IN spite of her wetting Lady Ellington felt she had had a most interesting day, when, an hour later, she drove back with Madge and her maid to Brockenhurst. She was not in the least afraid of having caught cold, because her physical constitution was, it may almost be said, as impervious to external conditions as her mind. That frightful flash of lightning, too, which had shattered the now leafless tree, had also, as we have seen, been powerless to upset the even balance of her nerves, and had only evoked a passing regret that so much electric force should be wasted. She could, therefore, observe with her customary clearness that something had occurred to agitate Madge, and though the thunderstorm alone might easily account for this—where Madge had got her nerves from she could not conjecture, there was nothing hereditary about them, at any rate, as far as her mother was concerned—yet it required no great exercise of constructive imagination to connect Evelyn’s sudden appearance with this agitation. She remembered also Madge’s refusal to see him the other day, and her rather unaccountable postponement of the sitting. A few well-chosen questions, however, would soon settle this, and these she delivered that evening after dinner, firing them off like well-directed shots at a broad target. She did not, to continue the metaphor, want to make bull’s eyes at once, a few outers would show her the range sufficiently well.
She had first, however, committed to writing on half-a-dozen sheets of the hotel paper her impressions of the day and the conversation of Mr. Merivale, in so far as it bore upon the simplification of life, and was pleased to find how considerable a harvest she had gathered in. Lady Ellington’s literary style had in perfection those qualities of clearness and sharp outline that distinguished her mind, and her document might have been a report for an academy ofscience, so well arranged and precise was it. There were no reflections of her own upon the matter; it was merely a chronicle of facts and conversation. This having been written, revised, and read aloud to Madge, she then marched with her gun to her position in front of the target.
“It was odd that Mr. Dundas should have appeared so unexpectedly, Madge,” she said. “You must have had some considerable time with him if he arrived before the storm began.”
Madge had been rather expecting this, and she winced under her mother’s firm, hard touch.
“Yes, he had been there about an hour before you came in,” she said. “I think your account is quite excellent, mother.”
This, if we consider it as an attempt to draw Lady Ellington off the subject of Evelyn, was quite futile. She did not even seem to notice that such an attempt had been made.
“And did you arrange about your further sittings?” she asked.
“I don’t think any more will be necessary,” replied Madge. “Philip agrees with me too.”
“And Mr. Dundas?”
“I don’t think he will ask me for any more either.”
Lady Ellington considered this a moment.
“But surely you had settled to have one more,” she said, “the one which you postponed.”
“Yes, but I think we all agree now that as far as I am concerned the picture is finished.”
Lady Ellington was not exactly puzzled; it would be fairer to say that though she did not quite know where this led, she was quite certain it led somewhere. It was not a puzzle; it was rather a clue. So she got behind a bush, as it were, and continued firing from there.
“He is a great friend of Philip’s, is he not?” she said. “I suppose you will see a good deal of him after your marriage?”
This sharp-shooting was frightfully trying to Madge’s nerves; she never knew where the next shot might be coming from. But in that it was now quite clear to her that shooting was going on, it was the part of wisdom to defend herself.
“Oh! I hope so,” she said, “he is charming. I expect he will be constantly with us.”
This was a little disconcerting; Madge had distinctly had the best of that exchange. But she was in the beleaguered position; she felt that at any moment she might have to give in. She had a wild desire simply to leave the room, for she wanted to be alone, and to think over all that she now knew, but the clock inexorably pointed to half-past nine only, and to say she was going to bed would simply strengthen whatever idea it was in Lady Ellington’s mind that prompted her questions. Maternal anxiety and solicitude, though the point of view of the mother was perhaps a little predominant, were the moving causes of them, if they were referred back to primary motives; to put it more bluntly yet, Lady Ellington merely wished for a guarantee that nothing of any sort had occurred which might, however remotely, influence the matrimonial design for her daughter which she had formed and Madge had agreed to carry out. That she had fears that things were running otherwise than smoothly—by smoothly being meant that the marriage would take place on the twenty-eighth of the month—would be an overstatement of the idea that prompted these questions, but she certainly wished for some convincing word that she need have none.
Now, in the art of conversation as generally expounded, provision is not made for one very important and common contingency. Of the two conversationalists one may be willing to talk of anything in the world except one subject, the other may for the time wish to talk about no other than that, and thus conversation becomes difficult. But it would often be a tactical error—a thing of which Lady Ellington was seldom guilty—for the person who wishes to speak of one subject only to batter the other with too many questions on it. It is often better to sit quietly down and wait, refusing with what politeness there may be handy to talk of anything else, and simply let silence do its stealthy work—for awkward silences are wearing, and the wearing effect is inevitably felt by the side which is willing to talk of any but the one subject. Lady Ellington perhaps had never formulated this in all its naked simplicity, but she had often before now put the theory into practice with masterly effect, and she did so now. There was, so to speak, but one gate through which the beleaguered garrison could make a sortie: round that she concentratedher forces. The beleaguered garrison knowing that, tried to make a sortie through every other gate first.
A long silence.
“That was a terrible storm this afternoon,” said Madge. “The rain fell in bucketsfull. I saw there were quite deep channels across the road along which we drove back here, which it had made.”
“I did not notice them,” said Lady Ellington.
Silence.
“Fancy Mr. Merivale cooking for himself and doing all the housework,” said Madge.
“Fancy!” said Lady Ellington.
Silence.
“Shall we go up after breakfast to-morrow?” asked Madge.
“Unless you would like to go before,” said her mother.
There is a terrible little proverb about being cruel only to be kind, and this benignant sort of torture exactly describes the procedure of Lady Ellington. Should there be—and she was quite sure there was—something going on in Madge’s mind with regard to Evelyn she was quite convinced that it would be better in every way that she should know about it. That was the ulterior kindness; the immediate cruelty was apparent—for Madge was on the edge of a crisis of nerves; a very little push might send her sprawling. If that then was the case, Lady Ellington distinctly wished that she should sprawl; if, on the other hand, there was nothing critical or agitating in her outlook, the little push would do no harm whatever, for a mind at peace does not have its tranquility upset by vague suggestions and indefinite suspicions.
But since poor Madge was far from owning just now that inestimable possession of a tranquil mind, in the silence that followed her third fiasco in making general conversation, she began to get restless and fidgetty. She opened a book and looked blankly at a page, and shut it again; she fingered the ornaments on the mantlepiece; she went to the open window and looked out for a considerable time into the hot, wet blackness, for the slow, steady rain was again falling, and the heavens wept from a sullen sky. The ridge of the forest below which stood Merivale’s house was directly opposite the window—she had seen that before night fell—and, like the thrush that came to his voiceless call, so now her spiritsped there to one who called for her. That sudden flash of lightning had not been more unexpected than Evelyn’s declaration to her that afternoon, nor had the thunder that followed it come quicker in response than she had come. And now she wondered, half with dread, half with a wild, secret hope, whether he had noticed that momentary self-betrayal that she had made. She knew that before she could think or control herself, a cry had been on her lips, her arms had flung themselves wide. True, as soon as her conscious brain could work, she had revoked and contradicted what she had done. But had he seen? How terrible if he had seen! How terrible if he had not!
