One day I had walked from Cadogan Gardens with a gadfly phrase of Lola's tormenting my ears:
“You're not quite alive even yet.”
I had spent most of the day over a weekly article for James's high-toned periodical, using the same old shibboleths, proclaiming Gilead to be the one place for balm, juggling with the same old sophistries, and proving that Pope must have been out of his mind when he declared that an honest man was the noblest work of God, seeing that nobler than the most honest man was the disingenuous government held up to eulogy; and I had gone tired, dispirited, out of conceit with myself to Lola for tea and consolation. I had not been the merriest company. I had spoken gloomily of the cosmos, and when Adolphus the Chow dog had walked down the room in his hind legs, I had railed at the futility of canine effort. To Lola, who had put forth all her artillery of artless and harmless coquetry in voice and gesture, in order to lure my thoughts into pleasanter ways, I exhibited the querulous grumpiness of a spoiled village octogenarian. We discussed the weather, which was worth discussing, for the spring, after long tarrying, had come. It was early May. Lola laughed.
“The spring has got into my blood.”
“It hasn't got into mine,” I declared. “It never will. I wonder what the deuce is the matter with me.”
Then Lola had said, “My dear Simon, I know. You're not quite alive even yet.”
I walked homewards pestered by the phrase. What did she mean by it? I stopped at the island round the clock-tower by Victoria Station and bought a couple of newspapers. There, in the centre of the whirlpool where swam dizzily omnibuses, luggage-laden cabs, whirling motors, feverish, train-seeking humans, dirty newsboys, I stood absently saying to myself, “You're not quite alive even yet.”
A hand gripped my arm and a cheery voice said “Hallo!” I started and recognised Rex Campion. I also said “Hallo!” and shook hands with him. We had not met since the days when, having heard of my Monte Cristo lavishness, he had called at the Albany and had beguiled me into giving a thousand pounds to his beloved “Barbara's Building,” the prodigious philanthropic institution which he had founded in the slums of South Lambeth. In spite of my dead and dazed state of being I was pleased to see his saturnine black-bearded face, and to hear his big voice. He was one of those men who always talked like a megaphone. The porticoes of Victoria Station re-echoed with his salutations. I greeted him less vociferously, but with equal cordiality.
“You're looking very fit. I head that you had gone through a miraculous operation. How are you?”
“Perfectly well,” said I, “but I've been told that I'm not quite alive even yet.”
He looked anxious. “Remains of trouble?”
“Not a vestige,” I laughed.
“That's all right,” he said breezily. “Now come along and hear Milligan speak.”
It did not occur to him that I might have work, worries, or engagements, or that the evening's entertainment which he offered me might be the last thing I should appreciate. His head, for the moment, was full of Milligan, and it seemed to him only natural that the head of all humanity should be full of Milligan too. I made a wry face.
“That son of thunder?”
Milligan was a demagogue who had twice unsuccessfully attempted to get into Parliament in the Labour interest.
“Have you ever heard him?”
“Heaven forbid!” said I in my pride.
“Then come. He's speaking in the Hall of the Lambeth Biblical Society.”
I was tempted, as I wanted company. In spite of my high resolve to out-Ishmael Ishmael, I could not kill a highly developed gregarious instinct. I also wanted a text for an article. But I wanted my dinner still more. Campion condemned the idea of dinner.
“You can have a cold supper,” he roared, “like the rest of us.”
I yielded. Campion dragged me helpless to a tram at the top of Vauxhall Bridge Road.
“It will do Your Mightiness good to mingle with the proletariat,” he grinned.
I did not tell him that I had been mingling with it in this manner for some time past or that I repudiated the suggestion of its benign influence. I entered the tram meekly. As soon as we were seated, he began:
“I bet you won't guess what I've done with your thousand pounds. I'll give you a million guesses.”
