CONNIE DEERING walked back to the house with a silent and still tremulous Jimmie. She had slid her hand through his arm, and now and then gave it an affectionate pat. Within the limitations of her light, gay nature she was a sympathetic and loyal woman, and she had loved Jimmie for many years with the unquestioning fondness that one has for a beloved and satisfying domestic animal. She had recovered from the fright his frantic demonstration had caused her, and her easy temperament had shaken off the little chill of solemnity that had accompanied her vow of secrecy. But she pitied him with all her kind heart, and in herself felt agreeably sentimental.
They strolled slowly into the hall, and paused for a moment before parting.
“When you come to think of it seriously, you won't consider I have made too impossible a fool of myself?” he asked with an apologetic smile.
“I promise,” she said affectionately. Then she laughed. Not only was Jimmie's smile contagious, but Connie Deering could not face the pleasant world for more than an hour without laughter.
“I have always said you were a dear, Jimmie, and you are. I almost wish I could kiss you.”
Jimmie looked around. They were quite unperceived.
“I do quite,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Now we are really brother and sister,” she said with a flush. “You are not going to be too unhappy, are you?”
“I? Oh no, not I,” he replied heartily. He repeated this asseveration to himself while dressing for dinner. Why indeed should he be unhappy? Had he not looked a few hours before at God's earth and found that it was good? Besides, to add to the common stock of the world's unhappiness were a crime. “Yes, a crime,” he said aloud, with a vigorous pull at his white tie. Then he perceived that it was hopelessly mangled, and wished for Aline, who usually conducted that part of the ceremony of his toilette.
“It will have to do,” he said cheerfully, as he turned away from the glass.
Yet, for all his philosophising, he was surprised at the relief that his wild confession to Connie had afforded him. The burden that had seemed too heavy for him to bear had now grown magically light. He attributed the phenomenon to Connie Deering, to the witchery of her sweet sympathy and the comfort of her sisterly kiss. By the time he had finished dressing the acute pain of the past two days had vanished, and as he went down the stairs he accounted himself a happy man. In the drawing-room he met Norma, and chatted to her almost light-heartedly. He did not notice the constraint in her manner, her avoidance of his glance, the little pucker of troubled brows; nor was he aware of her sigh of relief when the door opened and the servant announced Mr. Theodore Weever, who with one or two other people were dining at the house. Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre followed on the American's heels, and soon the rest of the party had assembled. Jimmie had no opportunity for further talk with Norma, who studiously kept apart from him all the evening, and during dinner devoted herself to subacid conversation with Morland and to a reckless interchange of cynical banter with Weever. Jimmie, talking with picturesque fancy about his student days in the Rue Bonaparte to his neighbour, a frank fox-hunting and sport-loving young woman, never dreamed of the chaos of thoughts and feelings that whirled behind the proud face on the opposite side of the table; and Norma, when her mind now and then worked lucidly, wondered at the strength and sweetness of the man who could subdue such passion and laugh with a gaiety so honest and sincere. For herself, Theodore Weever, with his icy humour that crystallised her own irony into almost deadly wit, was her sole salvation during the interminable meal. Once Morland, listening with admiration, whispered in her ear:
“I've never heard you in such good form.”
She had to choke down an hysterical impulse of laughter and swallow a mouthful of champagne. Later, when the women guests had gone, she slipped up to her room without saying good-night to Morland, and, dismissing her maid, as she had done the night before, sat for a long time, holding her head in her hands, vainly seeking to rid it of words that seemed to have eaten into her brain. And when she thought of Morland, of last night, of her humiliation, she flushed hot from hair to feet. She was only five-and-twenty, and the world had not as yet completed its work of hardening. It was a treacherous and deceitful world; she had prided herself on being a finished product of petrifaction, and here she lay, scorched and bewildered, like any soft and foolish girl who had been suddenly brought too near the flame of life. Keenly she felt the piteousness of her defeat. In what it exactly consisted she did not know. She was only conscious of broken pride, the shattering of the little hard-faced gods in her temple, the tearing up of the rails upon which she had reckoned to travel to her journey's end. Hers was a confused soul state, devoid of immediate purpose. A breach of her engagement with Morland did not occur to her mind, and Jimmie was merely an impersonal utterer of volcanic words. She slept but little. In the morning she found habit by her bedside; she clothed herself therein and faced the day.
Much was expected of her. The great garden-party was to take place that afternoon. Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck had signified that she would do Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre the honour of being present. Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire would accompany the princess. Thebanandarriere-banof the county had been invited, and the place would be filled with fair women agog to bask in the smiles of royalty, and ill-tempered men dragged away from their partridges by ambitious wives. A firm of London caterers had contracted for the refreshments. A military band would play on the terrace. A clever French showman whom Providence had sent to cheer the dying hours of the London season, and had kept during the dead months at a variety theatre, was coming down with an authentic Guignol. He had promised the choicest pieces in his repertoire—la vraie grivoiserie française—and men who had got wind of the proposed entertainment winked at one another wickedly. The garden-party was to be an affair of splendour worthy of the royal lady who had deigned to shed her serenity upon the county families assembled; and Mr. Hardacre had raised a special sum of money to meet the expenses.
“I shall have to go to the Jews, my dear,” he had said to his wife when they were first discussing ways and means.
“Oh, go to the—Jews then,” said Mrs. Hardacre, almost betrayed, in her irritation, into an unwifely retort. “What does it matter, what does any sacrifice matter, when once we have royalty at the house? You are such a fool, Benjamin.”
He had a singular faculty for arousing the waspishness of his wife; yet, save on rare occasions, he was the meekest of men in her presence.
“Well, you know best, Eliza,” he said.
“I have n't been married to you for six-and-twenty years without being perfectly certain of that,” she replied tartly.
So Mr. Hardacre went to the Jews, and the princess promised to come to Mrs. Hardacre.
Norma was not the only one that morning who was aroused to a sense of responsibility. The footman entering Jimmie's bedroom brought with him a flat cardboard box neatly addressed in Aline's handwriting. The box contained a new shirt, two new collars, a new silk tie, and a pair of grey suède gloves; also a letter from Aline instructing him as to the use of these various articles of attire.
