Attwelve o’clock on the night that witnessed the production of the tragedy, Lucian found himself one of a group of six men which had gathered together in Harcourt’s dressing-room. There was a blue haze of cigarette smoke all over the room; a decanter of whisky with syphons and glasses stood on a table in the centre; most of the men had already helped themselves to a drink. Lucian found a glass in his own hand, and sipped the mixture in it he recognised the taste of soda, and remembered in a vague fashion that he much preferred Apollinaris, but he said to himself, or something said to him, that it didn’t matter. His brain was whirling with the events of the night; he still saw, as in a dream, the misty auditorium as he had seen it from a box; the stage as he had seen it during a momentary excursion to the back of the dress-circle; the busy world behind the scenes where stage-carpenters sweated and swore, and the dust made one’s throat tickle. He recalled particular faces and heard particular voices; all the world and his wife had been there, and all the first-nighters, and all his friends, and he had spoken to a great many people. They all seemed to swim before him as in a dream, and the sound of their voices came, as it were, from the cylinder of a phonograph. He remembered seeing Mr. Chilverstone and his wife in the stalls—their faces were rapt and eloquent; in the stalls, too, he had seen Sprats and Lord Saxonstowe and Mrs. Berenson; he himself had spent some of the time with Haidee and Darlington and other people of their set in a box, but he had also wandered in and out of Harcourt’s dressing-room a good deal, and had sometimes spoken to Harcourt, and sometimes to his business manager. He had a vague recollection that he had faced the house himself at the end of everything, and had bowed several times in response tocheering which was still buzzing in his ears. The night was over.
He took another drink from the glass in his hand and looked about him; there was a curious feeling in his brain that he himself was not there, that he had gone away, or been left behind somewhere in the world’s mad rush, and that he was something else, watching a semblance of himself and the semblance’s surroundings. The scene interested and amused whatever it was that was looking on from his brain. Harcourt, free of his Greek draperies, now appeared in a shirt and trousers; he stood before the mirror on his dressing-table, brushing his hair—Lucian wondered where he bought his braces, which, looked at closely, revealed a peculiarly dainty pattern worked by hand. All the time that he was manipulating the brushes he was talking in disconnected sentences. Lucian caught some of them: ‘Little cutting here and there—that bit dragged—I’m told thatwasa fine effect—very favourable indeed—we shall see, we shall see!’—and he wondered what Harcourt was talking about. Near the actor-manager, in an easy-chair, sat an old gentleman of benevolent aspect, white-bearded, white-moustached, who wore a fur-lined cloak over his evening-dress. He was sucking at a cigar, and his hand, very fat and very white, held a glass at which he kept looking from time to time as if he were not quite certain what to do with it. He was reported to be at the back of Harcourt in financial matters, and he blinked and nodded at every sentence rapidly spoken by the actor-manager, but said nothing. Near him stood two men in cloaks and opera-hats, also holding glasses in their hands and smoking cigarettes—one of them Lucian recognised as a great critic, the other as a famous actor. At his own side, talking very rapidly, was the sixth man, Harcourt’s business-manager. Lucian suddenly realised that he was nodding his head at this man as if in intelligent comprehension of what he was saying, whereas he had not understood one word. He shook himself together as a man does who throws drowsiness aside.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I—I don’t think I was paying attention. I don’t know why, but I feel half-asleep.’
‘It’s the reaction,’ said Harcourt, hastily getting into his waistcoat and coat. ‘I feel tired out—if I had my way there should be no such thing as a first night—it’s a most wearing occasion.’
The famous critic turned with a smile.
‘Think of being able to lie in bed to-morrow with a sheaf of newspapers on your counterpane!’ he said pleasantly.
Then somehow, chatting disjointedly, they got out of the theatre. Harcourt and Lucian drove off in a hansom together—they were near neighbours.
‘What do you think?’ asked Lucian, as they drove away.
‘Oh, I think it went all right, as far as one could judge. There was plenty of applause—we shall see what is said to-morrow morning,’ answered Harcourt, with a mighty yawn. ‘They can’t say that it wasn’t magnificently staged,’ he added, with complacency. ‘And everything went like clockwork. I’ll tell you what—I wish I could go to sleep for the next six months!’
‘I believe I feel like that,’ responded Lucian. ‘Well, it is launched, at any rate.’
The old gentleman of the white beard and fur-lined cloak drove off in a private brougham, still nodding and blinking; the actor and the critic, lighting cigars, walked away together, and for some time kept silence.
‘What do you really think?’ said the actor at last. ‘You’re in rather a lucky position, you know, in respect of the fact that theForumis a weekly and not a daily journal—it gives you more time to make up your mind. But you already have some notion of what your verdict will be?’
‘Yes,’ answered the critic. He puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think we have heard some beautiful poetry, beautifully recited. But I confess to feeling a certain sense of incongruity in the attempt to mingle Greek art with modern stage accessories.I think Damerel’s tragedy will read delightfully—in the study. But I counted several speeches to-night which would run to two and three pages of print, and I saw many people yawn. I fear that others will yawn.’
‘What would you give it?’ said the actor. ‘The other ran for twelve months.’
‘This,’ said the critic, ‘may run for one. But I think Harcourt will have to withdraw it within three weeks. I am bearing the yawns in mind.’
Lucian’stragedy ran for precisely seventeen nights. The ‘attempt to revive Tragedy on the lines of pure Greek Art’ was a failure. Everybody thought the poetry very beautiful, but there were too many long speeches and too few opportunities for action and movement to satisfy a modern audience, and Harcourt quickly discovered that not even magnificent scenery and crowds of supernumeraries arrayed in garments of white and gold and purple and green will carry a play through. He was in despair from the second night onwards, for it became evident that a great deal of cutting was necessary, and on that point he had much trouble with Lucian, who, having revised his work to the final degree, was not disposed to dock it in order to please the gods in the gallery. The three weeks during which the tragedy ran were indeed weeks of storm and stress. The critics praised the poetry of the play, the staging, the scenery, the beauty and charm of everything connected with it, but the public yawned. In Lucian’s previous play there had been a warm, somewhat primitive human interest—it took those who saw it into the market-place of life, and appealed to everyday passions; in the new tragedy people were requested to spend some considerable time with the gods in Olympus amidst non-human characteristics and qualities. No one, save a few armchair critics like Mr. Chilverstone, wished to breathe this diviner air; the earlier audiences left the theatre cold and untouched. ‘It makes you feel,’ said somebody, ‘as if you had been sitting amongst a lot of marble statues all night and could do with something warming to the blood.’ In this way the inevitable end came. All the people who really wanted to see the tragedy had seen it within a fortnight; during the next few nights the audiences thinned and the advance bookings represented small future business, andbefore the end of the third week Harcourt had withdrawn the attempt to revive tragedy on the lines of pure Greek Art, and announced a revival of an adaptation from a famous French novel which had more than once proved its money-earning powers.