As I am a poor conjecturer, I put on a blank expression and shook my head. He waited for an instant, and then shouted with an air of triumph:
“I've founded a prize, my boy—a stroke of genius. I've called it by your name. 'The de Gex Prize for Housewives.' I didn't bother you about it as I knew you were in a world of worry. But just think of it. An annual prize of thirty pounds—practically the interest—for housewives!”
His eyes flashed in his enthusiasm; he brought his heavy hand down on my knee.
“Well?” I asked, not electrified by this announcement.
“Don't you see?” he exclaimed. “I throw the competition open to the women in the district, with certain qualifications, you know—I look after all that. They enter their names by a given date and then they start fair. The woman who keeps her home tidiest and her children cleanest collars the prize. Isn't it splendid?”
I agreed. “How many competitors?”
“Forty-three. And there they are working away, sweeping their floors and putting up clean curtains and scrubbing their children's noses till they shine like rubies and making their homes like little Dutch pictures. You see, thirty pounds is a devil of a lot of money for poor people. As one mother of a large family said to me, 'With that one could bury them all quite beautiful.'”
“You're a wonderful fellow,” said I, somewhat enviously.
He gave an awkward laugh and tugged at his beard.
“I've only happened to find my job, and am doing it as well as I can,” he said. “'Tisn't very much, after all. Sometimes one gets discouraged; people are such ungrateful pigs, but now and again one does help a lame dog over a stile which bucks one up, you know. Why don't you come down and have a look at us one of these days? You've been promising to do so for years.”
“I will,” said I with sudden interest.
“You can have a peep at one or two of the competing homes. We pop into them unexpectedly at all hours. That's a part of the game. We've a complicated system of marks which I'll show you. Of course, no woman knows how she's getting on, otherwise many would lose heart.”
“How do the men like this disconcerting ubiquity of soap and water?”
“They love it!” he cried. “They're keen on the prize too. Some think they'll grab the lot and have the devil's own drunk when the year's up. But I'll look after that. Besides, when a chap has been living in the pride of cleanliness for a year he'll get into the way of it and be less likely to make a beast of himself. Anyway, I hope for the best. My God, de Gex, if I didn't hope and hope and hope,” he cried earnestly, “I don't know how I should get through anything without hope and a faith in the ultimate good of things.”
“The same inconvincible optimist?” said I.
“Yes. Thank heaven. And you?”
I paused. There came a self-revelatory flash. “At the present moment,” I said, “I'm a perfectly convincible vacuist.”
We left the tram and the main thoroughfare, and turned into frowsy streets, peopled with frowsy men and women and raucous with the bickering play of frowsy children. It was still daylight. Over London the spring had fluttered its golden pinions, and I knew that in more blessed quarters—in the great parks, in Piccadilly, in Old Palace Yard, half a mile away—its fragrance lingered, quickening blood already quickened by hope, and making happier hearts already happy. But here the ray of spring had never penetrated either that day or the days of former springs; so there was no lingering fragrance. Here no one heeded the aspects of the changing year save when suffocated by sweltering heat, or frozen in the bitter cold, or drenched by the pouring rain. Otherwise in these gray, frowsy streets spring, summer, autumn, winter were all the same to the grey, frowsy people. It is true that youth laughed—pale, animal boys, and pale, flat-chested girls. But it laughed chiefly at inane obscenity.
One of these days, when phonography is as practicable as photography, some one will make accurate records in these frowsy streets, and then, after the manner of the elegant writers of Bucolics and Pastorals, publish such a series of Urbanics and Pavimentals, phonographic dialogues between the Colins and Dulcibellas of the pavement and the gutter as will freeze up Hell with horror.
An anemic, flirtatious group passed us, the girls in front, the boys behind.
“Good God, Campion, whatcanyou do?” I asked.
“Pay them, old chap,” he returned quickly.
“What's the good of that?”
