Chapter IV: Part 4

Oh, those hysterical women, with their love of keeping letters!

All this took place some years before Brand's marriage. He went abroad again until the storm blew over. This rumour, at least, had never reached Evelyn. Had others, he wondered? In all such matters she was so strictly rigid; he often wondered if her uncompromising views of sin were the result of temperament or convent education. Uncompromising to sin, that is to say--not to the sinner. His wife seemed to separate action from actor. The sin itself was loathsome, repulsive--it made her shrink. The sinner was wounded, and for him she had healing balms and ointments. But where another woman would have slurred over the cause of the hurt, she spoke of it confidently by name, confronting adultery or theft as she would any other mortal combat.

"We talk of Magersfontein and Colenso," she said once. "If we'd met sin on another kind of battle-field and been defeated, why should we be ashamed to call the battle-field by its own name?"

That Evelyn was original her husband conceded--at times he even took a certain pride in her looks and ways. They were useful. But her attitude to him personally was unendurable. She had never loved him, of course--such a man does not ask for love; he would not have recognized it had he found it. On the other hand, he had never claimed anything from her to which she had not made instant response so far as she was able. She had swept his floors and cooked for him, in their poorer days, like the docile wife of any village labourer; she had mended his reputation as well as his clothes, Hare once said, chuckling. When he was ill she nursed him; when he was well she stayed with him or left him as he wished. But day by day the wall that separated them grew higher; he had married a pliable child, who had become a woman in an hour.

If he spoke of it at all--which was seldom, for, try as he would, he could find no tangible ground for complaint--it was only to rail at her religion.

"Those damned priests and directors are behind this pose of yours. I'll break it down, as well as you, before I've done with you."

In an access of fury one day he dragged from her bedroom wall a Delia Robbia plaque of the Madonna and Child, before which a lamp was burning, and flung it to the ground.

Evelyn was smiling when he turned to her.

"Do you think one's faith depends on such things?" she asked, carefully gathering up the broken pieces. "They're quite immaterial. Your lover's picture is in your heart, whether you have his photograph or not. I'm sorry you broke this, it is one of the few valuable things we have. You may break or burn every outward needless symbol that I have, if you choose--I'll put them away if you dislike them. What you do or what you don't do doesn't touch anything in me. You killed my love long ago, and as for faith--that's just between myself and God."

She blew out the lamp, when he cursed her, and it was never lighted again.

Points of view such as these were indescribably irritating. In his excuse it must be admitted that with increasing years Brand's physical health had grown worse; long paroxysms of pain often seized him when he was alone. Once he had been man enough to fight against his irritability; he tended it now, watering it with his sense of ill-usage, and kept its fruits for his wife. Her unshaken calm, her peace, her air of quiet rest and strength when he was nervous and suffering, tried him beyond words; there were times when he could have stopped short at nothing to wreck her control, to subdue the unconquerable spirit that passed through the mines and tunnels of the world, as though the way was lit by an enduring light. The idea grew to an obsession. He himself was powerless to hurt her; he must act through some one else. Life had been unfair to him throughout; it had marred him first, then broken him. Well, it should mar and break her too.

And if in the fall some other enemy could be made to suffer too, so much the better ... some one to whom the gods had been lavish, as in the case of Richard Farquharson.

Farquharson was drawn to Evelyn, Evelyn was drawn to Farquharson; there was no doubt of that. And Miss Beadon meant to marry Farquharson, and, by herself, would never accomplish her purpose. Why, there were all the elements of a successful comedy in view if Brand could only teach the puppets their parts.

An opportunity came shortly. A few days later, as Brand was sitting in his little smoking-room, where the best, the most comfortable chairs and sofas were collected, he heard his wife's knock at the door.

He glanced at the open letter in her hand through half-closed eyes as she approached.

She held it out for him to read.