Lucian said little of this reverse of fortune—he was to all appearance unmoved by it; but Sprats, who could read his face as easily as she could read an open book, saw new lines write themselves there which told of surprise, disappointment, and anxiety, and she knew from his subdued manner and the unwonted reticence which he observed at this stage that he was thinking deeply of more things than one. In this she was right. Lucian by sheer force of circumstances had been dragged to a certain point of vantage whereat he was compelled to stand and look closely at the prospect which confronted him. When it became evident that the tragedy was a failure as a money-making concern, he remembered, with a sudden shock that subdued his temperamental buoyancy in an unpleasant fashion, that he had not foreseen such a contingency, and that he had confidently expected a success as great as the failure was complete. He sat down in his study and put the whole matter to himself in commendably brief fashion: for several months he and Haidee had been living and spending money on anticipation; it was now clear that the anticipation was not to be realised. The new volume was selling very slowly; the tragedy was a financial failure; very little in the way of solid cash would go from either to the right side of Lucian’s account at Darlington’s. And on the wrong side there must be an array of figures which he felt afraid to think of. He hurriedly cast up in his mind a vague account of those figures which memory presented to him; when he added the total to an equally vague guess of what Haidee might have spent, he recognised that he must be in debt to the bank to a considerable amount. He had never had the least doubt that the tragedy would prove a gold-mine—everybody had predicted it. Darlington had predicted it a hundredtimes, and Darlington was a keen, hard-headed business man. Well, the tragedy was a failure—to use the expressive term of the man in the street, ‘there was no money in it.’ It was to have replenished Lucian’s coffers—it left them yawning.
Easy-going and thoughtless though he was, Lucian had a constitutional dislike of owing money to any one, and the thought that he was now in debt to his bankers irritated and annoyed him. Analysed to a fine degree, it was not that he was annoyed because he owed money, but because he was not in a position to cancel the debt with a few scratches of his pen, and so relieve himself of the disagreeable necessity of recognising his indebtedness to any one. He had a temperamental dislike of unpleasant things, and especially of things which did not interest him—his inherited view of life had caused him to regard it as a walk through a beautiful garden under perpetual sunshine, with full liberty to pluck whatever flower appealed to his eye, eat whatever fruit tempted his palate, and turn into whatever side-walk took his fancy. Now that he was beginning to realise that it is possible to wander out of such a garden into a brake full of thorns and tangles, and to find some difficulty in escaping therefrom, his dislike of the unpleasant was accentuated and his irritation increased. But there was a certain vein of method and of order in him, and when he really recognised that he had got somewhere where he never expected to be, he developed a sincere desire to find out at once just where he was. The present situation had some intellectual charm for him: he had never in all his life known what it was to want money; it had always come to his hand as manna came to the Israelites in the desert—he wondered, as these unwonted considerations for the present and the future filled him, what would develop from it.
‘It will be best to know just where one really is,’ he thought, and he went off to find his wife and consult with her. It was seldom that he ever conversed with her on any matter of a practical nature; he had long sincediscovered that Haidee was bored by any topic that did not interest her, or that she did not understand. She scarcely grasped the meaning of the words which Lucian now addressed to her, simple though they were, and she stared at him with puzzled eyes.
‘You see,’ he said, feeling that his explanation was inept and crude, ‘I’d fully expected to have an awful lot of money out of the book and the play, and now, it seems, there won’t be so much as I had anticipated. Of course there will be Robertson’s royalties, and so on, but I don’t think they will amount to very much for the half-year, and——’
Haidee interrupted him.
‘Does it mean that you have spent all the money?’ she asked. ‘There was such a lot, yours and mine, together.’
Lucian felt powerless in the face of this apparently childish remark.
‘Not such a lot,’ he said. ‘And you know we had heavy expenses at first—we had to spend a lot on the house, hadn’t we?’
‘But will there be no more to spend?’ she asked. ‘I mean, has it all been spent? Because I want a lot of things, if we are to winter in Egypt as you proposed.’
Lucian laughed.
‘I’m afraid we shall not go to Egypt this winter,’ he said. ‘But don’t be alarmed; I think there will be money for new gowns and so on. No; what I just wished to know was—have you any idea of what you have spent since I transferred our accounts to Darlington’s bank?’
Haidee shrugged her shoulders. As a matter of fact she had used her cheque-book as she pleased, and had no idea of anything relating to her account except that she had drawn on it whenever she wished to do so.
‘I haven’t,’ she answered. ‘You told me I was to have a separate account, and, of course, I took you at your word.’
‘Well, it will be all right,’ said Lucian soothingly. ‘I’ll see about everything.’
He was going away, desirous of closing any discussion of the subject, but Haidee stopped him.
‘Of course it makes a big difference if your books don’t sell and people won’t go to your plays,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t bring money, does it?’
‘My dear child!’ exclaimed Lucian, ‘how terribly perturbed you look! One must expect an occasional dose of bad luck. The next book will probably sell by the tens of thousands, and the next play run for a hundred years!’
‘They were saying at Lady Firmanence’s the other afternoon that you had had your day,’ she said, looking inquiringly at him. ‘Do you think you have?’
‘I hope I have quite a big day to come yet,’ he answered quietly. ‘You shouldn’t listen to that sort of thing—about me.’
Then he left her and went back to his study and thought matters over once more. ‘I’ll find out exactly where I am,’ he thought at last, and he went out and got into a hansom and was driven to Lombard Street—he meant to ascertain his exact position at the bank. When he entered, with a request for an interview with Mr. Eustace Darlington, he found that the latter was out of town, and for a moment he thought of postponing his inquiries. Then he reflected that others could probably give him the information he sought, and he asked to see the manager. Five minutes after entering the manager’s private room he knew exactly how he stood with Messrs. Darlington and Darlington. He owed them close upon nine thousand pounds.
Lucian, bending over the slip of paper upon which the manager had jotted down a memorandum of the figures, trusted that the surprise which he felt was not being displayed in his features. He folded the paper, placed it in his pocket, thanked the manager for his courtesy, and left the bank. Once outside he looked at the paper again: the manager had made a distinction between Mr. Damerel’s account and his wife’s. Mr. Damerel’s was about eighteen hundred pounds in debt; Mrs. Damerel’sseparate account had been drawn against to the extent of nearly seven thousand pounds. Lucian knew what had become of the money which he had spent, but he was puzzled beyond measure to account for the sums which Haidee had gone through within a few months.
Whenever he was in any doubt or perplexity as to practical matters Lucian invariably turned to Sprats, and he now called a hansom and bade the man drive to Bayswater. He knew, from long experience of her, that he could tell Sprats anything and everything, and that she would never once say ‘I told you so!’ or ‘I knew how it would turn out!’ or ‘Didn’t I warn you?’ She might scold him; she would almost certainly tell him that he was a fool; but she wouldn’t pose as a superior person, or howl over the milk which he had spilled—instead, she would tell him quietly what was the best thing to do.
He found her alone, and he approached her with the old boyish formula which she had heard a hundred times since he had discovered that she knew a great deal more about many things than he knew himself.
‘I say, Sprats, I’m in a bit of a hole!’ he began.