“Good? Oh, I see!” He laughed, with a touch of scorn. “It's a question of definition. When you see a fellow creature suffering and it shocks your refined susceptibilities and you say 'poor devil' and pass on, you think you have pitied him. But you haven't. You think pity's a passive virtue. It isn't. If you really pity anybody, you go mad to help him—you don't stand by with tears of sensibility running down your cheeks. You stretch out your hand, because you've damn well got to. If he won't take it, or wipes you over the head, that's his look-out. You can't work miracles. But once in a way he does take it, and then—well, you work like hell to pull him through. And if you do, what bigger thing is there in the world than the salvation of a human soul?”
“It's worth living for,” said I.
“It's worth doing any confounded old thing for,” he declared.
I envied Campion as I had envied no man before. He was alive in heart and soul and brain; I was not quite alive even yet. But I felt better for meeting him. I told him so. He tugged his beard again and laughed.
“I am a happy old crank. Perhaps that's the reason.”
At the door of the hall of the Lambeth Ethical Society he stopped short and turned on me; his jaw dropped and he regarded me in dismay.
“I'm the flightiest and feather-headedest ass that ever brayed,” he informed me. “I just remember I sent Miss Faversham a ticket for this meeting about a fortnight ago. I had clean forgotten it, though something uncomfortable has been tickling the back of my head all the time. I'm miserably sorry.”
I hastened to reassure him. “Miss Faversham and I are still good friends. I don't think she'll mind my nodding to her from the other side of the room.” Indeed, she had written me one or two letters since my recovery perfect in tact and sympathy, and had put her loyal friendship at my service.
“Even if we meet,” I smiled, “nothing tragic will happen.”
He expressed his relief.
“But what,” I asked, “is Miss Faversham doing in this galley?”
“I suppose she is displaying an intelligent interest in modern thought,” he said, with boyish delight at the chance I had offered him.
“Touche,” said I, with a bow, and we entered the hall.
It was crowded. The audience consisted of the better class of artisans, tradesmen, and foremen in factories: there was a sprinkling of black-coated clerks and unskilled labouring men. A few women's hats sprouted here and there among the men's heads like weeds in a desert. There were women, too, in proportionately greater numbers, on the platform at the end of the hall, and among them I was quick to notice Eleanor Faversham. As Campion disliked platforms and high places in synagogues, we sat on one of the benches near the door. He explained it was also out of consideration for me.
“If Milligan is too strong for your proud, aristocratic stomach,” he whispered, “you can cut and run without attracting attention.”
Milligan had evidently just began his discourse. I had not listened to him for five minutes when I found myself caught in the grip which he was famous for fastening on his audience. With his subject—Nationalisation of the Land—and his arguments I had been perfectly familiar for years. As a boy I had read Henry George's “Progress and Poverty” with the superciliousness of the young believer in the divine right of Britain's landed gentry, and before the Eton Debating Society I had demolished the whole theory to my own and every one else's satisfaction. Later, as a practical politician, I had kept myself abreast of the Socialist movement. I did not need Mr. John Milligan, whom my lingering flippancy had called a son of thunder, to teach me the elements of the matter. But at this peculiar crisis of my life I felt that, in a queer, unknown way, Milligan had a message for me. It was uncanny. I sat and listened to the exposition of Utopia with the rapt intensity of any cheesemonger's assistant there before whose captured spirit floated the vision of days to come when the land should so flow with milk and money that golden cheeses would be like buttercups for the plucking. It was not the man's gospel that fascinated me nor his illuminated prophecy of the millennium that produced the vibrations in my soul, but the surging passion of his faith, the tempest of his enthusiasm. I had enough experience of public speaking to distinguish between the theatrical and the genuine in oratory. Here was no tub-thumping soothsayer, but an inspired zealot. He lived his impassioned creed in every fibre of his frame and faculties. He was Titanic, this rough miner, in his unconquerable hope, divine in his yearning love of humanity.
When he ended there was a dead silence for a second, and then a roar of applause from the pale, earnest, city-stamped faces. A lump rose in my throat. Campion clutched my knee. A light burned in his eyes.
“Well? What about Boanerges?”
“Only one thing,” said I, “I wish I were as alive as that man.”
