MRS. WOLFSTEIN was right. There was money in Miss Schley’s performance. Her sly impropriety appealed with extraordinary force to the peculiar respectability characteristic of the British temperament, and her celebrity, hitherto mainly social, was suddenly and enormously increased. Already a popular person, she became a popular actress, and was soon as well-known to the world in the streets and the suburbs as to the world in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And this public celebrity greatly increased the value that was put upon her in private—especially the value put upon her by men.
The average man adores being connected openly with the woman who is the rage of the moment. It flatters his vanity and makes him feel good all over. It even frequently turns his head and makes him almost as intoxicated as a young girl with adulation received at her first ball.
The combination of Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley’s celebrity—or notoriety—had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme’s head. Perhaps he had not the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not wholly unattractive to those who looked on—the casual ones to whom even the tragedies of a highly-civilised society bring but a quiet and cynical amusement.
Lady Holme was not one of these. Her strong temper was token of a vivid temperament. Till now this vivid temperament had been rocked in the cradle of an easy, a contented, a very successful life. Such storms as had come to her had quickly passed away. The sun had never been far off. Her egoism had been constantly flattered. Her will had been perpetually paramount. Even the tyranny of Lord Holme had been but as the tyranny of a selfish, thoughtless, pleasure-seeking boy who, after all, was faithful to her and was fond of her. His temperamental indifference to any feelings but his own had been often concealed and overlaid by his strong physical passion for his wife’s beauty, his profound satisfaction in having carried off and in possessing a woman admired and sought by many others.
Suddenly life presented to Lady Holme its seamy side; Fate attacking her in her woman’s vanity, her egoism, even in her love. The vision startled. The blow stung. She was conscious of confusion, of cloud, then of a terrible orderliness, of a clear light. In the confusion she seemed to hear voices never heard before, voices that dared to jeer at her; in the cloud to see phantoms of gigantic size menacing her, impending over her. The orderliness, the clear light were more frightful to her. They left less to her imagination; had, as it were, no ragged edges. In them she faced a definite catastrophe, saw it whole, as one sees a near object in the magical atmosphere of the East, outlined with burning blue, quivering with relentless gold. She saw herself in the dust, pelted, mocked at.
That seemed at first to be incredible. But she saw it so plainly that she could not even pretend to herself that she was deceived by some unusual play of light or combination of shadows. What she saw—was:
Her husband had thrown off his allegiance to her and transferred his admiration, perhaps his affection, to the woman who had most deftly and delicately insulted her in the face of all her world. And he had done this with the most abominable publicity. That was what she saw in a clear light like the light of the East. That was what sent a lash across her temperament, scarring it perhaps, but waking it into all it could ever have of life. In each woman there is hidden a second woman, more fierce and tender, more evil and good, more strong and fervent than the woman who hides her in the ordinary hours of life; a woman who weeps blood where the other woman weeps tears, who strikes with a flaming sword where the other woman strikes with a willow wand.
This woman now rose up in Lady Holme, rose up to do battle.
The laughing, frivolous world was all unconscious of her. Lord Holme was unconscious of her. But she was at last fully conscious of herself.
This woman remembered Robin Pierce’s odd belief and the light words with which she had chastised it. He had persistently kept faith in, and sought for, a far-away being. But she was a being of light and glory. His kernel of the husk was still a siren, but a siren with a heart, with an exquisite imagination, with a fragrance of dreams about her, a lilt of eternal music in her voice, the beaming, wonder of things unearthly in her eyes. Poor Robin! Lady Holme found it in her heart to pity him as she realised herself. But then she turned her pity aside and concentrated it elsewhere. The egoism of her was not dead though the hidden woman had sprung up in vivid life. Her intellect was spurred into energy by the suffering of her pride and of her heart. Memory was restless and full of the passion of recall.
She remembered the night when she softly drew up the hood of her dressing-gown above her head and, rocking herself to and fro, murmured the “Allah-Akbar” of a philosophic fatalist—“I will live for the day. I will live for the night.” What an absurd patter that was on the lips of a woman. And she remembered the conversation with Fritz that had preceded her monologue. She had asked him then whether he could love her if her beauty were taken from her. It had never occurred to her that while her beauty still remained her spell upon him might be weakened, might be broken. That it was broken now she did not say to herself. All she did say to herself was that she must strike an effective blow against this impertinent woman. She had some pride but not enough to keep her passive. She was not one of those women who would rather lose all they have than struggle to keep it. She meant to struggle, but she had no wish that the world should know what she was doing. Pride rose in her when she thought of cold eyes watching the battle, cold voices commenting on it—Amalia Wolfstein’s eyes, Mr. Bry’s voice, a hundred other eyes and voices. Her quickened intellect, her woman’s heart would teach her to be subtle. The danger lay in her temper. But since the scene at Arkell House she had thoroughly realised its impetuosity and watched it warily as one watches an enemy. She did not intend to be ruined by anything within her. The outside chances of life were many enough and deadly enough to deal with. Strength and daring were needed to ward them off. The chances that had their origin within the soul, the character—not really chances at all—must be controlled, foreseen, forestalled.