‘And, of course, you want me to pull you out. Well, what is it?’ she asked, gazing steadily at him and making a shrewd guess at the sort of hole into which he had fallen. ‘Do the usual, Lucian, tell everything.’
When he liked to be so, Lucian was the most candid of men. He laid bare his soul to Sprats on occasions like these in a fashion which would greatly have edified a confessor. He kept nothing back; he made no excuses; he added no coat of paint or touch of white-wash. He set forth a plain, unvarnished statement, without comment or explanation; it was a brutally clear and lucid account of facts which would have honoured an Old Bailey lawyer. It was one of his gifts, and Sprats never had an instance of it presented to her notice without wondering how it was that a man who could marshal facts so well and put them before others in sucha crisp and concise fashion should be so unpractical in the stern business of life.
‘And that’s just how things are,’ concluded Lucian, ‘What do you advise me to do?’
‘There is one thing to be done at once,’ she answered, without hesitation. ‘You must get out of debt to Darlington; you must pay him every penny that you owe him as quickly as possible. You say you owe him nearly nine thousand pounds: very good. How much have you got towards paying that off?’
Lucian sighed deeply.
‘That’s just it!’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t exactly know. Let me see, now; well, look here, Sprats—you won’t tell, of course—Mr. Pepperdine owes me a thousand—at least I mean to say I lent him a thousand, but then, don’t you know, he has always been so good to me, that——’
‘I think you had better chuck sentiment,’ she said. ‘Mr. Pepperdine has a thousand of yours. Very well—go on.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he continued, ‘that I might now ask him for the money which my father left me. He has had full charge of that, you know. I’ve never known what it was. I dare say it was rather heavily dipped into during the time I was at Oxford, but there may be something left.’
‘Has he never told you anything about it?’ asked Sprats.
‘Very little. Indeed, I have never asked him anything—I could trust him with everything. It’s quite possible there may not be a penny; he may have spent it all on me before I came of age,’ said Lucian. ‘Still, if there is anything, it would go towards making up the nine thousand, wouldn’t it?’
‘Well, leave it out of the question at present,’ she answered. ‘What else have you coming in soon?’
‘Harcourt has two hundred of mine, and Robertson about three hundred.’
‘That’s another five hundred. Well, and the rest?’
‘I think that’s the lot,’ he said.
‘There are people who owe you money,’ she said. ‘Come, now, Lucian, you know there are.’
Lucian began to wriggle and to study the pattern of the hearthrug.
‘Oh! ah! well!’ he said, ‘I—I dare say I have lent other men a little now and then.’
‘Better say given,’ she interrupted. ‘I was only wondering if there was any considerable sum that you could get in.’
‘No, really,’ he answered.
‘Very well; then you’ve got fifteen hundred towards your nine thousand. That’s all, eh?’ she asked.
‘All that I know of,’ he said.
‘Well, there are other things,’ she remarked, with some emphasis. ‘There are your copyrights and your furniture, pictures, books, and curiosities.’
Lucian’s mouth opened and he uttered a sort of groan.
‘You don’t mean that I should—sellany of these?’ he said, looking at her entreatingly.
‘I’d sell the very clothes off my back before I’d owe a penny to Darlington!’ she replied. ‘Don’t be a sentimental ass, Lucian; books in vellum bindings, and pictures by old masters, and unique pots and pans and platters, don’t make life! Sell every blessed thing you’ve got rather than owe Darlington money. Pay him off, get out of that house, live in simpler fashion, and you’ll be a happier man.’
Lucian sat for some moments in silence, staring at the hearthrug. At last he looked up. Sprats saw something new in his face—or was it something old? something that she had not seen there for years? He looked at her for an instant, and then he looked away.
‘I should be very glad to live a simpler life,’ he said. ‘I dare say it seems rather sentimental and all that, you know, but of late I’ve had an awfully strong desire—sort of home-sickness, you know—for Simonstower. I’ve caught myself thinking of the old days, and—’ he paused, laughed in rather a forced way, and sittingstraight up in the easy-chair in which he had been lounging, began to drum on its arms with his fingers. ‘What you say,’ he continued presently, ‘is quite right. I must not be in debt to Darlington—it has been a most kind and generous thing on his part to act as one’s banker in this fashion, but one mustn’t trespass on a friend’s kindness.’
Sprats flashed a swift, half-puzzled look upon him—he was looking another way, and did not see her.
‘Yes,’ he went on meditatively, ‘I’m sure you are right, Sprats, quite right. I’ll act on your advice. I’ll go down to Simonstower to-morrow and see if Uncle Pepperdine can let me have that thousand, and if there is any money of my own, and when I come back I’ll see if Robertson will buy my copyrights—I may be able to clear the debt off with all that. If not, I shall sell the furniture, books, pictures, everything, and Haidee and I will go to Italy, to Florence, and live cheaply. Ah! I know the loveliest palazzo on the Lung’ Arno—I wish we were there already. I’m sick of England.’
‘It will make a difference to Haidee, Lucian,’ said Sprats. ‘She likes England—and English society.’
‘Yes,’ he answered thoughtfully, ‘it will make a great difference. But she gave up a great deal for me when we married, and she’ll give up a great deal now. A woman will do anything for the man she loves,’ he added, with the air of a wiseacre. ‘It’s a sort of fixed law.’
Then he went away, and Sprats, after spending five minutes in deep thought, remembered her other children and hastened to them, wondering whether the most juvenile of the whole brood were quite so childish as Lucian. ‘It will go hard with him if his disillusion comes suddenly,’ she thought, and for the rest of the day she felt inclined to sadness.
Lucian went home in a good humour and a brighter flow of spirits. He was always thus when a new course of action suggested itself to him, and on this occasion he felt impelled to cheerfulness because he was meditatinga virtuous deed. He wrote some letters, and then went to his club, and knowing that his wife had an engagement of her own that night, he dined with an old college friend whom he happened to meet in the smoking-room, and to whom before and after dinner he talked in lively fashion. It was late when he reached home, and he was then more cheerful than ever; the picture of the old palazzo on the Lung’ Arno had fastened itself upon the wall of his consciousness and compelled him to look at it. Haidee had just come in; he persuaded her to go with him into his study while he smoked a final cigarette, and there, full of his new projects, he told her what he intended to do. Haidee listened without saying a word in reply. Lucian took no notice of her silence: he was one of those people who imagine that they are addressing other people when they are in reality talking to themselves and require neither Yea nor Nay; he went on expatiating upon his scheme, and the final cigarette was succeeded by others, and Haidee still listened in silence.
‘You mean to do all that?’ she said at last. ‘To sell everything and go to Florence? And to live there?’
‘Certainly,’ he replied tranquilly; ‘it will be so cheap.’
‘Cheap?’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes—and dull! Besides, why this sudden fuss about owing Darlington money? It’s been owing for months, and you didn’t say anything.’
‘I expected to be able to put the account straight out of the money coming from the book and the play,’ he replied. ‘As they are not exactly gold-mines, I must do what I can. I can’t remain in Darlington’s debt in that way—it wouldn’t be fair to him.’