A negligible person proposed a vote of thanks to Milligan, after which the hall began to empty. Campion, caught by a group of his proletariat friends, signalled to me to wait for him. And as I waited I saw Eleanor Faversham come slowly from the platform down the central gangway. Her eyes fixed themselves on me at once—for standing there alone I must have been a conspicuous figure, an intruder from the gorgeous West—and with a little start of pleasure she hurried her pace. I made my way past the chattering loiterers in my row, and met her. We shook hands.
“Well? Saul among the prophets? Who would have thought of seeing you here!”
I waved my hand towards Campion. “We have the same sponsor.” She glanced at him for a swift instant and then at me.
“Did you like it?”
“Have you seen Niagara?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“I'm so glad,” she cried. “I thought perhaps——” she broke off. “Why haven't you tried to see me?”
“There are certain conventions.”
“I know,” she said. “They're idiotic.”
“There's also Mrs. Faversham,” said I.
“Mother is the dearest thing in life,” she replied, “but Mrs. Faversham is a convention.” She came nearer to me, in order to allow a freer passage down the gangway and also in order to be out of earshot of an elderly woman who was obviously accompanying her. “Simon, I've been a good friend to you. I believe in you. Nothing will shake my convictions. You couldn't look into my eyes like that if—well—you know.”
“I couldn't,” said I.
“Then why can't two honourable, loyal people meet? We only need meet once. But I want to tell you things I can't write—things I can't say here. I also want to hear of things. I think I've got a kind of claim—haven't I?”
“I've told you, Eleanor. My letters—”
“Letters are rubbish!” she declared with a laugh. “Where can we meet?”
“Agatha is a good soul,” said I.
“Well, fix it up by telephone to-morrow.”
“Alas!” said I; “I don't run to telephones in my eagle's nest on Himalaya Mansions.”
She knitted her brows. “That's not the last address you wrote from.”
“No,” I replied, smiling at this glimpse of the matter-of-fact Eleanor. “It was a joke.”
“You're incorrigible!” she said rebukingly.
“I don't joke so well in rags as in silken motley,” I returned with a smile, “but I do my best.”
She disdained a retort. “We'll arrange, anyhow, with Agatha.”
Campion, escaping from his friends, came up and chatted for a minute. Then he saw Eleanor and her companion to their carriage.
“Now,” said he a moment later, “come to Barbara and have some supper. You won't mind if Jenkins joins us?”
“Who's Jenkins?” I asked.
“Jenkins is an intelligent gas-fitter of Sociological tastes. He classes Herbert Spencer, Benjamin Kidd, and Lombroso as light literature. He also helps us with our young criminals. I should like you to meet him.”
“I should be delighted,” I said.
So Jenkins was summoned from a little knot a few yards off and duly presented. Whereupon we proceeded to Campion's plain but comfortably furnished quarters in Barbara's Building, where he entertained us till nearly midnight with cold beef and cheese and strenuous conversation.
As I walked across Westminster Bridge on my homeward way it seemed as if London had grown less hostile. Big Ben chimed twelve and there was a distinct Dick Whittington touch about the music. The light on the tower no longer mocked me. As I passed by the gates of Palace Yard, a policeman on duty recognised me and saluted. I strode on with a springier tread and noticed that the next policeman who did not know me, still regarded me with an air of benevolence. A pale moon shone in the heavens and gave me shyly to understand that she was as much my moon as any one else's. As I turned into Victoria Street, omnibuses passed me with a lurch of friendliness. The ban was lifted. I danced (figuratively) along the pavement.
What it portended I did not realise. I was conscious of nothing but a spiritual exhilaration comparable only with the physical exhilaration I experienced in the garden at Algiers when my bodily health had been finally established. As the body then felt the need of expressing itself in violent action—in leaping and running (an impulse which I firmly subdued), so now did my spirit crave some sort of expression in violent emotion. I was in a mood for enraptured converse with an archangel.
Looking back, I see that Campion's friendly “Hallo” had awakened me from a world of shadows and set me among realities; the impact of Milligan's vehement personality had changed the conditions of my life from static to dynamic; and that a Providence which is not always as ironical as it pleases us to assert had sent Eleanor Faversham's graciousness to mitigate the severity of the shock. I see how just was Lola's diagnosis. “You're not quite alive even yet.” I had been going about in a state of suspended spiritual animation.
My recovery dated from that evening.
“Certainly, dear,” she said when I came the following morning with my request. “You can have my boudoir all to yourselves.”
“I am grateful,” said I, “and for the first time I forgive you for calling it by that abominable name.”
It was an old quarrel between us. Every lover of language picks out certain words in common use that he hates with an unreasoning ferocity.
“I'll change it's title if you like,” she said meekly.
“If you do, my dear Agatha, my gratitude will be eternal.”
“I remember a certain superior person, when Tom and I were engaged, calling mother's boudoir—the only quiet place in the house—the osculatorium.”
She laughed with the air of a small bird who after long waiting had at last got even with a hawk. But I did not even smile. For the only time in our lives I considered that Agatha had committed a breach of good taste. I said rather stiffly:
“It is not going to be a lovers' meeting, my dear.”
She flushed. “It was silly of me. But why shouldn't it be a lovers' meeting?” she added audaciously. “If nothing had happened, you two would have been married by this time—”
“Not till June.”
“Oh, yes, you would. I should have seen about that—a ridiculously long engagement. Anyhow, it was only your illness that broke it off. You were told you were going to die. You did the only honourable and sensible thing—both of you. Now you're in splendid health again—”
“Stop, stop!” I interrupted. “You seem to be entirely oblivious of the circumstances—”
“I'm oblivious of no circumstances. Neither is Eleanor. And if she still cares for you she won't care twopence for the circumstances. I know I wouldn't.”
And to cut off my reply she clapped the receiver of the telephone to her ear and called up Eleanor, with whom she proceeded to arrange a date for the interview. Presently she screwed her head round.
“She says she can come at four this afternoon. Will that suit you?”
“Perfectly,” said I.
When she replaced the receiver I stepped behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.
“'The mother of mischief,'” I quoted, “'is no bigger than a midge's wing,' and the grandmother is the match-making microbe that lurks in every woman's system.”
She caught one of my hands and looked up into my face.
“You're not cross with me, Simon?”
Her tone was that of the old Agatha. I laughed, remembering the policeman's salute of the previous night, and noted this recovery of my ascendancy as another indication of the general improvement in the attitude of London.
“Of course not, Tom Tit,” said I, calling her by her nursery name. “But I absolutely forbid your thinking of playing Fairy Godmother.”
“You can forbid my playing,” she laughed, “and I can obey you. But you can't prevent my thinking. Thought is free.”
“Sometimes, my dear,” I retorted, “it is better chained up.”
With this rebuke I left her. No doubt, she considered a renewal of my engagement with Eleanor Faversham a romantic solution of difficulties. I could only regard it as preposterous, and as I walked back to Victoria Street I convinced myself that Eleanor's frank offer of friendship proved that such an idea never entered her head. I took vehement pains to convince myself Spring had come; like the year, I had awakened from my lethargy. I viewed life through new eyes; I felt it with a new heart. Such vehement pains I was not capable of taking yesterday.
“It has never entered her head!” I declared conclusively.
And yet, as we sat together a few hours later in Agatha's little room a doubt began to creep into the corners of my mind. In her strong way she had brushed away the scandal that hung around my name. She did not believe a word of it. I told her of my loss of fortune. My lunacy rather raised than lowered me in her esteem. How then was I personally different from the man she had engaged herself to marry six months before? I remembered our parting. I remembered her letters. Her presence here was proof of her unchanging regard. But was it something more? Was there a hope throbbing beneath that calm sweet surface to which I did not respond? For it often happens that the more direct a woman is, the more in her feminine heart is she elusive.