What had become, she asked herself, of all her sober and sane conclusions of a week ago? She knew then that she loved him, that that which had been a stranger to her all her life, no pleasant domestic affection, but something wild, unbarred, almost brutal, yet how essential now to life itself, had dropped into her heart, as a stone drops into the sea, going down and down to depths unplumbable, yet still going down until the bottom—the limits of her soul—was reached. And he? Was she to him another such stone? Was she really sinking down and down in his heart, so steadily and inevitably that all the tides of all the seas might strive, yet could never cast that stone up again? It was such a little thing, yet no power on earth, unless the laws that govern the earth were revised and made ineffectual, could ever stay its course, if it moved under the same command as she. Each had to settle in the depths of the other. Once the surface was broken by the little splash, down that would go which made the splash, and whether in a wayside puddle or in the depths of mid-Atlantic, it would rest only where it touched bottom. Such was the sum of her wide-eyed staring into the blackness of the rain-ruled night. Then, still restless, she turned back again into the room, and faced not the world of dreams and solitary imaginings, of what must theoretically be the case, but the material side of it all, which indubitably had its word to say. On the table was the letter she had received an hour before dinner, forwarded from London, and expressing the pleasure of the donor in sending a wedding present; there too was her own answer of neatly-worded thanks, and, above all, there was her mother, patiently adamant. And the beleaguered garrison, though it knew that the enemy—thatfriendly enemy—awaited it, went out on a sortie too forlorn to call a hope through the only available gate.
Madge sat down in the chair she had occupied before.
“You have been asking me a lot of questions, mother,” she said, “which bear on Mr. Dundas. I suppose you think or have guessed that something has happened. You are quite right; I think you are always right. He told me this afternoon that he was in love with me.”
Lady Ellington hardly knew whether she had expected this or not; at any rate she showed no sign of surprise.
“What very bad taste,” she said, “his telling you, I mean.”
Madge had given a sudden hopeless giggle of laughter at the first four words of this, before the explanation came. Lady Ellington waited till she had finished.
“What did you say to him?” she asked.
“I hardly know. I think I said that one or other of us must leave the room.”
“Very proper; and he?”
“He—he asked me whether I hated him for it. And I told him I did not.”
Then she broke; whether or no it was wiser to be silent she did not pause to consider, for she could not be silent. There must be a crash; a situation of this kind could not adjust itself in passivity, it was mere temporising not to speak at once.
“Because I don’t hate him,” she said, now speaking quickly as if in fear of interruption. “I love him. Oh! I have done my best; if he had never spoken, never let me know that he loved me, I could have gone on, I think, and done what it has been arranged for me to do. Philip knew, you see, that I did not love him like that. I had told him. But I did not know what it was. I almost wish I had never known. But I know; I can’t help that now.”
Whatever Lady Ellington’s gospel as regards the best plan on which to conduct life was worth, if weighed as a moral principle, it is quite certain that she acted up to it. She put a paper-knife into the book she had taken up during Madge’s aimless wanderings about the room to mark the page of her perusal, and spoke with perfect calmness.
“And what do you propose to do?” she asked.
Madge had not up till that moment proposed to do anything; she had not, in other words, considered the practicalinterpretation of this bewildering discovery. The fact that her silent, secret love—a love which she was determined to lock up forever in her own breast—was returned, was so emotionally overwhelming that as from some blinding light she could only turn a dazzled eye elsewhere. Her first instinct, at the moment at which that was declared to her, was of rapturous acceptance of it, but almost as instinctive (not quite so instinctive, since it had come second) was a shrinking from all that it implied—her rupture with Philip, his inevitable suffering, the pressure that she knew would be brought to bear on her. Yet the thing had to be faced; it was no use shrinking from it, and Lady Ellington’s question reminded her of the obvious necessity for choice. Her choice indeed was made; it was time to think of what action that choice implied. But she answered quietly enough.
“No, I have not yet thought of what I mean to do,” she said. “I suppose we had better talk about it.”
Then Lady Ellington unmasked all her batteries. It was quite clear that Madge already seriously contemplated breaking off her engagement with Philip and marrying this artist.
“Indeed, we had better talk about it,” she said. “But I want to ask you one question first. Has Mr. Dundas the slightest notion that his feeling for you is reciprocated?”
Madge thought over this a moment.
“He has no right to think so,” she said. “I—I have told you what occurred. The whole thing was but a few seconds.”
“There are various ways of spending a few seconds,” said her mother. “But you think you spent them discreetly.”
Madge looked up with a sort of weary patience.
“You mustn’t badger me,” she said. “It is no use. I did my best to conceal it.”
Then the bombardment began.
“Very good; we take it that he does not know. Now let us consider what you are going to do. Do you mean to write a note to him saying, ‘Dear Mr. Dundas, I love you?’ If that is your intention, you had better do it at once. There is no kind of reason for delay. But if it is not your intention, taking that in its broadest sense to mean that you will not make known to him that you love him, dismiss that possibility altogether. Pray give me your whole attention, Madge;nothing that can occur to you in the whole of your life is likely to matter more than this.”
“But I love him,” pleaded Madge, “and he loves me. Is not that enough? Must not something happen?”
“I ask you whether you intend to do anything; that implies now that you, without further action on his part, will show him that you love him. The question just requires ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’”
“And supposing I decline to answer you?” asked Madge, suddenly flashing out.
“I don’t think you can do that. You see I am your mother; as such, I think I have a right to know what you propose to do.”
Madge covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. The question had to be answered; she knew that, and she knew also that unless Evelyn made a further sign she could do nothing. If his love for her, as she doubted not at all, was real, he must approach her again. Here then were all the data for her answer.
“No,” she said. “I shall do nothing, because there is no need. He must——” And she broke off. Then she got up with a sudden swift movement.
“You put it coarsely, you make cast-iron of it all, mother,” she said, “when you ask me if I intend to write to him and tell him. Of course I do not.”
“Nor see him?” pursued Lady Ellington.
“If he asks to see me I shall see him,” said she. “And if his object is to say again what he said to-day, I shall tell him.”
Now to get news, even if it is not very satisfactory, is better than not getting news. In uncertainty there is no means of telling how to act, and whatever the contingency—a contingency known is like a danger known—it can perhaps be guarded against, and it can certainly be faced. How to guard against this Lady Ellington did not at the moment see, but she knew that danger lay here.
“And from that moment you will break off your engagement with Philip?” she asked.
There was no need here of any reply, and Lady Ellington continued:
“Now consider exactly how Mr. Dundas stands,” she said. “He knows you are engaged to a friend of his, that you willbe married in a few weeks, and he allows himself, left alone with you by accident, to make this declaration to you. Does that seem to you to be an honourable action?”
Then once again Madge flashed out.
“Ah, who cares?” she cried. “What does that matter?”
Lady Ellington rose.
“You have also promised to marry Philip,” she said. “I suppose that does not matter either? Or do I wrong you?”
“He would not wish me to marry him if he knew,” said Madge.