“Be sure to wear your frock-coat,” wrote the director of Jimmie's conduct. “I wish you had one less than six years old; but I went over it with benzine and ammonia before I packed it up, so perhaps it won't be so bad. And wear your patent-leather evening shoes. They'll look quite smart if you'll tie the laces up tight, and stick the ends in between the shoe and the sock. Oh, I wish I could come and turn you out decently! andplease, Jimmie dear, don't cut yourself shaving and go about all day with a ridiculous bit of cotton wool on your dear chin. Tony says you need n't wear the frock-coat, but I know better. What acquaintance has he with princesses and duchesses? And that reminds me to tell you that Tony—”et caetera, et caetera,in a manner that brought the kindest smile in the world into Jimmie's eyes.
He dressed with scrupulous regard to directions, but not in the frock-coat. He had a morning sitting with the princess at Chiltern Towers to get through before airing himself in the splendour of benzine and ammonia. He put on his old tweed jacket and went downstairs. Morland was the only person as yet in the breakfast-room. He held a morning paper tight in his hand, and stared through the window, his back to the door. On Jimmie's entrance he started round, and Jimmie saw by a harassed face that something had happened.
“My dear fellow—” he began in alarm.
Morland smoothed out the paper with nervous fingers, and threw it somewhat ostentatiously on a chair. Then he walked to the table and poured himself out some tea. The handle of the silver teapot slid in his grasp, and awkwardly trying to save the pouring flood of liquid, he dropped the teapot among the cups and saucers. It was a disaster, but one that could have been adequately greeted by a simpler series of expletives. He cursed vehemently.
“What's the matter, man?” asked Jimmie.
Morland turned violently upon him.
“The very devil's the matter. There never was such a mess since the world began. What an infernal fool I have been! You do well to steer clear of women.”
“Tell me what's wrong and I may be able to help you.”
Morland looked at him for a moment in gloomy doubt. Then he shook his head.
“You can't help me. I thought you could, but you can't. It's a matter for a lawyer. I must run up to town.”
“And cut the garden-party?”
“That's where I'm tied,” exclaimed Morland, impatiently. “I ought to start now, but if I cut the garden-party the duchess would never forgive me—and by Jove, I may need the duchess more than ever—and I've got a meeting to attend in Cosford this morning to which a lot of people are coming from a distance.”
“Can't I interview the lawyer for you?”
“No. I must do it myself.”
The butler entered and looked with grave displeasure at the wreckage on the tea-tray. While he was repairing the disaster, Morland went back to the window and Jimmie stood by his side.
“If you fight it through squarely, it will all come right in the end.”
“You don't mind my not telling you about it?” said Morland, in a low voice.
“Why should I? In everything there is a time for silence and a time for speech.”
“You're right,” said Morland, thrusting his hands into his trousers' pockets; “but how I am to get through this accursed day in silence I don't know.”
They sat down to breakfast. Morland rejected the offer of tea, and called for a whisky and soda which he nearly drained at a gulp. Mr. Hardacre came in, and eyed the long glass indulgently.
“Bucking yourself up, eh? Why did n't you ask for a pint of champagne?”
He opened the newspaper and ran through the pages. Morland watched him with swift nervous glances, and uttered a little gasp of relief when he threw it aside and attacked his grilled kidneys. His own meal was soon over. Explaining that he had papers to work at in the library, he hurried out of the room.
“Can't understand a man being so keen on these confounded politics,” his host remarked to Jimmie across the table. A polite commonplace was all that could be expected in reply. Politics were engrossing.
“That's the worst of it,” said Mr. Hardacre. “In the good old days a man could take his politics like a gentleman; now he has got to go at them like a damned blaspheming agitator on a tub.”
“Cosford was once a pretty little pocket borough, wasn't it?” said Jimmie. “Now Trade's unfeeling train usurp the privileges of His Grace of Wiltshire and threaten to dispossess his nominee. Instead of one simple shepherd recording his pastoral vote we have an educated electorate daring to exercise their discretion.”
Mr. Hardacre looked at Jimmie askance; he always regarded an allusive style with suspicion, as if it necessarily harboured revolutionary theories.
“I hope you're not one of those—” He checked himself as he was going to say “low radical fellows.” Politeness forbade. “I hope you are not a radical, Mr. Padgate?”
“I am sure I don't quite know,” replied Jimmie, cheerfully.
“Humph!” said Mr. Hardacre, “I believe you are.”
Jimmie laughed; but Mr. Hardacre felt that he held the key to the eccentric talk of his guest. Jimmie Padgate was a radical; a fearful wildfowl of unutterable proclivities, to whom all things dreadful were possible.
“I,” he continued, “am proud to be a Tory of the old school.”
The entrance of the ladies put a stop to the distressful conversation.
Jimmie, whose life during the past few days had been a curious compound of sunshine and shadow, went about his morning's work with only Morland's troubles weighing upon him. Of their specific nature he had no notion; he knew they had to do with the unhappy love affair; but as Morland was going to put matters into the hands of his lawyers, a satisfactory solution was bound to be discovered. Like all simple-minded men, he had illimitable faith in the powers of solicitors and physicians; it was their business to get people out of difficulties, and if they were capable men they did their business. Deriving much comfort from this fallacy, he thought as little as might be about the matter. In fact he quite enjoyed his morning. He sat before his easel at the end of a high historic gallery, the bright morning light that streamed in through the windows tempered by judiciously arranged white blinds; and down the vista were great paintings, and rare onyx tables, and priceless chairs and statuary, all harmonising with the stately windows and painted ceiling and polished floor. In front of him, posed in befitting attitude, sat the royal lady, with her most urbane expression upon her features, and, that which pleased him most, the picture was just emerging from the blurred mass of paint, an excellent though somewhat idealised portrait. So he worked unfalteringly with the artist's joy in the consciousness of successful efforts, and his good-humour infected even his harsh sitter, who now and then showed a wintry gleam of gaiety, and uttered a guttural word of approbation.
“You shall come to Herren-Rothbeck and baint the bortrait of the brince my brother,” she said graciously. “Would that blease you?”
“I should just think it would,” said Jimmie.
The princess laughed—a creaking, rusty laugh, but thoroughly well intentioned. Jimmie glanced at her enquiringly.
“I like you,” she responded. “You are so natural—what you English call refreshing. A German would have made a ceremonious speech as long as your mahl-stick.”