"Mr. Calvert's chauffeur has just brought this. The Bedfords have lent him their box at the opera to-night; the Beadons are going, and he wants us too. The man is waiting for an answer. We're free, of course, but you don't care for Wagner opera, do you?"

Brand took the letter and read it with unusual deliberation.

"'_Tristan and Isolde_, and please be in your place a quarter of an hour before the orchestra strikes up. We are a party of six,'" he quoted slowly. "That means Calvert, Beadon, Miss Dora, you and I and Farquharson, I suppose."

"Am I to refuse or accept?" asked Evelyn. "You look very tired to-night. Are you up to going?"

"I'm right enough," said Brand. "I think--I'm sure, in fact, it will amuse me, although, perhaps, that wasn't exactly the intention of the composer."

He looked at her from head to foot critically, then fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a sovereign.

"Get some flowers to wear--malmaison carnations for choice, if the neighbourhood can produce them. The colour suits you. This is the first invitation Calvert has ever given me, it mustn't be the last. Remember, I rely upon you to do all you can in that direction. Wear white to-night by the bye, you're one of the few women who can; and if the carnations fail, get roses of the same shade."

"Thank you," said Evelyn, lingering still. So sudden, so complete a change of manner made her vaguely uneasy. Brand never gave her money without expecting its full value back in kind.

"Give yourself plenty of time to dress, Evelyn. I want you to look your best. It's really an occasion."

He was still smiling as she closed the door.

*CHAPTER VII*

"Je connais trop tard quel est l'essential!"--E. ROSTAND.

"Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you've come to look after me," said Miss Beadon; "I was getting quite embarrassed amongst this tribe of men."

She tried to pull Evelyn playfully down beside her as she spoke into the vacant seat she had kept between herself and her father, but Calvert interposed.

"I want Mrs. Brand next me, Miss Beadon. We've business to talk over." He lowered his voice. "I'm going to plunge into things as usual. Farquharson and I have just been discussing his plan of campaign. You've worked wonders for him already; I'm trusting to you to concentrate your influence at this critical moment. He's been seen and felt already, but he's not actually been heard in public. Now I know you've great influence with Beadon----"

Farquharson, entering the box at that moment; overheard the last sentence, and came straight to Mrs. Brand.

"Is my chief worrying you again on my behalf?"

"I refuse to be drawn by that lure," Evelyn laughed lightly. "Don't be ridiculous. I haven't done a single thing for you as yet. Mr. Calvert's right, you know; you ought to speak soon in public. It's the only way to touch the man with the vote, the great uneducated majority. Why, I've seen two or three thousand people at the Albert Hall absolutely swaying to one man's words. Oh, oratory is the power of powers. To play on your audience like an instrument--there's nothing so telling. When _The Ambassador_ was being acted at the St. James's Theatre, the manager used to let me go behind and listen in the wings. The big scene was the one between Violet Vanbrugh and Fay Davis, you know, and Violet Vanbrugh had certain words to say--I've forgotten the actual phrase--which always either warmed the house to frenzy or left it cold. I used to stand with my eyes shut waiting for that speech--one became in time so sensitive to the atmosphere of the house as to know before it was given exactly how it would be received. I've never heard you speak; but I know just how the world's going to take your speech when you make one."

"Yet I haven't done much in that line," said Farquharson. "The plain audience I'm accustomed to is quite different to critical London. Our whole system in Taorna is different to your system here, of course. We can't afford to have wastrels in our Assembly. The people elect their Council from amongst men who've been proved to have the island's interest at heart. And then each man has his own right of judgment. When an appeal comes before us, we vote according to our individual opinion, not according to party. The President has the casting vote. We put men on their honour, as it were; we don't necessarily oppose because we belong to the Opposition, nor do we change our opinions unanimously because we're afraid to face a general election. If at any time during his tenure of office a minister is found to have failed in his duty according to the opinion of a quorum of his colleagues, he has to come before a sort of political court-martial."