And yet she had not douched the flame of defiance which she had felt burning within her on the night of Pimpernel Schley’s first appearance on the London stage. She had fanned it. At the Elwyns’ ball she had fanned it. Temper had led her that night. Deliberately, and knowing perfectly well who was her guide, she had let it lead her. She had been like a human being who says, “To do this will be a sin. Very well, I choose to sin. But I will sin carefully.” At the Elwyns she had discovered why her husband had not come with her. She had stayed late to please Leo Ulford. Mr. Laycock had come in about two in the morning and had described to Leo the festivity devised by Lord Holme in honour of Miss Schley, at which he had just been present. And Leo Ulford had repeated the description to her. She had deceived him into thinking that she had known of the supper-party and approved of it. But, after this deception, she had given a looser rein to her temper. She had let herself go, careless whether she set the poor pink eyelids of Mrs. Leo fluttering or not.
The hint of Fritz which she recognised in Leo Ulford had vaguely attracted her to him from the first. How her world would have laughed at such a domestic sentiment! She found herself wondering whether it were Miss Schley’s physical resemblance to her which had first attracted Fritz, the touch of his wife in a woman who was not his wife and who was what men call “a rascal.” Perhaps Fritz loved Miss Schley’s imitation of her. She thought a great deal about that—turning it over and over in her mind, bringing to bear on it the white light of her knowledge of her husband’s character. Did he see in the American his wife transformed, made common, sly, perhaps wicked, set on the outside edge of decent life, or further—over the border? And did he delight in that? If so, ought she not to—? Then her mind was busy. Should she change? If herself changed were his ideal, why not give him what he wanted? Why let another woman give it to him? But at this point she recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair—that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things—opposites, even—in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would be worse than useless for her to imitate Miss Schley’s imitation of her. Then, travelling along the road of thought swiftly as women in such a case always travel, she reached another point. She began to consider the advice of Robin Pierce, given before she had begun to feel with such intensity, to consider it as a soldier might consider a plan of campaign drawn up by another.
Should she, instead of descending, of following the demure steps of the American to the lower places, strive to ascend?
Could she ascend? Was Robin Pierce right? She thought for a long time about his conception of her. The singing woman; would she be the most powerful enemy that could confront Miss Schley? And, if she would be, could the singing woman be made continuous in the speech and the actions of the life without music? She remembered a man she had known who stammered when he spoke, but never stammered when he sang. And she thought she resembled this man. Robin Pierce had always believed that she could speak without the stammer even as she sang without it. She had never cared to. She had trusted absolutely in her beauty. Now her trust was shaken. She thought of the crutch.
Realising herself she had said within herself, “Poor Robin!” seeing perhaps the tigress where he saw the angel. Now she asked herself whether the angel could conquer where the tigress might fail. People had come round her like beggars who have heard the chink of gold and she had showed them an empty purse. Could she show them something else? And if she could, would her husband join the beggars? Would he care to have even one piece of gold?
Whether Lord Holme’s obvious infatuation had carried him very far she did not know. She did not stop to ask. A woman capable, as she was, of retrospective jealousy, an egoist accustomed to rule, buffeted in heart and pride, is swift not sluggish. And then how can one know these things? Jealousy rushes because it is ignorant.
Lord Holme and she were apparently on good terms. She was subtle, he was careless. As she did not interfere with him his humour was excellent. She had carried self-control so far as never to allude to the fact that she knew about the supper-party. Yet it had actually got into the papers. Paragraphs had been written about a wonderful ornament of ice, representing the American eagle perched on the wrist of a glittering maiden, which had stood in the middle of the table. Of course she had seen them, and of course Lord Holme thought she had not seen them as she had never spoken of them. He went his way rejoicing, and there seemed to be sunshine in the Cadogan Square house. And meanwhile the world was smiling at the apparent triumph of impertinence, and wondering how long it would last, how far it would go. The few who were angry—Sir Donald was one of them—were in a mean minority.