“I am afraid I must learn ceremony before I come to court, Madam,” said Jimmie.
“If you do, you will have forgotten how to baint bor-traits,” said the princess.
Thus, under the sun of princely favour, was Jimmie proceeding on the highroad to fortune. Never had the future seemed so bright. His bombastic jest about being appointed painter in ordinary to the crowned heads of Europe was actually going to turn out a reality. He lost himself in daydreams of inexhaustible coffers from which he could toss gold in lapfuls to Aline. She should indeed walk in silk attire, and set up housekeeping with Tony in a mansion in Park Lane.
On the front lawn at Heddon Court he met Connie and waved his hat in the air. She went to him, and, peering into his smiling face, laid her hand on his sleeve.
“Whatever has happened? Have you two stepped into each other's shoes?”
“What on earth do you mean?
“You know—Norma.”
“My dear Connie—” he began.
“Well, it seemed natural. Here are you as happy as an emperor; and there is Morland come back from Cosford with the look of a hunted criminal.”
THE princess had the affability to inform Mrs. Hardacre that it was a “charming barty,” and Mrs. Hardacre felt that she had not lived in vain.
Henceforth she would be of the innermost circle of the elect of the county. Exclusive front doors would open respectfully to her. She would be consulted on matters appertaining to social polity. She would be a personage. She would also make her neighbour, Lady FitzHubert, sick with envy. A malignant greenness on that lady's face she noted with a thrill of pure happiness, and she smilingly frustrated all her manoeuvres to get presented to Her Serene Highness. She presented her rival, instead, to Jimmie.
“My dear Lady FitzHubert, let me introduce Mr. Padgate, who is painting the dear princess's portrait. Mr. Padgate is staying with us.”
Whereby Mrs. Hardacre conveyed the impression that Heddon Court and Chiltern Towers contained just one family party, the members of which ran in and out of either house indiscriminately. It may be mentioned that Jimmie did not get on particularly well with Lady FitzHubert. He even confided afterwards to Connie Deering his suspicion that now and again members of the aristocracy were lacking in true urbanity.
By declaring the garden-party to be charming the princess only did justice to the combined efforts of the Hardacres and Providence. The warm golden weather and the chance of meeting august personages had brought guests from far and near. The lawns were bright with colour and resonant with talk. A red-coated band played on the terrace. Between the items of music, Guignol, housed in the Greek temple, with the portico for a proscenium, performed his rogueries to the delight of hastily assembling audiences. Immediately below, a long white-covered table gleamed with silver tea-urns and china, and all the paraphernalia of refreshments. At the other end of the lawn sat the august personages surrounded by the elect.
Among these was Morland. But for him neither blue September skies nor amiable duchesses had any charm. To the man of easy living had come the sudden shock of tragedy, and the music and the teacups and the flatteries seemed parts of a ghastly farce. The paragraph he had read in the paper that morning obsessed him. The hours had seemed one long shudder against which he vainly braced his nerves. He had loved the poor girl in his facile way. The news in itself was enough to bring him face to face with elementals. But there was another terror added. The chance word of a laughing woman had put him on the rack of anxiety. Getting out of the train at Cosford, she had seen the queerest figure of a man step on to the platform, with the face of Peter the Hermit and the costume of Mr. Stiggins. Morland's first impulse had been to retreat precipitately from Cosford, and take the next train to London, whither he ought to have gone that morning. The tradition-bred Englishman's distaste for craven flight kept him irresolutely hanging round the duchess. He thought of whispering a private word to Jimmie; but Jimmie was far away, being introduced here and there, apparently enjoying considerable popularity. Besides, the whisper would involve the tale of the newspaper paragraph, and Morland shrank from confiding such news to Jimmie. No one on earth must know it save his legal adviser, an impersonal instrument of protection. He did what he had done once during five horrible weeks at Oxford, when an Abingdon barmaid threatened him with a breach of promise action. He did nothing and trusted to luck. Happy chance brought to light the fact that she was already married. Happy chance might save him again.
Beyond the mere commonplaces of civility he had exchanged no words that day with Norma. Moved by an irritating feeling of shame coupled with a certain repugnance of the flesh, he had deliberately avoided her; and his preoccupation had not allowed him to perceive that the avoidance was reciprocated. When they happened to meet in their movements among the guests, they smiled at each other mechanically and went their respective ways. Once, during the afternoon, Mr. Hardacre, red and fussy, took him aside.
“I have just heard a couple of infernal old cats talking of Norma and that fellow Weever. There they are together now. Will you give Norma a hint, or shall I?”
Morland looked up and saw the pair on the terrace, midway between the band and the Guignol audience.
“I'm glad she has got somebody to amuse her,” he said, turning away. He was almost grateful to Weever for taking Norma off his hands.
Meanwhile Jimmie was continuing to find life full of agreeable surprises. Lady FitzHubert was not the only lady to whom he was presented as the Mr. Padgate who was painting the princess's portrait. Mrs. Hardacre waived the personal grudge, and flourished him tactfully in the face of the county; and the county accepted him with unquestioning ingenuousness. He was pointed out as a notability, became the well-known portrait-painter, the celebrated artist,theJames Padgate, and thus achieved the bubble reputation. A guest who was surreptitiously reporting the garden-party for the local paper took eager notes of the personal appearance of the eminent man, and being a woman of the world, professed familiarity with his works. For the first time in his life he found himself a person of importance. The fact of his easy inclusion in the charmed circle cast a glamour over the crudities of the gala costume designed and furbished up with so much anxious thought by Aline, and people (who are kindly as a rule when their attention is diverted from the trivial) looked only at his face and were attracted to the man himself. Only Lady FitzHubert, who had private reasons for frigidity, treated him in an unbecoming manner. Other fair ladies smiled sweetly upon him, and spread abroad tales of his niceness, and thus helped in the launching of him as a fashionable portrait-painter upon the gay world.
He had a brief interlude of talk with Norma by the refreshment-table.
“I hope you are not being too much bored by all this,” she said in her society manner.
“Bored!” he cried. “It's delightful.”
“What about the hollow world where imagination doth not corrupt and enthusiasms do not break in and steal?”
“It's a phantom dust-heap for inept epigrams. I don't believe it exists.”
