear?"
He stood waiting as she wrote her answer, noticing the hesitating, illegible scrawl, that was so utterly unlike Evelyn's usual firm hand.
"Miss Beadon, 50 Carlton House Terrace, Shall expect you to-night at eight o'clock.—EVELYN."
"Good!" he said jubilantly. He took up his hat. "I'll take it myself. Clever woman! We're getting thoroughly well in with the Beadons. Miss Dora's a nice girl, too. What a match she'd be for a man who's starting in his career. She'd get him to the top of the tree in half the time it would take any one else."
He left the room whistling. Evelyn, alone, sat on idly at her table, her hands resting upon the book of telegraph forms. Well, she had had her day, a perfect one. No one could take that from her. But there was to-morrow to face, and all the to-morrows still to come.
CHAPTER XI
"Whether you be men or women you will never do anything in the world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind—next to honour."—J. L. ALLEN.
Lady Wereminster put up her lorgnette and looked round Evelyn's cheerful little sitting-room at Bramley with intense dissatisfaction.
"Comfortable in its way, yes. But, my dear child, why on earth should you come to such a dull place in the height of the season? You must have had some reason for it. Illness, economy? You are not a woman of moods to do things purposelessly or in a temper. And to go away and leave no address too! I tell you every one's talking about it. The charm of the country indeed! The world won't swallow that. It only looks upon the country as a means of wearing a different set of smart clothes, that's all. And you yourself have always waited until August to go to the country until now.
"I wish you were not so reserved, Evelyn. You've made enemies, you know; women like you always do. You know they say that in a successful play an audience has to be taken into the author's confidence from the first act. Well, the world's like an audience, and wants to know one's secrets too. (It'll betray them at the first opportunity, but no matter.) It doesn't understand you. It calls itself Christian, but it sees Christian principles so seldom that when it comes across them it suspects their probity at once. When it meets a person who helps others for the sheer love of giving help, like you, it says, 'Hallo, there's something behind this; I must set to work at once and rout it out!' And on it switches its most powerful flashlight of envy and malice.
"Don't contradict me, my dear. When I was young I believed I knew better than any one else, and now I'm sure of it. If I hadn't learnt something of life by seventy-five, I should be a fool. You're quixotic, and quixotry is out of date. Now-a-days we only take trouble because we want to get on, to fill our pockets, or be advertised. Politics—art—we try to excel in these because it will make people talk of us. As for charity——! In nine cases out of ten charity is the refuge of the uncharitable—the means by which elderly spinsters and widows of no social importance foist themselves on the notice of a public which would never have heard of them under any other circumstances, and delude themselves in the belief that they are personages."
"I wish you'd have some lunch or something," said Evelyn blankly; "you'd feel ever so much better then."
Lady Wereminster chuckled.
"A polite way of stopping my tongue, eh? But what I've said is for your good, Evelyn, as unpleasant things always are in the view of the person who says them. Every one's discussing this sudden flight of yours, and the world can't talk about anything long without saying something scandalous. And we all miss you so! Creagh's depressed, Wereminster's so irritable that I can hardly face him at meal-times, and as for Dora Beadon, she's more odious than ever."
"You dear old impostor, I've only been away a week!"
"A week, my dear—a day's enough to start a sensation in London, if it's properly spread. You see, try as you will, you can't escape being a personality. You're known, and you're watched. Must I speak plainer? Well, then—when it happens that the motor of a very notorious personage has been waiting outside your house day after day for six weeks or more, and the visits suddenly cease and you run away into the country, the world scents out a quarrel, and begins agitating itself as to the meaning of it all."
"I care very little for the world's opinion," said Evelyn.
"No incense, please," said Lady Wereminster sharply. "Not care for the world—a good-looking woman like you! Stuff and nonsense! You're living in the twentieth century, not the sixteenth. People can't go and stand on pillars like St. Simeon Stylites, and be comparatively disregarded. The telephone has made that impossible. Why, if anybody did such a thing now, within half-an-hour he would have a row of Pressmen at his feet, expecting him to fall off."