Robin Pierce was angry too, but not with so much single-heartedness as was Sir Donald. It could not quite displease him if the Holmes drifted apart. Yet he was fond enough of Lady Holme, and he was subtle enough, to be sorry for any sorrow of hers, and to understand it—at any rate, partially—without much explanation. Perhaps he would have been more sorry if Leo Ulford had not come into Lady Holme’s life, and if the defiance within her had not driven her into an intimacy that distressed Mrs. Leo and puzzled Sir Donald.
Robin’s time in London was very nearly at an end. The season was at its height. Every day was crowded with engagements. It was almost impossible to find a quiet moment even to give to a loved one. But Robin was determined to have at least one hour with Lady Holme before he started for Italy. He told her so, and begged her to arrange it. She put him off again and again, then at last made an engagement, then broke it. In her present condition of mind to break faith with a man was a pleasure with a bitter savour. But Robin was not to be permanently avoided. He had obstinacy. He meant to have his hour, and perhaps Lady Holme always secretly meant that he should have it. At any rate she made another appointment and kept it.
She came one afternoon to his house in Half Moon Street. She had never been there before. She had never meant to go there. To do so was an imprudence. That fact was another of the pleasures with a bitter savour.
Robin met her at the head of the stairs, with an air of still excitement not common in his look and bearing. He followed her into the blue room where Sir Donald had talked with Carey. The “Danseuse de Tunisie” still presided over it, holding her little marble fan. The open fireplace was filled with roses. The tea-table was already set by the great square couch. Robin shut the door and took out a matchbox.
“I am going to make tea,” he said.
“Bachelor fashion?”
She sat down on the couch and looked round quickly, taking in all the details of the room. He saw her eyes rest on the woman with the fan, but she said nothing about it. He lit a silver spirit lamp and then sat down beside her.
“At last!” he said.
Lady Holme leaned back in her corner. She was dressed in black, with a small, rather impertinent black toque, in which one pale blue wing of a bird stood up. Her face looked gay and soft, and Robin, who had cunning, recognised that quality of his in her.
“I oughtn’t to be here.”
“Absurd. Why not?”
“Fritz has a jealous temperament.”
She spoke with a simple naturalness that moved the diplomat within him to a strong admiration.
“You can act far better than Miss Schley,” he said, with intentional bluntness.
“I love her acting.”
“I’m going away. I shan’t see you for an age. Don’t give me a theatrical performance to-day.”
“Can a woman do anything else?”
“Yes. She can be a woman.”
“That’s stupid—or terrible. What a dear little lamp that is! I like your room.”
Robin looked at the blue-grey linen on the walls, at the pale blue wing in her hat, then at her white face.
“Viola,” he said, leaning forward, “it’s bad to waste anything in this life, but the worst thing of all is to waste unhappiness. If I could teach you to be niggardly of your tears!”
“What do you mean?”
She spoke with sudden sharpness.
“I never cry. Nothing’s worth a tear,” she added.
“Yes, some things are. But not what you are going to weep for.”
Her face had changed. The gaiety had gone out of it, and it looked hesitating.
“You think I am going to shed tears?” she said. “Why?”
“I am glad you let me tell you. For the loss of nothing—a coin that never came out of the mint, that won’t pass current anywhere.”
“I’ve lost nothing,” she exclaimed, “nothing. You’re talking nonsense.”
He made no reply, but looked at the small, steady flame of the lamp. She followed his eyes, and, when he saw that she was looking at it too, he said:
“Isn’t a little, steady flame like that beautiful?”
She laughed.
“When it means tea—yes. Does it mean tea?”
“If you can wait a few minutes.”
“I suppose I must. Have you heard anything of Mr. Carey?”
Robin looked at her narrowly.
“What made you think of him just then?”
“I don’t know. Being here, I suppose. He often comes here, doesn’t he?”
“Then this room holds more of his personality than of mine?”
There was an under sound of vexation in his voice.
“Have you heard anything?”
“No. But no doubt he’s still in the North with his mother.”
“How domestic. I hope there is a stool of repentance in the family house.”
“I wonder if you could ever repent of anything.”
“Do you think there is anything I ought to repent of?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What?”
“You might have married a man who knew the truth of you, and you married a man incapable of ever knowing it.”
He half expected an outburst of anger to follow his daring speech, but she sat quite still, looking at him steadily. She had taken off her gloves, and her hands lay lightly, one resting on the other.