“You mustn't preach a gospel one day and give it the lie the next,” she said, half seriously; “for then I won't know what to believe. You don't seem to realise your responsibilities.”
He echoed the last word in some surprise. Norma broke into a little nervous laugh.
“You don't suppose you can go about without affecting your fellow-creatures? It is well that you don't know what a disturbing element you are.”
She turned her head away and closed her eyes for a second or two, for the words she had overheard there by the hedge, last evening, rang in her ears. Perhaps it had been well for Jimmie if he had known. Before he had time to reply, she recovered herself, and added quickly:
“I am glad you are enjoying yourself.”
“How can I help it when every one is so kind to me?” he said brightly. “I came down here an obscure painter, a veritablepictor ignotus, and all your friends are as charming to me as if I were the President of the Royal Academy.”
Connie Deering came up with a message for Norma and carried her off to the house.
“How does Jimmie like being lionised?” she asked on the way.
Norma repeated his last speech.
“He has n't any idea of the people's motives.” She added somewhat hysterically:
“The man is half fool, half angel—”
“And altogether aman. Don't you make any mistake about that,” said Connie, with a pretty air of finality. “You don't know as much about him as I do.”
“I'm not so sure about that,” said Norma.
“I am,” said Connie.
Jimmie was wandering away from the refreshment-table when Theodore Weever stopped him.
“That's a famous portrait of yours, Mr. Padgate. I saw it to-day after lunch. I offer you my congratulations.”
Jimmie thanked him, said modestly that he hoped it was a good likeness.
“Too good by a long chalk,” laughed the American. “Her Serene Skinflint does n't deserve it. I bet you she beat you down like a market-woman haggling for fish.”
Jimmie stuck his hands on his hips and laughed.
“You don't deny it. You should n't have let her. She is rolling in money.”
“I am afraid one does n't bother much with the commercial side of things,” said Jimmie.
“That's where you make the mistake. Money is money, and it is better in one's own pockets than in anybody else's. But that's not what I wanted to speak to you about. I wonder if you would let me have the pleasure of calling at your studio some day? I'm collecting a few pictures, and I should regard it as a privilege to be allowed to look round yours.”
Jimmie, having no visiting cards, scribbled his address on the back of an envelope. He would be delighted to see Mr. Weever any time he was passing through London. Weever bowed, and turned to greet a passing acquaintance, leaving a happy artist. A miracle had happened; the star of his fortunes had arisen. A week ago it was below the horizon, shedding a faint, hopeful glimmer in the sky. Now it shone bright overhead. The days of struggle and disappointment were over. He had come into his kingdom of recognition. All had happened to-day: the princess's promise of another and more illustrious royal portrait; the sudden leap into fame; the patronage of the American financier. One has to be the poor artist, with his youth—one record of desperate endeavour—behind him, to know what these things mean. The delicate flattery of strange women, however commonplace or contemptible it may be to the successful, was a new, rare thing to Jimmie and appeased an unknown hunger. The prospect of good work done and delivered to the world, without sordid, heart-breaking bargainings, shimmered before him like a paradise. Old habit made him long for Aline. How pleased the child would be when she heard the glad news! He saw the joy on her bright face and heard her clap her hands together, and he smiled. He would return to her a conqueror, having won the prizes she had so often wept for—name and fame and fortune. The band was playing the “Wedding March” from “Lohengrin.” By chance, as he was no musician, he recognised it.
“Aline shall have a wedding dress from Paris,” he said half aloud, and he smiled again. The world had never been so beautiful.
He embraced all of it that was visible in a happy, sweeping glance. Then with the swiftness of lightning the smile on his face changed into consternation.
For a moment he stood stock still, staring at the sudden figure of a man. It was Stone, the mad orator of Hyde Park. There was no possibility of mistaking him at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards. He wore the same rusty black frock-coat and trousers, the same dirty collar and narrow black tie, the same shapeless clerical hat. His long neck above the collar looked raw and scabious like a vulture's. In his hand he carried a folded newspaper. He had suddenly emerged upon the end of the terrace from the front entrance, and was descending the steps that led down to the tennis lawn. If he walked straight on, he would come to the group surrounding the princess and the Duchess of Wiltshire. Two or three people were already eyeing him curiously.
Morland's strange dread of the man flashed upon Jimmie. He hurried forward to meet him. Of what he was about to do he had no definite idea. Perhaps he could head Stone off, take him away from the grounds on the pretext of listening to his grievances. At any rate, a scandal must be avoided. As he drew near, he observed Morland, who had been bending down in conversation with the duchess, rise and unexpectedly recognise Stone.
A manservant bearing a small tray with some teacups ran up to the extraordinary intruder, who waved him away impatiently. The servant put down his tray and caught him by the arm.
“You have no business here.”
Stone shook himself free.
“I have. Where is Mr. Rendell? Tell him I have to speak with him.”
“There is no such person here,” said the servant. “Be off!”
Jimmie reached the spot, as a few of the nearer guests were beginning to take a surprised interest in the altercation. Morland came forward from behind the duchess's chair and cast a swift glance at Jimmie.
“If you don't go, I shall make you,” said the servant, preparing to execute his threat. The man looked dangerous.
“I must see Mr. David Rendell,” he cried, beginning to struggle.
Jimmie drew the servant away.
“I know this gentleman,” he said quietly. “Mr. Stone, Mr. Rendell is not here, but if you will come with me, I will listen to you, and tell him anything you have to say.”
Mr. Hardacre, who had seen the scuffle from a distance, came up in a fluster.
“What's all this? What's all this? Who is this creature? Please go away.” He began to hustle the man.
“Stop! He's an acquaintance of Padgate's,” said Morland, huskily.
There was a short pause. Stone stared around at the well-dressed men and women, at the seated figures of the princess and the duchess, at the servant who had picked up the tray, at the band who were still playing the “Wedding March” from “Lohengrin,” at the red-faced, little, blustering man, at the beautiful cool setting of green, and the look in his eyes was that of one who saw none of these things. Morland edged to Jimmie's side.
“For God's sake, get him away,” he said in a low voice.
Jimmie nodded and touched the man's arm.
“Come,” said he.
“Yes, please take him off! What the dickens does he want?” said Mr. Hardacre.