Lady Ellington poured out her glass of hot water, and sipped it in silence. She knew well that many words may easily spoil the effect of few, and her few, she thought, on the whole had been well chosen. So just as before she had refused to talk on any subject but one, so now, since she had said really just what she meant to say, she refused any longer to talk on it, but was agreeably willing, as Madge had been some ten minutes before, to talk about anything else.
“I think there will be more rain before morning,” she said.
Then Madge came close to her and knealt by her chair.
“Are you not even sorry for me, mother?” she said.
“I shall be if you act unwisely,” replied the other, and Madge, there was nothing else to be done, got up again.
There was a slightly chalybeate taste in Lady Ellington’s hot water to-night, and she remarked on it; this was more noticeable if the water was hot than if it was cold, but the taste was not unpleasant. Then the question of their train up to town the next day was debated, and it was settled to leave that till to-morrow. Indeed, it was rather a pity to come down into the country for so few hours, and their afternoon to-day had really been spoiled by the rain. Another walk in the forest—it would look beautifully fresh and green after the storm—would be very pleasant to-morrow morning, if it was fine.
All this, delivered in her cool, well-bred voice, had a sort of paralytic effect on Madge; she felt as if coils were being wound round her that hampered her power of movement. She could scarcely picture herself as in active opposition to her mother’s will, and the picture of herself triumphant over it was even more unthinkable. But, as usual, she kissed her mother when she said “Good night” to her, and her mother offered her bromide if she thought that the excitement andagitation caused by the thunderstorm would be likely to prevent her sleeping.
Lady Ellington did not propose taking any bromide herself to make her sleep; she did not, on the other hand, propose to attempt to go to sleep just yet, for she had matters to weigh and consider, and perhaps take steps consequent on her consideration, before she went to sleep. Like all practical and successful people, she believed intensely in prompt action; it was better in most cases to decide wrongly than not to decide at all, and she intended before she slept to-night both to decide, and, as far as the lateness of the hour permitted, to act on her decision. The proposition, the thesis of her decision, was very soon rehearsed; indeed, that was the thing that she took for granted, but had now to prove and demonstrate. There was a house, so to speak, which she was under contract to build and have ready in a few weeks, it was her bricks and mortar she had to procure, and have the house solidly built and ready by the required date. And the house to be built, it is almost superfluous to remark, was the house which Madge and Philip would occupy together.
Now, according to her lights, little lights, they may have been, “much like a shade,” she was convinced that Madge would be extremely happy in the house she had to build, for she was a woman of sense, and fully believed that everything that was sensible, even a sensible marriage, wasipso factobetter than its corresponding equivalent with the sense left out. Philip was in every way a suitable match; he was a gentleman, he had all those solid qualities, the qualities that wear well, which are so supremely important if they have to wear for the remainder of mortal existence, and he was much devoted to Madge. Madge on her side was much attached to him, and was quite certainly unemotional. It was therefore only reasonable to suppose that her sudden ascent into these aerial regions which had culminated in this evening’s crisis were but a Daedalus-flight; her wings, or the fastenings of them, would melt, and she would, if she pursued the unwise course, come to earth with a most uncomfortable and shattering bump. Evelyn, no doubt, possessed for her something which she missed in Philip, or would have missed if she had looked for it. But she had not looked for it, she had told him that she brought him affection, esteem, respect, and hehad been content. He was content still, and Madge must be content too.
Browning says that it is “a ticklish matter to play with souls,” but Lady Ellington did not stand convicted over this. She did not play with them at all; with a firm, cool hand, she shoved them into their places. For weeks Madge had accepted, if not with rapture, at any rate with a very sincere welcome, the future that had been planned for her, and it was an insanity now to revoke that for the sake of what might easily be a moment’s freak. That there was something very attractive about this irresponsible boy with his brilliant talent and his graceful presence, Lady Ellington did not for a moment deny, even when she was quite by herself. But to plan a lifetime that merely rested on these foundations was to build a house upon sand. Madge had fallen in love with externals; it was impossible that she should be allowed to make her blunder—for so her mother regarded it—irreparable, and it was the means whereby this should be rendered impossible that Lady Ellington had now to determine. And since she was quite firmly convinced of the desirability of this end, she did not, it must be confessed, feel particularly scrupulous with regard to means.
All this time Lady Ellington’s mind had not been only formulating but also constructing, and her construction was now complete. Late though it was, she drew her chair to the small writing-table, so conveniently placed under the electric light, and wrote:
Dear Mr. Dundas.—My daughter has told me, as indeed she was bound to do, what took place this afternoon when you arrived unexpectedly at Mr. Merivale’s house and found yourself alone with her. I feel of course convinced that you must be already sorry for having allowed yourself to take advantage of my girl’s accidental loneliness in this way, but since I gather from her that Mr. Merivale and I returned almost at that moment, I am willing to believe that you would not have——
Dear Mr. Dundas.—My daughter has told me, as indeed she was bound to do, what took place this afternoon when you arrived unexpectedly at Mr. Merivale’s house and found yourself alone with her. I feel of course convinced that you must be already sorry for having allowed yourself to take advantage of my girl’s accidental loneliness in this way, but since I gather from her that Mr. Merivale and I returned almost at that moment, I am willing to believe that you would not have——
Lady Ellington paused a moment; she wished to put things strongly.
—have continued to obtrude your presence and your speech on one to whom it was so unwelcome.I have no desire to add to the reproaches I am sure you must be heaping on yourself, and I will say no more on this subject. It is of course impossible that my daughter should sit to you again, it is equally impossible that you should write to her or attempt to see her, since you cannot possibly have anything to say except to reiterate your regrets for what you have done. These it is better to take for granted, as I am perfectly willing to do. We both of us forgive you—I can answer for her as completely as I can answer for myself—with all our hearts, and will maintain, you may rest assured, the strictest silence on the subject.I should like to have one line from you in acknowledgment of the receipt of this.—Yours very truly,Margaret Ellington.
—have continued to obtrude your presence and your speech on one to whom it was so unwelcome.
I have no desire to add to the reproaches I am sure you must be heaping on yourself, and I will say no more on this subject. It is of course impossible that my daughter should sit to you again, it is equally impossible that you should write to her or attempt to see her, since you cannot possibly have anything to say except to reiterate your regrets for what you have done. These it is better to take for granted, as I am perfectly willing to do. We both of us forgive you—I can answer for her as completely as I can answer for myself—with all our hearts, and will maintain, you may rest assured, the strictest silence on the subject.
I should like to have one line from you in acknowledgment of the receipt of this.—Yours very truly,
Margaret Ellington.
This note was written with but few erasures, for it was Lady Ellington’s invariable custom to think her thoughts with some precision before she committed them to paper. Yet, late as it had grown, she copied it out afresh, put it in an envelope and directed it, and placed it on a small table by the head of her bed, so that when her tea was brought in the morning, it would be patent to the eyes of her maid. But, rather uncharacteristically, she thought over what she had said in it as she continued her undressing. Yet it was all for the good, likewise there was no word in it that was not true. And she slept with a conscience that was hard and clear and quite satisfied. For if one was doing one’s best for people, nothing further could be demanded from one. And that she was doing her best she had no kind of doubt. Thus her mind was soon at leisure to observe that it was impossible to put out the electric light after getting into bed. It was necessary to light a candle first, and she made a mental note to refuse to pay for candles in case they were charged in the bill.