“You mean, I might have married you.”
“I’m not worth much, but at least I could never have betrayed the white angel in you.”
She leaned towards him and spoke earnestly, almost like a child to an older person in whom it has faith.
“Do you think such an angel could do anything in—in this sort of world?”
“Modern London?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes still on him. He guessed at once of what she was thinking.
“Do anything—is rather vague,” he replied evasively. “What sort of thing?”
Suddenly she threw off all reserve and let her temper go.
“If an angel were striving with a common American, do you mean to tell me you don’t know which would go to the wall in our world?” she cried. “Robin, you may be a thousand things, but you aren’t a fool. Nor am I—notau fond. And yet I have thought—I have wondered—”
She stopped.
“What?” he asked.
“Whether, if there is an angel in me, it mightn’t be as well to trot it out.”
The self-consciousness of the slang prevented him from hating it.
“Ah!” he said. “When have you wondered?”
“Lately. It’s your fault. You have insisted so much upon the existence of the celestial being that at last I’ve become almost credulous. It’s very absurd and I’m still hanging back.”
“Call credulity belief and you needn’t be ashamed of it.”
“And if I believe, what then?”
“Then a thousand things. Belief sheds strength through all the tissues of the mind, the heart, the temperament. Disbelief sheds weakness. The one knits together, the other dissolves.”
“There are people who think angels frightfully boring company.”
“I know.”
“Well then?”
Suddenly Robin got up and spoke almost brutally.
“Do you think I don’t see that you are trying to find out from me what I think would be the best means of—”
The look in her face stopped him.
“I think the water is boiling,” he said, going over to the lamp.
“It ought to bubble,” she answered quietly.
He lifted up the lid of the silver bowl and peeped in.
“It is bubbling.”
For a moment he was busy pouring the water into the teapot. While he did this there was a silence between them. Lady Holme got up from the sofa and walked about the room. When she came to the “Danseuse de Tunisie” she stopped in front of it.
“How strange that fan is,” she said.
Robin shut the lid of the teapot and came over to her.
“Do you like it?”
“The fan?”
“The whole thing?”
“It’s lovely, but I fancy it would have been lovelier without the fan.”
“Why?”
She considered, holding her head slightly on one side and half closing her eyes.
“The woman’s of eternity, but the fan’s of a day,” she said presently. “It belittles her, I think. It makes herchicwhen she might have been—”
She stopped.
“Throw away your fan!” he said in a low, eager voice.
“I?”
“Yes. Be the woman, the eternal woman. You’ve never been her yet, but you could be. Now is the moment. You’re unhappy.”
“No,” she said sharply.
“Yes, you are. Viola, don’t imagine I can’t understand. You care for him and he’s hurting you—hurting you by being just himself, all he can ever be. It’s the fan he cares for.”
“And you tell me to throw it away!”
She spoke with sudden passion. They stood still for a moment in front of the statuette, looking at each other silently. Then Robin said, with a sort of bitter surprise:
“But you can’t love him like that!”
“I do.”
It gave her an odd, sharp pleasure to speak the truth to him.
“What are you going to do, then?” he asked, after a pause.
He spoke without emotion, accepting the situation.
“To do? What do you mean?”
“Come and sit down. I’ll tell you.”
He took her hand and led her back to the sofa. When she had sat down, he poured out tea, put in cream and gave it to her.
“Nothing to eat,” she said.
He poured out his tea and sat down in a chair opposite to her, and close to her.
“May I dare to speak frankly?” he asked. “I’ve known you so long, and I’ve—I’ve loved you very much, and I still do.”
“Go on!” she answered.
“You thought your beauty was everything, that so long as it lasted you were safe from unhappiness. Well, to-day you are beautiful, and yet—”
“But what does he care for?” she said. “What do men care for? You pretend that it’s something romantic, something good even. Really, it’s impudent—just that—cold and impudent. You’re a fool, Robin, you’re a fool!”
“Am I? Thank God there are men—and men. You can’t be what Carey said.”
For once he had spoken incautiously. He had blurted out something he never meant to say.
“Mr. Carey!” she exclaimed quickly, curiously. “What did Mr. Carey say I was?”
“Oh—”
“No, Robin, you are to tell me. No diplomatic lies.”
A sudden, almost brutal desire came into him to tell her the truth, to revel in plain speaking for once, and to see how she would bear it.