"But I don't want to sit on a pillar or do anything remarkable," said Evelyn. "I came here because I was tired out. I had a lot of work over that Albert Hall meeting, you know. As for Mr. Farquharson, the one or two things we did together are over now. One doesn't expect a future Prime Minister to go on calling on insignificant people like ourselves day after day."
"Umph!" Lady Wereminster looked her up and down critically. "The man's not in Parliament yet, even. So you were tired out? And never let one of your friends know? Is the air supposed to be especially good here, by the bye?"
"It's the best in Sussex," said Evelyn promptly. "We are I don't know how many hundred feet above the sea. There's no known disease we can't cure in about ten minutes. Didn't you notice the russet-apple faces of the village children as you came?"
"All I can say is you don't do the air credit," said Lady Wereminster; "you're drawn and pale, and you've got deep lines under your eyes. And yourprotégé, by the way, has scarcely been heard in public since you left. If you don't come back and look after him, people will say the famous Albert Hall speech was his swan-song."
Evelyn laughed outright.
"What utter nonsense! My dear lady, there's nothing that man can't do. If he's quiet now it's for a purpose. He means to show us we can't do without him and so force our hands."
"Perhaps you're right," said Lady Wereminster slowly, proceeding once more to enfold herself in a voluminous motor veil. "By the way, you never asked me how I found out your hiding-place. Your husband gave me your address—in the very strictest confidence. I'm not sure he hasn't given it to other people too. I saw him standing in a corner last night at the Beadons' party, with Mr. Farquharson; the future Prime Minister wrote down something on his shirt-cuff as your husband left. It may have been an appointment, I don't know." She turned briskly. "Well, there's the motor. You won't change your mind and let me take you back? Good-bye, then, wilful woman."
She was gone. And Evelyn, standing alone at the gate watching her out of sight, found her voice at last and called, "Come back, come back," too late. She even ran a few steps in the direction that the motor had taken before realizing the utter futility of her action.
Only one's thoughts can keep pace with a forty horse-power car!
Half-indignant, half-despairing, she repeated Lady Wereminster's words. So the world was talking, was it? Well, it had no respect of persons. She was blamed in good company. In days of old, a king's conduct was supposed to be beyond reproach; now-a-days even his Majesty's actions were occasionally called into question by the daily Press to whom he gave the liberty which they thus abused. Surely an insignificant person like herself could afford to let the world say what it would and bide her time. For sooner or later evil tongues bring evil on themselves; they carry their own corruption with them.
The poison of asps killed Cleopatra in her day. And souls and reputations are alike easily slain. For herself it did not matter. But Farquharson had his foot on the ladder of success. He was in the thick of enemies; this, the outset of his campaign in England, was the critical period. He must not be checked now, whatever happened.
Too late to repair it, she saw the mistake she had made. She had run away like a frightened school-girl—run away from thoughts and fears and memories which had only taken a stronger hold on her in the past week. A little forethought—a hint of enforced economy to Lady Wereminster, and she might have got some post as chaperon to a girl abroad, and let her flat. There was her husband to be reckoned with, of course, but with board and lodging paid for, she herself could have managed on very little money, and long experience had shown her that Brand well paid was Brand well satisfied.
In solitude, in contemplation, the heart sounds the depths of its own bitterness. Solitude brings peace for the worker who has a task to fulfil which its special conditions make imperative, or for the mystic, already detached so far from earth that human longings can no longer reach him. But in the restless and passionate spirit, it breeds new restlessness and passion. Only the glare of the world can blot out certain dreams and visions, only the hum of Vanity Fair stifle the voice that calls in darkness.
Bareheaded, her hair stirred by the light breeze, hardly conscious of where she was going, Evelyn walked on and on, looking neither to right nor left. Dusk deepened and found her still searching aimlessly for peace which had for ever escaped her. She had eaten nothing since morning, and now it was nearly nine o'clock. Physically spent and broken by the struggle, exhausted and fainting, she knew suddenly that she could not walk a step further. There was an opening in the little wood beyond which offered temporary shelter. She was making her way to it, blindly groping in the darkness, when from behind she saw two great lights sweep rapidly upon her, like an animal on its prey. She gave a startled cry. The car slowed down; the man who was driving it got down. It was Farquharson.