Clean-built, clean-hearted, clean-eyed, of that clean complexion which suggests the open air, Eleanor impressed you with a sense of bodily and mental wholesomeness. Her taste in dress ran in the direction of plain tailor-made gowns (I am told, by the way, that these can be fairly expensive), and shrank instinctively from the frills and fripperies to which daughters of Eve are notoriously addicted. She spoke in a clear voice which some called hard, though I never found it so; she carried herself proudly. Chaste in thought, frank in deed, she was a perfect specimen of the highly bred, purely English type of woman who, looking at facts squarely in the face, accepts them as facts and does not allow her imagination to dally in any atmosphere wherein they may be invested. To this type a vow is irrefragable. Loyalty is inherent in her like her blood. She never changes. What feminine inconsistencies she had at fifteen she retains at five-and-twenty, and preserves to add to the charms of her old age. She is the exemplary wife, the great-hearted mother of children. She has sent her sons in thousands to fight her country's battles overseas. Those things which lie in the outer temper of her soul she gives lavishly. That which is hidden in her inner shrine has to be wrested from her by the one hand she loves. Was mine that hand?
It will be perceived that I was beginning to take life seriously.
Eleanor must have also perceived something of the sort; for during our talk she said irrelevantly:
“You've changed!”
“In what way?” I asked.
“I don't know. You're not the same as you were. I seem to know you better in some ways, and yet I seem to know you less. Why is it?”
I said, “No one can go through the Valley of the Grotesque as I have done without suffering some change.”
“I don't see why you should call it 'the Valley of the Grotesque.'”
I smiled at her instinctive rejection of the fanciful.
“Don't you? Call it the Valley of the Shadow, if you like. But don't you think the attendant circumstances were rather mediaeval, gargoyley, Orcagnesque? Don't you think the whole passage lacked the dignity which one associates with the Valley of the Shadow of Death?”
“You mean the murder?” she said with a faint shiver.
“That,” said I, “might be termed the central feature. Just look at things as they happened. I am condemned to death. I try to face it like a man and a gentleman. I make my arrangements. I give up what I can call mine no longer. I think I will devote the rest of my days to performing such acts of helpfulness and charity as would be impossible for a sound man with a long life before him to undertake. I do it in a half-jesting spirit, refusing to take death seriously. I pledge myself to an act of helpfulness which I regard at first as merely an incident in my career of beneficence. I am gradually caught in the tangle of a drama which at times develops into sheer burlesque, and before I can realise what is going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in grotesque disaster—it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the brink and look back and see that it is all one gigantic devil-jest at my expense. I thank God I am going to die. I do die—for practical purposes. I come back to life and—here I am. Can I be quite the same person I was a year ago?”
She reflected for a few moments. Then she said:
“No. You can't be—quite the same. A man of your nature would either have his satirical view of life hardened into bitter cynicism or he would be softened by suffering and face things with new and nobler ideals. He would either still regard life as a jest—but instead of its being an odd, merry jest it would be a grim, meaningless, hideous one; or he would see that it wasn't a jest at all, but a full, wonderful, big reality. I've expressed myself badly, but you see what I mean.”
“And what do you think has happened?” I asked.
“I think you have changed for the better.”
I smiled inwardly. It sounded rather dull. I said with a smile:
“You never liked my cap and bells, Eleanor.”
“No!” she replied emphatically. “What's the use of mockery? See where it led you.”
I rose, half-laughing at her earnestness, half-ashamed of myself, and took a couple of turns across the room.
“You're right,” I cried. “It led me to perdition. You might make an allegory out of my career and entitle it 'The Mocker's Progress.'” I paused for a second or two, and then said suddenly, “Why did you from the first refuse to believe what everybody else does—before I had the chance of looking you in the eyes?”
She averted her face. “You forget that I had had the chance of searching deep beneath the mocker.”
I cannot, in reverence to her, set down what she said she found there. I stood humbled and rebuked, as a man must do when the best in him is laid out before his sight by a good woman.