“He said you were an egoist, that you were fine enough in your brilliant selfishness to stand quite alone—”
A faint smile moved the narrow corners of her lips at the last words. He went on.
“—That your ideal of a real man, the sort of man a woman loses her head for, was—”
He stopped. Carey’s description of the Lord Holme and Leo Ulford type had not been very delicate.
“Was—?” she said, with insistence. “Was—?”
Robin thought how she had hurt him, and said:
“Carey said, a huge mass of bones, muscles, thews, sinews, that cares nothing for beauty.”
“Beauty! That doesn’t care for beauty! But then—?”
“Carey meant—yes, I’m sure Carey meant real beauty.”
“What do you mean by ‘real beauty’?”
“An inner light that radiates outward, but whose abiding-place is hidden—perhaps. But one can’t say. One can only understand and love.”
“Oh. And Mr. Carey said that. Was he—was he at all that evening as he was at Arkell House? Was he talking nonsense or was he serious?”
“Difficult to say! But he was not as he was at Arkell House. Which knows you best—Carey or I?”
“Neither of you. I don’t know myself.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. The only thing I know is that you can’t tell me what to do.”
“No, I can’t.”
“But perhaps I can tell you.”
She put down her cup and looked at him with a sort of grave kindness that he had never seen in her face before.
“What to do?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Give up loving the white angel. Perhaps it isn’t there. Perhaps it doesn’t exist. And if it does—perhaps it’s a poor, feeble thing that’s no good to me, no good to me.”
Suddenly she put her arms on the back of the couch, leaned her face on them and began to cry gently.
Robin was terribly startled. He got up, stretched out his hands to her in an impulsive gesture, then drew them back, turned and went to the window.
She was crying for Fritz.
That was absurd and horrible. Yet he knew that those tears came from the heart of the hidden woman he had so long believed in, proved her existence, showed that she could love.
AS Lady Holme had foreseen, the impertinent mimicry of Miss Schley concentrated a great deal of attention upon the woman mimicked. Many people, accepting the American’s cleverness as a fashionable fact, also accepted her imitation as the imitation of a fact more surreptitious, and credited Lady Holme with a secret leading towards the improper never before suspected by them. They remembered the break between the Holmes and Carey, the strange scene at the Arkell House ball, and began to whisper many things of Lady Holme, and to turn a tide of pity and of sympathy upon her husband. On this tide Lord Holme and the American might be said to float merrily like corks, unabashed in the eye of the sun. Their intimacy was condoned on all sides as a natural result of Lady Holme’s conduct. Most of that which had been accomplished by Lord and Lady Holme together after their reconciliation over the first breakfast was undone. The silent tongue began to wag, and to murmur the usual platitudes about the poor fellow who could not find sympathy at home and so was obliged, against his will, to seek for it outside.
All this Lady Holme had foreseen as she sat in her box at the British Theatre.
The wrong impression of her was enthroned. She had to reckon with it. This fact, fully recognised by her, made her wish to walk warily where otherwise her temper might have led her to walk heedlessly. She wanted to do an unusual thing, to draw her husband’s attention to an intimacy which was concealed from the world—the intimacy between herself and Leo Ulford.
After her visit to the house in Half Moon Street she began to see a great deal of Leo Ulford. Carey had been right when he said that they would get on together. She understood him easily and thoroughly, and for that very reason he was attracted by her. Men delight to feel that a woman is understanding them; women that no man can ever understand them. Under the subtle influence of Lady Holme’s complete comprehension of him, Leo Ulford’s nature expanded, stretched itself as his long legs stretched themselves when his mind was purring. There was not much in him to reveal, but what there was he revealed, and Lady Holme seemed to be profoundly interested in the contents of his soul.
But she was not interested in the contents of his soul in public places on which the world’s eye is fixed. She refused to allow Leo to do what he desired, and assumed an air of almost possessive friendship before Society. His natural inclination for the blatant was firmly checked by her. She cared nothing for him really, but her woman’s instinct had divined that he was the type of man most likely to rouse the slumbering passion of Fritz, if Fritz were led to suspect that she was attracted to him. Men like Lord Holme are most easily jealous of the men who most closely resemble them. Their conceit leads them to put an exaggerated value upon their own qualities in others, upon the resemblance to their own physique exhibited by others.
Leo Ulford was rather like a younger and coarser Lord Holme. In him Lady Holme recognised an effective weapon for the chastisement, if not for the eventual reclamation, of her husband. It was characteristic of her that this was the weapon she chose, the weapon she still continued to rely on even after her conversation with Robin Pierce. Her faith in white angels was very small. Perpetual contact with the world of to-day, with life as lived by women of her order, had created within her far other faiths, faiths in false gods, a natural inclination to bow the knee in the house of Rimmon rather than before the altars guarded by the Eternities.