Lady Ellington’s postponement of the settling of the train by which she and Madge should go up to town next day was due, as the reader will have guessed, to her desire to get Evelyn’s answer to her note before she went. A glorious morning of flooding sunshine and a world washed and renewed by the torrents of the day before succeeded the storm, and at breakfast her plan of spending the morning in the forest, and going up to London after lunch was accepted byMadge if not with enthusiasm, at any rate with complete acquiescence. She of course must not know that her mother had written to Evelyn; it was wiser also, in case she was familiar with his handwriting, that there should be no risk run of her seeing the envelope addressed by him in reply. A very little strategy, however, would affect all this, and in obedience to orders, as soon as Lady Ellington and Madge had started on their ramble this morning, her maid took a cab to the Hermitage, bearing this note, the answer to which she would wait for, and give it to her mistress privately. This seemed to provide for all contingencies anyhow that could arise from this note itself. Indeed, though there were dangers and contingencies to be avoided or provided for before Madge would be safely Home—Lady Ellington thought this rather neat—she felt herself quite competent to tackle with them. Madge had declared she would take no step without the initiative on the part of Evelyn, and after the really very carefully worded note which he would receive this morning, it was not easy to see what he could do. Luck, of course, that blind goddess who upsets all our plans as a mischievous child upsets a chess-board on which the most delicate problem is in course of solution, might bring in the unforeseen to wreck everything, but Lady Ellington’s experience was that Luck chiefly interfered with careless people who did not lay their plans well. She could not accuse herself of belonging to that class, nor in fact would her enemies, if, as was highly probable, she had enemies, have done so.
It was therefore in a state of reasonable calm and absence of apprehension that she came back from her long stroll in the forest with Madge just before lunch. She had had a really delightful walk, and they had talked over, without any allusion to the subject that really occupied them both, the gospel of the simple life, as practised by Merivale. Madge had not slept well; indeed, it would be truer to say she had scarcely slept at all, and her face bore traces of the weary hours of the night. But she too, like her mother, though for different reasons, had no temptation to re-open the subject, simply because she felt she could not stand any more just then, and it was something of a relief to devote even the superficial activity of her mind to other topics. Not for a moment did she doubt that Evelyn would write to her asking to see her; he must indeed do that for his own sake no lessthan hers, and though the waiting was hard enough, yet at the end of it there shone so bright a light that even the waiting had a sort of luminous rapture about it. So comforting herself thus, she responded to her mother’s bright, agile talk, and indeed took her fair share of conversation.
The answer had arrived when Lady Ellington reached home, and her maid gave it her in her bedroom. It acknowledged the receipt of her note, as she had asked, and which indeed was all she had asked. She should, therefore, have been perfectly satisfied. Yet she was not quite; she did not feel as secure as she could have wished.
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IT was some ten days after the events of the thunderstorm, and Evelyn, who had returned to London the day after, was in his studio working at the portrait of Philip. The last ten days had passed for him like an evil dream—a dream, too, unfortunately from which there was no prospect whatever of waking. Indeed, as the dream went on it seemed to gain in its ghastly vividness; every day that passed repeated the effect of it, and stamped its reality deeper. But with good sense that did him credit, instead of brooding desolately over his lot, or driving himself half-mad with the thought of Madge, he turned with a sort of demented fury to his work, and day after day painted till he could no longer see, not leaving off till his brain was dull and almost incapable of further thought. But though nervous, excitable and highly-strung, he was luckily also very strong, and believed that he was capable, at any rate, of going on at this frightful high pressure anyhow till the marriage had taken place. When that was accomplished, he felt that the tension of the suspense would be lightened; he might himself, it is true, drop like a stone in the sea, but the struggle would then be over, he would not battle any longer to try to keep afloat. In the inside pocket of his coat he kept the note that he had received from Lady Ellington; it was soiled and wilted with much handling and re-reading, and simple and straightforward (from a literary point of view) as it was, he had tried fifty interpretations on each of those very intelligible sentences. But not one contained a grain of comfort for him.
But though the whole fibre of his spiritual being was in so great and agonising a state of unrest, he found that his eye and his hand had lost not one particle of their powers of vision and execution. Sometimes, it is true, it was rather hard to get to work; it seemed scarcely worth while putting in a light or a shadow, but when once he had begun therewas no abatement in the brilliance of his skill, and though he only felt a vague, far-away satisfaction in what he was doing, he brought all his keenness of observation, all his dexterity of handling to his work. Again, when his sitters were there, there was the same merciful necessity of normal behaviour, and probably there was only one person who saw him during these days who suspected that there was anything wrong. This was Philip. But of what was wrong he had not the faintest inkling.
Philip himself, so said the world in general, had become wonderfully softened since his engagement. He had gained enormously in geniality, a quality of which the world had not considered him particularly lavish before, and he did not in these new days take himself quite so seriously as he had been used to. Why he had fallen in love with Madge originally nobody quite knew, for there was no very obvious common ground between them. But the ways of love are past finding out, and even as when two tiny carbon poles of an electric battery are brought near to each other a light altogether disproportionate to their size illuminates the night, so it was with Philip. And certainly now the miracle was easier of explanation; there apparently had been in him the germ of a quite different Philip to that which he showed the world—a Philip admirably kind and gentle, the very man who would so easily fall in love with anyone possessed of half Madge’s perfectly obvious attractions. All this was said in general talk, but in whispers it had begun to be said that Madge was not so desperately in love with him, and for this Gladys Ellington was not, as a matter of fact, directly responsible, though no doubt she would have been if she had thought she would not be found out. It was rather Madge’s own manner which suggested it. She too, like Philip, had been much humanised, coincidentally anyhow, with their engagement; but later, during these last ten days in fact, she really seemed to have hired a snail-shell and curled herself up in it. Her trousseau—this alone was immaterial—did not seem to give her the smallest pleasure, and yet her indifference to that was not the indifference which might have been the fruit of her private intense happiness, which could conceivably have made even these confections seem tasteless. In fact, it was not only the trousseau that she appeared to find tasteless; she found everything tasteless,and really, to judge from her mode of behaviour when she was with Philip, you would have thought that she was an icicle just being introduced to an eligible snowflake.
Philip on this particular day had sat for Evelyn for nearly a couple of hours, grumbling at the length of his detention, but in a manner that did not suggest active discontent. He intended, in fact, to give Madge the picture on their wedding day, if it could be finished, and to further that desirable object he was willing really to sit for as long as Evelyn required. The latter, various and numerous as were the moods to which he usually treated his sitters, seemed to-day to have gone through them all; he was, in fact, more like himself than Philip had lately seen him.
“Until one really looks at a man’s face,” he had been saying, “one never knows how ugly he is. I always used to think you passably good-looking. But you are awful, do you know? Men’s faces generally are like chests of drawers—square, don’t you know, and covered with knobs that suggest handles. And you are balder than when I began to paint you.”
“I am sure I apologise. And do you really think you can finish it by the twenty-eighth? I shall be immensely grateful if you can.”
