XII
A CATASTROPHE
Checked in mid-course, and with all his righteous indignation bottled up, Paul, I expect, hardly found the "worldly" dinner a diverting affair. He had reached the stage of mental development—a mid-way one, be it noted—where types interest more than persons, and none of those he met to-night aroused in him anything save a burning desire for their speedy effacement. Lumsden did not appear to remember him, which was hardly wonderful, considering the complete change of dress and environment. Besides which the baronet was a man very much occupied and in request throughout dinner. He was just back from theCôte d'Azur, and was primed with the true inwardness of the approaching Manby-Millett sensation. Lucy Millett was passing through Paris alone, and thought it civil to leave a card on the only Mrs. Manby at theSuperbebecause she had sent her a wedding present. Mrs. Manby's reputation hadn't reached her, it seems, which was hardly wonderful, seeing Lucy was a daughter of the great Quaker sago-refining family, and rather out of things. She had left her own card and her husband's, and by a mistake of the clerk only the smaller card was handed to the gay lady on her return. Result: that Lucy found apetit bleuwaiting when she got back from a round of the shops, which gave everything away. "Most impassioned," Lumsden understood, on good authority, and quite up to Manby form.
"And if you put that in one of your books, Mrs. Hepworth, people would say there was too much—what d'you call it?—coincidence, wouldn't they, now?"
It happened that Lady Robert Millett had been the first woman Ingram had interviewed for theParthenon. He remembered the sandy haired girl-wife at Isleworth, with her high teeth, awkward kindness and innocent pride, who had given him tea and, "as a special favor," shown him her white squirrels and blue-wattled Japanese fowl. Well—her happiness was destroyed. He did not join in the laughter when some one achieved a stammering, knock-kneed epigram in French; something aboutsagouandsagesse.
Captain Templeton had just won a seat for his party in a three-cornered contest. He detailed with considerable verve the intrigues necessary to induce a labor candidate to run and split the vote. The Liberal's wife had social ambitions. "I hope we shall meet in town, Captain Templeton," she had said after the poll. "We're Liberal; butnaturallymost of our friends are on your side of the house."
At the top of the table, with his noble old ivory-white face, silver hair, and limitless shirt-front, their host sat, a fine flower of democracy, and enjoyed his daughter's social success. His ponderous civilities failed to absorb the little Italian marchesina on his right (Gioconda, they say, of theFool's Errand). Her heart was at the noisy end of the table; continually, at some new outburst, she would clap her tiny ringed hands autocratically for silence. "Whatis this?Whatis this? I have not heard well." Things had to be repeated, explained, for her benefit.
Paul was nearest the door, and rose to open it as the women passed out. His hostess, who had barely addressed a word to him during dinner, bent forward as she passed and reminded him of his promise. Lumsden was the only man who seemed to notice the incident; and Ingram thought he caught the tail end of a look of intelligence as he returned to the table. But it was gone instantly, and presently the men drew to the side next the fire and began to talk tariffs. Tongue-tied amidst the women's chatter, their host easily dominated the conversation now. He spoke of Republican prospects at the Mid-West conventions, their intimate association with business prosperity, discussed the new influences at Washington with good-natured banter, predicted worse times before a "banner-year," hinted what was worth watching meantime. The men listened to him intently—even Lumsden—carelessly, sipping their coffee or rolling their liqueurs round and round in tiny gilt glasses. Every word was golden now. Art, literature, philosophy, all the visions that visit an idle mood, blew off like mists when the sun mounts the sky. Paul, watching him in silence, felt an involuntary respect, a pride despite himself, in their common nationality.
"You're force," he was saying to himself, "blind Titanic force—that's what you are. And our business is with you and not with this trash that cumbers the ground and obscures the issue; these parasites, who imagine the things their own hearts covet were the incentive to men like yourself, who corrupt you because they fear you, and with grave, attentive faces are trying to make you believe now that there's great personal merit in what you've been doing. You've sucked up riches from a disorganized society that your energy took unawares, because you couldn't help it, and you spend it on yourselves because you don't know any better way. Well, we must show you one. The force that creates, the wisdom that could distribute—these two are groping for each other through a maze of laws, human and divine, that the world has outgrown. They must mingle, must come together, must interpenetrate, and if priests and judges hinder, then priests and judges must go. They were made for man, not man for them."
"... so if you've bought warrants at sixty-three merely on the report of divisions inside the amalgamation, you haven't done badly, Lumsden. And now, Lord Hatherley, what do you say? Shall we join the ladies upstairs?"
An hour later Ingram was alone with his host and hostess. His presence,ami de maisonas he had become, did not restrain Mr. Rees from a palpable yawn.
"You look tired, father," said Althea, putting her arm over his broad shoulder. "What are you going to do? Mr. Ingram and I have something to talk over."
"I think I shall read Lew Wallace for half an hour, honey, and then go to bed. Have my hot milk sent to the study."
"Let us go upstairs to my own room," said Althea, when he was gone. "I can always talk better there."
Ingram followed her, and, as she preceded him gracefully, something forlorn and lonely in her face and figure struck him, over-receptive of such impressions as he was. He thought she drooped. Once she stumbled slightly.