"I'm afraid our methods here are less straightforward," said Evelyn. "I know of at least one by-election where an inefficient candidate was pulled through solely because his canvassers said he had a sick wife whose death would be hastened if he didn't get the seat."

"As a matter of fact he hadn't lived with her for years, and neither of them took the least interest in the other, but his agent waxed positively hysterical over the sentimental aspect of the case. Had there been universal suffrage I've no doubt that the wife would have plumped her vote for the rival candidate," said Beadon. "By the bye, Farquharson, you're in favour of Tariff Reform, of course. Mrs. Brand asked me the other day to persuade you to speak for us at our monster meeting at the Albert Hall next Monday. You would be in good company; we have a fine show of speakers."

"Delighted, of course," said Farquharson impassively. "It begins at eight o'clock, doesn't it?" He took out his note-book.

Brand eagerly interposed.

"Mr. Calvert has just promised to dine with us that evening. Will you come too? Lady Wereminster always invites my wife to her box; Lord Meavy and Lord Creagh are coming too. We shall have to feed at an unearthly hour, but perhaps you won't mind that under the circumstances."

"Thanks very much, I shall be delighted," said Farquharson again.

Evelyn, amazed, leant back in her seat and whispered to her husband under cover of her fan.

"I didn't know that they were coming. When did you ask them?"

Brand bent down, adjusting his opera-glasses.

"Don't give yourself away. The others will be glad enough to come if Calvert and Farquharson do. Once capture the coming man and others will follow. You must help me, Evelyn; it means everything to me to have it known Calvert visits us."

"Of course I'll do my best. Oh, hush!" said Evelyn. The orchestra had begun playing the first notes of that exquisite prelude to _Tristan and Isolde_ which, _motif_ by _motif_, leads from the first confession of love by way of desire and magic and mystery to the deliverance of death.

Wagner opera was to Farquharson a new experience. He had come that night in a cynical enough mood. The darkness that enfolded the great assembly in its mantle, the hush and tension under which it laboured, listening without movement, rather as one corporate body than as a crowd of separate entities, struck him at first as a mere pose. But presently the power and strength and pathos of the music carried him away as it carried others. This was real flesh and blood; impatience, ardour, glory, the very song of the sea, transport and passion, blending with underlying chords of human sorrow--each in turn rang true.

And as he listened old memories came thronging back, memories at once exquisite and painful. For now the sufferings of his childhood spread before him like an allegory whose language his mature eyes could read; they had been encrusted for years with the ice of bitterness. But here, under Evelyn's influence, the ice had melted. He detached himself, the man, from the sturdy boyish figure which had flinched and wavered, but yet never given way, and saw how the fire of manhood had been kindled by those hours of stress. Wind and rain, storm and torrent, had formed his character, and mountain fastnesses had been his playground. The whole story of his childhood was a preparation for the battle he was fighting now. His ceaseless combats with men and things, even the mimic raids and sorties he had made as a child upon invisible foes, had stood him in good stead later when struggle was as infallibly his portion as it is the portion of certain men to sleep beside the hearth.

But if life for him was a battle-field, it was no less a battle-field for the woman at his side. His foes were worthy opponents, men of strength who brought their artillery to bear upon his little stronghold; hers were mere thieves of the night, but both came armed with weapons that drew blood.

Apart in body, separated from each other by every natural barrier, the wheel of the potter, whose toil is endless, had shaped the rough clay of these two human beings from very similar moulds. The voice of the great religion to which Evelyn belonged has its unworthy exponents; it is not always in a convent that the purest souls are reared. "_Factus obediens usque ad mortem crucis_," is sometimes chanted solemnly by those who betray unconsciously the souls of others; who impose little straws of restrictions upon backs already bent to breaking by God's unswerving laws. Should a Catholic sin, the fault is shrieked from the housetops, so high a standard is demanded of man or woman who subscribes to that high faith.

