A SENSITIVE MAN
THE sight of Elsie’s drawn face, that pallid mask of desolation, moved Wyvern to a self-pity that savoured exquisitely on the tongue. To watch suffering and to be unable to relieve it was a cruel experience. He hardly dared to conjecture how much she had suffered during the last few days of suspense while he, the only man in the world for her, had been trying to make up his mind on a matter affecting the destinies of three persons. He could not dislike Elsie: she had a certain fragile winsomeness and she was still, though her first bloom was gone, pathetically young. Everything she said to-night did but strengthen his conviction of her intellectual immaturity. Between his mind and hers there was a great gulf fixed. Now Marion—Marion was so different. That did not mean that he had no pity left for Elsie. Not at all. His heart was wrung for the one no less than for the other. That was his tragedy: he had a threefold burden. Fromthat point of view he had to admit himself the most luckless of the three.
‘I know my little wife will understand. Her Jim has been quite frank with her.’
Elsie leaned forward, chin in hands, staring fixedly at distance. Only her extreme pallor showed her to be suffering. For the rest, her brow was knitted as though she concentrated all her power upon some problem that as yet baffled her.
‘Yes, Jim, I understand. I understand that you’re so much more sensitive than other men, and can’t resist beauty. Your gift carries penalties with it, and acute susceptibility is one of them. But....’
He glowed in appreciation of her. She was really unique. ‘Only one woman in a thousand could see that,’ he said warmly. ‘And my little wife is that one. She is the dearest....’
Elsie winced. ‘I was going to say there’s something Ican’tunderstand. I always thought you were the soul of honour, and you were once. Yet you were going away from me without a word of explanation.’
Sorrow looked out at her from his eloquent brown eyes. ‘My dear Elsie, don’t disappoint me. You’ve always been so understanding and helpful. How many men would haveconfided to their wives all that I have confided to you about my love for Marion?’
‘But, Jim!’ She frowned again, struggling to believe the best of him. ‘Jim, you didn’t tell me anything until other people had begun to make scandal.’ The idea hardened her. ‘I don’t believe you’d ever have told me. You would just have gone on deceiving us both.’
A gesture of impatience, and that was all. He did not give way to anger. ‘My dear, I realize how hard it is for you to listen to the voice of reason in a crisis like this, but you will try, won’t you? It all began in the most innocent, the most human way. I was overwhelmed by my compassion for the poor child—virtually imprisoned, as she is, with a husband she can’t even respect, let alone love. And then the affection ripened. She stimulates me wonderfully. She is an inspiration, just the inspiration that I need. Our minds are so beautifully attuned.’
And still Elsie was not satisfied. ‘You know I don’t grudge you anything, Jim. It’s the deceit that worries me. She ought to know about me. You ought not to take her under false pretences. It’s not like you, Jim, to be content with a vulgar intrigue.’
‘There is nothing vulgar in love.’ Hesoftened the rebuke by taking her hand, which she instantly withdrew. ‘And nothing guilty,’ he added, with a note of sternness.
Her laugh was of a kind that could not but shock him. ‘How clever you are at putting me in the wrong!’ she remarked, when her bitter mirth had subsided. ‘But I’m not wrong.’ Emotion induced in her a vitality that made him almost admire her. ‘I’m not sticking up for Respectability or any of the seven deadly virtues, as you call them. You dethroned these gods for me long ago. But thereissomething I believe in. I do believe in honour, and I hate a liar.... You’ve deceived her as well as me.’
Wyvern sighed. It was sometimes hard to be patient with women. ‘Elsie, why do you say things which you know to be untrue?’ His tone was still gentle.
‘Well, isn’t it true?’ she retorted. ‘Have you told her about me? Have you explained that a man so many-sided as yourself needs the love of more than one woman? Have you told her that the human heart is capable of almost infinite expansion? You know you haven’t.’
‘I respect you too much,’ he replied, cold with a new dignity, ‘and I respect myself too much ever to discuss you with anotherwoman. I thought you understood me better, Elsie.’
The fire in her seemed to die down. Vitality vanished, leaving her limp and listless. She rose, a frail slip of a girl with colourless skin and a halo of light brown hair like a dim mist—items so negligible compared with the lilies and roses of Marion’s robuster person, the flaming glory of her hair, the seductiveness of her brimming youth. Wyvern could not resist making a mental comparison even in this moment. He hated himself for making it, and he recorded it to his credit that he hated himself. It was so like him to be merciless to his own faults. He watched Elsie narrowly, from behind a curtain of cigarette smoke.