And then—she knew Lord Holme; knew what attracted him, what stirred him, what moved him to excitement, what was likely to hold him. She felt sure that he and such men as he yield the homage they would refuse to the angel to the siren. Instead of seeking the angel within herself, therefore, she sought the siren. Instead of striving to develope that part of her which was spiritual, she fixed all her attention upon that part of her which was fleshly, which was physical. She neglected the flame and began to make pretty patterns with the ashes.
Robin came to bid her good-bye before leaving London for Rome. The weeping woman was gone. He looked into the hard, white face of a woman who smiled. They talked rather constrainedly for a few minutes. Then suddenly he said:
“Once it was a painted window, now it’s an iron shutter.”
He got up from his chair and clasped his hands together behind his back.
“What on earth do you mean?” she asked, still smiling.
“Your face,” he answered. “One could see you obscurely before. One can see nothing now.”
“You talk great nonsense, Robin. It’s a good thing you’re going back to Rome.”
“At least I shall find the spirit of beauty there,” he said, almost with bitterness. “Over here it is treated as if it were Jezebel. It’s trodden down. It’s thrown to the dogs.”
“Poor spirit!”
She laughed lightly.
“Do you understand what they’re saying of you?” he went on.
“Where?”
“All over London.”
“Perhaps.”
“But—do you?”
“Perhaps I don’t care to.”
“They’re saying—‘Poor thing! But it’s her own fault.’”
There was a silence. In it he looked at her hard, mercilessly. She returned his gaze, still smiling.
“And it is your own fault,” he went on after a moment. “If you had been yourself she couldn’t have insulted you first and humiliated you afterwards. Oh, how I hate it! And yet—yet there are moments when I am like the others, when I feel—‘She has deserved it.’”
“When will you be in Rome?” she said.
“And even now,” he continued, ignoring her remark, “even now, what are you doing? Oh, Viola, you’re a prey to the modern madness for crawling in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn’t it mad of you? Isn’t it?”
He was really excited, really passionate. His face showed that. There was fire in his eyes. His lips worked convulsively when he was not speaking. And yet there was just a faint ring of the accomplished orator’s music in his voice, a music which suggests a listening ear—and that ear the orator’s own.
Perhaps she heard it. At any rate his passionate attack did not seem to move her.
“I prefer to be what I am,” was all she said.
“What you are! But you don’t know what you are.”
“And how can you pretend to know?” she asked. “Is a man more subtle about a woman than she is about herself?”
He did not answer for a moment. Then he said bluntly:
“Promise me one thing before I go away.”
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“Promise me not to—not to—”
He hesitated. The calm of her face seemed almost to confuse him.
“Well?” she said. “Go on.”
“Promise me not to justify anything people are saying, not to justify it with—with that fellow Ulford.”
“Good-bye,” she answered, holding out her hand.
He recognised that the time for his advice had gone by, if it had ever been.
“What a way—what a way for us to—” he almost stammered.
He recovered his self-possession with an effort and took her hand.
“At least,” he said in a low, quiet voice, “believe it is less jealousy that speaks within me than love—love for you, for the woman you are trampling in the dust.”
He looked into her eyes and went out. She did not see him again before he left England. And she was glad. She did not want to see him. Perhaps it was the first time in her life that the affection of a man whom she really liked was distasteful to her. It made her uneasy, doubtful of herself just then, to be loved as Robin loved her.
Carey had come back to town, but he went nowhere. He was in bad odour. Sir Donald Ulford was almost the only person he saw anything of at this time. It seemed that Sir Donald had taken a fancy to Carey. At any rate, such friendly feeling as he had did not seem lessened after Carey’s exhibition at Arkell House. When Carey returned to Stratton Street, Sir Donald paid him a visit and stayed some time. No allusion was made to the painful circumstances under which they had last seen each other until Sir Donald was on the point of going away. Then he said:
“You have not forgotten that I expect you at Casa Felice towards the end of August?”
Carey looked violently astonished.
“Still?” he said.
“Yes.”
Suddenly Carey shot out his hand and grasped Sir Donald’s.
“You aren’t afraid to have a drunken beast like me in Casa Felice! It’s a damned dangerous experiment.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s your own lookout, you know. I absolve you from the invitation.”