Yet the limits of Catholicism and the limits of Calvinism--apart as they seem--can touch. The bigot of the one may be as the bigot of the other. The gospel of detachment had been preached to Evelyn until, for a short time, she let herself drift upon the waters of submission, and since habitual and unquestioning obedience must crush in time the strongest spirit, yielded in the matter of marriage to the direction of her stepmother and father as she would have yielded to that of a spiritual adviser. Now, too late, she knew that for this retribution would be exacted hourly, for God strikes--not as men do, at the mere twigs and blossoms of human frailty, but at the very roots of being.

Unconsciously the thoughts of the man and woman in the box moved on converging lines and met, as the music below swayed onward and upward in Tristan and Isolde's exquisite duet.

"_Isolde_. So stuerben wir,
Um ungetrennt--
_Tristan_. Ewig einig--
_Isolde_. Ohne End'--
_Tristan_. Ohn' Erwachen--
_Isolde_. Ohne Bangen--
_Tristan_. Namenlos
In Leib' umfangen--
_Isolde_. Ganz uns selbst gegeben,
Der Liebe nur zu leben?"

The spell of the music, rising to that passionate climax of the love song in the second act where Night the Revealer points the way of human transport to culminate in the superb Song of Death, broke the earthly barriers of speculation, and two souls in the audience called to each other as before the judgment seat and became temporarily one. Such things have been since the world came out of chaos, and will be until it returns again to the void. There is but one mate for each man and woman in the world, and until they recognize the fact and learn with patience to await that note of absolute conviction which is the one infallible guide to happiness, marriages will fail as they fail now, and the Church will give its empty blessing to those ill-assorted pairs whom God for ever leaves unblessed.

"... Traut allein,
Ewig heim....

Du Isolde,
Tristan ich,
Nicht mehr Tristan,
Nicht Isolde....

Endloss ewig
Ein-bewusst:
Heiss ergluehter Brust
Hochste Leibes-Lust!"

"I always wish that the music of _Peer Gynt_ could have been written by Wagner," said Evelyn. "Think what he would have made of Anitas' last words: and the magic of the Troll Kingdom, and the great scene, as eerie in its way as the Brocken scene in _Faust_--don't you really know it? Towards the end of the play, just before he meets the Button-Moulder, Peer Gynt, the failure, is standing alone on the moor with charred trees and desolation all about him. Mist has risen, and all the world is full of little voices. Tiny thread balls sweep before him--they are the thoughts he should have followed. Dewdrops fall--his unshed tears; withered leaves drift to and fro in his path and dazzle him--watchwords he should have spoken; broken straws lie at his feet--an epitome of his life. It's all so like one's own life, void and valueless. And yet things started well enough. The very trees flowered, the dewdrops were like gold in the sunshine, and one heard pleasant voices in the woods, as a child."

"I've been thinking of my childhood too to-night," said Farquharson. "My love for Glune has been with me through everything. Out in Taorna, that night I was waiting in the Place of Sepulchres, I had a dream--a vision, if you like to call it so--and Glune stood before me, as brave, as broken, as courageous as of old. I could see the gorse in bloom and the peewits circling round and round, and Dan waiting patiently as he always waited.... I shall never forget the day that dog died mercifully, it was in my arms. The man who made this music must have been through heaven and hell too in his day. Glune has been through both, and so have most of us Farquharsons."

"I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letters of that after-life to spell;
And by and by my soul return'd to me
And answer'd, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell,'"

Evelyn quoted below her breath.

"Oh, aren't those lovely words?" broke in Dora Beadon, impatient at having been left so long to the companionship of Calvert and her father. "Rossetti's, aren't they? Oh, Omar Khayyam, is it? Well, he's much the same. One of my _attaches_, a student at the Academy, promised to set them to music for me."

"Miss Beadon is a great devotee of music," said Brand gravely; "she has a pianola and three gramophones."

Evelyn laughed.

"Dora dislikes musical people as much as I do. We spread the gramophone story to frighten them away, don't we, Dora?"