How did he guess who it was? Trembling, she turned to meet him. He lit a match and held it in front of her, looking straight into her eyes as it burned out. He was pale, and his mouth was set in the determined lines she knew.
"So you thought you could escape me!" he said, laughing.
It seemed to Evelyn afterwards that years passed in the moment he held her to him, stifling her fluttering cry with the torrent of his words.
"You ran away, did you? That was very cowardly, Eve. Didn't you know I should move heaven and earth to find you? As a matter of fact, no heroics were necessary; I asked Brand for your address last night and got it at once." The explanation was so typical! "I have been trying to get to you all day; I came here, in fact, two hours ago, but they didn't know at the cottage where you had gone, so since then I've been chasing you all over the county." He took her face in his hands; he could not see its expression, but he felt her quiver. "I've learnt a lot of things since I saw you last, Evelyn," he said, very gently. "You can't go on living with your husband, that's one thing. I can't go on living without you, that's another. Where are the matches?" He let go of her to light up again; even in that moment it struck her how unlike the things that happen in real life are to the scenes in books. His eyes were alight with triumph; there was no tragedy here, only joy. He asked no questions, he was sure of himself and sure of her, strong in the hope of victory.
"Career—did I hear you say something about my career? Careers don't depend upon conventional morality. Besides, it's only a question of shifting the scene. If England won't have anything to do with us, there's always Taorna, my own place with my own laws. Or if we want a bigger field—America. They let one have the courage of one's own opinions there."
He stopped. His eyes looked past her, on into the world he had never seen where they could begin life together. The darkness hid his face or she would at once have wept and rejoiced at its look of half-boyish exaltation. He had had to wait and work and fight for things all his life; but they had come to him. Unconsciously from childhood he had waited and worked and fought for this—so surely it was his.
Voiceless still, she swayed in his slackened clasp, and he bent down, wondering. His voice softened.
"Still nothing to say for yourself, Eve? Won't you even tell me that you're glad? Try to understand. It's you who are living a lie, not I. Real adultery is to live your life with the wrong man, as you are now. You're made for me, and I for you. The world shan't dare to throw a stone at you—I'll see to that. We'll win through everything, hands down. Love's the fulfilling of the law. Sinning against it is the one unpardonable crime. It's when a man does that, that he deserves the hell to which he's probably already sent the woman who loves him."
"Wait," said Evelyn at last. "Let me think—I must think." She put out her hand to warn him back. She was face to face with naked facts; it had never been Farquharson's way to lie to those he trusted; he was not lying now. There would be no concealment in his actions now or ever, so far as she was concerned; he would take and keep her in view of the world, because he thought she was his by right of love. So strong, indeed, was he that he might even wrest a certain sympathy from the world for his courage and daring.
His words had driven away her faintness; they were, after all, but the echo of those she had already stifled in her own heart. Weakened and unnerved by the day's fast, they sounded in her ear like a trumpet call. Here, beside him, away from husband and friends and priests and confessors, there swept before her a sudden glorious vision of they two together defying the world and yet trampling upon it. Were they strong enough to point the way, to sacrifice themselves openly and without shame that the great truth behind his words might reach mankind and help others, weaker than they, to see the exquisite sanctity of a tie that would be to them for ever sacred?
But what of faith, what of religion? She might defy the world's judgment, there was still God's to confront. Hell would be to bring punishment on another; her own soul might go, but what if she plunged his into everlasting fires? Suddenly Cummings' words came back to her; the boy's words, not the priest's.
"You're not playing the game, Evelyn," he had said once, more gravely than occasion seemed to warrant, when she had just successfully evaded some trivial rule he had been at pains to teach her. "One must always play the game in life, however trivial it may seem."
"One must always play the game in life, however trivial it may seem."
Perhaps she said the words aloud; she never knew. He started.
"My dear, my dear," she said, "I can't!" She hid her head on his shoulder, not daring to face him. She heard him draw a deep breath, and stand tense and rigid. She drew back. "You don't want heroics, nor do I. I am not afraid of the world or you. You'd be good to me for ever, and the best of our friends would be friends still, whatever happened. As for you, you're too big a man for me to harm you here—your career, I mean. But that's not all. There's God and there's eternity. They frighten me, not for myself, but you."