“I repeat it, then.”
“I accept it, then—again.”
Sir Donald went away thoughtfully. When he reached the Albany he found Mrs. Leo Ulford waiting for him in tears. They had a long interview.
Many people fancied that Sir Donald looked more ghostly, more faded even than usual as the season wore on. They said he was getting too old to go about so much as he did, and that it was a pity Society “got such a hold” on men who ought to have had enough of it long ago. One night he met Lady Holme at the Opera. She was in her box and he in the stalls. After the second act she called him to her with a gay little nod of invitation. Lady Cardington had been with her during the act, but left the box when the curtain fell to see some friends close by. When Sir Donald tapped at the door Lady Holme was quite alone. He came in quietly—even his walk was rather ghostly—and sat down beside her.
“You don’t look well,” she said after they had greeted each other.
“I am quite well,” he answered, with evident constraint.
“I haven’t seen you to speak to since that little note of yours.”
A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks.
“After Miss Schley’s first night?” he murmured.
His yellow fingers moved restlessly.
“Do you know that your son told me you would write?” she continued.
She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the box.
“Leo!”
Sir Donald’s voice was almost sharp and startling.
“How should he—you spoke about me then?”
There was a flash of light in his pale, almost colourless eyes.
“I wondered where you had gone, and he said you would write next day.”
“That was all?”
“Why, how suspicious you are!”
She spoke banteringly.
“Suspicious! No—but Leo does not understand me very well. I was rather old when he was born, and I have never been able to be much with him. He was educated in England, and my duties of course lay abroad.”
He paused, looking at her and moving his thin white moustache. Then, in an uneasy voice, he added:
“You must not take my character altogether from Leo.”
“Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley,” said Lady Holme.
She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid, ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking. Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald’s age. Or perhaps—but who knows why a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God guides her, perhaps, or the devil—or merely a bottle imp. Men never know, and that is why they find her adorable.
Sir Donald said nothing for a moment, only made the familiar movement with his hands that was a sign in him of concealed excitement or emotion. His eyes were fixed upon the ledge of the box. Lady Holme was puzzled by his silence and, at last, was on the point of making a remark on some other subject—Plancon’s singing—when he spoke, like a man who had made up his mind firmly to take an unusual, perhaps a difficult course.
“I wish to take it from you,” he said. “Give me the right one, not an imitation of an imitation.”
She knew at once what he meant and was surprised. Had Leo Ulford been talking?
“Lady Holme,” he went on, “I am taking a liberty. I know that. It’s a thing I have never done before, knowingly. Don’t think me unconscious of what I am doing. But I am an old man, and old men can sometimes venture—allowance is sometimes made for them. I want to claim that allowance now for what I am going to say.”
“Well?” she said, neither hardly nor gently.
In truth she scarcely knew whether she wished him to speak or not.
“My son is—Leo is not a safe friend for you at this moment.”
Again the dull, brick-red flush rose in his cheeks. There was an odd, flattened look just above his cheekbones near his eyes, and the eyes themselves had a strange expression as of determination and guilt mingled.
“Your son?” Lady Holme said. “But—”
“I do not wish to assume anything, but I—well, my daughter-in-law sometimes comes to me.”
“Sometimes!” said Lady Holme.
“Leo is not a good husband,” Sir Donald said. “But that is not the point. He is also a bad—friend.”
“Why don’t you say lover?” she almost whispered.
He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.
“I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is concerned he is unscrupulous.”
“Why say all this to a woman?”
“You mean that you know as much as I?”
“Don’t you think it likely?”
“Henrietta—”
“Who is that?”
“My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo—too much. She gets nothing—not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him thwarted?”
“Ah, you don’t think so badly of me after all?” she said quickly.
“I—I think of you that—that—”
He stopped.
“I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings smirched by a child of mine.” he added.
“You too!” she said.
Suddenly tears started into her eyes.
“Another believer in the angel!” she thought.
“May I come in?”
It was Mr. Bry’s cold voice. His discontented, sleek face was peeping round the door.
Sir Donald got up to go.
As Lady Holme drove away from Covent Garden that night she was haunted by a feverish, embittering thought:
“Will everyone notice it but Fritz?”