‘I don’t see that you need upset everything just for that,’ she said. ‘He has not asked you to put the account straight, has he?’
‘Of course not!’ exclaimed Lucian. ‘He never would; he’s much too good a fellow to do that sort of thing. But that’s just why I must get out of his debt—it’s taking a mean advantage of his kindness. I’m quite certain nobody else would have been so very generous.’
Haidee glanced at her husband out of the corners of her eyes: the glance was something like that with which Sprats had regarded him in the afternoon. He had not caught Sprats’s glance, and he did not catch his wife’s.
‘By the bye, Haidee,’ he said, after a short silence, ‘I called at Darlington’s to-day to find out just how we stand there, and the manager gave me the exact figures. You’ve rather gone it, you know, during the past half-year. You’ve gone through seven thousand pounds.’
Haidee looked at him wonderingly.
‘But I paid for the diamonds out of that, you know,’ she said. ‘They cost over six thousand.’
‘Good heavens!—did they?’ said Lucian. ‘I thought it was an affair of fifty pounds or so.’
‘How ridiculous!’ she exclaimed. ‘Diamonds—like these—for fifty pounds! You are the simplest child I ever knew.’
Lucian was endeavouring to recall the episode of the buying of the diamonds. He remembered at last that Haidee had told him that she had the opportunity of buying some diamonds for a much less sum than they were worth. He had thought it some small transaction, and had bidden her to consult somebody who knew something about that sort of thing.
‘I remember now,’ he said. ‘I told you to ask advice of some one who knew something about diamonds.’
‘And so I did,’ she answered. ‘I asked Darlington’s advice—he’s an authority—and he said I should be foolish to miss the chance. And then I said I didn’t know whether I dare draw a cheque for such an amount, and he laughed and said of course I might, and that he would arrange it with you.’
‘There you are!’ said Lucian triumphantly; ‘that’s just another proof of what I’ve been saying all along.Darlington’s such a kind-hearted sort of chap that he never said anything about it to me. Well, there’s no harm done there, any way, Haidee; in fact, it’s rather a relief to know that you’ve locked up six thousand in that way, because you can sell the diamonds and the money will go towards putting the account straight.’
Haidee looked at him narrowly: Lucian’s eyes were fixed on the curling smoke of his cigarette.
‘Sell my diamonds?’ she said in a low voice.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Lucian; ‘it’ll be rather jolly if there’s a profit on them. Oh yes, we must sell them. I can’t afford to lock up six thousand in precious stones, you know, and of course we can’t let Darlington pay for them. I wonder what they really are worth? What a lark if we got, say, ten thousand for them!’
Then he wandered into an account of how a friend of his had once picked up a ring at one of the stalls on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and had subsequently sold it for just ten times as much as he had given for it. He laughed very much in telling his wife this story, for it had certain amusing points in it, and Haidee laughed too, but if Lucian had been endowed with a better understanding of women he would have known that she was neither amused nor edified.
Luciancame down to breakfast next morning equipped for his journey to Simonstower. He was in good spirits: the day was bright and frosty, and he was already dreaming of the village and the snow-capped hills beyond it. In dressing he had thought over his plans, and had decided that he was now quite reconciled to the drastic measures which Sprats had proposed. He would clear off all his indebtedness to Darlington, pay whatever bills might be owing, and make a fresh start, this time on the lines of strict economy, forethought, and prudence. He had very little conception of the real meaning of these important qualities, but he had always admired them in the abstract, and he now intended to form an intimate acquaintance with them.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, as he faced Haidee at the breakfast-table and spread out theMorning Post, ‘that when I have readjusted everything we shall be much better off than I thought. Those diamonds make a big difference, Haidee. In fact we shall have, or we ought to have, quite a decent little capital, and we’ll invest it in something absolutely safe and sound. I’ll ask Darlington’s advice about that, and we’ll never touch it. The interest and the royalties will yield an income which will be quite sufficient for our needs—you can live very cheaply in Italy.’
‘Then you are still bent on going to Italy—to Florence?’ she asked calmly.
‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘It’s the best thing we can do. I’m looking forward to it. After all, why should we be encumbered as we are at present with an expensive house, a troop of servants, and all the rest of it? We don’t really want them. Has it never occurred to you that all these things are something like the shell which the snail has to carry on his back and can’t getaway from? Why should a man carry a big shell on his back? It’s all very well talking about the advantages and comforts of having a house of one’s own, but it’s neither an advantage nor a comfort to be tied to a house nor to anything that clogs one’s action.’
Haidee made no reply to those philosophic observations.
‘How long do you propose to stay in Italy?’ she asked. ‘Simply for the winter? I suppose we should return here for the season next year?’
‘I don’t think so,’ answered Lucian. ‘We might go into Switzerland during the very hot months—we couldn’t stand Florence in July and August. But I don’t intend returning to London for some time. I don’t think I shall ever settle here again. After all, I am Italian.’
Then, finding that it was time he set out for King’s Cross, he kissed his wife’s cheek, bade her amuse and take care of herself during his absence, and went away, still in good spirits. For some time after he had gone Haidee remained where he had left her. She ate and drank mechanically, and she looked straight before her in the blank, purposeless fashion which often denotes intense concentration of thought. When she rose from the table she walked about the room with aimless, uncertain movements, touching this and that object without any reason for doing so. She picked up theMorning Post, glanced at it, and saw nothing; she fingered two or three letters which Lucian had left lying about on the breakfast-table, and laid them down again. They reminded her, quite suddenly, of a letter from Eustace Darlington which she had in her pocket, a trivial note, newly arrived, which informed her that he had made some purchase or other for her in Paris, whither he had gone for a week on business, and that she would shortly receive a parcel containing it. There was nothing of special interest or moment in the letter; she referred to it merely to ascertain Darlington’s address.
After a time Haidee went into the study and soughtout a railway guide. She had already made up her mind to join Eustace Darlington, and she now decided to travel by a train which would enable her to reach Paris at nine o’clock that evening. She began to make her preparations at once, and instructed her maid to pack two large portmanteaus. Her jewels she packed herself, taking them out of a safe in which they were usually deposited, and after she had bestowed them in a small handbag she kept the latter within sight until her departure. Everything was carried out with coolness and thoughtfulness. The maid was told that her mistress was going to Paris for a few days and that she was to accompany her; the butler received his orders as to what was to be done until Mrs. Damerel’s return the next day or the day following. There was nothing to surprise the servants, and nothing to make them talk, in Haidee’s proceedings. She lunched at an earlier hour than usual, drove to the station with her maid, dropped a letter, addressed to Lucian at Simonstower vicarage, into the pillar-box on the platform, and departed for Paris with an admirable unconcern. There was a choppy sea in the Channel, and the maid was ill, but Haidee acquired a hearty appetite, and satisfied it in the dining-car of the French train. She was one of those happily constituted people who can eat at the greatest moments of life.