‘Very well, Jim. I shan’t stand in your way; you know that. To-morrow I’ll go away somewhere. Good night.’
He was pained and yet elated. She would go away to-morrow. Fortunately she had plenty of friends and, thank heaven, he had long ago settled an adequate income upon her. He had nothing to reproach himself with. She would go away to-morrow. They would meet again—oh, frequently. They would always be friends. He felt more warmly towards her than he had done for months, andyet he was dissatisfied. The victory he had won didn’t seem so good to him as it had seemed in prospect. He shrank from the suspicion that he had, in some inexplicable way, sunk in her esteem. The idea was unbearable.
‘We’ll discuss that another time. You’re not angry, darling?’ he said. ‘You see how inevitable it all is?’
With her hand on the door knob she turned to say: ‘Yes, Jim. I’m not blaming you.’ And she went out, closing the door softly behind her.
So that was all right. He smoked his cigarette out in something like peace of mind. Not perfect peace, however; the thought of losing something—even something for which he didn’t care—was distasteful. Old associations would cling. It was an insufferable social order that pressed this cruel alternative on a sensitive man, ordaining that he must release one woman before he could take another. ‘It’s all so niggardly, niggardly!’ said Wyvern, as he stepped out into the sweetness of that June evening. He felt the need, as he had never felt it before, of Nature’s soothing touch, her sunset’s balm for his eyes, the caress of her delicate breezes on his brow.
For the sake of the walk he set out in thedirection of his studio, a walk that would take him away from suburban houses into little lanes surrounded by open fields. There one could get close to Nature and to Beauty. He had often been grateful to his own foresight for having provided him with a studio not only separate from his residence but distant from it by many miles. Only in solitude, he murmured to himself, can the human spirit grow to its full stature; and he knew that the rather recondite art whereby he supplemented, or failed to supplement, his substantial private income could never have flourished in the vicinity of Elsie, who was, when all was said, ‘a dear little woman, but no artist.’ In his studio he could work undistracted; and once or twice, when the tide of his inspiration had been at the full, he had stayed there for several days, sleeping at nights upon a little canvas folding-bed. There was something Spartan about the practice that appealed to him. Elsie exhibited a suitable distress at these absences, but she encouraged his painting and applauded the results, though without revealing any real critical understanding of them. James Wyvern professed allegiance to no school, and to that fact attributed his failure to obtain recognition. He dealt too exclusively in subtleties to be able to please the multitude,even the multitude of art-critics. It was his declared purpose to demonstrate by his work a familiar French aphorism:La vérité consiste dans les nuances.‘The Boot Cupboard’ and an unnamed picture representing amethyst-blue houses were perhaps his most successful productions. ‘Representation, no. Symbolism, if you like. Representation is an artistic vice.’ Yet he had his lapses and was deliciously conscious of them. ‘My dear, I am daring. I am taking the gravest risk. What do you think—a ploughed field! Positively a ploughed field! The danger is simply colossal.’ To his artist-friends he was in the habit of saying: ‘Fundamentally, I suppose, I’m a novelist.’ Just as, three years before, during his literary period, he had fended off praise by murmuring: ‘I’m happiest, after all, with my palette and brush.... Oh, that little box of paints!’
Striding along between fragrant hedges, he luxuriated in the joy of the open air and in his new sense of freedom. Everything had been explained to Elsie, and she had taken it, on the whole, beautifully. He was really grateful to Elsie. And now he was a free man. ‘Freedom, the deep breath!’ he quoted in rapture. He was free now to rescue Marion, his imprisoned princess, from her dungeon of despair. He would take her away, far away. Awayfrom censorious England to the magic air and blue skies of Italy, where life should become an exquisite indolent dream. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Como! Como shall be themise-en-scène.’
Dreaming of Como, he entered the studio.
‘What the devil——!’ There she was, Marion herself, in his wicker-chair. ‘My darling,you!’ He was amazed to find her there, and amazed by the unearthly beauty of her. She rose to meet him, excited fear shining in her large eyes.
‘Hullo, Jimmy! You won’t be glad to see me.’ How the deuce did she know that? ‘John has found out about us. He made a scene. He’s dangerous. I’ve fled the house.’