"Eve——!"
She put out her hand again.
"Don't—don't dear, have some pity!" The anguish of her tone arrested him midway to her. He stopped short, a man who had received a mortal blow.
"No—never again. It will all be harder for you because you're a man and I'm a woman," she said, "but you've got to get on without me, and you will, you will! That's the beginning and the end of it. Oh, there's not a spark of all your generosity to me that I don't love and worship. And it will all be dreadful in the future. But it's just got to be.... And we must meet, too, ordinarily, in front of people and by ourselves, as if to-day had never come to us, as if we'd made a mark and crossed it from our lives. We shall do it, and get through—because we've got to, because we're strong, because we love each other."
She heard the beating of his heart, she felt its pulses against her hand as he drew her to him for a moment in spite of what she had said, in voiceless pleading while they clung together, and she wondered, with a little smile, if death would be more bitter.
Silence again. He understood he could not move her. Then darkness, full and complete.
She heard him go from her, heavily; the car throbbed. Presently there was a flash of light as it whirled past. It was well, perhaps, that he did not see her look of dumb agony as she stood alone, shaking from head to foot, straining her ears to hear the last echo of the car, making herself ready to face the long walk back and the long life ahead.
PART III
THE BETRAYAL
"Iniquity shall bring all the earth to a desert, and wickedness ... o'verthrow the thrones of the mighty."—Wisdom(Douay Version).
CHAPTER I
"As for them whose heart walketh after their scandals, I will lay their way upon their head, saith the Lord God."—ECCLESIASTICUS.
"Black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them." ... "Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."—MRS. HODGSON BURNETT.
"After all," said Miss Beadon solemnly, "there's nothing like a man's sympathy. Men are so much more helpful than women. With women, some outside element always seems to spoil the completeness of sympathy. Jealousy as a rule, of course. How much I've suffered from that no one will ever know."
"So one would naturally imagine," said Brand gravely. "The gods have been unusually kind to you, Miss Beadon."
Dora smiled consciously.
"Oh, I dare say I have as many disadvantages as other women really. Of course I've come in contact with a great many interesting men, that's in my favour; I always think experience broadens one's point of view. Most women are so extraordinarily petty. Now look at Evelyn, even. I used to think she was my best friend, but she hardly helps me now. Since that night I dined at your house, and you guessed how matters stood with Mr. Farquharson and me, and put things before me with such wonderful delicacy and tact, she has never invited me once, unless I deliberately asked her to do so. And he's such a busy man now—he has very little time to come here. Besides, of course it's a little awkward when every time a man dines with you the papers get hold of it. Now with Evelyn it's different. The public eye isn't always upon her as it is upon me."
"No man worth calling a man would willingly compromise a woman he cared for," said Brand.
He leant back in his chair and looked at Miss Beadon critically. Beadon had married beneath him, of course; all the world guessed as much, and Brand knew every detail of the story. Dora was pre-eminently her mother's daughter; she had fallen an easy prey to Brand's flattery. Little by little he had made himself indispensable to her for the last few weeks. She consulted him now about her engagements and her gowns. He had made her the means of paying off many an outlying score which had rankled for years. Little by little, he told himself, his luck was turning; he was regaining his old power and position. In time, if things went on as well as they were doing, he would again become a force to be reckoned with. If he could but obtain some permanent hold on Miss Beadon, the conquest of a great portion of the social world would be easy, and if he could but marry her to Farquharson——
But Farquharson himself was a stumbling-block in the plan. He had got on, not slowly and surely as other men may, but in leaps and bounds. Lady Wereminster declared that he had signed a bond with Satan. Brand saw no way of pointing out how valuable an asset a charming and tactful wife would be; for that matter neither adjective applied to Dora. The two men seldom came in contact now; they had nothing in common, and Farquharson's reserve and courtesy were more baffling than open antagonism.