She often wrote till morning, and the fire was still burning brightly in her room. She took the strip of paper on which the names of her guests had been written and, reading it over again, crumpled it in her hand with a little gesture of disgust and weariness, and threw it into the glowing coals.
"Ugh!" she said.
"Why do you have them, then?" asked Paul, more reasonably than politely.
"Oh!" impatiently, "you don't understand." She hesitated a moment. "Don't you ever find such people strangely interesting yourself?"
"The least so of any class I've met," Paul replied, without hesitation.
"I mean—sit down, please—because they are sofree."
"——of scruples?"
"Yes, of scruples, if you will. Don't you see as long as one has work to do, or an ideal to follow, or conscience to consider, or a heart even, one's life must, in a sense be incomplete, fettered, bound. One must leave off in unexpected places—never go quite to the logical end, never run the whole gamut."
"That's just as well, isn't it—for other people's sakes?"
"Perhaps. You don't read Newman, I suppose?"
"Never."
"He speaks, in one of his poems, of 'A secret joy that Hell is near.' Now, he was a great saint, Mr. Ingram; no Augustine, but one of the predestined of God's love, who never in the whole course of their lives commit a vile act, say a vile word, nor probably entertain an ill thought. And yet, you see, he felt it."
She had taken out her handkerchief, and was twisting it nervously into a rope.
"'A secret joy that Hell is near!' That's what I feel at times. That's what I've been feeling all to-night, as I listened to those people. It's wicked, I know. It's even a refinement of wickedness."
"I think it's nerves."
"Oh, no, you don't. I won't submit to that kind of talk from you—but I'm not keeping you from bed to discuss my temperament. About your story: I'm so sorry I can't help you to publish it."
"Owing, I gather, to its religious views?"
"Why deny it? Yes."
"As exemplified in the Rev. Mr. Ffoulkes, the Salvation Merchant?"
"Oh! don't laugh. It's terribly serious. You have—I don't know where you learnt it—such a terrifying plausibility in your case against Providence. Nothing strikes at faith like a perverted mysticism."
"Name one instance!"—a little bitterly. "I'm beginning to forget what I did say."
"Well, you say that the most obvious result of punishment is to destroy the sense of guilt."
"So it is."
"Yes—perhaps. But——"
"In short, one may bear witness for your God, but not against Him?"
"I know I must sound illogical to you. It is so hard to explain."
"Don't try, please."
She was silent awhile, staring into the fire. "Mr. Ingram, you've heard, perhaps, that my life has not been a happy one.
"A word here and there.Que sais-je?"
"Exactly. What do you know? What can any one know of it? Imagination even couldn't do justice to the whole truth. I came out of it not desolate, alone; not only sick of body and soul, but even degraded. Yes, I mean it. A degraded wretch—that's how I saw myself. The poor street-walker seemed a clean and honorable thing beside me."
"And so you became a Catholic. Is this the usual way into the fold?"
"It is, for many. Yes," she went on, with a strange glow in her eyes, "for those who have endured great wickedness as for those who have committed it, God be thanked, there is one respirable medium left on earth. Call it what you will—a hospital of sick souls, a home for moral convalescents."
"I call it nothing. I take your word for it. Does this account for the decrepitude of so much of your doctrine?"
"Ah! don't be clever, Paul. Cleverness is a little thing. At least I should be loyal to that in which I have found peace, self-respect, a new life."
"You misjudge me, Althea. I grudge you none of your comfort. God is true if He's true for you, and He's true, for you, if the thought of Him gives you peace."
There really seemed nothing more to say, and he got to his feet.
"Send along my manuscript," he said, "whenever it's convenient, and dismiss the matter from your mind. It makes no difference."
"Why are you in such a hurry to go?" she asked fretfully, and put her hand to her head. She seemed to sway.
"Are you ill?" Ingram asked, coming across and standing beside her.
"My head went queer suddenly," she said. "It does that lately. It's fatigue, I think. Listen to me, Paul Ingram. I want to strike a bargain with you."
"Well."
"I want to buy 'Sad Company' myself."
"In order to destroy it?"
No answer.
"And at what do you assess the damage, moral and material, to your creed that its suppression will avoid. Come, now! just for curiosity's sake."
"Five hundred pounds—a thousand if——"
He interrupted her brusquely. "You must have taken leave of your senses. Do you think I'm to be bought? Burn the thing yourself, if you like—burn it in the name of whatever god it offends—but don't impute dishonor ever again to a man, even to a man that doesn't believe in Him."
She caught at his sleeve. "Oh, but you must have some money for it," she said, incoherently. "You must—you must! Don't rob me of a pleasure. You've travelled the world over, but you don't know what poverty in London means. Why, only to-night, as I looked down the table and saw your face so—so proud and fine, and thought how little stood between you and—there! I won't even name it. But don't be stubborn—for my sake. Because you must have money; you must have money, dear."
At the last word he took her in his arms.
"Let me go!" she whispered, pushing him away with all the poor force of her bare arms. "I didn't mean this. Oh! believe me. Upon my honor I didn't—nothing like this, Paul."
Ingram only drew her closer. "Stop struggling," he said, with authority. "That's better. Now then—kiss me properly."