"I shouldn't mind them so much if they were only clean," said Miss Beadon. "Or if they wore better clothes! There's always a ready-made thirty-shilling-the-suit look about them, don't you think, Mr. Farquharson? By the way, Evelyn, you mustn't annex Mr. Farquharson any longer; I really insist upon his coming over here for the last act."

Calvert's eyes and Brand's met for once in the intimacy of mutual amusement. Dora Beadon was laying her snares a trifle flagrantly.

Well, Richard might do worse, Calvert thought. With so uncompromising a face and figure Miss Beadon should certainly be a docile wife, and she had money and position. Calvert had seen many brilliant matches fail, two stars outshining one another and falling into oblivion. He looked with awakened interest at the girl; the shadow of the box was kind to her, and her pleasure at having drawn Farquharson from Evelyn had given her for once an almost intelligent expression. He smiled benignly and drew Evelyn's attention to the pair, with a genial little nod of approval.

It was only at parting that Farquharson got an opportunity of speaking again to Mrs. Brand.

Then--"I owe the Albert Hall Meeting to you?" he said, with meaning. "It's another debt. No, don't deny it; you help every one. What was said of Madame Recamier is true of you, '_Elle etait pour ses amis la soeur de charite de lour peines, de leur frailtes, el meme un peu de leur fautes._'"

*CHAPTER VIII*

"The Sacraments are seven--Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Order, Matrimony.... Each has its own particular office: all give grace; but besides ordinary graces, they are intended to bestow the special grace which may be required to meet particular wants."--BISHOP BAGSHAWE.

"A lady to see you, sir."

"Oh, bother!" Cummings took the card impatiently, and then gave a startled exclamation. "Tell her I'll see her in half-a-minute."

The sight of Evelyn's card revived old memories; he smiled, absently fingering it for a moment before entering the little sitting-room. It was years since he had seen her. He remembered her as an undisciplined child; a small person with ideals which were never realized, an odd mixture of dreams and contradictions. Knowing Brand and Brand's capabilities as he did, no one was more surprised than Cummings at the marriage.

Partly for love of the cause, partly to kill thought, he had done the work of ten in his district, until at last his health gave way completely. A stray bishop paying pastoral visits in the neighbourhood took him in hand, and summarily ordered him away at a moment's notice on a sea-voyage and six months' leave. Medical opinions at home were slightly alarming; on his arrival in London he was packed off to Brighton within twenty-four hours.

As he opened the door of the little sitting-room he thought at first that it was the old unchanged Evelyn of childhood who greeted him so warmly. But to read men's souls is part of the priestly office, and there was something in her air of enforced gaiety which made him look at her more closely.

"You dear!" she said, holding his hands in hers as if they were a source of strength. "Isn't this a nice surprise? Lord Creagh offered to drive me down, and I couldn't resist the chance of routing you out."

"You are just one of the few people I wanted to see," said Cummings. "One of my last remaining links with the past. I won't have another soul admitted while you're here. You'll let me smoke, won't you? I want to hear about everything and everybody. I'm going to have my say first, yours comes later. If you talk as much as you used, I shan't get a look in when once you've started."

She became more at ease as he spoke. He pulled an arm-chair up to the empty grate, and wedged a shiny black horse-hair cushion at her back.

"Now begin about home, please. Is my mother's complexion still like a Greuze? How absolutely lovely she was once! Some one told me that my father had sold his hunters and taken to driving out in a governess car behind a fat pony. Surely that isn't true--they've not lost money, have they?"

"He is very changed," said Evelyn, hesitating. "He has become a total abstainer. Don't look so aghast, Jack; I believe in a way it suits him. A year ago he had a stroke which shook his nerves a good deal, and your mother is a chronic invalid, you know. She was thrown from the box-seat of a coach at the four-in-hand meet three years ago. We think some sort of vertigo must have seized her."