“The twenty-eighth? Ah! yes, the happy day.”
Thereat another mood came over him, and for the spate of surprising remarks which he had been pouring forth there was exchanged a frowning, brush-biting silence. This lasted another twenty minutes, and Philip, as thanks for his offerings on the altar of conversation, got only grunts, and once a laboriously polite request to stand still. But eventually he hit on a subject that produced a response.
“And Madge’s portrait?” he said. “Have you decided to yield to our ignorance perhaps, but anyhow our desire, and consider it finished?”
Evelyn stopped dead in the middle of a stroke, and a new and frightfully disconcerting mood suddenly appeared to possess him.
“How can you ask me if I yield,” he said hotly, “when you have told me I can’t have any more sittings? I yield as a man yields who is pinioned and hung. I only yield to force. As for the portrait, it is there, face to the wall. I will not send it to you, but you may fetch it away withoutopposition on my part. I never want to see it again. Oh! I make one condition—it must never be exhibited.”
“Ah! my dear fellow,” said Philip, “I cannot take it if you feel like that about it.”
“Leave it then.”
Philip was very deeply hurt somehow by this. Evelyn’s absolute insistence on his taking it as a present from him had much touched him, though he had tried to combat it. But this ending of the affair was intolerable. He could not leave matters like this. And now while he was debating what to do, Evelyn spoke again, resuming his painting with rapid, unerring strokes.
“I must say this, too,” he said. “I had an inspiration for that portrait quite unlike any I have ever had before. It is, even as it stands, my masterpiece, but you—you and Miss Ellington anyhow—have prevented me from completing what is my best, and would have been far better. Far better? It would have been on a different plane altogether. I am sorry if this hurts you, but it is only right you should know. I don’t say it is your fault; I don’t say it is anybody’s fault. But there the picture stands; I give it you with all the completeness with which I originally gave it you, and with all—all the best wishes.”
He paused a moment.
“But I won’t send it you,” he said, “since I don’t think it ought to be sent. Yet take it with my love, my best love, Philip. And I should be obliged if you would say no more at all about it. Turn your face a bit more to the left, there’s a good fellow; you have shifted slightly.”
He painted on for some little time in silence, and Philip, complying with his request that nothing more should be said about it, answered his next question, some common topic, and himself introduced another. But all the time his thoughts were busy enough on the tabooed subject. For a second time, as at the opera a few nights ago, the vague suspicion crossed his mind that Evelyn was in love with Madge, and had somehow betrayed this to her; but now, as then, he formulated this thought only to give it instant dismissal. That being so, he was morally bound to do Evelyn justice, to accept without either comment or reservation the fact that he really required another sitting from Madge, and to do his utmost, whatever her unwillingness and whatever thecause of it, to make her sit to him again. Both the Philip known to the few intimates and the Philip so much respected by the world at large had a very strong sense of fairness, and the fair thing quite certainly was this. It was impossible to deny an artist another sitting if he felt like this about it; it was doubly impossible to deny it to a friend. Even if the picture had been an order, a commission, it would have been but shabby treatment, now that he knew how Evelyn felt about it, not to do his very utmost to get Madge to give him another sitting; but the picture was not that, it was a present, given too, as he had said, “with his love.” He could not really doubt that when it was put to Madge like this, she would see it as he himself did.
The task itself of talking to her on the subject, it was distasteful to him, for she had been mysteriously indeed, but unmistakably in earnest, about it a few nights ago at the opera. Whatever the cause (and he consciously turned back from even conjecturing at the cause), she had, so she thought, at any rate, an adequate reason for not wishing to continue the sittings, even when the artist’s point of view was presented to her, and he foresaw that he might find himself in an opposition to her that would be painful to both of them. Nor had the change in her, which the world compared to the action of a snail retiring into its shell, escaped him. She had been for the last ten days or so reserved, silent, and apt to be startled. More than once he had asked her if anything was wrong, and the vehemence of her assertion that nothing was wrong had rather surprised him. But here, again, he had to pull himself up, and studiously refrain from conjecturing that Evelyn was in any way connected with any private worry of hers. Besides she had said that nothing was wrong; he was bound to accept that. For this reason he rejected the notion of consulting Lady Ellington about it; that would imply a distrust of the girl herself.
He was going to see her as soon as this sitting was over, and since he had thoroughly made up his mind that he must do his best to persuade her to do as he desired about the portrait, he determined not to put it off, but to speak to her to-day. But he judged it better not to tell Evelyn what he was going to do, because on the one hand his mission might fail of success, and on the other because he had been asked to allude no further to the question. So for the remainder ofthe sitting they talked, neither quite naturally, since both were thinking of the one subject that could not be talked about, on strictly public topics. But every minute was an age of discomfort, and Philip, at any rate, was heartily glad when it was over, and he was out again in the hot, sunny streets.
Madge scarcely knew how the days had passed since that afternoon in the New Forest, for it seemed to her that all the values of life were altered, as if a totally new scheme of things must be made, for that which existed at present was not possible. Day after day, too, brought the twenty-eighth nearer—that date before which something which would upset and reverse her whole world must assuredly occur. For she was pledged then to do that which she knew she could not do, the impossibility of which was every hour more vividly impressed on her. She had herself promised her mother to do nothing whatever, unless Evelyn made some further advance; what she did not know was how very skilfully he had been debarred from that. But already the promise she had herself given had begun to lose for her its moral validity, it was only in a second-hand sort of way that she considered it binding, for one thing only she felt was really binding on her, and that the impossibility of fulfilling her pledge to Philip. That was outside her power; by what step she would make that known, she did not yet consider. A way must be found; what the way was seemed to her, if she considered it at all, very immaterial.
For side by side with that impossibility, and not less securely throned, was another certainty, namely, that Evelyn must repeat what he had said before; no man could leave it like that. And in those days she knew what it was to start and change colour when the door-bell rang, to frame any excuse, or no excuse, to go downstairs and see what the post had brought, to watch at balls and parties the arrival of fresh-comers, and glance across the crowded rooms in a sort of yearning certainty that now at last she would see one face among the crowd, which would come slowly closer and closer through the throng, until it was by her. Then—even the trivial, commonplace little details were imagined by her—he would ask her for a dance, or take her out to some unfrequented room. Philip at the time would probably be with her; he would certainly smile and nod at Evelyn, and resignher to him for “just ten minutes.” But the days went on, and none of these visions were realised; he appeared no more at houses where she had often seen him. Often, too, people asked her about the progress of her portrait, and to these she replied that it was finished. Finished! These moments were lit with a certainty and a sure hope, but there were others, black ones. What if he had spoken without thought, excitedly, carried away by some moment’s passion, bitterly regretted since? Supposing he did not really love her, supposing it had been just the flame and the blaze of a moment.
There was no preparation possible for the crash that was inevitable. No gradual estrangement from Philip, ending in a quarrel, was to be thought of; she could not scheme and soften things; the granite of thebouleversementcould not be kneaded into dough. More than once he had asked her if anything was the matter, and on the last occasion, as we have seen, she had denied it with vehemence—the vehemence of one who is sick with a deadly, devouring sickness, whose instinct, feverish and irresistible, is to hold on to the last, affirming her health. But her own vehemence had startled not only him, but herself, and she had vowed to show more self-control, and exhibit that self-control in its most difficult demonstration—merely that of appearing quite normal, and not exercising or, indeed, needing any self-control at all. More especially was this difficult when she was alone with him—the half-hinted caress, the look of love in those honest eyes, had to be somehow telegraphed back; some resemblance that would pass muster as a response had to be sent by her. It was all so mean, and the only comfort, and that cold, was that it could not now last long. For the one supreme impossibility remained—she could not be at his side on the twenty-eighth. Some thing, Fate or her own action dictated by it, would interfere with that, but about it she felt a sort of cold irresponsibility. Meantime, since responsibility was not as yet definitely fallen on her, the need for normal behaviour was paramount.
To-day Philip was coming to tea; he was going to return to dinner, and they, with her mother, were going to the theatre. After that there was a dance; from the hours between five and the small hours of the next day she would scarcely be alone a moment. And it was in loneliness that she could best bear the hopeless tangle—that tangle which, soit seemed to her now, could never be unravelled, but must be cut with a knife. A small knot more or less no longer made any difference, and it was with apathy almost, certainly without strong feeling of any kind, that she heard from Lady Ellington that she would perhaps be late for tea, and in consequence that Philip and herself would be alone together. An hour or two more of make-believe did not seem to her now to matter much; the hours that there could be of that were definitely limited, and, since limited, it was possible to deal with them. For it is only the endless succession of impossible hours, this knowledge that they will continue as long as life itself, that brings despair. But above all, till the crash came, she must be normal. She must give no sign of the storm that was raging within her, and though the depths and lowest abysses of her nature were upheaved by wild billows yet somehow the surface must be kept calm. It was one of the forces outside her own control which had taken possession of her, and with a sort of shudder she thought of the duck-and-drake discussions she had held with Evelyn about incontrollable forces, making these things of vital import the subject for a jest and an epigram. But she knew now, as she had not known then, what such a force meant.
This dismal drawing-room, with its frippery hanging over the window to hide it from the gaze of the square, its grand piano, its window at the opposite end, which commanded a small sooty yard! A hundred drawing-rooms east and west of it were exactly like it, yet on this had Fate—that cruel, velvet-pawed cat—pounced, selecting it at random, to make it the scene of one of her mean little dramas, at which one cannot laugh for fear of tears, at which one cannot cry because other people laugh. And here Madge sat alone, Lady Ellington not having yet returned, the silver urn occasionally lifting its lid with the infinitesimal pressure of the steam beneath, with all the mocking accessories of comfortable life round her, waiting for the inevitable explosion. It might be to-day, it might be to-morrow, it might be any day up to the twenty-eighth. But by that time it must have come; yet the same carpet would be trodden on, the same pictures would cast incurious eyes on to a human tragedy, the sameeverythingwould preserve its mute, inanimate composure. That composure she, too, had now to rival; she must be as suitable as the sofa.
Her greeting of him, anyhow, was good enough.
“At last!” she said. “Philip, it is weeks since I set eyes on you. Where have you been, and what have you done with yourself all this time? Now, don’t say it has only been business. I don’t believe you do any, and I shall send a detective to get on your track. Ah! you wouldn’t like that, I can see it; you gave what novelists call an involuntary shudder.”
Then she broke down a little.
“Tea,” she asked. “You like it weak, don’t you?”
Philip settled himself in the chair she had indicated. He, too, like Madge, was inclined to temporise, though his reasons for so doing were different, for his inevitable errand was unpleasant, and the present so extremely the reverse. Her temporisation on the other hand, was that of postponing the inevitable for the sake of the impossible.
“Well, it is good anyhow to see you again,” he said. “Yes, business chiefly has stood in my way. But I won’t be dishonest; I spent nearly two hours this afternoon over the portrait.”
“What portrait?” asked Madge, with a swiftness that she could not help. But she would gladly have recalled it. For the present, however, it appeared that Philip did not notice her vehemence.
“Mine,” he said quietly. “I am sitting to Evelyn, you know. He hopes to have it finished by the twenty-eighth. You shall see it then, but not till then.”
“Yes, keep it for then,” she said, again bracing herself to keep up some sort of attitude which should be natural in a girl to a man she was shortly going to marry. “It must come as a surprise to me, Philip. But only tell me: it is good, isn’t it? I shan’t be disappointed?”
Now, this portrait of himself seemed to Philip more magical work than even that of Madge. He knew himself pretty well, but this afternoon, when he was allowed to see it, he felt that Evelyn somehow must have been inside him to have done that. Brilliant as Madge’s portrait was (the artist himself indeed considering it quite his high-water mark), it was yet but a mood of Madge that he had caught so correctly and delineated so unerringly—that mood of reassuring laughter at the worries and the sorrows of life. But in his own portrait he felt that he himself was there.
“No, I promise you that you will not be disappointed,” he said, “though I daresay it will make you jump. It isn’t on the canvas at all, it seems to me; it is stepping right out of it. And there is there,” he added, “not only this poor business man, but the man who loves you. He has put that in. My goodness, how could he haveknownwhat that was like?”
Madge gave a sudden little start, but recovered herself immediately. She could not meet this seriously; it had to be laughed off.
“Well, I don’t know what it is like,” she said, “because with all my faults, I’ve really never loved myself. I never think of myself except as rather a little brute. It’s better to do that oneself, isn’t it, not to leave it to others. Not that it prevents them doing it also.”
Philip had possessed himself of Madge’s left hand, the hand that he never ceased to wonder at. It was always cool, never hot, never cold, and the skin of it was like a peach. The fingers were long and tapered to almond-shaped nails, and for all its slimness and delicacy it was yet a strong hand. And mechanically she returned the touch of his, which half unconsciously lingered at the base of the fourth finger as if showing the place where so soon the plain circlet of gold would be.
“Ah! it is always a pity if anybody thinks one a brute,” he said. “It often must happen, but I think one should try to make such occasions rare, so long as one does not have to sacrifice principle to them. I mean, if anyone thinks one a brute, and one can convince him of the contrary, it is usually worth while.”
For a moment it flashed through Madge’s brain what was coming. Considering what her mind was full of, it was not surprising. And it came.
“I want to ask a favour of you, dear,” he said. “I call it a favour because it is a real favour—it implies your doing something that I know you don’t want to do. It also will make somebody cease to think you a brute, and instead of sacrificing a principle in its performance—you will satisfy one, and that a very good one, the principle of fairness.”
Madge had left the sofa where they were sitting together during this, and simply in order to be doing something instead of inertly listening, poured herself out another cupof tea. So her back was turned to Philip when she replied:
“You state it as if I couldn’t help saying ‘Yes,’” she said, her voice trembling a little. “What is it, Philip?”
“Merely this, that you give Evelyn another sitting,” he said. “I had no idea how strongly and keenly he felt about it till this afternoon. Shall I tell you about it?”
“Yes, do.”
“Well won’t you come and sit here again?”