Lord Holme indeed seemed scarcely the same man who had forbidden Carey to come any more to his house, who had been jealous of Robin Pierce, who had even once said that he almost wished his wife were an ugly woman. The Grand Turk nature within him, if not actually dead, was certainly in abeyance. He was so intent on his own affairs that he paid no heed at all to his wife’s, even when they might be said to be also his. Leo Ulford was becoming difficult to manage, and Lord Holme still gaily went his way. As Lady Holme thought over Sir Donald’s words she felt a crushing weight of depression sink down upon her. The brougham rolled smoothly on through the lighted streets. She did not glance out of the windows, or notice the passing crowds. In the silence and darkness of her own soul she was trying not to feel, trying to think.
A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came to her.
It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about his son’s conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink eyelids, the story of the Leo Ulford’smenage. Now, she was not preoccupied with any regret for her own cruelty or for another woman’s misery. The egoism spoken of by Carey was not dead in her yet, but very much alive. As she sat in the corner of the brougham, pressing herself against the padded wall, she was angry for herself, pitiful for herself. And she was jealous—horribly jealous. That woke up her imagination, all the intensity of her. Where was Fritz to-night? She did not know. Suddenly the dense ignorance in which every human being lives, and must live to the end of time, towered above her like a figure in a nightmare. What do we know, what can we ever know of each other? In each human being dwells the most terrible, the most ruthless power that exists—the power of silence.
Fritz had that power; stupid, blundering, self-contented Fritz.
She pulled the check-string and gave the order, “Home!”
In her present condition she felt unable to go into Society.
When she got to Cadogan Square she said to the footman who opened the door:
“His lordship isn’t in yet?”
“No, my lady.”
“Did he say what time he would be in to-night?”
“No, my lady.”
The man paused, then added:
“His lordship told Mr. Lucas not to wait up.”
“Mr. Lucas” was Lord Holme’s valet.
It seemed to Lady Holme as if there were a significant, even a slightly mocking, sound in the footman’s voice. She stared at him. He was a thin, swarthy young man, with lantern jaws and a very long, pale chin. When she looked at him he dropped his eyes.
“Bring me some lemonade to the drawing-room in ten minutes,” she said.
“Yes, my lady.”
“In ten minutes, not before. Turn on all the lights in the drawing-room.”
“Yes, my lady.”
The man went before her up the staircase, turned on the lights, stood aside to let her pass and then went softly down. Lady Holme rang for Josephine.
“Take my cloak and then go to bed,” she said.
Josephine took the cloak and went out, shutting the door.
“Ten minutes!” Lady Holme said to herself.
She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive, startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind. If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man would be there.
She looked at the little silver box she had taken up that night when she was angry, then at the grand piano in the further room. The two things suggested to her two women—the woman of hot temper and the woman of sweetness and romance. What was she to-night, and what was she going to do? Nothing, probably. What could she do? Again she glanced round the rooms. It seemed to her that she was like an actress in an intense, passionaterole, who is paralysed by what is called in the theatre “a stage wait.” She ought to play a tremendous scene, now, at once, but the person with whom she was to play it did not come on to the stage. She had worked herself up for the scene. The emotion, the passion, the force, the fury were alive, were red hot within her, and she could not set them free. She remained alone upon the stage in a sort of horror of dumbness, a horror of inaction.
The footman came in quietly with the lemonade on a tray. He put it down on a table by Lady Holme.
“Is there anything else, my lady?”
She supposed that the question was meant as a very discreet hint to her that the man would be glad to go to bed. For a moment she did not reply, but kept him waiting. She was thinking rapidly, considering whether she would do the desperate thing or not, whether she would summon one of the actors for the violent scene her nature demanded persistently that night.
After the opera she had been due at a ball to which Leo Ulford was going. She had promised to go in to supper with him and to arrive by a certain hour. He was wondering, waiting, now, at this moment. She knew that. The house was in Eaton Square, not far off. Should she send the footman with a note to Leo, saying that she was too tired to come to the ball but that she was sitting up at home? That was what she was rapidly considering while the footman stood waiting. Leo would come, and then—presently—Lord Holme would come. And then? Then doubtless would happen the scene she longed for, longed for with a sort of almost crazy desire such as she had never felt before.
She glanced up and saw an astonished expression upon the footman’s pale face. How long had she kept him there waiting? She had no idea.
“There is nothing else,” she said slowly.
She paused, then added, reluctantly:
“You can go to bed.”
The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.
She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.
As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery, like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna’s picture of Christ and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of Mantegna’s women and no tears fell from Lady Holme’s eyes. Still making grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence, the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her, must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of cowardice.
But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She could not just—do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.
“I want you to take a note to Eaton Square,” she said. “It will be ready in five minutes.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford: