WHILE this tragical comedy of the domestic felicities was being enacted, Connie Deering's brougham containing three agitated, silent, human beings was rapidly approaching the scene.
They had made certain of finding Norma at Bryanston Square. The news that she had not arrived disquieted them. Morland anxiously suggested the police. They had a hurried colloquy, Morland and Connie standing on the pavement, Mrs. Hardacre inside the carriage, thrusting her head through the window. Connie falteringly confessed to the meeting of Jimmie and Norma in the afternoon. Something serious had evidently passed between them.
Morland broke into an oath. “By God! That's where she's gone. Damn him!”
“We must get her away at all costs,” said Mrs. Hardacre, tensely.
“I am afraid it is my fault,” said Connie.
“Of course it is,” Mrs. Hardacre replied brutally. “The best you can do is to help us to rescue her.”
They started. The brougham was small, the air heavy, their quest distasteful, its result doubtful. The sense of fretfulness became acute. Mrs. Hardacre gave vent to her maternal feelings. When she touched on the vile seducer of her daughter's affections, Connie turned upon her almost shrewishly.
“This is my carriage, and I am not going to hear my dearest friend abused in it.”
Morland sat silent and worried. When they stopped at the house, he said:
“I think I shall stay outside.”
Connie, angry with him for having damned Jimmie, bent forward.
“Are you afraid of facing Jimmie?” she said with a little note of contempt.
“Certainly not,” he replied viciously.
A few moments later Aline ran into the studio with a scared face.
“Jimmie!”
He went up to her, and she whispered into his ear; then he turned to Norma.
“Your mother and Connie and Morland are upstairs. I don't suppose you are anxious to see them. May I tell them what has happened?”
Norma rose and joined him in the centre of the studio. “I would sooner tell them myself. Can they come down here?”
“If you wish it.”
He gave the order to Aline. Before going, she took him by the arm and swiftly glancing at Norma, asked eagerly:
“What has happened?”
“The wonder of wonders, dear,” said Jimmie.
With a glad cry she ran upstairs and brought down the visitors, who were waiting in the hall.
Jimmie stood by the open door to receive them. Norma retired to the far end of the studio. She held her head high, and felt astonishingly cool and self-possessed. Mrs. Hardacre entered first, and without condescending to look at Jimmie marched straight up to her daughter. Then came Connie and Aline, the girl excited, her arm round her friend's waist. Morland, on entering, drew Jimmie aside.
“So you've bested me,” he said in an angry whisper. “You held the cards, I know. I did n't think you would use them. I wish you joy.”
A sudden flash of pain and indignation lit Jimmie's eyes.
“Good God, man! Have you sunk so low as to accuse me of that?Me?”
He turned away. Morland caught him by the sleeve.
“I say—” he began.
But Jimmie shook him off and went to the side of Norma, who was listening to her mother's opening attack. It was shrill and bitter. When she paused, Norma said stonily:
“I am not going home with you to-night, mother. I sleep at Connie's. She will not refuse me a bed.”
“Your father means what he says.”
“So do I, mother. I can manage pretty well without your protection till I am married. Then I sha'n't need it.”
“Pray whom are you going to marry?” asked Mrs. Hardacre, acidly.
“I should think it was obvious,” said Norma. “Mr. Padgate has done me the very great honour to ask me to be his wife. I have agreed. I am over age and a free agent, so there's nothing more to be said, mother.”
Mrs. Hardacre refused to take the announcement seriously. Her thin lips worked into a smile.
“This is sheer folly, my dear Norma. Over age or not we can't allow you to disgrace yourself and us—”
“We have never had such honour conferred on us in all our lives,” said Norma.
Mrs. Hardacre shrugged her shoulders pityingly.
“Among sane folks it would be a disgrace and a scandal. Even Mr. Padgate would scarcely take advantage of a fit of hysterical folly.” She turned to Jimmie. “I assure you she is hardly responsible for her actions. You are aware what you would be guilty of in bringing her into this—this—?” She paused for a word and waved her hand around.
“Hovel?” suggested Jimmie, grimly. “Yes. I am aware of it. Miss Hardacre must not consider herself bound by anything she has said to-night.”
Connie Deering, who had come up waiting for a chance to speak, her forget-me-not eyes curiously hard and dangerous, broke in quickly:
“Why did you sayevenMr. Padgate, Mrs. Hardacre?”
“Mr. Padgate has a reputation—” said Mrs. Hardacre, with an expressive gesture.
“Jimmie—”
He checked his advocate. “Please, no more.”
“I should think not, indeed! Are you coming, Norma?”
“You had better go,” said Jimmie, softly. “Why quarrel with your parents? To-morrow, a week, a month hence you can tell me your wishes. I set you quite free.”
Norma made a movement of impatience.
“Don't make me say things I should regret—I am not going to change my mind. No, mother, I am not coming.”
Morland had not said a word, but stood in the background, hating himself. Only Connie's taunt had caused him to enter this maddeningly false position. He knew that his accusation, though he believed it true at the time, was false and base. Jimmie was true gold. He had not betrayed him. Connie, when Jimmie had checked her, went across to Morland.
“Doyoubelieve that Jimmie deserves his reputation?” she said for his ears alone.
“I don't know,” he answered moodily, kicking at a hassock.
“I do know,” she said, “and it's damnable.”
A quick glance exchanged completed her assurance. He saw that she knew, and despised him. For a few moments he lost consciousness of externals in alarmed contemplation of this new thing—a self openly despised by one of his equals. Mrs. Hardacre's voice aroused him. She was saying her final words to Norma.
“I leave you. When you are in the gutter with this person, don't come to ask me for help. You canencanailleryourself as much as you like, for all I care. This adventurer—”
Jimmie interposed in his grand manner.
“Pray remember, Mrs. Hardacre, that for the moment you are my guest.”
“Your guest!” For the second time that evening she had been rebuked. Her eyes glittered with spite and fury. She lost control. “Your guest! If I went to rescue my daughter from a house of ill fame, should I regard myself as a guest of the keeper? How dare you? How do I know what does n't go on in this house? That girl over there—”
Norma sprang forward and gripped her by the arm.
“Mother!”
She shook herself free. “How do I know? Howdoyou know? The man's name stinks over England. No decent woman has anything to do with him. Have you forgotten last autumn? That beastly affair? If you choose to succeed the other woman—”
“Oh, damn it!” burst out Morland, suddenly. “This is more than I can stand. Have you forgotten what I told you a week ago?”
The venomous woman was brought to a full stop. She stared helplessly at Morland, drawing quick panting breaths. She had forgotten that he was in the room.
The cynicism was too gross even for him. There are limits to every man's baseness and cowardice. Moreover, his secret was known. To proclaim it himself was a more heroic escape than to let it be revealed with killing contempt by another. The two forces converged suddenly, and found their resultant in his outburst. It was characteristic of him that there should be two motives, though which one was the stronger it were hard to say—most likely revolt at the cynicism, for he was not a depraved man.
Norma looked swiftly from one to the other.
“What did you tell my mother a week ago?”
Jimmie picked up Morland's crush-hat that lay on the table and thrust it into his hand.
“Oh, that's enough, my dear good fellow. Don't talk about those horrible things. Mrs. Hardacre would like to be going. You had better see her home. Good-night.”
He pushed him, as he spoke, gently towards Mrs. Hardacre, who was already moving towards the door. But Norma came up.
“I insist upon knowing,” she said.
“No, no,” said Jimmie, in an agitated voice. “Let the dead past bury its dead. Don't rake up old horrors.”
Morland cleared himself away from Jimmie.
“My God! You are a good man. I've been an infernal blackguard. Everybody had better know. If Jimmie hadn't taken it upon himself, that madman would have shot me. He would have hit the right man. I wish to heaven he had.”
Norma grew white.
“And this is what you told my mother?”
“I thought I ought to,” said Morland, looking away from the anxious faces around him.
“You shouldn't have done it,” said Jimmie, in a low voice. He was bent like a guilty person.
Norma went to the door and opened it.
“Kindly see my mother into a cab.”
“Please take the brougham,” said Connie. “Norma and I will take a cab later.”
Morland made a movement as if to speak to Jimmie. Norma intercepted him, waved her hand towards her mother, who stood motionless.
“Go. Please go,” she said in a constrained voice. “Take the brougham. She will catch cold while you are whistling for a cab—and you will be the sooner gone.”
Mrs. Hardacre, stunned by the utter disaster that she had brought about, mechanically obeyed Morland's gesture and passed through the open door, without looking at her daughter. As Morland passed her, he plucked up a little courage.
“We both lied for your sake,” he said; which might have been an apology or a tribute. Norma gave no sign that she had heard him.
Jimmie followed them upstairs and opened the front door. He put out his hand to Morland, who took it and said “Good-night” in a shamefaced way. Mrs. Hardacre stepped into the brougham like a somnambulist. Morland did not accompany her. He had seen enough of Mrs. Hardacre for the rest of his life.
When Jimmie went down to the studio, he saw Norma and Connie bending over a chair in the far corner. Aline had fainted.
They administered what restoratives were to hand—water and Connie's smelling-salts—and took the girl up to her bedroom, where she was left in charge of Mrs. Deering. Jimmie and Norma returned to the studio. The preoccupation of tending Aline, whose joy in the utter vindication of her splendid faith had been too sudden a strain upon an overwrought nervous system, had been welcomed almost as a relief to the emotional tenseness. They had not spoken of the things that were uppermost.
They sat down in their former places, without exchanging a remark. Jimmie took up his pipe from the table by his side, and knocked the ashes into the ash-tray and blew through it to clear it. Then he began to fill it from his old tobacco-pouch, clumsy as all covered pouches are and rough with faded clumps of moss-roses and forget-me-nots worked by Aline years before.
“Why don't you go on with the sewing?” he said.
She waited a second or two before answering, and when she spoke did not trust herself to look at him.
“I ought to say something, I know,” she said in a low voice. “But there are things one can't talk of, only feel.”
“We never need talk of them,” said Jimmie. “They are over and done with. Old, forgotten, far-off things now.”
“Are they? You don't understand. They will always remain. They make up your life. You are too big for such as me altogether. By rights I should be on my knees before you. Thank God, I did n't wait until I learned all this, but came to you in faith. I feel poor enough to hug that to myself as a virtue.”
“I am very glad you believed in me,” said Jimmie, laying down the unlit pipe which he had been fondling. “I would n't be human if I did n't—but you must n't exaggerate. Exposure would have ruined Morland's career, and I thought it would go near breaking your heart. To me, an insignificant devil, what did it matter?”
“Did n't my love for you matter? Did n't all that you have suffered matter? Oh, don't minimise what you have done. I am afraid of you. Your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways not my ways. You will always be among the stars while I am crawling about the earth.”
Jimmie rose hurriedly and fell at her feet, and took both her hands and placed them against his cheeks.
“My dear,” he said, moved to his depths. “My dear. My wonderful, worshipped, God-sent dear. You are wrong—utterly wrong. I am only a poor fool of a man, as you will soon find out, whose one merit is to love you. I would sell my body and my soul for you. If I made a little sacrifice for the love of you, what have you done tonight for me—the sacrifice of all the splendour and grace of life?”
“The lies and the rottenness,” said Norma, with a shiver. “Did you comprehend my mother?”
He took her hands from his face and kissed her fingers.
“Dear, those are the unhappy, far-off things. Let us forget them. They never happened. Only one thing in the world has ever happened. You have come to me, Norma,” he said softly, speaking her name for the first tremulous time, “Norma!”
Their eyes met, and then their lips. The world stood still for a space. She sighed and looked at him.
“You will have to teach me many things,” she said. “You will have to begin at the very beginning.”
EVERY one knew that the marriage arranged between Morland King and Norma Hardacre would not take place. It was announced in the “Times” and “Morning Post” on the Tuesday morning; those bidden to the wedding received hurried messages, and a day or two later the wedding-gifts were returned to the senders, who stored them up for some happier pair. But the new engagement upon which Norma had entered remained a secret. Norma herself did not desire to complete the banquet of gossip she had afforded society, and Mrs. Hardacre was not anxious to fill to overflowing the cup of her own humiliation. The stricken lady maintained a discreet reserve. The lovers had quarrelled, Norma had broken off the match and would not be going out for some time. She even defied the duchess, who commanded an explicit statement of reasons. Her grace retorted severely that she ought to have brought her daughter up better, and signified that this was the second time Norma had behaved with scandalous want of consideration for her august convenience. “She shall not have the opportunity of doing it again. I dislike being mixed up in scandals,” said the duchess; and Mrs. Hardacre saw the gates of Wiltshire House and Chiltern Towers closed to her forever. But of the impossible painter wretch she spoke not a word, hoping desperately that in some mysterious fashion the God of her fathers would avert this crowning disgrace from them and would lead Norma forth again into the paths of decency and virtue. As for her husband, he stormily refused to speak or hear the outcast's name. He had done with her. She should never sleep again beneath the roof she had dishonoured. He would not allow her a penny. He would cut her out of his will. She had dragged him in the mud, and by heaven! she could go to the devil! It took much to rouse the passions of the feeble, mean-faced little man; but once they were roused, he had the snarling tenacity of the fox. Mrs. Hardacre did not tell him of Morland's confession and the rehabilitation of his rival. The memory of her stunning humiliation brought on a feeling akin to physical nausea. She strove to bury it deep down in her sub-consciousness, beneath all the other unhallowed memories. There were none quite so rank. On the other hand, her husband's vilification of the detested creature was a source of consolation which she had no desire to choke. Why should she deny herself this comfort. The supreme joy of vitriol throwing was not countenanced in her social sphere. At odd times she regretted that she was a lady.
While the black fog of depression darkened Devonshire Place, in neighbouring parts of London the days were radiant. A thousand suns glorified the heavens and the breaths of a thousand springs perfumed the air. It was a period of exaggeration, unreality, a page out of a fairy tale lived and relived. Norma abandoned herself to the intoxication, heedless of the fog in Devonshire Place, and the decent grey of the world elsewhere. She refused to think or speculate. Rose veils shrouded the future; the present was a fantasy of delight. For material things, food, shelter, raiment, she had no concern. Connie fed and housed her, making her the thrice welcome guest, the beloved sister. From society she withdrew altogether. Visitors paid calls, odd people were entertained at meals, the routine of a wealthy woman's establishment proceeded in its ordinary course, and Norma's presence in the house remained unknown and unsuspected. She was there in hiding. The world was given to understand that she was in Cornwall. Even common life had thus its air of romance and mystery. Being as it were a fugitive, she had no engagements. There was a glorious incongruity in the position. She regarded the beginnings of the London season with the amused detachment of a disembodied spirit revisiting the scenes of which it once made a part. Morning, afternoon, and evening she was free—an exhilarating novelty. Nobody wanted to see her save Jimmie; save him she wanted to see nobody.
They met every day—sometimes in the sitting-room on the ground floor which Connie had set apart for her guest's exclusive use, and sometimes in Jimmie's studio. Now and then, when the weather was fine, they walked together in sweet places unfrequented by the fashionable world, Regent's Park and Hampstead Heath, fresh woods and pastures new to Norma, who had heard of the heath vaguely as an undesirable common where the lower orders wore each other's hats and shied at cocoanuts. Its smiling loneliness and April beauty, seen perhaps through the artist's eyes, enchanted her. Jimmie pointed out its undulations; like a bosom, said he, swelling with the first breaths of pure air on its release from London.
Most of all she loved to drive up to St. John's Wood after dinner and burst upon him unexpectedly. The new Bohemian freedom of it all was a part of the queer delicious life. She laughed in anticipation at his cry of delighted welcome. When she heard it, her eyes grew soft. To lift her veil and hang back her head to receive his kiss on her lips was an ever-new sensation. The intimacy had a bewildering sweetness. To complete it she threw aside gloves and jacket and unpinned her hat, a battered gilt Empire mirror over the long table serving her to guide the necessary touches to her hair. Although she did not repeat the little comedy of the shirt which had been inspired by the exaltation of a rare moment, yet she sat in Aline's chair, now called her own, and knitted at a silk tie she was making for him. She had learned the art from her aunt in Cornwall, and she brought the materials in a little black silk bag slung to her wrist. The housewifely avocation fitted in with the fairy tale. Jimmie smoked and talked, the most responsive and least tiring of companions. His allusive speech, that of the imaginative and cultured man, in itself brought her into a world different from the one she had left. His simplicity, his ignorance of the ways of women, his delight at the little discoveries she allowed him to make, gave it a touch of Arcadia. In passionate moments there was the unfamiliar, poetic, rhapsodic in his utterance which turned the world into a corner of heaven. And so the magic hours passed.
“I do believe I have found a soul,” she remarked on one of these evenings, “and that's why I must be so immoderately happy. I'm like a child with a new toy.”
She was unconscious of the instinctive, pitiless analysis of herself; and Jimmie, drunk with the wonder of her, did not heed the warning.
Of their future life together they only spoke as happy lovers in the rosy mist shed about them by the veil. They dwelt in the glamour of the fairy tale, where the princess who marries the shepherd lives not only happy ever afterwards, but also delicately dressed and daintily environed, her chief occupation being to tie silk bows round the lambs' necks, and to serve to her husband the whitest of bread and the whitest of cheese with the whitest of hands. Their forecast of the future might have been an Idyll of Theocritus.
“You will be the inspiration of all my pictures, dear,” said Jimmie.
“I will sit for you as a model, if I am good enough.”
“Good enough!” Language crumbled into meaningless vocables before her infinite perfection. “I have had a little talent. You will give me genius.”
“I will also give you your dinner.” She laughed adorably. “Do you know Connie told me I must learn to cook. I had my first lesson this morning in her kitchen—a most poetic way of doing sweetbreads. Do you like sweetbreads?”
“Now I come to think of it, I do. Enormously. I wonder why Aline never has them.”
“We'll have some—our first lunch—at home.”
“And you will cook them?” cried the enraptured man.
She nodded. “In a most becoming white apron. You'll see.”
“You'll be like a goddess taking her turn preparing the daily ambrosia for Olympus!” said Jimmie.
On another occasion they spoke of summer holidays. They would take a little cottage in the country. It would have honeysuckle over the porch, and beds of mignonette under the windows, and an old-fashioned garden full of stocks and hollyhocks and sunflowers. There would be doves and bees. They would go out early and come home with the dew on their feet. They would drink warm milk from the cow. They would go a hay-making. Norma's idea of the pastoral pathetically resembled that of the Petit Trianon.
The magic of the present with its sincerity of passionate worship on the part of the man, and its satisfaction of a soul's hunger on the part of the woman, was in itself enough to blind their eyes to the possible prose of the future. Another interest, one of the sweetest of outside interests that can bind two lovers together, helped to fix their serious thoughts to the immediate hour. Side by side with their romance grew up another, vitally interwoven with it for a spell and now springing clear into independent life. The two children Aline and Tony Merewether had found each other again, and the fresh beauty of their young loves lit the deeper passion of the older pair with the light of spring sunrise. In precious little moments of confidence Aline opened to Norma her heart's dewy happiness, and what Norma in delicate honour could divulge she told to Jimmie, who in his turn had his little tale to bear. More and more was existence like the last page of a fairy book.
The reconciliation of the younger folk had been a very simple matter. It was the doing of Connie Deering. The morning after Morland's confession she summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. He arrived wondering. She asked him point blank:
“Are you still in love with Aline Marden or have you forgotten all about her?”
The young fellow declared his undying affection.
“Are you aware that you have treated her shamefully?” she said severely.
“I am the most miserable dog unhung,” exclaimed the youth. He certainly looked miserable, thin, and worried. He gave his view of the position. Connie's heart went out to him.
“Suppose I told you that everything was cleared up and you could go to Aline with a light conscience?”
“I should go crazy with happiness!” he cried, springing to his feet.
“Aline deserves a sane husband. She is one in a thousand.”
“She is one in twenty thousand million!”
“There she goes, hand in hand with Jimmie Padgate. It's to tell you that I've asked you to come. I hope you'll let them both know you're aware of it.”
Satisfied that he was worthy of her confidence, she told him briefly what had occurred.
“And now what are you going to do?” she asked, smiling.
“Do? I'll go on my knees. I'll grovel at his feet. I'll ask him to make me a door-mat. I'll do any mortal thing Aline tells me.”
“Well, go now and do your penance and be happy,” Connie said, holding out her hand.
“I don't know how I can thank you, Mrs. Deering,” he cried. “You are the most gracious woman that ever lived!”
A few moments later an impassioned youth was speeding in a hansom cab to Friary Grove. But Connie, with the memory of his clear-cut, radiant young face haunting her, sighed. Chance decreed that the very moment should bring her a letter from Jimmie, written that morning, full of his wonder and gratitude. She sighed again, pathetically, foolishly, unreasonably feeling left out in the cold.
“I wonder whether it would do me good to cry,” she said, half aloud. But the footman entering with the announcement that the carriage which was to take her to her dressmaker was at the door, settled the question. She had to content herself with sighs.
Tony Merewether did not go on his knees, as Aline had ordained; but he made his apology in so frank and manly a way that Jimmie forgave him at once. Besides, said he, what had he to forgive?
“I feel like Didymus,” said Tony.
Jimmie laughed as he clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him out of the studio.
“You had better cultivate the feeling. He became a saint eventually. Aline will help to make you one.”
If plain indication of another's infirmities can tend to qualify him for canonisation, Aline certainly justified Jimmie's statement. She did not confer her pardon so readily on the doubting disciple. His offence had been too rank. It was not merely a question of his saying acredoand then taking her into his arms. She exacted much penance before she permitted this blissful consummation. He had to woo and protest and humble himself exceedingly. But when she had reduced him to a proper state of penitence, she gave him plenary absolution and yielded to his kiss, as she had been yearning to do since the beginning of the interview. After that she settled down to her infinite delight. Nothing was lacking in the new rapturous scheme of existence. The glory of Jimmie was vindicated. Tony had come back to her. The bars to their marriage had vanished. Not only was Tony a man of substance with the legacy of eight thousand pounds that had been left him, and therefore able to support as many wives as the Grand Turk, but Jimmie no longer had to be provided for. The wonder of wonders had happened; she could surrender her precious charge with a free conscience and a heart bursting with gratitude.
Thus the happiness of each pair of lovers caught a reflection from that of the other, and its colour was rendered ever so little fictitious, unreal. The light of spring sunrise, exquisite though it is, invests things with a glamour which the light of noon dispels. The spectacle of the young romance unfolding itself before the eyes of Jimmie and Norma completed their delicious sense of the idyllic; but the illusive atmosphere thus created caused them to view their own romance in slightly false perspective. Essentially it was a drama of conflict—themselves against the pettinesses and uglinesses of the world; apparently it was a pastoral among spring flowers.
Another cause that contributed to Norma's unconcern for the future was her exaggerated sense of the man's loftiness of soul. Instead of viewing him as a lovable creature capable of the chivalrous and the heroic and afforded by a happy fate an opportunity of displaying these qualities—for the opportunity makes the hero as much as it does the thief—she grovelled whole-sexedly before an impossible idol imbued with impossible divinity. While knitting silk ties and devising with him the preparation of foodstuffs (which she did not realise he would not be able to afford) she was conscious of a grace in the trifling, all the more precious because of these little earthly things midway between the empyrean and the abyss which they respectively inhabited. In the deeply human love of each was a touch of the fantastic. To Jimmie she was the Princess of Wonderland, the rare Lady of Dreams; to Norma he appeared little less than a god.
She was talking one evening with Connie Deering in a somewhat exalted strain of her own unworthiness and Jimmie's condescension, when the little lady broke into an unwonted expression of impatience.
“My dear child, every foolish woman is a valet to her hero. You would like to clean his boots, wouldn't you?”
“My dear Connie,” cried Norma, alarmed, “whatever is the matter?”
“I think you two had better get married as quickly as possible. It is getting on one's nerves.”
Norma stiffened. “I am sorry—” she began.
Connie interrupted her. “Don't be silly. There's nothing for you to be sorry about.” She brightened and laughed, realising the construction Norma had put upon her words. “I am only advising you for your good. I had half an hour's solitary imprisonment with Theodore Weever this afternoon. He always takes it out of me. It's like having a bath with an electric eel. He called this afternoon to get news of you.”
“Of me?” asked Norma serenely, settling herself in the depths of her chair.
“He is like an eel,” Connie exclaimed with a shiver. “He's the coldest-blooded thing I've ever come across. I told you about the dinner at the Carlton, did n't I? It appears that he reckoned on my doing just what I rushed off to do. It makes me so angry!” she cried with feminine emphasis on the last word. “Of course he did n't tell me so brutally—he has a horrid snake-like method of insinuation. He had counted on my getting at the truth which he had guessed and so stopping the marriage. 'I'm a true prophet,' he said. 'I knew that marriage would never come off.'”
“So he told me,” said Norma. “Do you know, there must be some goodness in him to have perceived the goodness in Jimmie.”
“I believe he's a disembodied spirit without either goodness or badness—a sort of non-moral monster.” Connie was given to hyperbole in her likes and dislikes. She continued her tale. He had come to ask her advice. Now that Miss Hardacre was free, did Mrs. Deering think he might press his suit with advantage? His stay in Europe was drawing to a close. He would like to take back with him to New York either Miss Hardacre or a definite refusal.
“'You certainly cannot take back Miss Hardacre,' I said, 'because she is going to marry Jimmie Padgate.' I thought this would annihilate him. But do you think he moved a muscle? Not he.”
“What did he say?” asked Norma, lazily amused.
“'This is getting somewhat monotonous,'” replied Connie.
Norma laughed. “Nothing else?”
“He began to talk about theatres. He has the most disconcerting way of changing the conversation. But on leaving he sent his congratulations to you, and said that you were always to remember that you were the wife specially designed for him by Providence.”
“You dear thing,” said Norma, “and did that get on your nerves?”
“Would n't it get on yours?”
Norma shook her head. “I have n't any nerves for things to get on. People don't have nerves when they're happy.”
“And are you happy, really, really happy?”
“I am deliciously happy,” said Norma.
She went to bed laughing at the discomfiture of Weever and the remoteness of him and of the days last summer when she first met him among the Monzies' disreputable crowd. He belonged to a former state of existence. Jimmie's portrait, which had been put for two or three reasons in her bedroom, caught her attention. She looked at it with a dreamy smile for a long time, and then turned to the glass. Made curiously happy by what she saw there, she kissed her fingers to the portrait.
“He is the better prophet,” she said.
But Connie's advice as to the desirability of a speedy marriage remained in her mind. Jimmie with characteristic diffidence had not yet suggested definite arrangements. She was gifted with so much insight as to apprehend the reasons for his lack of initiative. His very worship of her, his overwhelming sense of goddess-conferred boon in her every smile and condescension, precluded the asking of favours. So far it was she who had arranged their daily life. It was she who had established the custom of the studio visits, and she had taken off her hat and had inaugurated the comedy of the domestic felicities of her own accord. She treasured this worship in her heart as a priceless thing, all the more exquisite because it lay by the side of the knowledge of her own unworthiness. The sacrifice of maidenly modesty in proposing instead of coyly yielding was at once a delicious penance for hypocritical assumption of superiority, and a salve to her pride as a beautiful and desirable woman. It was with a glorious sureness of relation, therefore, that she asked him the next day if he had thought of a date for their marriage.
“There is no reason for a long engagement that I can see,” she added, with a blush which she felt, and was tremulously happy at feeling.
“I was waiting for you to say, dear,” he replied, his arm around her. “I dared not ask.”
She laughed the deep laugh of a woman's happiness.
“I knew you would say that,” she murmured. “Let it be some time next month.”
ONE day Norma received a polite intimation from her bankers that her account was overdrawn. This had happened before but on previous occasions she had obtained from her father an advance on her allowance and the unpleasant void at the bank had been filled. Now she realised with dismay that the allowance had been cut off, and that no money could come into her possession until the payment of the half-yearly dividend from the concern in which her small private fortune was invested. She looked in her purse and found five shillings. On this she would have to live for three weeks. Her money was in the hands of trustees, wisely tied up by the worldly aunt from whom she had inherited it, so that she could not touch the capital. While she was contemplating the absurdity of the position, the maid brought up a parcel from a draper's on which there was three and eleven pence halfpenny to pay. She surrendered four of her shillings, and disconsolately regarded the miserable one that remained. The position had grown even more preposterous. She actually needed money. She had not even the amount of a cab-fare to Friary Grove. She would not have it for three weeks.
Preposterous or not, the fact was plain, and demanded serious consideration. She would have to borrow. The repayment of the loan and the overdraft would reduce the half-yearly dividend. A goodly part of the remainder would be required to meet an outstanding milliners' bill, not included in the bridal trousseau for which her father was to pay. The sum in simple arithmetic frightened her.
“I am poverty-stricken,” she said to Connie, to whom she confided her difficulties.
Connie blotted the cheque that was to provide for immediate wants, and laughed sympathetically.
“You'll have to learn to be economical, dear. I believe it's quite easy.”
“You mean I must go in omnibuses and things?” said Norma, vaguely.
“And not order so many hats and gowns.”
“I see,” said Norma, folding up the cheque.
With money again in her pocket, she felt lighter of heart, but she knew that she had stepped for a moment out of fairyland into the grey world of reality. The first experience was unpleasant. It left a haunting dread which made her cling closer to Jimmie in the embrace of their next meeting. It was a relief to get back into the Garden of Enchantment and leave sordid things outside. Wilfully she kept the conversation from serious discussion of their marriage.
When next she had occasion to go to the studio, she remembered the necessity of economy, and took the St. John's Wood omnibus. As a general rule the travellers between Baker Street station and the Swiss Cottage are of a superior class, being mostly the well-to-do residents in the neighbourhood and their visitors; but, by an unlucky chance, this particular omnibus was crowded, and Norma found herself wedged between a labouring man redolent of stale beer and bad tobacco, and a fat Jewish lady highly flavoured with musk. A youth getting out awkwardly knocked her hat awry with his elbow. It began to rain—a smart April shower. The wet umbrella of a new arrival dripped on her dress while he stood waiting for a place to be made for him opposite. The omnibus stopped at a shelterless corner, the nearest point to Friary Grove. She descended to pitiless rain and streaming pavements and a five minutes' walk, for all of which her umbrella and shoes were inadequate. She vowed miserably a life-long detestation of omnibuses. She would never enter one again. Cabs were the only possible conveyances for people who could not afford to keep their carriage. She fought down the dread that she might not be able to afford cabs. The Almighty, who had obviously intended her to drive in cabs, would certainly see that His intentions were carried out.
She arrived at the studio, wet, bedraggled, and angry; but Jimmie's exaggerated concern disarmed her. It could not have been less had she wandered for miles and been drenched to the skin and chilled to the bone. He sent Aline to fetch her daintiest slippers to replace the damp shoes, established the storm-driven sufferer in the big leathern armchair with cushions at her back and hassocks at her feet, made a roaring fire and insisted on her swallowing cherry brandy, a bottle of which he kept in the house in case of illness. In the unwonted luxury of being loved and petted and foolishly fussed over, Norma again forgot her troubles. Jimmie consoled the specific grievance by saying magniloquently that omnibuses were the engines of the devil and vehicles of the wrath to come. With a drugged economic conscience she went home in a cab. But the conscience awoke later, somewhat suffering, and she recognised that her exasperated vow had been vain. Jimmie was a poor man. She recalled to mind his words on the night of their engagement, and apprehended their significance. The trivial incident of the omnibus was a key. The abandonment of cabs and carriages meant the surrender of countless luxuries that went therewith. Her own two hundred a year would not greatly raise the scale of living. She was to be a poor man's wife; would have to wear cheap dresses, eat plain food, keep household books in which pennies were accounted for; hers would be the humdrum existence of the less prosperous middle class. The first pang of doubt frightened her for a while and left her ashamed. Noble revolt followed. Had she not renounced the pomps and vanities of a world which she scorned? Had not this wonderful baptism of love brought New Birth? She had been reborn, a braver, purer woman; she had been initiated into life's deeper mysteries; her soul had been filled with joy. Of what count were externals?
The next evening Connie Deering gave a small dinner-party in honour of the two engagements. Old Colonel Pawley, charged under pain of her perpetual displeasure not to reveal the secret of Norma's whereabouts, was invited to balance the sexes. He was delighted to hear of Norma's romantic marriage.
“I can still present the fan,” he said, rubbing his soft palms together; “but I'm afraid I shall have to write a fresh set of verses.”
“You had better give Norma a cookery-book,” laughed Connie.
“I have a beautiful one of my own in manuscript which no publisher will take up,” sighed Colonel Pawley.
Norma, who had been wont to speak with drastic contempt of the amiable old warrior, welcomed him so cordially that he was confused. He was not accustomed to exuberant demonstrations of friendship from the beautiful Miss Hardacre. At dinner, sitting next her, he enjoyed himself enormously. Instead of freezing his geniality with sarcastic remarks, she lured him on to the gossip in which his heart delighted. When Connie rallied her, later, on her flirtation with the old man, she laughed.
“Remember I've been a prisoner here. He's one of the familiar faces from outside.”
Although jestingly, she had spoken with her usual frankness, and her confession was more deeply significant than she was aware at the time. She had welcomed Colonel Pawley not for what he was, but for what he represented. As soon as she was alone she realised the moral lapse, and rebuked herself severely. She was sentimental enough to hang by a ribbon around her neck the simple engagement ring which Jimmie had given her, and to sleep with it as a talisman against evil thoughts.
She spent the following evening at the studio, heroically enduring the discomforts of the detested omnibus. When she descended she drew a breath of relief, but felt the glow that comes from virtuous achievement. Jimmie was informed of this practice in the art of economy. He regarded her wistfully. There were times when he too fought with doubts,—not of her loyalty, but of his own honesty in bringing her down into his humble sphere. Even now, accustomed as he was to the adored sight of her there, he could not but note the contrast between herself and her surroundings. She brought with her in every detail of her person, in every detail of her dress, in every detail of her manner, an atmosphere of a dainty, luxurious life pathetically incongruous with the shabby little house. He had not even the wherewithal to call in decorators and upholsterers and make the little house less shabby. So when she spoke of practising economy, he looked at her wistfully.
“Your eyes are open, dear, are n't they?” he said. “You really do realise what a sacrifice you are making in marrying me?”
“By not marrying you,” she replied, “I should have gained the world and lost my own soul. Now I am doing the reverse.”'
He kissed her finger-tips lover-wise. “I am afraid I must be the devil's advocate, and say that the loss and gain need not be so absolutely differentiated. I want you to be happy. My God! I want you to be happy,” he burst out with sudden passion, “and if you found that things were infinitely worse than what you had expected, that you had married me in awful ignorance—”
She covered his lips with the palm of her hand.
“Don't go on. You pain me. You make me despise myself. I have counted the cost, such as it is. Did I not tell you from the first that I would go with you in rags and barefoot through the world? Could woman say more? Don't you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you,” he replied, bowing his head. “You are a great-hearted woman.”
She unfastened her hat, skewered it through with the pins, and gave it him to put down.
“I remember my Solomon,” she said, trying to laugh lightly, for there had been a faint but disconcerting sense of effort in her protestation. “'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred there with.' Besides, you forget another important matter. I am now a homeless, penniless outcast. I am not sacrificing anything. It is very kind of you to offer to take me in and shelter me.”
“These are sophistries,” said Jimmie, with a laugh. “You gave up all on my account.”
“But I am really penniless,” she said, ignoring his argument. “Anch' io son pittore. I too have felt the pinch of poverty.”
“You?”
She revealed her financial position—the overdraft at the bank, the shilling between herself and starvation. Were it not for Connie, she would have to sing in the streets. She alluded thoughtlessly, with her class's notions as to the value of money, to her “miserable two hundred a year.”
“Two hundred a year!” cried Jimmie. “Why, that's a fortune!”
His tone struck a sudden chill through her. He genuinely regarded the paltry sum as untold riches. She struggled desperately down to his point of view.
“Perhaps it may come in useful for us,” she said lamely.
“I should think it will! Why did n't you tell me before?”
“Have you never thought I might have a little of my own?” she asked with a touch of her old hardness.
“No,” said Jimmie. “Of course not.”
“I don't see any 'of course' in the matter. The ordinary man would have speculated—it would have been natural—almost common-sense.”
Jimmie threw up his hands deprecatingly.
“I have been too much dazzled by the glorious gift of yourself to think of anything else you might bring. I am an impossible creature, as you will find out. I ought to have considered the practical side.”
“Oh! I am very glad you did n't!” she exclaimed. “Heaven forbid you should have the mercenary ideas of the average man. It is beautiful to have thought of me only.”
“I am afraid I was thinking of myself, my dear,” said he. “I must get out of the way of it, and think of the two of us. Now let us be severely business-like. You have taken a load off my mind. There are a thousand things you can surround yourself with that I imagined you would lack.” He took her two hands and swung them backwards and forwards. “Now I shan't regard myself as such a criminal in asking you to marry me.”
“Do you think two hundred a year a fortune, Jimmie?” she asked.
“To the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts perhaps not—but everything is relative.”
“Everything?”
Her heart spoke suddenly, demanding relief. Their eyes met.
“No, dear,” he said. “One thing at least is absolute.” An interlude of conviction succeeded doubt. She felt that she had never loved him so much as at that moment. It was more with the quickly lit passion of the awakened woman than with the ardour of a girl that she clasped her hands round his head and drew it down to their kiss. She had an awful need of the assurance of the absolute.
It nerved her to face a discussion on ways and means with Aline, whom Jimmie at her request summoned from demure sewing in her little drawing-room.
“You are right,” she had said, referring to his former remark. “We ought to be severely business-like. I must begin to learn things. You don't know how hopelessly ignorant I am.”
Aline came down to give the first lesson in elementary housekeeping. She brought with her a pile of little black books which she spread out at the end of the long table. The two girls sat side by side. Jimmie hovered about them for a while, but was soon dismissed by Aline to a distant part of the studio, where, having nothing wherewith to occupy himself, he proceeded to make a charcoal sketch of the two intent faces.
Aline, proud at being able to display her housewifely knowledge before appreciative eyes, opened her books, and expounded them with a charming business air. These were the receipts for the last twelve months; these the general disbursements. They were balanced to a halfpenny.
“Of course anything I can't account for, I put down to the item 'Jimmie,'” she said naively. “Hewillgo to the money-drawer and help himself without letting me know. Is n't it tiresome of him?”
Norma smiled absently, wrinkling her brows over the unfamiliar figures. She had no grasp of the relation the amounts of the various items bore to one another, but they all seemed exceedingly small.
“I suppose it's necessary to make up this annual balance?” she asked.
“Of course. Otherwise you would n't know how much you could apportion to each item. Jimmie says it's nonsense to keep books; but if you listen to Jimmie, you 'll have the brokers in in a month.”
“Brokers?”
Aline laughed at her perplexed look. “Yes, to seize the furniture in payment of debt.”
The main financial facts having been stated, Aline came to detail. These were the weekly books from the various tradesmen. She showed a typical week's expenditure.
“What about the fishmonger?” asked Norma, noting an obvious omission.
“Fish is too expensive to have regularly,” Aline explained, “and so I don't have an account. When I buy any, I pay for it at once, in the shop.”
“Whenyoubuy it?”
“Why, yes. You'll find it much better to go and choose things for yourself than let them call for orders. Then you can get exactly what you want, instead of what suits the tradesman's convenience. You see, I go to the butcher and look round, and say 'I want a piece of that joint,' and of course he does as he's told. It seems horrid to any one not accustomed to it to go into a butcher's shop, I know; but really it's not unpleasant, and it's quite amusing.”
“But why should n't your housekeeper do the marketing?”
“Oh, she does sometimes,” Aline admitted; “but Hannah is n't a good buyer. She can'tjudgemeat and things, you know, and she is apt to be wasteful over vegetables.”
“You don't bring the—the meat and things—home with you in a basket, do you?” asked Norma, with a nervous laugh.
Jimmie, interested in his sketch, had not listened to the conversation, which had been carried on in a low tone. The last words, however, pitched higher, caught his ear. He jumped to his feet.
“Norma carry home meat in a basket! Good God! What on earth has the child been telling you?”
“I never said anything of the kind, Jimmie,” cried Aline, indignantly. “You needn't bring home anything unless you like; our tradesmen are most obliging.”
Norma pushed back her chair from the table and rose and again laughed nervously.
“I am afraid I can't learn all the science of domestic economy in one lesson. I must do it by degrees.” She passed her hand across her forehead. “I'm not used to figures, you see.”
Jimmie looked reproachfully at Aline. “Those horrid little black books!” he exclaimed. “They are enough to give any one a headache. For heaven's sake, have nothing to do with them, dear.”
“But the brokers will come in,” said Norma, with an uncertain catch in her voice.
“They are Aline's pet hobgoblins,” laughed Jimmie. “My dear child,” pointing to the books, “please take those depressing records of wasted hours away.”
When they were alone, he said to Norma very tenderly, “I am afraid my little girl has frightened you.”
She started at the keenness of his perception and flushed.
“No—not frightened.”
“She is so proud of the way she runs her little kingdom here,” he said; “so proud to show you how it is done. You must forgive her. She is only a child, my dearest, and forgets that these household delights of hers may come as shocks to you. I shall not allow you to have these worries that she loves to concern her head about.”
“Then who will have them?” she asked, with her hand on the lapel of his jacket. “You? That would be absurd. If I am your wife, I must keep your house.”
“My dear,” said Jimmie, kissing her, “if we love each other, there will be no possibility of worries. I believe in God in a sort of way, and He has not given you to me to curse and wither your life.”
“You could only bless and sanctify it,” she murmured.
“Not I, dear; but our love.”
Soothed, she raised a smiling face.
“But still, I'll have to keep house. Do you think I would let you go to the butcher's? What would Aline say if you made such a proposal?”
“She would peremptorily forbid him to take my orders,” he replied, laughing.
“I am sure I should,” she said.
It was growing late. She glanced at the wheezy tilted old Dutch clock in the corner, and spoke of departure. She reflected for a moment on the means of home-getting. To her lowered spirits the omnibus loomed like a lumbering torture-chamber. The consolation of a cab seemed cowardice. An inspiration occurred to her. She would walk; perhaps he would accompany her to Bryanston Square. He was enraptured at the suggestion. But could she manage the distance?
“I should like to try. I am a good walker—and when we are outside,” she added softly, “we can talk a little of other matters.”
It was a mild spring night, and the quiet stars shone benignantly upon them as they walked arm in arm, and talked of “other matters.” As she had needed a little while before the assurance of the absolute, so now she craved the spirituality of the man himself, the inner light of faith in the world's beauty, the sweetness, the courage—all that indefinable something in him which raised him, and could alone raise her, above the terrifying things of earth. She clung to his arm in a pathos of yearning for him to lead her upward and teach her the things of the spirit. Only thus lay her salvation.
He, clean, simple soul, lost in the splendour of their love, expounding, as it chanced, his guileless philosophy of life and his somewhat childishly pagan religious convictions, was far from suspecting the battle into which he was being called to champion the side of righteousness. He went to sleep that night the most blissfully happy of men. Norma lay awake, a miserable woman.