She looked pityingly at the bent form of the man beside her.

"We can't always be young, dear Jack," she said, with her eyes full of pain. "I always think the most obvious compensation of old age is its inability to feel, as we younger people do. The blows which fall on old people scarcely seem to shake their serenity. But they shatter us. Oh yes, it must be nice to be old. Your parents are marvellous considering all they have gone through. And, you see, you were their life, their all, and they won't let themselves be happy in your peace. Oh, my dear boy, don't look like that; things will come right in time--at least that's what I'm always telling other people," she added, faltering a little.

Cummings walked up and down the room for a moment or two before answering.

"_Pone, Domini, custodian ori meo...._ Yes, we say those things to others, but they don't always convince us. There are times when horrible spiritual dryness grips you, and you grope for days and weeks in absolute darkness, knowing that you yourself have raised the veil between you and the light."

"Sacrifice and death--somebody said those were the only terms on which the God of life has made life to exist," said Evelyn softly. "The French talk of the soul's secret garden as though it were a place of promise and perfume. I always think one's secret garden is Gethsemane. And sweat broke out even on Christ's brow in Gethsemane, you know. 'All bound together with one chain of darkness, and to themselves more grievous than the darkness.'"

"But the saints had a very great light," said Cummings. He shook his head back with a characteristic little gesture of decision. "Do you know what it is, Evelyn, suddenly, for no reason, when you are saying the same prayers in the same way, kneeling on the same step, practising the same austerities, whatever they may be, neither more nor less, to have your hardness break down and your heart like a little child's again? That has come before; it will, it must, come again."

Evelyn sighed wearily.

"It seems to me that sometimes one believes with one's heart and sometimes with one's head. I suppose the best of all is when the two work together. One can plant flowers in other people's gardens even when they won't flourish in one's own back yard. It's the same principle as telling a rosary. After you've hammered out half-a-dozen Pater and a hundred or so Aves, they begin to take some meaning, don't they? 'Vain repetitions' have their comfort after all. I heard such a nice story the other day about two dear Evangelical old ladies. At seventy-five and eighty, foreseeing the near approach of death, they began to take lessons on the harp, because they thought the knowledge could be turned to account later on in Paradise.

"Oh, delicious!" said Cummings. He pulled the blind up, so that the light fell more fully on Evelyn's face. "I've finished whining. Now tell me how the world has been treating you for the last few years."

Evelyn moved away restlessly to the window.

"What a nasty mean trick to let in that glare. You used to tease me as a child," she said from the back of the room. "What made you take these stuffy rooms, Jack? They're very ugly and uncomfortable."

"I didn't anticipate the visits of my female friends," said Cummings. "Come here, Evelyn; be a good girl and--you know the rest. No, I'm not chaffing now--you're bothered, aren't you?"

"I rather wish I hadn't come, Grand Inquisitor," said Evelyn. "Well, put down those glasses then; they worry me." She came and stood behind his chair. "Things are so horribly mixed up, Jack. One thinks perhaps it's--dangerous to go to a special place and see a special person--and then some one who has the right compels one to. Do you think what St. Philip Neri said about the way of escape was true?"

"Ungrammatical--but fairly concise for a woman. By the bye, I always gave St. Paul the credit of the remark you quote," said Cummings, his eyes twinkling.

"I wasn't thinking of that obvious text," said Evelyn triumphantly. "Capecelatro says what I mean--'Paradise was not made for cowards.' St. Philip always told one to face foes visible and invisible, as you know. But"--she bowed her head--"there was one particular temptation he told us to fly from the moment we recognized even the barest shadow of possibility of its coming near us."

There was a little pause.

"Yes?"

"Oh, I can look you in the face," said Evelyn hurriedly, coming forward. "It's not quite a temptation, Jack. A shadow, rather, that I'm flung against."

"But a substantial shadow."

"I'm shut up in the room with it," said Evelyn. "I believe I'm exaggerating. The whole thing may just be a senseless scruple, or vanity, and yet----"

"A cloud no bigger than a man's hand on the horizon," said Cummings softly.

Evelyn sat down.

"I suppose I'd better tell you all about it. I believe I meant to from the first. And yet there's nothing really to tell. You remember when I was a child I always wanted to be in everything--at the head of it, as a rule. Well, I honestly have been able to help one or two people since--it's the old childish vanity again, perhaps. There's one special person I've met often, and been a little--only a very little--useful to; everything has combined to bring us together, interest, ambition, sympathy. You see, the man doesn't trust women, but he trusts me--vanity again, I suppose you'll say. Sometimes I make excuses; I say not at home, and then he goes away." She stopped for a moment. "Then a note comes from his great friend, asking some little favour, saying that only I can do for him the special thing that is just wanted at the moment, and so it all begins again. The man's a hard man naturally, and I want to soften him. He's more gentle than he was, and kinder. He doesn't believe in anything; that's another point. I wish he could meet you, or some one like you who has fought battles and found faith. I can't talk about those things--I never have; I don't think born Catholics often do; we're lazier, perhaps, than converts. But he guesses what it all means to me, I fancy."

Cummings waited.

"I feel like a rat in a cage sometimes," said Evelyn passionately. "I gnaw a bar of my cage and make a passage, and then I'm put into another cage with stronger bars and told to stay there."

"Come to the light," said Cummings. "Yes, I thought so. You're overwrought and overdone. Well, I say to you as I should say to any other woman, 'Go away.' Remember the accommodation muscles of one's soul need rest just like those of one's eyes. Their focus gets strained too. And there's another point." He hesitated for a moment. This was hard to say under the circumstances, knowing Brand as he did. "Something about marriage. Remember that marriage garments have to be fitted like any others; they don't always suit at the first trial or the last; but, unlike other clothes, you may neither sell them nor give them away."

He turned away. His window opened on to a narrow side-street; a hawker selling decayed vegetables and flowers was calling his wares a few doors away. Children, playing hop-scotch on the pavement below, wrangled and screamed over the game. From the Western Road came the jar and clatter of motor omnibuses. Everything was noisy and turbulent.

"So I'm to go away," Evelyn said at last, blankly, drawing a deep breath. "That's your decision. Well, I suppose you're right. The real country must be very sweet now. Late the other night, coming back from Weybridge, we stopped by the bridge to hear the nightingales in the woods, just about midnight. I know a tiny cottage where I can go quite by myself and be rural. There's a farm near which is kept by the kindest, fattest woman I've ever seen--just like a very amiable porpoise. She has cows and poultry, and once she let me try to milk a cow. It took me a quarter of an hour even to get the bottom of the pail damp. Suppose I go there later, Jack? There's a big meeting at the Albert Hall next week, which I've absolutely promised to do some work for, and go to."

"Take your cottage, by all means, but please have mercy on the cows," said Cummings. "You'll get off as soon as you can, won't you?"

They stood for a moment looking at each other--friends whose paths might probably never cross again. Then Evelyn went out with bent head. Cummings watched her go. When she was out of sight he made the sign of the cross and sat down wearily in his chair.

*CHAPTER IX*

"A woman wishes and believes; a man wills and achieves. The wish of the woman ripens into a faith; the will of the man hardens into a fact."--J. S. BLACKIE.

From floor to ceiling the Albert Hall, which normally contains ten thousand people, was packed to overflowing.