She did not dare, for she felt too uncertain of herself, and as she poured the milk into her tea, her hand was no longer master of itself, and the saucer was flooded.
“Ah! what a mess,” she cried. “Go on, Philip.”
“He feels that you are treating him shabbily,” he said. “Mind, he never said that; he never would. But it was clear to me. He believes that his portrait of you is the best piece of work he is ever likely to do, and though I may disagree with him, that says nothing against his right to his opinion, which is probably correct. Well, he wants one more sitting——”
“Did he say that this afternoon?”
“No, but he did before, and this afternoon he told me I might fetch it away if I liked, and he would offer no opposition, but that he would not send it. I can’t take it like that; neither you nor I can take it if that is his feeling about it. It isn’t as if I paid for it; it is a present—a most generous, splendid present. So will you be very kind, Madge, and though he bores you, just go back once? Indeed, it is only fair that you should. After all, it is only for an hour or so, and really, I don’t believe he bores you much.”
Though in the next moment Madge thought of so much, the pause was not long, for her thoughts flashed lightning-wise through her mind. First came the dramatic wonder that it should be Philip—Philip of all people in the huge world, who should be asking her to do this. If it had been anybody else the thing would not have been so astounding, but it was he. Then came the thought of her mother, and the promise she had given her. Even before this that promise, set in the scales with larger issues, had weighed light: now it just kicked the beam. But then, after that, and stronger than all else, came the sense of solution, of a riddle answered. How often had she puzzled over the manner in which it would turn out that the twenty-eighth should beto her a day without significance. Here was the answer, different from all her imaginings, and told her by Philip himself. And of imaginings and puzzlings she had had enough, and she did not put her brain to the task of imagining what that sitting would be like, how he would speak, what he would say. Simply, she was going to meet him again. And her voice when she answered was perfectly calm, without vibration. She felt indeed now so certain of herself that she came and sat by Philip again.
“Yes, if he feels it like that,” she said, “and if you feel it like that, I will do as you wish. As you say, an hour or two doesn’t matter much. I will write to him; it had better be as soon as possible—to-morrow if he has time. I have rather an empty day to-morrow.”
She got up again.
“I will write now, I think,” she said, “because I must eat a little, just a little, humble pie, and as I have no relish for that, I will get it done with as soon as possible. Now, what shall I say? Let me think.”
Her pen travelled with remarkable ease over the paper; the humble pie, it appeared, was being consumed without much difficulty. Once only she stopped for a word, then the scream of the quill underlined her own name.
“Will this do?” she asked, and read:
Dear Mr. Dundas.—I feel that I have no right whatever, since you wish me to give you another sitting, to refuse it. This has been pointed out to me quite clearly by Philip, who is with me now, and I see that it is not fair either on you or the portrait. I wonder if to-morrow would suit you? I could come any time between three and six. If three will do, pray do not trouble to answer, and I will assume the affirmative.
Philip’s habit of considering business letters led him to pause.
“Yes, that isamende honorable,” he said at length. “It will do excellently. But if you are bored, Madge, why not take your mother with you, or I would meet you there?”
“Oh, no, he would think it so odd,” she said lightly. “You see, I am accustomed to go alone. And he has told me that he hates other people in the studio while he is painting.”
She directed the note and rang the bell.
“There is one thing more, Philip,” she said, “and that is that I don’t want my mother to know I am going. You see, I told her, too, that I was not going to sit again, and if one goes back on one’s word, well, the fewer people who know about it the better. Everyone hates a changeable person who doesn’t know her own mind.”
Philip willingly gave his assurance on this point, for though it seemed to him rather a superfluous refinement, he was, on the whole, so pleased to have met with no opposition that he was delighted to leave the matter settled without more discussion. Then, since it was already time for him to go home and dress for the early dinner before the theatre, he got up.
“Ah! Madge,” he said, lingering a moment. “You don’t know, and you can’t guess, how divinely happy you make me. In the big things I knew it was so, but in little things it is so also. You are complete all through.”
This struck her like a blow. She could scarcely look at him, it was even harder to return his caress.
“Oh, don’t think too well of me,” she said, “and—and go now, or you will be late.”
Then, after he had gone, Madge felt tired as she had never felt tired before. The fact that the tension was over showed her what the tension had been; she had struggled, and while she struggled the need for effort had postponed the effect of weariness which the effort produced. She could go on living her ordinary life, and had not this occurred she could still have gone on, but it was only now, when the need for going on was over, that she knew how utterly weary she was. Yet with the weariness there was given her a draught of wine; it would no longer be “to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow,” but to-morrow only. She knew as surely as she knew how tired she was, that to-morrow would see her with him, and the rest she was content to leave; no imagination or picturing of hers was necessary. It would be as it would be.
After Philip had left her, there was still half an hour before she need go to dress, but the thought that her solitude might be disturbed here by anyone who called, or by her mother, who would be returning any minute, caused her togo upstairs to her own room, where, till the advent of her maid at dressing-time, she would be alone.
Thus it was scarcely a minute after her lover had gone that she went upstairs. As she mounted the steps to the storey above, she heard the front-door bell ring, congratulated herself on having just escaped, and went more softly, and closed the door of her bedroom very gently behind her.
The ring at the bell which she had heard was her mother returning. The footman who had taken Madge’s note, who had also just let Philip out, let her in, having laid down the note in question on the hall table, meaning to put a stamp on it, and drop it into the letter-box. Madge’s handwriting was unmistakable; it was brilliantly legible, too, and the address leaped from the envelope.
Now, Lady Ellington, as both her friends and her possible enemies would have at once admitted, was a very thorough woman. She did not, in fact, when she desired or designed anything, neglect any opportunity of furthering that desire or design, or on the other hand, neglect to remove any obstacle which might possibly stand in the way of its realisation. She had excellent eyes, too—eyes not only of good sight, but very quick to observe. Yet even a short-sighted person might easily have involuntarily read the address, so extremely legible was it. And Lady Ellington, with her excellent sight, read it almost before she knew she had read it. The footman in question had meantime just gone out to deliver her order to the chauffeur for the motor this evening, and before he had got back again into the hall, Lady Ellington was half-way upstairs with the note in her hand.
William—the footman—had a week before received a month’s warning on the general grounds of carelessness and inattention. Whether justified or not before they were justified now, for on re-entering he thought no more at all about the note he had to post, but stared at himself in a looking-glass, and hoped the next butler might be more agreeable to a sensitive young fellow, than the one he at present served under. He was a student of the drama, and smiled to himself in the glass, detecting in that image a likeness to Mr. George Alexander. So he smiled again. And as befits so vacant-minded a young man, he vanishes from this tale after a short and inglorious career. His career he himself regarded in a different fashion.
Lady Ellington went into the drawing-room on her way upstairs. Philip, she knew, since she had passed him fifty yards from the house had gone, and Madge, so it appeared, had gone too. But the tea was still there. For herself, she had already had tea, but she took the trouble to rinse out a cup, pour a little boiling water into it, and proceeded to lay the note face upwards over it. Thorough in every way, she took the precaution of sitting close to the table, ready at any moment to snatch the note away and be discovered sipping hot water—a practice to which she was known to be addicted, and to which she attributed much of her superlative health and freedom from all digestive trouble. How well founded that belief was may be judged from the fact that she digested without qualms of any kind what she was doing now. The good purpose that lurked behind assimilated apparently any meanness. In fact, the good purpose was of the nature of the strongest acid; the meanness ceased to exist—it was absorbed, utterly eaten away.
She was in no hurry, for there was still plenty of time before she need dress, and she waited till the flap of the envelope began to curl back of its own accord as the gum that fastened it was made fluid again by the steam. This happened very soon, because it was not yet really dry. Then, taking precaution against the sheet inside being touched by it, she drew it out and read. The clear, neat handwriting—she had taken great pains with Madge’s early tuition in this art—was as intelligible as print, and she only needed to read it through twice before she placed it back again in its envelope, pressed the flap back, and left it to cool and dry. Yet during this very short process her own ideas were also cool and dry, and the reasoning sound and effective. So she put a stamp on the envelope, and went downstairs herself, and dropped it into the letter-box.
That was necessary, since in her note Madge had stated that she would be at the studio at three unless she heard to the contrary. Therefore there was no object to be gained in merely sequestrating the note, since Madge proposed to go there unless stopped. For Lady Ellington knew well that no plan, however well-founded, could be quite certain of success; uncertainty, the possibly adverse action of Fate might work against it, and thus to let this note go—of which she had mastered the contents—was to provoke an accident theless, since, on her present scheme, she had not stopped it. For the fewer dubious things one does on the whole, the less is the risk. It is the unfortunate accident of guilt which in nine cases out of ten hangs a man. So though she had been guilty—in a way—when she wrote to Evelyn, implying Madge’s acquiescence in her letter, she had the more excellent reason now, especially since she had completely mastered the contents of this note, in not taking the more questionable step of stopping it. For she knew for certain, and at the moment did not require to know more, the immediate movements of the enemy; if Madge heard nothing, she would go to the studio to-morrow at three. But no one under any circumstances could prevent her mother making her appearance there too.
Again, it is true, some sort of reply might come. But the fact of a reply coming was equivalent to Evelyn’s saying that he could not be there at three to-morrow, which rightly she put down as being a negligible contingency. And in this case again, if Lady Ellington could not keep watch over Madge’s movements during the next ten days she felt she would be really ashamed of herself. And as she had never been that yet, she saw no reason why she should begin now. She was probably right—the chances were immensely at this moment in favour of her not beginning to be ashamed of herself. For the beginnings of shame are searchings of the heart; Lady Ellington never searched her heart, she only did her best.
The evening passed in perfect harmony; and though she had a good deal to think about, she could yet spare time to be characteristically critical about the play. That was easy, since it was a very bad one, and the deeper consolations of her brain were devoted all the time to certain contingencies. This note had been posted by half-past seven; it would be received that night. Supposing there was a reply to it, it was almost certain that the answer would come at the second morning post, the one that rapped towards the end of breakfast time. If so, and if that reply was received by Madge, she had merely, in the most natural manner possible, to suggest complete occupations for the day, challenging and inquiring into any other engagement. But she did not seriously expect this—no reply was the almost certain rejoinder.In this case, Lady Ellington would be quite unoccupied after lunch.
The ramifications went further. Madge had consented to give Mr. Dundas another sitting after she had declared she would not take the next step. It was better, therefore, to meet guile with guile, and not suggest a suspicion or possibility of it till the last moment. She would go out to lunch to-morrow herself, with regrets to Madge, leaving her free to spend the afternoon as she chose, without asking questions. She herself, however, would leave lunch early, and manage to be at Mr. Dundas’s by three o’clock, five minutes before perhaps; it was always well to be on the safe side.
Lady Ellington’s applause at the end of the second act was rather absent-minded. Her thoroughness made her examine her own position a little more closely, and there was one point about it which she did not much like, namely, the fact that she had written to Mr. Dundas from Brockenhurst, implying Madge’s concurrence in what she said. It would be rather awkward if any hint of that ever reached Madge; it really would be difficult to explain. Explanation, in fact, was impossible, since there was none. But it followed from this, as a corollary, that he must not see Madge alone; the chances then were enormous of the whole thing coming out. Yet how again would she be able to explain her own presence at Evelyn’s house in the King’s Road at three o’clock that afternoon? It was childish to say she happened to be passing. Then a solution occurred to her—one which was extraordinarily simple, and extremely probable—Philip had told her that Madge was sitting again. So probable, indeed, was this, that she could, almost without effort, persuade herself that he had done so.
Lady Ellington was happily unconscious at this moment what an extremely tangled web she was weaving, and how impossible it was for her to disentangle it, for not having had the privilege of overhearing Madge’s conversation with Philip, she had, by no fault of hers, no idea that he was pledged to secrecy. True, he had not actually mentioned, a thing which he might be expected to have done, the fact that Madge was going to sit again, but no doubt a little well-turned conversation might make him do so. Madge, at the end of the third act, was talking to a neighbour in the stalls, and she herself turned to Philip.
“A stupid act, rather,” she said. “Those two laid their plans so badly.”
Then, with a sudden sense of the inward humour of her words:
“It isn’t enough to open people’s letters,” she said, “you must hear their conversations too. I should really have made an excellent villain, if I had studied villainy. I should have hidden behind the curtains, and under the tables, and listened at key holes, for the private conversations of other people, and carefully looked in such places, and hung a handkerchief over the key-hole before indulging in any of my own.”
Philip laughed.
“Yes, I think you would be thorough in all you did,” he said, “and certainly, whatever your line was, I should ‘pick you up’ first, as schoolboys say, to be on my side.”
“Ah! I am certainly on your side,” said she. “Now, what have you done with yourself all day? I like to hear always exactly what people have done. A few weeks of what people have done gives you the complete key to their character.”
“Is that why you ask?” said he.
“No, because I know your character. I ask merely from interest in you.”
“Well, I rode before breakfast,” said he, “and got down to the city about half-past ten. I worked till half-past two, dull work rather—but, by-the-bye, hold on to your East Rand Mining, I think they are going better—then I ate three sandwiches and a piece of cake; then I sat to Evelyn for two hours, then I went round to see Madge, dressed, dined, and didn’t think much of the play.”
“And your portrait?” asked Lady Ellington. “Is it good?”
“Ah! all he does is good,” said Philip. “A man like that cannot do a bad thing. But it is more than good. It’s Mary Jane’s top-note.”
“I thought Madge was his top-note,” said Lady Ellington.
“Well, I think he has gone a semitone higher,” said he. “Of course I am the worst person to judge, but it seems to me that he is even more sure in this than he was in her portrait. Haven’t you seen it?”
Lady Ellington was quite quick enough to catch at this.
“No, but I should so much like to,” she said. “Do you think he would let me see it?”
“I’m sure he would.”
Philip paused a moment.
“Send him a note, or I will,” he said. “I shouldn’t go to-morrow, if I were you, because I know he is busy.”
“Ah! what a pity,” said Lady Ellington, lowering her voice a little. “I have nothing to do to-morrow afternoon.”
“I know he is busy,” repeated Philip. “He told me so.”