Stone turned his burning eyes upon him.
“I have come to find an infamous seducer,” he replied, with a melodramatic intensity that would have been ludicrous had his face not been so ghastly. “His name is Rendell.”
There was a shiver of interest in the crowd.
“Was sagt er?” the princess whispered to her neighbour.
Jimmie again tried to lead Stone away, but the distraught creature seemed lost in thought and looked at him fixedly.
“I have seen you before,” he said at last.
“Of course you have,” said Jimmie. “In Hyde Park. Don't you remember?”
Suddenly, with a wrench of his hands he tore an unmounted photograph from the folded newspaper and threw it on the ground. His eyes blazed.
“I thought I should find him. One of you is David Rendell. It is not your real name. That I know. Which of you is it?”
Jimmie had sprung upon the photograph. Instinct rather than the evidence of sight told him that it was an amateur portrait of himself and Morland taken one idle afternoon in the studio by young Tony Merewether. It had hardly lain the fraction of a second on the ground but to Jimmie it seemed as if the two figures had flashed clear upon the sight of all the bystanders. He glanced quickly at Morland, who stood quite still now with stony face and averted eyes. He too had recognised the photograph, and he cursed himself for a fool for having given it to the girl. He had had it loose in his pocket; she had pleaded for it; she had no likeness of him at all. He was paying now for his imprudent folly. Like Jimmie, he feared lest others should have recognised the photograph. But he trusted again to chance. Jimmie had undertaken the unpleasant business and his wit would possibly save the situation.
Jimmie did not hesitate. A man is as God made him, heart and brain. To his impulsive imagination the photograph would be proof positive for the world that one of the two was the infamous seducer. It did not occur to him to brazen the man out, to send him about his business; wherein lies the pathos of simple-mindedness. The decisive moment had come. To Morland exposure would mean loss of career, and, as he conceived it, loss of Norma; and to the beloved woman it would mean misery and heartbreak. So he committed an heroic folly.
“Well, IamRendell,” he said in a loud voice. “What then?”
Heedless of shocked whisperings and confused voices, among which rose a virtuously indignant “Great heavens!” from Mrs. Hardacre, he moved away quickly towards the slope, motioning Stone to follow. But Stone remained where he stood, and pointed at Jimmie with lean, outstretched finger, and lifted up his voice in crazy rhetoric, which was heard above the “Wedding March.” No one tried to stop him. It was too odd, too interesting, too dramatic.
“The world shall know the tale of your lust, and the sun shall not go down upon your iniquity. Under false promises you betrayed the sweetest flower in God's garden. Basely you taunted her in her hour of need. Murder and suicide are on your head. There is the record for all who wish to read it. Read it,” he cried, flinging the newspaper at Mrs. Hardacre's feet. “Read how she killed her newborn babe, the child of this devil, and then hanged herself.”
Jimmie came two or three steps forward.
“Stop this mad foolery,” he cried.
Stone glared at him for a fraction of a second, thrust his hand into the breast-pocket of his frock-coat, drew out a revolver, and shot him.
Jimmie staggered as a streak of fire passed through him, and swung round. The women shrieked and rushed together behind the princess and the duchess, who remained calmly seated. The men with one impulse sprang forward to seize the madman; but as he leaped aside and threatened his assailants with his revolver, they hung back. The band stopped short in the middle of a bar.
Norma and Connie Deering and one or two others who had been in the house, unaware of the commotion of the last few minutes, ran out on the terrace as they heard the shot and the sudden cessation of the band. They saw the crowd of frightened, nervous people below, and the grotesque figure in his rusty black pointing the pistol. And they saw Jimmie march up to him, and in a dead silence they heard him say:
“Give me that revolver. What is a silly fool like you doing with fire-arms? You could n't hit a haystack at a yard's distance. Give it to me, I say.”
The man's arm was outstretched, and the pistol was aimed point-blank at Jimmie. Connie Deering gripped Norma's arm, and Norma, feeling faint, grew white to the lips.
“Give it to me,” said Jimmie again.
The man wavered, his arm drooped slightly; with the action of one who takes a dangerous thing from a child, Jimmie quietly wrenched the revolver from his grasp.
Norma gave a gasp of relief and began to laugh foolishly. Connie clapped her hands in excitement.
“Did n't I tell you he was a man? By heavens, the only one in the lot!”
Jimmie pointed towards the terrace steps.
“Go!” he said.
But there was a rush now to seize the disarmed Stone, the red coats of the bandsmen mingling with the black of the guests. Jimmie, with a curious flame through his shoulder and a swimming in his head, swerved aside. Morland ran up, with a white face.
“My God! He has hit you. I thought he had missed.”
“No,” said Jimmie, smiling at the reeling scene. “I'm all right. Keep the photograph. It was silly to give one's photograph away. I always was a fool.”
Morland pocketed the unmounted print. He tried to utter a word of thanks, but the eyes of the scared and scandalised crowd a few steps away were upon them, and many were listening. For a moment during the madman's crazy indictment of Jimmie—for the horrible facts were only too true—he had had the generous impulse to come forward and at all costs save his friend; but he had hesitated. The shot had been fired. The dramatic little scene had followed. To proclaim Jimmie's innocence and his own guilt now would be an anticlimax. It was too late. He would take another opportunity of exonerating Jimmie. So he stood helpless before him, and Jimmie, feeling fainter and fainter, protested that he was not hurt.
They stood a bit apart from the rest. By this time men and women had flocked from all quarters, and practically the whole party had assembled on the tennis lawn. Norma still stood with Connie on the terrace, her hand on her heart. A small group clustered round a man who had picked up the newspaper and was reading aloud the ghastly paragraph marked by Stone in blue pencil. The Hardacres were wringing their hands before a stony-faced princess and an indignant duchess, who announced their intention of immediate departure. Every one told every one else the facts he or she had managed to gather. Human nature and the morbidly stimulated imagination of naturally unimaginative people invented atrocious details. Jimmie's new-born fame as a painter was quickly merged into hideous notoriety. His star must have been Lucifer, so swift was its fall.
Mr. Hardacre left his wife's side, and dragged Morland a step or two away, and whispered excitedly:
“What a scandal! What a hell of a scandal! Before royalty, too. It will be the death of us. The damned fellow must go. You must clear him out of the house!”