A maidservant brought in tea, set the table, and departed, Eleanor drew off her gloves and my glance fell on her right hand.
“It's good of you to wear my ring to-day,” I said.
“To-day?” she echoed, with the tiniest touch of injury in her voice. “Do you think I put it on to just please you to-day?”
“It would have been gracious of you to do so,” said I.
“It wouldn't,” she declared. “It would have been mawkish and sentimental. When we parted I told you to do what you liked with the ring. Do you remember? You put it on this finger”—she waved her right hand—“and there it has stayed ever since.”
I caught the hand and touched it lightly with my lips. She coloured faintly.
“Two lumps of sugar and no milk, I think that's right?” She handed me the tea-cup.
“It's like you not to have forgotten.”
“I'm a practical person,” she replied with a laugh.
Presently she said, “Tell me more about your illness—or rather your recovery. I know nothing except that you had a successful operation which all the London surgeons said was impossible. Who nursed you?”
“I had a trained nurse,” said I.
“Wasn't Madame Brandt with you?”
“Yes,” said I. “She was very good to me. In fact, I think I owe her my life.”
Hitherto the delicacy of the situation had caused me to refer to Lola no more than was necessary, and in my narrative I had purposely left her vague.
“That's a great debt,” said Eleanor.
“It is, indeed.”
“You're not the man to leave such a debt unpaid?”
“I try to repay it by giving Madame Brandt my devoted friendship.”
Her eyes never wavered as they held mine.
“That's one of the things I wanted to know. Tell me something about her.”
I felt some surprise, as Eleanor was of a nature too proud for curiosity.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because she interests me intensely. Is she young?”
“About thirty-two.”
“Good-looking?”
“She is a woman of remarkable personality.”
“Describe her.”
I tried, stumbled, and halted. The effort evoked in my mind a picture of Lola lithe, seductive, exotic, with gold flecks in her dusky, melting eyes, with strong shapely arms that had as yet only held me motherwise, with her pantherine suggestion of tremendous strength in languorous repose, with her lazy gestures and parted lips showing the wonderful white even teeth, with all her fascination and charm—a picture of Lola such as I had not seen since my emergence from the Valley—a picture of Lola, generous, tender, wistful, strong, yielding, fragrant, lovable, desirable, amorous—a picture of Lola which I could not put before this other woman equally brave and straight, who looked at me composedly out of her calm, blue eyes.
My description resolved itself into a loutish catalogue.
“It is not painful to you to talk of her, Simon?”
“Not at all. There are not many great-hearted women going about. It is my privilege to know two.”
“Am I the other?”
“Who else?”
“I'm glad you have the courage to class Madame Brandt and myself together.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It proves beyond a doubt that you are honest with me. Now tell me about a few externals—things that don't matter—but help one to form an impression. Is she educated?”
“From books, no; from observation, yes.”
“Her manners?”
“Observation had educated them.”
“Accent?”
“She is sufficiently polyglot to have none.”
“She dresses and talks and behaves generally like a lady?”
“She does,” said I.
“In what way then does she differ from the women of our class?”
“She is less schooled, less reticent, franker, more natural. What is on her tongue to say, she says.”
“Temper?”
“I have never heard her say an angry word to or of a human creature. She has queer delicacies of feeling. For instance——”
I told her of Anastasius Papadopoulos's tawdry, gimcrack presents which Lola has suffered to remain in her drawing-room so as not to hurt the poor little wretch.
“That's very touching. Where does she live?”
“She has a flat in Cadogan Gardens.”
“Is she in London now?”
“Yes.”
“I should like very much to know her,” she said calmly.
I vow and declare again that the more straightforward and open-eyed, the less subtle, temperamental, and neurotic are women, the more are they baffling. I had wondered for some time whither the catechism tended, and now, with a sudden jerk, it stopped short at this most unexpected terminus. It was startling. I rose and mechanically placed my empty tea-cup on the tray by her side.
“The wish, my dear Eleanor,” said I, quite formally, “does great credit to your heart.”