Occupied with public affairs, and in much social request, it was difficult to think of Farquharson as having either time or inclination to play the part of a modern suitor—to woo the object of his affections with lunch at one restaurant and tea at another, and dinner at a third and supper at a fourth, after the modern mode. Indeed, so far as Miss Beadon was concerned, he scarcely seemed to recognize her existence. But for Brand, one doubted if even Dora could have construed his "good-mornings" and "good-nights" into the protestations of undying love.
A clever and unscrupulous woman can usually get what she wants without help. But Dora was not clever. Her platitudes, her plainness, told against her. Things seemed at a deadlock. It is not much use to have written what you think is a successful comedy if all the leading characters refuse to play the parts you have assigned to them.
As well attempt to influence the elements themselves as Farquharson. Unless Evelyn could be made to intervene. But Evelyn, once so tractable, was unmoved now by threats or pleading; nothing would induce her to meet Farquharson voluntarily.
Ah, but what if she could be used unconsciously? Suddenly Brand saw light. What had he told Miss Beadon just now? "A man will never willingly compromise the woman he cares for." If Farquharson could be made to think that he had put Evelyn in a false position, he would take the readiest means of disproving the statement. And the announcement of a man's engagement or marriage to one woman is the best public contradiction of his interest in another. Once Evelyn's name was called into the question, Farquharson was the man to act quickly. Let Miss Beadon be but near at such a moment, and she would seem the easiest solution of the difficulty.
"I may be able to help you," Brand said after a pause. "It won't be easy—it may give me and those I love infinite pain. But friendship isn't worth much if one isn't willing to risk a great deal for it, and I am sure you are the last woman in the world to forget such a kindness."
He spoke meaningly. Dora held out her hand. Her vanity was piqued, and as much of her heart as such a woman can give was involved. Generally, to set her heart on anything meant that it became hers very shortly. These unaccustomed barriers had completely unnerved her; she would have taken any means to secure Brand's help.
"You can count on me," she said, ready at that moment to promise him anything he asked. "There's nothing you can ask of me that I won't do for you in the future if you'll only help me now. I mean it; and I never break my word."
Brand smiled.
"Oh, well, it won't be a very serious matter. Perhaps I shall ask you to do some little service for me later on, but I don't suppose it will tax your resources as wife of—the Prime Minister, shall we say?"
They were walking in the direction of Knightsbridge. The clock at the Guards' Barracks struck the hour.
"Suppose you go and see Evelyn now? I see a way of helping you which must be put in train at once." He lifted his hat, and, crossing to Hyde Park Corner, hailed a hansom. "TheCrystaloffices, Fleet Street," he said.
"Mr. Brand,Mr. Brand, did you say? What on earth can the man want with me? Take him to the library, James, and say I'll come as soon as I can."
Lady Wereminster, erect and stately, gave Henry Brand the mere tips of her fingers, and withered him with her most disconcerting stare. She knew that to meet an unwelcome guest in complete silence puts him at the most serious disadvantage. Her quick eye took in every detail of Brand's faultlessly arranged air of distress. "Good Heavens, the man looks like a mourner; even his tie-pin is in keeping. Has he come to borrow money, or what?" she wondered.
"Lady Wereminster, forgive me. May I sit down?"
The voice was low and broken. Lady Wereminster raised her eyebrows, allowing but one word to escape from her tightly pursed lips.
"Certainly."
Brand hesitated.
"I have come to consult you about a matter that is very near my heart, Lady Wereminster. A matter that concerns Evelyn's welfare. Otherwise I should never have dreamed of intruding upon you."
"The time between half-past two and a quarter to three is usually spent in idleness," said Lady Wereminster grimly. "Go on, please."
"I shall go straight to the point," said Brand. "I am in great trouble, I've heard rumours——" He stopped again, choked by emotion, while Lady Wereminster watched him with a look of stone. "A man can fight his own battles, good or ill scarcely matter where his character is concerned. But when the name of the woman one loves best——" He corrected himself hastily, seeing his hostess's momentary expression of surprise. "When one's wife's name is spoken with ever such slight levity, it's another matter." He paused, shielding his face with his hands, pent-house fashion, as though utterly overcome.