“He's hit. Look at him,” exclaimed Morland.
Jimmie heard his host's whisper in a dream. It seemed a hoarse voice very, very far off. He laughed in an idiotic way, waved his hand to the gyrating crowd, and stumbled a few yards towards the slope. The world swam into darkness and he fell heavily on his face.
Then, to the amazement of the county, Norma with a ringing cry rushed down the slope, and threw herself beside Jimmie's body and put his head on her lap. And there she stayed until they dragged her away, uttering the queer whimpering exclamations of a woman suddenly stricken with great terror. She thought Jimmie was dead.
THEY took Jimmie into the house, and Norma, looking neither to right nor left, walked by the side of those carrying him, the front of her embroidered dress smeared with blood. Every time her hands came in contact with the delicate fabric, they left a fresh smear. Of this she was unconscious. She was unconscious too, save in a dull way, of the staring crowd; but she held her head high, and when Morland spoke to her by the drawing-room window through which they passed, she listened to what he had to say, bowed slightly, and went on.
“It is only a flesh wound. If it had been the lung, he would have spat blood. I don't think it is serious.”
He spoke in a curiously apologetic tone, as if anxious to exculpate himself from complicity in the attempted murder.. He was horribly frightened. Two deaths laid in one day at a man's door are enough. The possibility of a third was intolerable. The sense of the unheroic part he had just played was beginning to creep over him like a chilling mist. The consequences of confession, the only means whereby Jimmie could be rehabilitated, loomed in front of him more and more disastrous. It would be presenting himself to the world as a coward as well as a knave. That prospect, too, frightened him. Lastly, there was Norma, white, terror-stricken, metamorphosed in a second into a creature of primitive emotions. Like the other shocks of that unhallowed day, her revelation of unsuspected passions brought him face to face with the unfamiliar; and to the average sensual man the unfamiliar brings with it an atmosphere of the uncanny, the influence to be feared. His attitude, therefore, when he addressed her was ludicrously humble.
She bowed and passed on. By this time she knew that Jimmie was not dead. Morland's words even reassured her. Her breath came hard through her delicate nostrils, and her bosom heaved up and down beneath the open-work bodice with painful quickness. Only a few were allowed to stay in the dining-room, Morland, Mr. Hardacre, Theodore Weever on behalf of the duchess, and one or two others, while the Cosford doctor, who had been invited to the garden-party, made his examination. Norma went through into the hall. At the bottom of the stairs she met Connie in piteous distress.
“Oh, my poor dear, my poor dear, we did n't know! I have just heard all about it. It is terrible!”
Norma put up her hand beseechingly.
“Don't, Connie dear; don't talk of it. I can't bear it. I must be alone. Send me up word what the doctor says.”
She went to her room, sat there and waited. Presently her maid entered with the message from Mrs. Deering. The doctor's report was favourable—the wound not in any way dangerous, the bullet easily extractable. They had carried the patient to his bedroom, and Mrs. Deering had wired for Miss Marden to come down by the first train. Norma dismissed the maid, and tried, in a miserable wonder, to realise all that had happened.
A woman accustomed to many emotions can almost always hold herself in check, if she be of strong will. Experience has taught her the meaning and the danger of those swift rushes of the blood that lead to unreasoning outburst. She is forewarned, forearmed, and can resist or not as occasion demands. But even she is sometimes taken unawares. How much the more likely to give way is the woman who has never felt passionate emotion in her life before. The premonitory symptoms fail to convey the sense of danger to her inexperienced mind. Before the will has time to act she is swept on by a new force, bewildering, irresistible. It becomes an ecstatic madness of joy or grief, and to the otherwise rational being her actions are of no account. This curse of quick responsiveness afflicts men to a less degree. If the first chapters of Genesis could be brought up to date, woman would be endowed, not with an extra rib, but with an extra nerve.
Now that she knew the shooting of Jimmie to be an affair of no great seriousness, her heart sickened at the thought of her wild exhibition of feeling. She heard the sniggering and ridicule in every carriage-load of homeward-bound guests. From the wife of the scrubby curate to the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck, her name was rolled like a delicate morsel on the tongue of every woman in the county. And the inference they could not fail to draw from her action was true—miserably true. But she had only become poignantly aware of things at the moment when she saw the lean haggard man in rusty black covering Jimmie with the revolver. Then all the unrest of soul which she had striven to allay with her mockery, all the disquieting visions of sweet places to which she had scornfully blinded her eyes, all the burning words of passion whose clear echoing had wrapped her body in hateful fever the night before, converged like electric currents into one steady light radiant with significance. Two minutes afterwards, when Jimmie fell, civilisation slipped from her like a loose garment, and primitive woman threw herself by his side. But now, reclothed, she shivered at the memory.
The door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Hardacre entered. There was battle in every line of the hard face and in every movement of the thin, stiff figure. Norma rose from the window where she had been sitting and faced her mother defiantly.
“I know what you are going to say to me. Don't you think you might wait a little? It will keep.”
“It won't. Sit down,” said Mrs. Hardacre between her teeth.
“I prefer to stand for the moment,” said Norma.
Mrs. Hardacre lost her self-control.
“Are we to send you to a madhouse? What do you mean by your blazing folly? Before the whole county—before the duchess—before the princess! Do you know what I have had to go through the last half-hour? Do you know that we may never set foot in Chiltern Towers again? Do you know we are the scandal and the laughing-stock of the county? As if one thing was n't sufficient—for you to crown it by behaving like a hysterical school-girl! Do you know what interpretation every scandal-mongering tabby in the place is putting on your insane conduct?”
“Oh, yes,” said Norma, looking at her mother stonily; “and for once in their spiteful lives they are quite right.”
“What do you mean?” gasped Mrs. Hardacre.
“I think my meaning is obvious.”
“That man—that painter man dressed like a secondhand clothes-dealer—that—that beast?”
Mrs. Hardacre could scarcely trust her senses. The true solution of her daughter's extraordinary behaviour had never crossed her most desperate imaginings. But then she had not had much time for quiet speculatien. The speeding of her hurriedly departing guests had usurped all the wits of the poor lady.
“You have indeed given us a dramatic entertainment, dear Mrs. Hardacre,” Lady FitzHubert had said with a sympathetic smile. “And poor Norma has supplied the curtain. I hope she won't take it too much to heart.”