She drove from the Gare du Nord to the Hôtel Bristol, and engaged rooms immediately on her arrival. A little later she inquired for Darlington, and then discovered that he had that day journeyed to Dijon, and was not expected to return until two days later. Haidee, in nowise disconcerted by this news, settled down to await his reappearance.
Lucianarrived at the old vicarage towards the close of the afternoon. He had driven over from Oakborough through a wintry land, and every minute spent in the keen air had added to the buoyancy of his spirits. Never, he thought as he was driven along the valley, did Simonstower look so well as under its first coating of snow, and on the rising ground above the village he made his driver stop so that he might drink in the charm of the winter sunset. At the western extremity of the valley a shelving hill closed the view; on its highest point a long row of gaunt fir-trees showed black and spectral against the molten red of the setting sun and the purpled sky into which it was sinking; nearer, the blue smoke of the village chimneys curled into the clear, frosty air—it seemed to Lucian that he could almost smell the fires of fragrant wood which burned on the hearths. He caught a faint murmur of voices from the village street: it was four o’clock, and the children were being released from school. Somewhere along the moorland side a dog was barking; in the windows of his uncle’s farmhouse, high above the river and the village, lights were already gleaming; a spark of bright light amongst the pine and fir trees near the church told him that Mr. Chilverstone had already lit his study-lamp. Every sound, every sight was familiar—they brought the old days back to him. And there, keeping stern watch over the village at its foot, stood the old Norman castle, its square keep towering to the sky, as massive and formidable as when Lucian had first looked upon it from his chamber window the morning after Simpson Pepperdine had brought him to Simonstower.
He bade the man drive on to the vicarage. He had sent no word of his coming; he had more than oncedescended upon his friends at Simonstower without warning, and had always found a welcome. The vicar came bustling into the hall to him, with no sign of surprise.
‘I did not know they had wired to you, my boy,’ he said, greeting him in the old affectionate way, ‘but it was good of you to come so quickly.’
Lucian recognised that something had happened.
‘I don’t understand you,’ he said. ‘No one wired to me; I came down on my own initiative—I wanted to see my uncle on business.’
‘Ah!’ said the vicar, shaking his head. ‘Then you do not know?—your uncle is ill. He had a stroke—a fit—you know what I mean—this very morning. Your Aunt Judith is across at the farm now. But come in, my dear boy—how cold you must be.’
Lucian went out to the conveyance which had brought him over, paid the driver, and bade him refresh himself at the inn, and then joined the vicar in his study. There again were the familiar objects which spelled Home. It suddenly occurred to him that he was much more at home here or in the farmhouse parlour along the roadside than in his own house in London, and he wondered in vague, indirect fashion why that should be so.
‘Is my uncle dangerously ill, then?’ he asked, looking at the vicar, who was fidgeting about with the fire-irons and repeating his belief that Lucian must be very cold.
‘I fear so, I fear so,’ answered Mr. Chilverstone. ‘It is, I think, an apoplectic seizure—he was rather inclined to that, if you come to think of it. Your aunt has just gone across there. It was early this morning that it happened, and she has been over to the farm several times during the day, but this time I think she will find a specialist there—Dr. Matthews wished for advice and wired to Smokeford for some great man who was to arrive an hour ago. I am glad you have come, Lucian. Did you see Sprats before leaving?’
Lucian replied that he had seen Sprats on the previous day. He sat down, answering the vicar’s questionsrespecting his daughter in mechanical fashion—he was thinking of the various events of the past twenty-four hours, and wondering if Mr. Pepperdine’s illness was likely to result in death. Mr. Chilverstone turned from Sprats to the somewhat sore question of the tragedy. It was to him a sad sign of the times that the public had neglected such truly good work, and he went on to express his own opinion of the taste of the age. Lucian listened absent-mindedly until Mrs. Chilverstone returned with news of the sick man. She was much troubled; the specialist gave little hope of Simpson’s recovery. He might linger for some days, but it was almost certain that a week would see the end of him. But in spite of her trouble Aunt Judith was practical. Keziah, she said, must not be left alone that night, and she herself was going back to the farm as soon as she had seen that the vicar was properly provided for in respect of his sustenance and comfort. Ever since her marriage Mrs. Chilverstone had felt that her main object in life was the pleasing of her lord; she had put away all thought of the dead hussar, and her romantic disposition had bridled itself with the reins of chastened affection. Thus the vicar, who under Sprats’srégimehad neither been pampered nor coddled, found himself indulged in many modes hitherto unknown to him, and he accepted all that was showered upon him with modest thankfulness. He thought his wife a kindly and considerate soul, and did not realise, being a truly simple man, that Judith was pouring out upon him the resources of a treasury which she had been stocking all her life. He was the first thing she had the chance of loving in a practical fashion; hence he began to live among rose-leaves. He protested now that Lucian and himself wanted for nothing. Mrs. Chilverstone, however, took the reins in hand, saw that the traveller was properly attended to and provided for, and did not leave the vicarage until the two men were comfortably seated at the dinner-table, the maids admonished as to lighting a fire in Mr. Damerel’s room, and the vicar warned ofthe necessity of turning out the lamps and locking the doors. Then she returned to her brother’s house, and for an hour or two Lucian and his old tutor talked of things nearest to their hearts, and the feelings of home came upon the younger man more strongly than ever. He began to wonder how it was that he had settled down in London when he might have lived in the country; the atmosphere of this quiet, book-lined room in a village parsonage was, he thought just then, much more to his true taste than that in which he had spent the last few years of his life. At Oxford Lucian had lived the life of a book-worm and a dreamer: he was not a success in examinations, and he brought no great honour upon his tutor. In most respects he had lived apart from other men, and it was not until the publication of his first volume had drawn the eyes of the world upon him that he had been swept out of the peaceful backwater of a student’s existence into the swirling tides of the full river of life. Then had followed Lord Simonstower’s legacy, and then the runaway marriage with Haidee, and then four years of butterfly existence. He began to wonder, as he ate the vicar’s well-kept mutton, fed on the moorlands close by, and sipped the vicar’s old claret, laid down many a year before, whether his recent life had not been a feverish dream. Looked at from this peaceful retreat, its constant excitement and perpetual rush and movement seemed to have lost whatever charm they once had for him. Unconsciously Lucian was suffering from reaction: his moral as well as his physical nature was crying for rest, and the first oasis in the desert assumed the delightful colours and soft air of Paradise.
Later in the evening he walked over to the farmhouse, through softly falling snow, to inquire after his uncle’s condition. Mrs. Chilverstone was in the sick man’s room and did not come downstairs; Miss Pepperdine received him in the parlour. In spite of the trouble that had fallen upon the house and of the busy day which she had spent, Keziah was robed in state for the evening, and she sat bolt upright in her chair plying her knitting-needlesas vigorously as in the old days which Lucian remembered so well. He sat down and glanced at Simpson Pepperdine’s chair, and wished the familiar figure were occupying it, and he talked to his aunt of her brother’s illness, and the cloud which hung over the house weighed heavily upon both.
‘I am glad you came down, Lucian,’ said Miss Pepperdine, after a time. ‘I have been wanting to talk to you.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What about?’