Lady Wereminster looked rather pale.
"To what, pray, are you alluding?" she asked.
Brand looked up desperately.
"Have you seen this week'sCrystal, Lady Wereminster? It came half-an-hour ago. I've kept it from Evelyn till now. You know those accursed problems that they print weekly—one's meant to read between the lines. The ghastly part of them is that they are veiled under so damnable and complete a cloak of anonymity."
"Will you kindly oblige me by being more explicit?" asked Lady Wereminster, after a glacial pause.
Brand turned, at bay, his eyes flashing. He was really playing his part excellently.
"There's something about Evelyn!—about Evelyn!—in the paper."
"An unopened copy is on the table beside you," said Lady Wereminster. "Will you kindly read me the paragraph to which you refer?"
Holding the table for support, Brand read on slowly, giving each word its full significance.
"'A woman who contemplates an eventual ménage à trois is wise not to marry an athletic husband.'
"'Gratitude is a virtue, remember, though it does not always lead to virtue where politics are concerned.'
"'He was lately seen in Sussex, where she had temporarily taken up her residence.'
"'After all, more ways than one lead to the Divorce Court.'"
There was a long pause.
"And you mean to tell me," Lady Wereminster began very slowly. Then she stopped, her voice was shaking.
Brand bowed his head.
"Unmistakable. I heard a man laugh at it just now in the club. 'Farquharson and——' he said. Then he saw me."
Lady Wereminster put out a warning hand.
"No names, please; it's not safe even here. Oh, if I were a man!" Her eyes blazed. "Couldn't one horsewhip the editor? or—no, that would make a scandal at once. That's where people like these have everything in their hands. Nothing is so easy to spread as a lie about a woman. One word of suspicion and you could blacken Una herself. This must be stopped—but how? What can we do?"
For the first time in her life she was identifying herself with Brand, even consulting him on mutual terms.
"They are bound to go on meeting. And now at every turn there will be eyes to watch and lips to sneer. If I had my way, I'd have the people who spread lies like these stand naked in a public pillory. There's a jealous woman or women behind it, of course. Trace any scandal to its source, and you will find that the one man or woman from whom it originally emanated was the one who would benefit by its being spread. In a question of work, you will find it is the woman beaten in her own field by a younger woman, socially superior, who starts the scandal; in love, the vanquished rival. Scandal can't create itself; there's always at least one pair of lying lips to bring it into being."
"What if the man were to—but then he never would——" Brand faltered.
Lady Wereminster threw up her hands with a cry.
"You have it," she said; "there's only one way he can stop it. He must marry. People must think that she has been his confidante throughout—has known about it from the first. She's not the kind of woman to stand up against a stab in the dark like this. It would kill her!"
"But is Farquharson likely to marry? Is there any one with whom his name is associated?" said Brand doubtfully. "He never seemed to me a marrying man."
"That's not the question," said Lady Wereminster decidedly. "The whole point is that he must save her. Good Heavens, that Evelyn should be the talk of any club!" She rang the bell violently. "Give me the paper. I shall go and see Mr. Farquharson myself at once, and put the matter straight before him. He owes everything to Evelyn, and he's brought this upon her. They say it's always the woman who goes to the wall in these matters. Well, she shan't in this case, if I have to take the man to the church myself. Good-bye, and thank you."
She extended a hurried forefinger and waved him to the door. He bowed, well satisfied.
"Order the victoria at once, James; I'm in a hurry."
Taking out her glasses, Lady Wereminster re-read the paragraph line by line.
"Oh, if I had but seen Evelyn lately! But meeting Miss Beadon when I ran in the other morning stopped my going for a week. 'Sussex'—and 'politics'!—Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn!"
CHAPTER II
"The cleverest of all devils is opportunity."—VIELAND.
"Evelyn, you must help me," said Miss Beadon angrily. "How can you say no, and be so horribly cruel? It's such a tiny favour to ask; it shan't cost you a penny, I promise, if you'll only come. I'll let the carriage pick you up." She was on the verge of tears.
Evelyn, to whom tears came with difficulty, thought that they caused other women acute mental agony like her own.
She held out her hand.
"Please don't cry, Dora. There's more in this than you know. I've got to think things out. Be quiet for a minute, dear."
On the face of it it was a small thing Miss Beadon was asking, merely that Evelyn should make a point of accompanying her to the last reunion that night in Hare's rooms before he left town. Evelyn had already accepted the invitation tentatively, meaning only to go if she heard that Farquharson would not be present. At large parties they were able to avoid each other easily. They had never been much together in public. But at so small and intimate a gathering as this—Hare was expecting only ten or twelve people—they must infallibly be thrown together and meet as though things were on the old footing, before their bitter-sweet secret had drawn them near.
But now Dora had come to demand Evelyn's help, and she was made to confront the very thought which she most dreaded. Dora wanted to marry Farquharson. Evelyn shut her eyes and tried to think what life would be under such changed conditions. If the idea was no longer new, it was none the less terrible. Spiritual forces may be called up to battle with many foes successfully, but there are times when spiritual forces fail, when foes from within, the very roots of our nature, take arms against us. It seemed to Evelyn at that moment that the civil war within her was sapping the very life in her body. She could have stood aside to watch Farquharson rise higher and higher, alone, unhampered, even although every step took him further from her, but how could she bear to see him live his life out with another woman, reaping the small domestic joys, gathering in time, perhaps, even the perfect fruit of the tree of life?
"Thou shalt ask and not obtain." The words came back to her. This was, perhaps, what God demanded of her, the penalty for having come near sin. Daily crucifixion—not a mere seven hours agony, but one which would endure to her life's end.
And yet the horrible selfishness of the point of view! What right had she to deny him such little gifts as he might secure from life, which is so rarely bountiful? His inward life, all its purposes and ambitions, would be hers, and in a career like his there must inevitably be dark moments when home comfort and joys, which he had never had, might brace him to meet his difficulties, and nerve him, by sheer force of reaction, for future battles.
She looked at Dora critically. Perhaps they had all misjudged her. Her heart seemed to be set upon her object with absolute determination; and if she loved Farquharson enough, nothing else mattered. Love was what he needed—love near at hand, love wrapping him round. The love which "feels no burthen, gives all for all and is all in all, which watches and, sleeping, slumbers not, when weary is not tired."
"You love Mr. Farquharson—you want me to understand that you really love him?" she said at last. "Love is such a big thing, Dora, I often wonder if girls understand it. Modern men and women take more trouble to choose a housekeeper than they give to the choice of a life-long companion. Marriage is all give and take—and there's more in those words than you will ever realize until you've gone right through the marriage service, and come out at the other side. It's a thing of deadly gravity, marriage, not a mere shifting of responsibility, or the prospect of a better position, or the escape from home discomfort. You are one of the lucky people to whom none of these three incentives need appeal. Oh, Dora, there are so many unhappy marriages in this world, and I'm so tired of them! Do make up your mind that yours shall be a beautiful success, not just a brilliant one."
"You always take things so seriously," Dora said tartly. "Of course I love him. Why should I want to marry him rather than any one else? It's not as if he were the only one. I'm only asking you to chaperon me for this one evening, not a lifetime, and it's nothing to make such a fuss about, after all. I never get an opportunity of saying a word to him without everybody seeing. Even servants may be reporters in disguise. It makes even me unlike myself; and I know it's only the fear of being seen and watched that keeps him from speaking to me. When he was not so important he used to talk to me quite a lot, and quite intimately. I remember one night at the Wereminsters' when he spoke of you—implied he liked you, but said you weren't his style, or something of the sort. For such a man that meant a lot. I'm not a woman to make confidences, as you know, so I appreciate reserve in others. I've come to you because you've seen everything from the first. You're married, you've got all you want; why can't you help me by giving me one or two of the opportunities nobody else in the whole world knows that I long for?"
This sounded plausible enough. Dora's ways were not as Evelyn's, but that was perhaps a mere matter of temperament. And the glow of sacrifice burns with so white a flame that it illuminates even those trivial objects that it falls upon.
"I'll come," said Evelyn, sighing. "What time shall I be ready?"