And Mrs. Hardacre, livid with rage, had had no weapon wherewith to strike her adversary who thus took triumphant vengeance. It had been a half-hour of grievous humiliation. The fount and origin thereof was lying unconscious with a bullet through his shoulder. The subsidiary stream, so to speak, was in her room safe and sound. Human nature, for which she is not deserving of over-blame, had driven Mrs. Hardacre thither. At least she could vent some of her pent-up fury upon her outrageous daughter, who, from Mrs. Hardacre's point of view, indeed owed an explanation of her action and deserved maternal censure. This she was more than prepared to administer. But when she heard Norma calmly say that Lady FitzHubert and the other delighted wreakers of private revenges were entirely in the right, she gasped with amazement.
“That beast!” she repeated with a rising intonation. Norma gave her habitual shrug of the shoulders. With her proud, erect bearing, it was a gesture not ungraceful.
“Considering what I have just admitted, mother, perhaps it would be in better taste not to use such language.”
“I don't understand your admitting it. I don't know what on earth you mean,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
There was a short pause, during which she scanned her daughter's face anxiously as if waiting to see a gleam of reason dawn on it. Norma reflected for a moment. Should she speak or not? She decided to speak. Brutal frankness had ever been her best weapon against her mother. It would probably prevent future wrangling.
“I am sorry I have n't made my meaning clear,” she said, resuming her seat by the window; “and I don't know whether I can make it much clearer. Anyhow, I'll try, mother. I used to think that love was either a school-girl sentimentality, a fiction of the poets, or else the sort of thing that lands married women who don't know how to take care of themselves in the divorce court. I find it is n't. That's all.”
Mrs. Hardacre ran up to the window and faced Norma. “And Morland?”
“It won't break his heart.”
“What won't?”
“The breaking off of our engagement.”
Mrs. Hardacre looked at her daughter in a paralysis of bewilderment.
“The madhouse is the only place for you.”
“Perhaps it is. Anyway I can't marry a man when I care for his intimate friend—and when the intimate friend cares for me. Somehow it's not quite decent. Even you, mother, can see that.”
“So you and the intimate friend have arranged it all between you?”
“Oh, no. He does n't know that I care, and he does n't know that I know that he cares. I'll say that over again if you like. It is quite accurately expressed. And you know I'm not in the habit of lying.”
“And you propose to marry——”
“I don't propose to do anything,” interrupted Norma, quickly. “I at least can wait till he asks me. And now, mother, I've had rather a bad time—don't you think we might stop?”
“It seems to me, my dear Norma, we are only just beginning,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
Norma rose with nervous impatience.
“O heavens, mother,” she said, in the full deep notes of her voice, which were only sounded at rare moments of feeling, “can't you see that I'm in earnest? This man is like no one else I have ever met. I have grown to need him. Do you know what that means? With him I am a changed woman—as God made me, I suppose; natural, fresh, real—” Mrs. Hardacre sat in Norma's vacated chair by the window and stared at her, as she moved about the room. “I somehow feel that I am a woman, after all. I have got something higher than myself that I can fall at the feet of, and that's what every woman craves when she's decent. As for marrying him—I'm not fit to marry him. There is n't any one living who is. That's an end of it, mother. I can't say anything more.”
“And do you propose to go on seeing this person when he recovers?” asked Mrs. Hardacre.
“Why not?”
“I really can't argue with you,” said her mother, mystified. “If you had told me this rubbish yesterday, I should have thought you touched in your wits. To-day it is midsummer madness.”
“Why to-day?” asked Norma.
“The man has shown himself to be such a horrible beast. Of course, if you think confessing to having seduced a girl under infamous circumstances and driven her by his brutality to child-murder and suicide, and blazoning the whole thing out at a fashionable garden-party and getting himself shot for his pains, are idyllic virtues, nothing more can be said. It's a case, as I remarked, for a madhouse.” Norma came and stood before her mother, her brows knitted in perplexity.
“Perhaps I am going crazy—I really don't understand what you are talking about.”
Mrs. Hardacre leant forward in her chair and drew a long breath. A gleam of intelligence came into her eyes as she looked at Norma.
“Do you mean to say you don't know what the row was about before the man fired the shot?”
“No,” said Norma, blankly.
Her mother fell back in her chair and laughed. It was the first moment of enjoyment she had experienced since Stone's black figure had appeared on the terrace. Reaction from strain caused the laughter to ring somewhat sharply. Norma regarded her with an anxious frown.
“Please tell me exactly what you mean.”
“My dear child—it's too funny. I thought you would have been too clever to be taken in by a man like this. I see, you've been imagining him a Galahad—a sort of spotless prophet—though what use you can have for such persons I can't make out. Well, this is what happened.” Embellishing the story here and there with little spiteful adornments, she described with fair accuracy, however, the scene that had occurred. Norma listened stonily.
“This is true?” she asked when her mother had finished.
“Ask any one who was there—your father—Morland.”
“I can't believe it. He is not that sort of man.”
“Is n't he? I knew he was the first time I set eyes on him. Perhaps another time you'll allow me to have some sense—of course, if it is immaterial to you whether a man is a brute—What are you ringing the bell for?”
“I am going to ask Morland to come up here.”
The maid appeared, received Norma's message, and retired. Norma sat by her little writing-table, with her head turned away from her mother, and there was silence between them till the maid returned.
“Mr. King has just driven off to catch the train, miss. He left a note for you.”
Mrs. Hardacre listened with contracted brow. When the maid retired, she bent forward anxiously.
“What does he say?”
“You can read it, mother,” replied Norma, wearily. She held out the note. Mrs. Hardacre came forward and took it from her hand and sat down again.
It ran:
“Dear Norma,—I think it best to run up to town on this afternoon's business. I have only just time to catch the train at Cosford, so you will forgive my not saying good-bye to you more ceremoniously. Take care of poor Jimmie.
“Yours affectionately,
“Morland.”
“Poor Jimmie, indeed!” said Mrs. Hardacre, somewhat relieved at finding the note contained no reference to the part played by Norma. “It's very good of Morland, but I wish he would not mix himself up in this scandal.”
“I can't see what less he could do than look after his friend's interests,” said Norma.
