Leah received her cousin in the sitting-room of her Lady Jim days, where they had twice talked seriously. Later on it appeared that she had a special reason for selecting an apartment sanctified by the vicar's endeavour to improve her into a moderately presentable angel. It was a charming and tastefully decorated room, and the Duchess was as tastefully decorated and as charming as her surroundings. She sat in a deep chair by a brisk fire, dressed with that perfect choice of colour and material which always distinguished her. The delicate blue of her frock, and a selection of certain filigree silver ornaments, matched marvellously with her splendid red hair and sapphire eyes. Lionel noted an unusual pallor, but thought that he had never seen, her look more lovely. Apparently she had been reading, for she dropped her handkerchief over an open book on the small table at her elbow when she rose to shake hands. He mechanically wondered at the trivial action, and learned its significance later.
"So very kind of you to come, Lionel," said the Duchess, pressing his hand cordially. "I know how busy you are with your parishioners."
"You are one of them," smiled the clergyman.
"At odd moments, certainly; but we globe-trot for our places of worship nowadays. Sit down;" she indicated a convenient chair opposite her own. "Now tell me the news of your small world. Is Joan quite well?"
"Could not be better, considering the circumstances."
"I am so glad; when do you expect the happy event?"
"In a month, please God."
Leah looked pensively into the fire. "I hope it will be a boy."
"I shall be more than content with a girl. Why a boy particularly?"
"Why not, when an heir is so important? You succeed Jim, and a new Marquis of Frith----"
"My dear Duchess, you and the Duke are young. There is little chance of my succeeding. I may be congratulating you some day."
"No," cried Leah, almost fiercely; "such a thing can never be, thank God."
Lionel stared. "Why 'thank God'?"
"Oh--er--I hardly know; of course, I should hate to be pestered with children. The nursery is an obsolete institution here, and will remain so, unless"--she hesitated--"unless Jim marries again."
"Duchess!"
"Why not Leah?"
"If it will please you. But why talk of Jim's marrying again, when you are in the best of health and spirits?"
She shrugged indifferently. "One never knows, I might go first."
"I sincerely trust not."
"Does that imply that you wish me to be a real widow, after posing as a sham one?"
"Of course not; but you talk so strangely."
"And so honestly. Remember, I have always paid you the compliment of being plain even to rudeness."
Lionel tried to read her face, but in vain, and could not arrive at the meaning of her apparently aimless conversation. The slanting rays of sunset made a radiant glory round her as she half sat, half reclined in the chair, and her beauty could bear even that merciless test. Youth, health, money, charm, loveliness--with these desirable blessings at her command, what else could she want?
"I do not quite understand," said the perplexed man.
"Understand what?" she asked absently; then became more alive to his question. "Oh, my chatter. You will, before we part. I am no sphinx to propose riddles."
"Every woman is a sphinx."
"Without a secret; that is why you men find us so difficult to comprehend."
"I confess to the difficulty at this moment."
"What a complex mind I must have! Yet I am a very ordinary butterfly of fashion; something with wings, at all events, though not entirely an angel."
Her visitor laughed. "Am I to pay you a compliment, or rebuke you for frivolity?"
"You can do both or either; the sweet first will counterbalance the bitter last. But I sicken of compliments."
"Even when genuine?"
"They never are. Men say things they don't mean to women out of traditional reverence for the exploded idea of the weaker vessel. When you meet a child your first thought is to give it sweets; when you talk with us the same thought is translated into polite lies. And we never believe you--never," Leah assured him. "Plain or beautiful, vain or humble, we price the words directly. In no case have I found them to be of value."
"You make us out to be fools."
"One must be truthful at times. Of course, I always except you, Lionel, as you are more man than parson."
"Cannot I be both?"
"Oh, yes, when miracles occur. Lately I heard of a parson who laboured solitary and freezing amongst the snows of Labrador for a poor eighty pounds a year. He was emphatically a man."
"And a parson," supplemented the vicar; "so, you see, miracles do occur."
A warm colour crept into Leah's cheeks, and she looked piercingly at her companion. "Do they? Nowadays, I mean. I am not using a mere phrase, believe me. Honestly now, could those Gospel miracles occur in this twentieth century?"
Lionel mused, and considered a careful reply. "Our Master was given the Spirit without measure as a man because He was the Son of the Most High; by that wisdom did He work His marvels. But the Apostles, in His power, also prevailed over the apparently natural, showing signs and wonders to the glory of the Risen Lord and His Father. 'With faith ye can do all things,' said the blessed Jesus Himself. Yes, Leah, I reverently believe that with purity, faith, and a humble trust in the Father by the merits of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, miracles could take place to-day."
"Then why don't they?" she asked abruptly.
The vicar, sighing, dropped into the high-pitched sing-song of the pulpit. "A faithless and perverse generation----"
"A scientific generation, you mean. I don't believe--I can't believe--and I won't believe. Prove the power of your Master. You have faith; you are good; you----"
"No, no! You go too fast. I assuredly try to be good, but I am sadly wanting in many ways. I have faith, but how weak, how faltering. Who am I, to claim that the Lord should select me to reveal His strength unto men? I can work no miracle, Leah. Would to God that I could, if only to convince you!"
"Would to God that you could!" she echoed with something like a groan, and the faint flush disappeared, like the dying out of a hope.
"Why do you, a sceptic, ask about these things?"
Leah, possessed by the spirit of the perverse, laughed maliciously. "Jim is trying to be good; why should not I try also, since a wife is bound to follow her husband, according to St. Paul, who by the way was a bachelor? But," her mood shifted, "Jim has a tin-pot sort of faith which is better than nothing. I have not, and so, like your unbelieving Jews, require a sign."
Lionel became professionally interested, descrying intimations of a changed heart. "I believe that you will yet find the Kingdom," he said hopefully.
"Don't you make any such mistake," she retorted. "I have not yet set out to find it, and never will, unless I see some of those wonders about which you talk so glibly."
"But, believe me----"
"I do, though not to the extent of Bible magic. You hypnotise yourself into crediting the impossible. I wish you could hypnotise me. Oh, I wish--I wish--I wish!" she ended passionately.
"Faith is not hypnotism," argued Lionel; the word grated on his ear.
"It is--it is--it is!" Leah was vehement in her denial. "Science can explain everything. Why do you come here to prate of miracles, when you know in your own heart that such things never were and never can be?"
"They were and they can be and they will be, while Christ reigneth," asserted the vicar, firmly; "nothing is impossible to God."
"Then call upon Him, and work your marvel."
"I am not worthy."
"You are not able, rather," and she taunted him as did Elijah the priests of Baal, their god.
Kaimes wondered at her restless moods, and wondered still more when she abruptly left the serious subject they were discussing--and on her own initiative--to talk most frivolously.
"I have heard you preach," went on this weathercock, "and I am no more to be persuaded than was Agrippa. You and your shadows"--she whiffed these away. "Pouf! Let us talk of real things;" and a toss of her head dismissed the spiritual for the purely temporal. "I had such a ripping time this season," rattled on the nature set upon pomps and vanities.
"Leah, Leah! How can you?"
"Change so rapidly? Oh, my good man, I am a twirl-ma-gee woman, ever seeking variety. Religious conversation is neither amusing nor convincing. It's much more fun to talk of one's friends and abuse their failings."
"I decline to join in," said Lionel, dryly, and feeling nonplussed.
"Because you have no sense of humour. What a dull time of it Joan must have, poor child!"
"She does not complain," he objected stiffly.
"Oh, Lord, what is the use of complaining! I never whimper about Jim, though his goodness is even duller than his badness. 'I have tried George drunk, I have tried George sober'"--she was quoting an epigram of Charles II.--"'and there is nothing in George.'"
"You are unnecessarily personal," rebuked Kaimes, annoyed.
"That's right. Tramp on your little corns and you howl."
He intimated that he desired to leave. "My time is valuable."
"Oh, I know yon are a millionaire of seconds and hours. How disagreeable you are, when I want to be amused!"
"You have just informed me that I am dull," he reminded her pointedly.
"So you are; all honest men are dull. Why, I don't know, unless it is that honesty and wit match as ill as beauty and brains. Now don't look at your watch again. I have something to tell you that will make your clerical hair stand on end."
What could one do with such a whirlwind woman? The vicar replaced his watch and shrugged resignedly. She was what she had always been, freakish and uncertain; but on this occasion more so than usual. An April lady, whimsical and irresponsible, decidedly rude, and aggravatingly amusing. But Kaimes instinctively felt that at the back of these volleying drifts of smalltalk lurked something serious, which she feared to handle. Hoping that in time it might be manifested to his intelligence, he waited patiently, while Leah scrambled on verbosely in her gabble of nothings.
"You need a London month to pull you together. Dull country, dull man; dull man, awful bore. Get a parish in the West End; you'll have howling larks converting Dives and Jezebel of the drawing-room."
"I do not look upon conversion as a lark."
"I do, especially with Jim. Oh, Lord, to think that he of all people should turn goody-goody. You are pleased, of course; the sight of the lost black sheep trotting home to fodder to the fold is----"
"I really cannot listen to this talk," said Lionel, rising quickly.
"Yes, you can. I'll shock you more before I've done."
Kaimes resumed his seat blankly. "But your reason?"
Leah jumped up as her visitor sat down, and addressed nothing in particular.
"He asks for reason, and from a woman," she exclaimed. "So like that lame Lord Esbrook; he always asks what he should not and what he is never likely to get."
"Reason from women?"
"And from men, who have still less to spare. But that's his way. Have you met Lord Esbrook? Such a funny walk as he has. Dot and carry one--wooden leg, you know; dot and carry one--just like this only much worse;" and Leah limped the length of the room, mimicking an extraordinary gait so cleverly that Lionel laughed openly.
"Though you shouldn't mock at people's infirmities," he coughed.
"Why not? Esbrook's a holy show, and with the spite of the cripple, he spares no one's feelings. He's the cracked black pot snarling at the kettles he can never hope to be, with his dot and carry one, dot and carry one;" and back she came swinging and grunting with provoking cleverness.
In her gyrations--it seemed from her imitations that Lord Esbrook gyrated--she overturned the table upon which rested the covered book. Leah pounced to pick up the volume, as did Kaimes, out of courtesy. When he had set the table on its legs he could scarcely refrain from glancing casually at the book. It's exterior was familiar.
"The Bible!" exclaimed an amazed man.
Leah flung herself into the chair, laughing noisily. "Oh, what a face!" she mocked, pointing a jeering finger. "Look at yourself, do."
"Were--you--reading the Bible?" asked the vicar, too astonished to note the poor attempt she made to force humour.
"Why not?" said she, defiantly, but with flushes and quick breaths.
"You only mock."
"The opportunity is so alluring," was her reply. "There's such an awful lot of rot in that history of the Jews. And hundreds of impossibilities. Here!" She seized the Bible and rapidly swept the pages. "What was I reading when you entered?" The thin leaves flew and flickered beneath her fingers. "Oh yes! Something quite too absurd in Matthew."
"St. Matthew."
"Mister St. Matthew, if you will. There;" she presented the book; "you read so beautifully--really you do, without flattery."
"I will not read for you to mock."
Her face flashed into crude anger. "Read," she commanded harshly.
The vicar would have declined again, but that his eye fell on the verses she had indicated. A memory of their earlier conversation, coupled with her unnecessary vehemence, made him obey without further hesitation. It might be that here was the key to the problem of her jerky speech. His mellow voice rose like the music of a solemn bell, and the glorious words rolled majestically through the room.
"When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed."
"And immediately his leprosy was cleansed," breathed the Duchess, gripping the arms of her chair to lean forward. "Why not 'her' leprosy?"
Lionel laid down the sacred volume. "It was a man who came to ask mercy of our Lord," said he, obtusely.
Leah threw herself back in the chair with the pettish cry of a misunderstood child. "Oh, you fool!"
Something in her voice startled him; yet he was far from gathering her meaning. "What is it?" he demanded, entirely bewildered.
There was no light in her eyes now; from luminous sapphires they had become pebbles, dull orbs of lapis-lazuli. When she spoke her voice creaked and wheezed "If your Master lived to-day, I would go to Palestine!" she said, looking very directly at him.
"What on earth for?" he asked blankly.
"Can you not understand?"
Her look was that of Medusa, and flickering lights came and went in her half-lifeless eyes. Their glare, rather than the toneless notes of her voice, made him faintly understand. The chosen passage out of St. Matthew, taken in conjunction with her earlier chatter of miracles, and her late reference to Palestine, engendered in his brain a horrible, a terrible, an impossible thought. And yet----
"What are you talking about?" he asked harshly.
The cry of a soul on fire broke on his ears. "You brute, when I suffer so! Does it need words?"
"Does what need words?"
She dashed her hand on the open page of the Bible. "This--this!"
"Augh!" He rose and sat down, with cold hands and a white face. The meaning of what she meant crashed like the blow of a bludgeon, and his brain spun to the shock "Leah!" he heard himself say, in a far-away voice like a telephone whisper. Then he stopped to stare at the quiet woman who sat upright, with rigid features and tightly clasped hands. "Leah," he muttered again, and some indefinable feeling made his hair crisp at the roots.
"Yes!" That was all she said, and her lips hardly moved in the saying.
Kaimes looked aimlessly round the room, and noted the pattern of the window-curtains. Only the whistling of the coals, spouting smoke and jetting flame, broke the stillness. His eyes returned to her face, fair and stainless. "Impos--s--sible!" he jerked, his voice entirely beyond control. "Im----" then his nerves vibrated and his skin crept.
"Three doctors in London, five doctors abroad, assured me that it is not impossible--unfortunately."
They were like two pale ghosts sitting in the shadows. Said one ghost to the other: "But have you--are you a----?" His tongue refused to form either terrible word.
Leah unexpectedly flung up her arms with a scream, then brought two shaking hands across her mouth to stifle that wild note of human pain. Right and left, up and down, did she look, as though to be certain that no one was within earshot but the vicar. "It will never do to let the servants hear," said the rapid action. Lionel's benumbed brain could not yet take in wholly the appalling truth--if truth it was. The leper dropped her hands and looked at him heavily.
"You lying devil," said Leah, slowly.
"What? what? what?" babbled Kaimes, incoherently.
She groaned and rocked with hands palm to palm between her knee. "I will, be thou clean; I will, be thou clean." Over and over again did she moan the words, till they bored into the listener's brain.
"God have mercy!" murmured the man, trying to be a man. The creeping paralysis of the horror almost struck him dumb. But he managed by a violent effort to wet his lips with a stiff tongue, and made it form certain words: "Are you sure of this?"
"Three doctors," went on the Duchess, rocking and droning as Demetrius did aforetime--"three doctors, five doctors, eight doctors in all. They said the same thing--ugh!--such a beastly thing! It was the truth, though. Doctors never lie like parsons. And that Book with its falsehoods--that----" She lunged forward without rising, and grabbing the Bible pitched it into the fire. Lionel snatched it from the flames; Leah struck it from his hands; and then ensued a silent struggle, uncanny, savage, in which some leaves were torn. All at once she relaxed her grip and lay back crying quietly. "It's a shame, a shame!" she wept softly; "just when everything was going on so well. And it can't be cured; all the money in the world can't cure me. I must die--in bits;" her voice soared shrilly, and she crouched, as though being beaten. "Ugh! That kiss, that beastly kiss!"
"Leah, how did you get this disease?"
The woman took no notice, but sprang up, as though moved by springs, flinging wide her arms, and looking upward in wild rebellion. "I won't die--I won't. I refuse to give in--I refuse;" she tore up and down the room, speaking in angry undertones, as one always mindful of possible listeners. "I have always had my own way!" was her whispered argument--"always--always; why can't I have it now? There can be nothing up there; no, no--there can't be. If He does exist He would not have let me go so long on my own. I am strong--I have never met any one stronger. I must win--I have always won. I will win!" her voice rose tyrannically. "I am myself; who can be stronger than myself? And yet this thing"--a strong shudder shook her into weakness--"this vile--vile---- Ugh! ugh! I believe there must be Something. Can you tell me, you--you who assume to know the secrets of the stars?"
She lurched forward in a frenzy of deadly fear, cannoned against Lionel, and dragged him down into his chair, clasping his knees, and knocking her forehead against them. "Where is your Master?" she whimpered. "Tell Him I'm sorry--really I am sorry. He may cure me then, as He cured that man long ago. Gentle Jesus--the children call Him so; He can't be cruel to me--to me. He can't be cruel to any one, so they say--ah, they say, they say; but how do I know? It's not true, it isn't true, and yet if it was--if it---- Lionel----" She broke off with the squall of a terrified child, hiding her eyes pitifully. "I'll be good--I'll be good, if only--only He will do this! It's a little thing--oh, a very little thing. And you said that He could--that He, your Master, I mean. Oh! oh! oh!" With sobbing breath she unwound her arms and fell back beating the carpet with open palms. Murmurings went rhythmically with the padding sound. "I want to be clean; I want to be clean; I want to be clean."
Kaimes tried to lift her. "Let me summon help."
With a bound she was on her feet, pushing him back. "Do that and I kill you," she panted, clenching her hands and facing him furiously. "No one knows but these doctors--yes, and Katinka, and that fiend Demetrius. Strange also. If I had Strange here"-- she hammered with closed fists on the vicar's shoulders--"I would cut him into bits; I would blind him somehow; I would--I would--oh, what would I not do? Why couldn't he leave that infected beast to die in Siberia? Oh, the--the--the----" She poured forth a torrent of words, which made the listener grow hot and cold with shame. Then again she collapsed as the chill of a deadly fear struck at her heart. "I don't want to die--I don't want to die!" and against the wall she rocked with arms held crosswise over her eyes, swinging, ever swinging.
The scene was like a nightmare; but by this time Lionel had the grip of his emotions. "Leah," he said firmly, and advancing close to the writhing creature, "you must tell your husband; you must----"
Out came her arms with a circular swing, and struck him fair across the eyes. "Jim doesn't know; Jim must never know."
He was almost blinded, but persisted. "Leah, something must be done."
Her voice sank, and with it her rage. "Something must be done," said she, faintly--"something shall be done, and--soon."
"What do you mean?" he asked, half under his breath, and half catching at her intention.
She took no notice. "Sit down, please!" said Leah, quietly, and Kaimes obeyed, since to summon assistance would only be to precipitate a still more dreadful scene. The Duchess looked into the mirror and arranged her hair; also she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, and smoothed her wrist-cuffs. When she did speak it was in the smooth voice of a society hostess asking a visitor if he took sugar in his tea. "I have made a fool of myself, Lionel. But you must admit that I am rather severely tried just now."
"Oh, you poor soul!" His tone and look were pitiful.
"Reserve your sympathy till you hear what I have to say. But first tell me honestly, can Christ cure me?"
"Yes--if it is His Will."
"Then let Him."
"You must have Faith."
"Faith in what?"
"In His power and Will to heal."
"How can I believe, when I do not believe?"
"He died for you on the Cross."
"He did not. That was purely a political matter because the Jews feared the Romans. I have read Strauss; I have read Renan; the four Gospels also: you can't puzzle me. He was a good man, a very good man--quite a saint, if you will. But--the Son of God?" She shook her head with a hard frown of disbelief.