Keziah’s needles clicked with unusual vigour for a moment or two.
‘Simpson,’ she said at last, ‘was always a soft-hearted man. If he had been harder of heart, he would have been better off.’
Lucian, puzzled by this ambiguous remark, stared at Miss Pepperdine in a fashion indicative of his amazement.
‘I think,’ continued Miss Pepperdine, with pointed emphasis, ‘I think it is time you knew more than you know at present, Lucian. When all is said and done, you are the nearest of kin in the male line, and after hearing the doctors to-night I’m prepared for Simpson’s death at any moment. It’s a very bad attack of apoplexy—if he lived he’d be a poor invalid all his life. Better that he should be taken while in the full possession of his faculties.’
Lucian gazed at the upright figure before him with mingled feelings. Miss Pepperdine used to sit like that, and knit like that, and talk like that, in the old days—especially when she felt it to be her duty to reprimand him for some offence. So far as he could tell, she was wearing the same stiff and crackly silk gown, she held her elbows close to her side and in just the same fashion, she spoke with the same precision as in the time of Lucian’s youth. The sight of her prim figure, the sound of her precise voice, blotted out half a score of years: Lucian felt very young again.
‘It may not be so bad as you think,’ he said. ‘Even the best doctors may err.’
Miss Pepperdine shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s all over with Simpson. And I think you ought to know, Lucian, how things are with him. Simpson has been a close man, he has kept things to himself all his life; and of late he has been obliged to confide in me, and I know a great deal that I did not know.’
‘Yes?’ said Lucian.
‘Simpson,’ she continued, ‘has not done well in business for some time. He had a heavy loss some years ago through a rascally lawyer whom he trusted—he always was one of those easy-going men that will trust anybody—and although the old Lord Simonstower helped him out of the difficulty, it ultimately fell on his own shoulders, and of late he has had hard work to keep things going. Simpson will die a poor man. Not that that matters—Judith and myself are provided for. I shall leave here, afterwards. Judith, of course, is married. But as regards you, Lucian, you lent Simpson some money a few months ago, didn’t you?’
‘My dear aunt!’ exclaimed Lucian, ‘I——’
‘I know all about it,’ she said, ‘though it’s only recently that I have known. Well, you mustn’t be surprised if you have to lose it, Lucian. When all is settled up, I don’t think there will be much, if anything, over; and of course everybody must be paid before a member of the family. The Pepperdines have always had their pride, and as your mother was a Pepperdine, Lucian, you must have a share of it in you.’
‘I have my father’s pride as well,’ answered Lucian. ‘Of course I shall not expect the money. I was glad to be able to lend it.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Pepperdine, with the air of one who deals out justice impartially, ‘in one way you were only paying Simpson back for what he had laid out on you. He spent a good deal of money on you, Lucian, when you were a boy.’
Lucian heard this news with astonished feelings.
‘I did not know that,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I am careless about these things, but I have always thought that my father left money for me.’
‘I thought so too, until recently,’ replied Miss Pepperdine. ‘Your father thought that he did, too, and he made Simpson executor and trustee. But the money was badly invested. It was in a building society in Rome, and it was all lost. There was never a penny piece from it, from the time of your father’s death to this.’
Lucian listened in silence.
‘Then,’ he said, after a time, ‘my uncle was responsible for everything for me? I suppose he paid Mr. Chilverstone, and bought my clothes, and gave me pocket-money, and so on?’
‘Every penny,’ replied his aunt. ‘Simpson was always a generous man.’
‘And my three years at Oxford?’ he said inquiringly.
‘Ah!’ replied Miss Pepperdine, ‘that’s another matter. Well—I don’t suppose it matters now that you should know, though Simpson wouldn’t have told you, but I think you ought to know. That was Lord Simonstower—the old lord. He paid every penny.’
Lucian uttered a sharp exclamation. He rose from his chair and took a step or two about the room. Miss Pepperdine continued to knit with undiminished vigour.
‘So it would seem,’ he said presently, ‘that I lived and was educated on charity?’
‘That is how most people would put it,’ she answered, ‘though, to do them justice, I don’t think either Lord Simonstower or Simpson Pepperdine would have called it that. They thought you a promising youth and they put money into you. That’s why I want you to feel that Simpson was only getting back a little of his own in the money that you lent him, though I know he would have paid it back to the day, according to his promise, if he’d been able. But I’m afraid that he would not have beenable, and I think his money affairs have worked upon him.’
‘I wish I had known,’ said Lucian. ‘He should have had no anxiety on my account.’
He continued to pace the floor; Miss Pepperdine’s needles clicked an accompaniment to his advancing and retreating steps.
‘I thought it best,’ she observed presently, ‘that you should know all these things—they will explain a good deal.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘it is best. I should know. But I wish I had known long ago. After all, a man should not be placed in a false position even by his dearest friends. I ought to have been told the truth.’
Miss Pepperdine’s needles clicked viciously.
‘So I always felt—after I knew, and that is but recently,’ she answered. ‘But, as I have said to you before, Simpson Pepperdine is a soft-hearted man.’
‘He has been a kind-hearted man,’ said Lucian. He was thinking, as he walked about the room, glancing at the well-remembered objects, that the money which he had wasted in luxuries that he could well have done without would have relieved Mr. Pepperdine of anxiety and trouble. And yet he had never known, never guessed, that the kindly-hearted farmer had anything to distress him.
‘I think we all seem to walk in darkness,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘I never had the least notion of this. Had I known anything of it, Uncle Simpson should have had all that I could give him.’
Miss Pepperdine melted. She had formed rather hard thoughts of Lucian since his marriage. The side-winds which blew upon her ears from time to time represented him as living in a style which her old-fashioned mind did not approve: she had come to consider him as extravagant, frivolous, and unbalanced. But she was a woman of sound common sense and great shrewdness, and she recognised the genuine ring in Lucian’s voiceand the sincerity of his regret that he had not been able to save Simpson Pepperdine some anxiety.
‘I’m sure you would, my boy,’ she said kindly. ‘However, Simpson has done with everything now. I didn’t tell Judith, because she frets so, but the doctors don’t think he’ll ever regain consciousness—it will only be a matter of a few days, Lucian.’
‘And that only makes one wish that one had known of his anxieties sooner,’ he said. ‘Five years ago I could have helped him substantially.’
He was thinking of the ten thousand pounds which had already disappeared. Miss Pepperdine did not follow his line of thought.
‘Yes, I’ve heard that you’ve made a lot of money,’ she said. ‘You’ve been one of the lucky ones, Lucian, for I always understood that poets generally lived in garrets and were half-starved most of their time. I’m sure one used to read all that sort of thing in books; but perhaps times have changed, and so much the better. Simpson always read your books as soon as you sent them. Upon my word, I’m sure he never understood what it was all about, except perhaps some of the songs and ballads, but he liked the long words, and he was very proud of these little green books—they’re all in his bureau there, along with his account-books. Well, as I was saying, I understand you’ve made money, Lucian. Take care of it, my boy, for you never know when you may want it, and want it badly, in this world. There’s one thing I want you to promise me. I don’t yet know how things will be when Simpson’s gone, but if he is a bit on the wrong side of the ledger, it must be made up by the family, and you must do your share. It mustn’t be said that a Pepperdine died owing money that he couldn’t pay. I’ve already talked it over with Judith, and if there is money to be found, she and I and you must find it between us. If need be, all mine can go,’ she added sharply. ‘I can get a place as a housekeeper even at my age.’