“I wish the man had been shot or hanged before he came down here,” said Mrs. Hardacre, vindictively. “That's the worst of associating with such riff-raff. One never knows what they will do. It will teach you not to pick people out of the gutter and set them in a drawing-room.” Mrs. Hardacre rose. She did not often have the opportunity of triumphing over her daughter. She crossed the room and paused for a moment by Norma, who sat motionless with her chin in her hand, apparently too dismayed to retort.
“I am glad to see symptoms of sanity,” she remarked.
Norma brought down her hand hard upon the table and leaped to her feet and faced her mother.
“I tell you, it's impossible! Impossible! He is not that kind of man. It is some horrible mistake. I will ask him myself. I will get the truth from his own lips.”
“You shall certainly do nothing of the kind,” cried her mother; and in order to have the last word she went out and slammed the door behind her.
Norma sat by the window again. The red September sun was setting, and bathed downs and trees in warm light, and glinted on the spire of a little village church a mile away. Everything it touched was at peace, save the bowed head of the girl, clasped with white fingers which still retained the dull brown marks of blood. Could she believe the revolting story? A woman so driven to desperation must have been cruelly handled. Her sex rose up against the destroyer. Her social training had caused her to regard with cynical indifference ordinary breaches of what is popularly termed the moral law. In the fast, idle set which she generally frequented it was as ordinary for a man to neigh after his neighbour's wife as to try to win his friend's money; as unsurprising for him to keep a mistress as a stud of race-horses; the crime was to marry her. But it was not customary, even in smart society, to drive women to murder their new-born babes and kill themselves. A callous brutality suggested itself, and the contemplation of it touched humanity, sex, essential things. Could she believe the story? She shuddered.
The dressing-gong sounded through the house. Her maid entered, drew the curtains, and lit the gas; then was dismissed. Norma would not go down to dinner. A little food and drink in her own room would be all that she could swallow.
Later, Connie Deering, who had changed her dress, tapped at the door and was bidden to enter. A quantity of powder vainly strove to hide the traces of recent tears on her pretty face. She was a swollen-featured, piteous little butterfly.
“How is he?” asked Norma.
“Better, much better. They have taken out the bullet. There is no danger, and he has recovered consciousness. I almost wish he hadn't. Oh, Norma dear—”
She broke down and sat on the bed and sobbed. Norma came up and laid her hand on her shoulder.
“Surely you don't believe this ghastly story?”
The fair head nodded above the handkerchief. A voice came from-below it.
“I must—it's horrible—Jimmie, of all men! I thought his life was so sweet and clean—almost like a good woman's—I can't understand it. If he is as bad as this, what must other men be like? I feel as if I shall never be able to look a man in the face again.”
“But why should you take it for granted that he has done this?” asked Norma, tonelessly.
Mrs. Deering raised her face and looked at her friend in blue-eyed dismay.
“I did n't take it for granted. He told me so himself. Otherwise do you think I should have believed it?”
“He told you so himself! When?”
“A short while ago. I went into his room. I could n't help it—I felt as if I should have gone mad if I didn't know the truth. Parsons was there with him. She said I could come in. He smiled at me in his old way, and that smile is enough to make any woman fall in love with him. 'You've been crying, Connie,' he said. 'That's very foolish of you.' So I began to cry more. You would have cried if you had heard him. I asked him how he was feeling. He said he had never felt so well in his life. Then I blurted it out. I know I was a beast, but it was more than I could stand. 'Tell me that this madman's story was all lies.' He looked at me queerly, waited for a second or two, and then moved his head. 'It's all true,' he said, 'all true.' 'But you must have some explanation!' I cried. He shut his eyes as if he were tired and said I must take the facts as they were. Then Parsons came up and said I mustn't excite him, and sent me out of the room. But I did n't want to hear any more. I had heard enough, had n't I?”
Norma, as she listened to the little lady's tale, felt her heart grow cold and heavy. Doubt was no longer possible. The man himself had spoken. He had not even pleaded extenuating circumstances; had merely admitted the plain, brutal facts. He had gone under a feigned name, seduced an honest girl, abandoned her, driven her to tragedy. It was all too simple to need explanation.
“But what are we to do, dear?” cried Connie, as Norma made no remark, but stood motionless and silent.
“I think we had better drop his acquaintance,” she replied with bitter irony.
Connie flinched at the tone, being a tender-natured woman. She retorted with some spirit:
“I don't believe you have any heart at all, Norma. And I thought you cared for him.”
“You thought I cared for him?” Norma repeated slowly and cuttingly while her eyes hardened. “What right had you to form such an opinion?”
“People can form any opinions they like, my dear,” said Connie. “That was mine. And on the terrace this afternoon you know you cared. If ever a woman gave herself away over a man, it was Norma Hardacre.”
“It was n't Norma Hardacre, I assure you. It was a despicable fool whom I will ask you to forget. My mother was for putting it into a madhouse. She was quite right. Anyhow it has ceased to exist and I am the real Norma Hardacre again. Humanity is afflicted, it seems, periodically with a peculiar disease. It turns men into beasts and women into idiots. I have quite recovered, my dear Connie, and if you'll kindly go down and ask them to keep dinner back for five minutes, I'll dress and come down.”
She rang the bell for her maid. Connie rose from the bed. She longed to make some appeal to the other's softer nature for her own sake, as she had held Jimmie very dear and felt the need of sympathy in her trouble and disillusion.
But knowing that from the rock of that cynical mood no water would gush forth for any one's magic, she recognised the inefficacy of her own guileless arts, and forbore to exercise them. She sighed for answer. By chance her glance fell upon Norma's skirt. Human instinct, not altogether feminine, seized upon the trivial.
“Why, whatever have you been doing to your dress?”
Norma looked down, and for the first time noticed the disfiguring smears of blood.
“I must have spilt something,” she said, turning away quickly, and beginning to unfasten the hooks and eyes of her neckband.
“I hope it will come out,” said Connie. “It's such a pretty frock.”
As soon as she was alone, Norma looked at the stains with unutterable repulsion. She tore off the dress feverishly and threw it into a corner. When her maid entered in response to her summons, she pointed to the shapeless heap of crêpe and embroidery.
“Take that away and burn it,” she said.