There was a short pause, marking an automatic close of the subject. Deeply as I admired both women, I shrank from the idea of their meeting. It seemed curiously indelicate, in view both of my former engagement to Eleanor and of Lola's frank avowal of her feelings towards me before what I shall always regard as my death. It is true that we had never alluded to it since my resurrection; but what of that? Lola's feelings, I was sure, remained unaltered. It also flashed on me that, with all the goodwill in the world, Eleanor would not understand Lola. An interview would develop into a duel. I pictured it for a second, and my sudden fierce partisanship for Lola staggered me. Decidedly an acquaintance between these two was preposterous.
The silence was definite enough to mark a period, but not long enough to cause embarrassment. Eleanor commented on my present employment. I must find it good to get back to politics.
“I find it to the contrary,” said I, with a laugh. “My convictions, always lukewarm, are now stone-cold. I don't say that the principles of the party are wrong. But they're wrong for me, which is all-important. If they are not right for me, what care I how right they be? And as I don't believe in those of the other side, I'm going to give up politics altogether.”
“What will you do?”
“I don't know. I honestly don't. But I have an insistent premonition that I shall soon find myself doing something utterly idiotic, which to me will be the most real thing in life.”
I had indeed awakened that morning with an exhilarating thrill of anticipation, comparable to that of the mountain climber who knows not what panorama of glory may be disclosed to his eyes when he reaches the summit. I had whistled in my bath—a most unusual thing.
“Are you going to turn Socialist?”
“Qui lo sa? I'm willing to turn anything alive and honest. It doesn't matter what a man professes so long as he professes it with all the faith of all his soul.”
I broke into a laugh, for the echo of my words rang comic in my ears.
“Why do you laugh?” she asked.
“Don't you think it funny to hear me talk like a two-penny Carlyle?”
“Not a bit,” she said seriously.
“I can't undertake to talk like that always,” I said warningly.
“I thought you said you were going to be serious.”
“So I am—but platitudinous—Heaven forbid!”
The little clock on the mantelpiece struck six. Eleanor rose in alarm.
“How the time has flown! I must be getting back. Well?”
Our eyes met. “Well?” said I.
“Are we ever to meet again?”
“It's for you to say.”
“No,” she said. And then very distinctly, very deliberately, “It's for you.”
I understood. She made the offer simply, nobly, unreservedly. My heart was filled with great gratitude. She was so true, so loyal, so thorough. Why could I not take her at her word? I murmured:
“I'll remember what you say.”
She put out her hand. “Good-bye!”
“Good-bye and God bless you!” I said.
I accompanied her to the front door, hailed a passing cab, and waited till she had driven off. Was there ever a sweeter, grander, more loyal woman? The three little words had changed the current of my being.
I returned to take leave of Agatha. I found her in the drawing-room reading a novel. She twisted her head sideways and regarded me with a bird-like air of curiosity.
“Eleanor gone?”
Her tone jarred on me. I nodded and dropped into a chair.
“Interview passed off satisfactorily?”
“We were quite comfortable, thank you. The only drawback was the tea. Why a woman in your position can't give people China tea instead of that Ceylon syrup will be a mystery to me to my dying day.”
She rose in her wrath and shook me.
“You're the most aggravating wretch on earth!”
“My dear Tom-Tit,” said I gravely. “Remember the moral tale of Bluebeard.”
“Look here, Simon”—she planted herself in front of me—“I'm not a bit inquisitive. I don't in the least want to know what passed between you and Eleanor. But what I would give my ears to understand is how you can go through a two hours' conversation with the girl you were engaged to—a conversation which must have affected the lives of both of you—and then come up to me and talk drivel about China tea and Bluebeard.”
“Once on a time, my dear,” said I, “I flattered myself on being an artist in life. I am humbler now and acknowledge myself a wretched bungling amateur. But I still recognise the value of chiaroscuro.”
“You're hopeless,” said Agatha, somewhat crossly. “You get more flippant and cynical every day.”