Lucian gave her his promise readily enough, andimmediately began to wonder what it might imply. But he agreed with her reasoning, and assured himself that, if necessary, he would live on a crust in order to carry out her wishes. And soon afterwards he set out for the vicarage, promising to return for news of Mr. Pepperdine’s condition at an early hour in the morning.
As he walked back over the snow Lucian was full of thought. The conversation with Miss Pepperdine had opened a new world to him. He had always believed himself independent: it now turned out that for years and years he had lived at other men’s charges. He owed his very food to the charity of a relative; another man, upon whom he had no claim, had lavished generosity upon him in no unstinted fashion. He was full of honest gratitude to these men, but he wished at the same time that he had known of their liberality sooner. He felt that he had been placed in a false position, and the feeling lowered him in his own estimation. He thought of his father, who earned money easily and spent it freely, and realised that he had inherited his happy-go-lucky temperament. Yet he had never doubted that his father had made provision for him, for he remembered hearing him tell some artist friends one afternoon in Florence that he had laid money aside for Lucian’s benefit, and Cyprian Damerel had been a man of common sense, fond of pleasure and good living and generous though he was. But Lucian well understood the story of the Roman building society—greater folk than he, from the Holy Father downwards, had lost money out of that feverish desire to build which has characterised the Romans of all ages. No doubt his father had been carried away by some wave of enthusiasm, and had put all his eggs into one basket, and they had all been broken together. Still, Lucian wished that Mr. Pepperdine had told him all this on his reaching an age of understanding—it would have made a difference in many ways. ‘I seem,’ he thought, as he plodded on through the snow, ‘I seem to have lived in an unreal world, and to have supposed things which were not!’ And he began to recall the daysof sure and confident youth, when his name was being extolled as that of a newly risen star in the literary firmament, and his own heart was singing with the joy of pride and strength and full assurance. He had never felt one doubt of the splendour of his career, never accepted it as anything but his just due. His very certainty on these matters had, all unknown to himself, induced in him an unassuming modesty, at which many people who witnessed his triumphs and saw him lionised had wondered. Now, however, he had tasted the bitterness of reverse; he had found that Fortune can frown as easily as she can smile, and that it is hard to know upon what principle her smiles and frowns are portioned out. To a certain point, life for Lucian had been a perpetual dancing along the primrose way—it was now developing into a tangle wherein were thorns and briars.
He was too full of these thoughts to care for conversation, even with his old tutor, and he pleaded fatigue and went to bed. He lay awake for the greater part of the night, thinking over his talk with Miss Pepperdine, and endeavouring to arrange his affairs so that he might make good his promise to her, and when he slept, his sleep was troubled by uneasy dreams. He woke rather late in the morning with a feeling of impending calamity hanging heavily upon him. As he dressed, Mr. Chilverstone came tapping at his door—something in the sound warned Lucian of bad news. He was not surprised when the vicar told him that Simpson Pepperdine had died during the night.
He walked over to the farm as soon as he had breakfasted, and remained there until noon. Coming back, he overtook the village postman, who informed him that the letters were three hours late that morning in consequence of the heavy fall of snow, which had choked up the roads between Simonstower and Oakborough.
‘It’ll be late afternoon afore I’ve finished my rounds,’ he added, with a strong note of self-pity. ‘If you’re going up to the vicarage, sir, it ’ud save me a step ifyou took the vicar’s letters—and there’s one, I believe, for yourself.’
Lucian took the bundle of letters which the man held out to him, and turned it over until he found his own. He wondered why Haidee had written to him—she had no great liking for correspondence, and he had not expected to hear from her during his absence. He opened the letter in the vicar’s study, without the least expectation of finding any particular news in it.
It was a very short letter, and, considering the character of the intimation it was intended to make, the phrasing was commendably plain and outspoken. Lucian’s wife merely announced that his plans for the future were not agreeable to her, and that she was leaving home with the intention of joining Eustace Darlington in Paris. She further added that it was useless to keep up pretences any longer; she had already been unfaithful, and she would be glad if Lucian would arrange to divorce her as quickly as possible, so that she and Darlington might marry. Either as an afterthought, or out of sheer good will, she concluded with a lightly worded expression of friendship and of hope that Lucian might have better luck next time.
It is more than probable that Haidee was never quite so much her true self in her relation to Lucian as when writing this letter. It is permitted to every woman, whatever her mental and moral quality, to have her ten minutes of unreasoning romance at some period of her life, and Haidee had hers when she and Lucian fell in love with each other’s beauty and ran away to hide themselves from the world while they played out their little comedy. It was natural that they should tire of each other within the usual time; but the man’s sense of duty was developed in Lucian in a somewhat exceptional way, and he was inclined to settle down to a Darby and Joan life. Haidee had little of that particular instinct. She was all for pleasure and the glory of this world, and there is small wonder that the prospect of exile in a land for which she had no great liking shouldhave driven her to the salvation of her diamonds and herself by recourse to the man whom she ought to have married instead of Lucian. There was already a guilty bond between them; it seemed natural to Haidee to look to it as a means of drawing her away from the dangers which threatened her worldly comfort. It was equally natural to her to announce all these things to Lucian in pretty much the same terms that she would have employed had she been declining an invitation to some social engagement.
Lucian read the letter three times. He gave no sign of whatever emotion it called up. All that he did was to announce in quiet, matter-of-fact tones that he must return to London that afternoon, and to beg the loan of the vicar’s horse and trap as far as Wellsby station. After that he lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Chilverstone, and if they thought him unusually quiet, there was good reason for that in the fact that Simpson Pepperdine was lying dead in the old farmhouse behind the pine groves.
Haidee, waiting for Darlington in Paris, spent the time in a state of perfect peace, amused herself easily and successfully, and at the same time kept clear of such of her acquaintance as she knew to be in the French capital at that moment. On the morrow Darlington would return, and after that everything would be simple. She had arranged it all in her own mind as she travelled from London, and she believed—having a confident and sanguine disposition—that the way in which the affair presented itself to her was the only way in which it could possibly present itself to any one. It had been a mistake to marry Lucian. Well, it wasn’t too late to rectify the mistake, and one was wise, of course, in rectifying it. If you find out that you are on the wrong road—why, what more politic and advisable than to take the shortest cut to the right one? She was sorry for Lucian, but the path which he was following just then was by no means to her own taste, and she must leave him to tread it alone. She was indeed sorry for him. He had been an ardent and a delightful lover—for a while—and it was a pity he was not a rich man. Perhaps they might be friends yet. She, at any rate, would bear no malice—why should she? She was fond enough of Lucian in one way, but she had no fondness for a quiet life in Florence or Pisa or anywhere else, and she had been brought up to believe that a woman must be good to the man who can best afford to be good to her, and she felt as near an approach to thankfulness as she had ever felt in her life when she remembered that Eustace Darlington still cherished a benevolent disposition towards her.