‘Marion, what a wonderful girl you are! What a study in contrast—your fragrant English girlhood, and your exotic chintz dress!’ He enfolded her in arms of solicitude. ‘My dear, tell me it all.’
‘That’s all. People have been talking to him. He threatened me. So I came here.’
He could see her nostrils dilate and her breasts flutter in the intoxication of the danger. ‘Like netted fish they leap,’ he quoted to himself. Aloud he murmured: ‘Darling, you came here. Yes, of course. But how....’
‘Oh, I found out where it was and just came. There was a woman here——’
He was startled. ‘A woman?... Oh, Mrs. Phillips, perhaps, the woman who cleans up.’
‘Yes. I told her I was a friend of your wife’s, and she let me stay. Cheek, wasn’t it! Invented a wife for you. Just bluff, but it came off.... Do give me a cigarette.’
But this would never do. Here they were alone together, in a most compromising situation, while her husband—positively a dangerous fellow—raged round the countryside looking for her, perhaps with a pistol. At any moment——‘But, my darling girl, is it wise?’
With no sign of having heard the question, she rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Darling Jimmy, what shall I do?’
It was surely the most beautiful moment of his life. He was touched almost to tears by her perfect trust in him. All her dewy freshness, all her passionate beauty, all her vital young womanhood, was his for the taking. He had but to say: ‘Come with me now.... Como!’ and she would come. But was it wise to act so hastily? He plunged into a delirium of pleasurable emotion only to emerge with that question in his mind. With his lips clinging to hers he asked it. Was it wise?They would go away sooner or later: that was inevitable; but to go now, would it not be precipitate? To take a woman from her husband was a serious matter, involving unexampled responsibility. He would be bound to her more surely than by any legal marriage. And the scandal, the hateful publicity, the dragging of one’s name through the divorce courts—it was all so intolerable to a sensitive man. He would incur the enmity of many people, and he would lose Elsie. Elsie would divorce him, would perhaps forget him and re-marry....
He released Marion from that mad embrace.
‘What am I to do, darling?’ she repeated.
‘Let me think, dear,’ he said, stroking his troubled brow. ‘Let me think. Above all we must listen to the voice of reason. So much depends on this. Don’t you think it would be best for you to go back? Only for a while, of course.’
She stared as though he had spoken in an unknown tongue. ‘Go back? Go back to John?’
‘Only for a few weeks, darling, until I can see daylight, and make all arrangements.’
She stepped back from him a few paces, as if to survey him the better. Her eyes hadthe surprised and stricken look of a child unaccountably hurt.
‘I don’t think I understand. Are you telling me to go back to my husband?You, are you telling methat?’
‘My darling girl, don’t you see....’
‘Do you understand what that means? Go back to my husband who, when I last saw him, was raging like a beast. Go back to him and, if he doesn’t kill me, be his woman.’
‘Dear heart, for a few weeks only.’
She trembled violently for a moment, and then became rigid with scorn. ‘I agree with you perfectly. I had better go.’
The door slammed behind her before Wyvern recovered his wits. He ran forward a few steps as if to pursue her ... and stopped. ‘My God, I shall never see her again!’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘Perfect harmony, complete understanding, all lost. That was the moment, the moment of my life, and I let it pass. Como ... I shall never bear to look on Como again.’ Painful as his sensations were, they were undeniably interesting. If ever he wrote a novel he would make that incident the pivot of the plot, the crisis, the turning-point. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men.... By Jove there is!’ Why had he not taken it at the flood? It was alltoo sudden—no arrangements made, and a picture half-finished. Marion—he must forget Marion. Perhaps he had been mistaken in her. Her scorn for him had been so undeserved; he writhed at the recollection of it. He yearned now for some haven of refuge. Bruised and broken by life, his heart cried out for comfort. Ah, Elsie—she did not scorn him. A stab of fear lest the impossible had happened, lest he had alienated his wife’s love, sent him flying out of the studio and on the road for home. Forsaken by both women, he would be homeless indeed, and with no balm for his wounds. What if it were his fate to be misunderstood again? He began rehearsing the speeches he would make to Elsie. He conjured up the scene: Elsie in her night-dress, sitting up in the rumpled bed, just disturbed out of sleep. Perhaps she would be a little cruel at first: women were like that. ‘If my little wife is not kind to me now I shall go mad with the pain of it all.’ At that she would relent, and weep upon his breast. And she would love him more dearly than ever for having been so near to losing him.