"We ought to be there at half-past nine," said Dora. "Will you be with us at nine-fifteen? Then we can have a talk first. By the way, you'd better take a cab, Evelyn, after all—you do live such an awfully long way out."
"Thanks. Then you don't think me an interfering old woman?" said Lady Wereminster.
"I think you are very kind," said Farquharson courteously. His tone was final. He rose and held out his hand, and Lady Wereminster, who was known amongst her circle of intimate friends as "The Social Tyrant," meekly acquiesced and left him.
"The man's extraordinarily reassuring," she told herself as she drove away. "He says very little. But he's a man of his word, and he'll do as I want. There's nothing he wouldn't do for Evelyn. I didn't dare even say I was sorry for him. And these are matters that the world would tell you you might not even pray about!" ...
Farquharson, left mercifully alone, went back to the table in his study and sat down heavily. Blue Books, pamphlets, the records of his work lay all about him, in orderly piles; Farquharson was nothing if not scrupulously neat; his life lay there. Methodical, orderly, brilliant, complete—which adjective best described it?
Yet in that moment it all seemed to him of little worth, little real value. After all, to have your name in men's mouths for a season, what is it? Success and enmity go hand in hand; the man or woman who finds the highest is beset by a thousand treacheries and betrayals. The little bank clerk, with his hundred and fifty pounds a year, setting out to his work in the morning unnoticed, and unenvied, and returning to the woman he loves at the close of office hours, has a happier lot than the most important statesman in the empire. His small cup is full to the brim with wholesome wine and water; that of the other is mixed with vinegar and gall.
What had Farquharson's country done for him that he should work for it? It had given him a legacy of dishonour, it had torn his heritage from him. Why should he sow in blood, that the wastrel and incompetent should reap the fruit of his toil in ease? Why should he spend himself that England, who reared heroes only to spit upon them, should put him on that pedestal which had so often, of late years, turned to a pillory? And yet other men had braved and achieved so much more than he.
His mind leapt back to Kabul; to the doings of a little Corps of Guides, Hamilton, Jenkyns, Kelly and the rest. Who remembered those deathless heroes now? Hamilton, the most intrepid, he who had charged over two thousand of the enemy, first with four men, and then with three, and last of all alone, had his memorial in stone at Dublin. But stone cannot speak or glow. Cold and immovable, it is the symbol of a nation's heart.
Yet the call of one's country is strong. Now, at this moment, when he, the strong man, wavered between allegiance to her service and denial of her claims, weighing duty in the scale with happiness, her voice rose with the calm insistence which drives a man to do the thing he would not—to achieve what, humanly speaking, we should call impossible. Peace and ease might have been Farquharson's in Taorna—life with the woman he loved. He knew his power; he underrated Evelyn's. He faced again in that moment the temptation to take her away against her will, maybe, strong in the certainty that he could satisfy her, that they would find together something which the average man and woman could never attain.
But the voice of the nation spoke, implacably. "I want you. You must stay. I shall bruise and break you. No matter, you are dust, you can return to the dust from which you came. You may ride in my car of progress day and night, neither sleeping nor resting so long as your wits are keen and your intellect alert. Once your eyes fail or your hand trembles, I shall have no further use for you. From nothing you came, to nothing you may then return. But my car will go on, and you will have driven it for a little time."
Yes, he must stay. And if he stayed, he must make this sacrifice for Evelyn; he must give up his dearest dream. For, grimly as he faced life as a whole, he had always cherished the thought of marriage as his one hope of human salvation. What he had said to Evelyn was true; not mere words, but conviction. He believed that a man should only give himself in marriage to the one woman who could make an equal gift of mind, body and soul, the supreme trinity of surrender. Marriage was a sacrament—marriage as God instituted it, not the false union that convention recognized.
"And now the dream must go," he said aloud. His thoughts went back to the old phrase of the picture gallery when he had spoken to Dan. "Yes, dreams are only made to break, I suppose." He got up. "Since one woman is as much or as little to me as another, if I can't have Eve as my wife—I'll leave it to chance, and propose to the first unmarried woman, if she will let me, who speaks to me to-night at Hare's."