Darlington did not return to Paris until nearly noon of the following day. When he reached his hotel he was informed by his valet, whom he had left behind, that Mrs. Damerel had arrived, and had asked for him.Darlington felt no surprise on hearing this news; nothing more serious than a shopping expedition occurred to him. He sent his man to Haidee’s rooms with a message, and after changing his clothes went to call upon her himself. His manner showed her that he neither suspected nor anticipated anything out of the common, but his first question paved the way for her explanation. It was a question that might have been put had they met in New York or Calcutta or anywhere, a question that needed no definite answer.
‘What brings you here? Frills, or frocks, or something equally feminine, I suppose?’ he said carelessly, as he shook hands with her. ‘Staying long?’
The indifference of his tone sounded somewhat harshly in Haidee’s hearing. It was evident that he suspected nothing and had no idea of the real reason of her presence. She suddenly became aware that there might be difficulties in the path that had seemed so easy.
‘Lucian here?’ asked Darlington, with equal carelessness.
‘No,’ she said. Then, in a lower tone, she added, ‘I have left Lucian.’
Darlington turned quickly from the window, whither he had strolled after their greeting. He uttered a sharp, half-suppressed exclamation.
‘Left him?’ he said. ‘You don’t mean——’
His interrogative glance completed the sentence. There was something in his eyes, something stern and businesslike, that made Haidee afraid. Her own eyes turned elsewhere.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Darlington put his hands in his pockets and came and stood in front of her. He looked down at her as if she had been a child out of whom he wished to extract some information.
‘Quarrelling, eh?’ he said.
‘No, not quarrelling at all,’ she answered.
‘Then—what?’
‘He has spent all the money,’ she said, ‘and lotsbeside, and he is going to sell everything in the house in order to pay you, and then he wanted me to go and live cheaply—cheaply, you understand?—in Italy; and—and he said I must sell my diamonds.’
‘Did he?’ said Darlington. ‘And he is going to sell everything in order to pay me, is he? Well, that’s honest; I didn’t think he’d the pluck. He’s evidently not quite such an utter fool as I’ve always thought him. Well?’
‘And, of course, I left him.’
‘That “of course” is good. Of course, being you, you did, “of course.” Yes, I understand that part, Haidee. But’—he looked around him with an expressive glance at her surroundings, ‘why—here?’ he inquired sharply.
‘I came to you,’ she said in a low and not too confident voice.
Darlington laughed—a low, satirical, cynical laughter that frightened her. She glanced at him timidly; she had never known him like that before.
‘I see!’ he said. ‘You thought that I should prove a refuge for the fugitive wife? But I’m afraid that I am not disposed to welcome refugees of any description—it isn’t mymétier, you know.’
Haidee looked at him in astonishment. Her eyes caught and held his: he saw the growing terror in her face.
‘But——’ she said, and came to a stop. Then she repeated the word, still staring at him with questioning eyes. Darlington tore himself away with a snarl.
‘Look here!’ he said, ‘I’m not a sentimental man. If I ever had a scrap of sentiment,youknocked it out of me four years ago. I was fond of you then. I’d have made you a kind husband, my girl, and you’d have got on, fool as you are by nature. But you threw me over for that half-mad boy, and it killed all the soft things I had inside me. I knew I should have my revenge on both of you, and I’ve had it. He’s ruined; he hasn’t a penny piece that isn’t due to me; and as for you—listen,my girl, and I’ll tell you some plain truths. You’re a pretty animal, nice to play with for half an hour now and then, but you’re no man’s mate for life, unless the man’s morally blind. I once heard a scientific chap say that the soul’s got to grow in human beings. Well, yours hasn’t sprouted yet, Haidee. You’re a fool, though you are a very lovely woman. I suppose—’—he came closer to her, and looking down at her astonished face smiled more cynically than ever—‘I suppose you thought that I would run away with you and eventually marry you?’
‘I—yes—of course!’ she whispered.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if I, too, had been a fool, I might have done that. But I am not a fool, my dear Haidee. Perhaps I’m hard, brutal, cynical—the world and its precious denizens have made me so. I’m not going to run away with the woman who ran away with another man on the very eve of her marriage to me; and as to marrying you, well—I’m plain spoken enough to tell you that I made up my mind years ago that whatever other silliness I might commit, I would never commit the crowning folly of marrying a woman who had been my mistress.’
Haidee caught her breath with a sharp exclamation. If she had possessed any spirit she would have risen to her feet, said things, done things: having none, like most of her sort, she suddenly buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
‘I dare say it doesn’t sound nice,’ said Darlington, ‘but Lord knows it’s best to be plain spoken. Now, my girl, listen to me. Go home and make the best of your bargain. I’ll let Lucian Damerel off easily, though to tell you the truth I’ve always had cheerful notions of ruining him hopelessly. If he wants to live cheaply in Italy, go with him—you married him. You have your maid here?—tell her to pack up and be ready to leave by the night train. I dare say Damerel thinks you have only run over here to buy a new gown; he never need know anything to the contrary.’
‘B-b-b-but I have t-t-toldhim!’ she sobbed. ‘Heknows!’
‘Damn you for a fool!’ said Darlington, between his teeth. He put his hands in his pockets again and began rattling the loose money there. For a moment he stood staring at Haidee, his face puckered into frowning lines. He came up to her. ‘How did you tell him?’ he said. ‘You didn’t—write it?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I did—I wrote him a letter.’
Darlington sighed.
‘Oh, well!’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter, only he’ll be able to get heavy damages, and I wanted to clear him out. It’s the fortune of war. Well, I’m going. Good-day.’
He had walked across to the door and laid his hand upon the latch ere Haidee comprehended the meaning of his words. Then she sprang up with a scream.
‘And what of me?’ she cried. ‘Am I to be left here?’
‘You brought yourself here,’ he retorted, eyeing her evilly. ‘I did not ask you to come.’
She stared at him open-mouthed as if he were some strange thing that had come into her line of vision for the first time. Her breath began to come and go in gasps. She was an elementary woman, but at this treatment from the man she had known as her lover a natural indignation sprang up in her and she began to find words.
‘But this!’ she said, with a nearer approach to honesty than she had ever known, ‘this is—desertion!’
‘I am under no vow to you,’ he said.
‘You have implied it. I trusted you.’
‘As Lucian trusted you,’ he sneered.
She became speechless again. Something in her looks brought Darlington back from the door to her side.
‘Look here, Haidee,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘don’t be a little fool. Go home quickly and settle things with your husband. Tell him you wrote that letter in a fit of temper; tell him—oh, tell him any of the lies that womeninvent so easily on these occasions! It’s absolutely hopeless to look to me for protection, absolutely impossible for me to give it——’