Tickets for the great Tariff Reform Demonstration had been begged, borrowed and bargained for; it was said that a newly made peer had given a hundred guineas for a box. Orderly files of subdued men and women--the prevailing characteristics of an English crowd are melancholy and dejection--stretched spirally like a huge serpent, outside each separate door, awaiting the remote chance of returned seats. Hawkers had pursued them to the edge of the barrier, chaffing them and harassing them with a motley row of wares--gaudy painted flags and ribbon badges, highly coloured and totally unreliable programmes of the evening's performance, printed on coarse handkerchiefs, Japanese fans and cheap scent, photographs of the leading members of the League, postcard views of their homes and pets, sticks of chocolate, strips of gay-coloured tissue papers tied together with string and known to the initiated as "ticklers." It was a typical crowd except for its magnitude: street loafer, cab-runner, British workman, bank clerk and wide-eyed child who never stopped eating oranges, the suburban man of business with his family, the socialist reformer whose personal habits made his immediate neighbourhood unwholesome, the cynic who complained aloud of his own special wrongs and the evils of the Empire, the people's orator who swelled with importance and big words, and spoke with patronage of the King--all were there.

The night was still young, and the policemen, still good-natured, bore with patience the ceaseless effort of the crowd to break down the barriers. Again and again they piloted such privileged beings as had tickets through the seething, jostling lines of massed humanity; no easy matter, in view of momentarily increasing numbers. Good-natured still, they bore the banter and abuse of the great army of the ticketless as the crowd swayed to and fro with love of excitement, that strange passion for "seeing things"--from however uncomfortable a position--which stirs most human breasts.

"London may have its ten men or its million on the brink of absolute starvation, but while the half-penny papers exist, it can count upon a given number of spectators wasting hour after hour of idleness outside any public building where an important function is in progress," said Lady Wereminster, arriving early.

Inside the hall itself, the brilliant gas-jets lit a brilliant throng.

The gallery was packed so closely as to suggest a probable need of the nursing sisters and ambulances outside--now and again a solitary figure in the background, man or woman, was lifted upon the shoulders of the person in front to catch a momentary glimpse of the hall below. But nearly everywhere, spaces accustomed to hold one as a rule held two on this occasion; in the body of the hall whole extra rows of stalls were added. The padded arm-chairs in the boxes had been taken out and cane seats substituted, and in the larger boxes so many as twenty or thirty people were assembled. Amongst these were some of the most notable and distinguished men in England. Statesmen, diplomats, men who had helped to uphold or save their country, bishops, admirals, generals, explorers, war-correspondents, critics, leaders of society and commerce. Many women were in evening dress; some wore jewels. Lady Wereminster was holding a reception afterwards to meet the chief speakers of the Tariff Reform League.

Almost every opera-glass was focussed upon the central platform where the Executive Committee sat with their friends, eight rows of them all told, each member of whom was notable in his own line, and could be recognized by the man in the street, even without the aid of the printed programme. The entrance of many more immediately prominent than others had been cheered, but, except when the organ pealed out its jubilant marches or national songs, at intervals, during the assembling of the meeting, the tension was so great that hardly a sound or movement broke it.

Evelyn, leaning forward in her box, with quickened breath and leaping pulses, wondered if, with the exception of the four great functions of the century, a more impressive sight had ever been seen in England. For like the Jubilee and Coronation and the passing of the quiet dead, this was essentially a "one man's show."

Unmoved, and with absolute composure, the veteran leader made his triumphal entry in the midst of men and women who had for once lost all their national calm, whose senses were wrought up to the highest pitch of almost frenzied welcome, whose enthusiasm echoed in cheers so loud that the great building seemed to rock in sympathy. The storm of feeling swept alike from stall to gallery in a wild rush of gesticulation and movement, so that in every part of the house there was a confused blur of white waving arms, of fluttering handkerchiefs and lace scarves, of flags and banners floating triumphantly in welcome. There is still a heartier ring in British cheers than in those of any other nation, although they come but seldom.

The moment was over, men and women sat back in their places, physically spent, and a gasp of relief came simultaneously from the hall. Much the same note broke from the men who reached the summit of Dargai, with ranks thinned and broken by the enemy's rolling stones and concentrated fire; one hears such a sound sometimes from a woman who looks upon her child for the first time. Then the audience began to settle down to its practical work of the night.

There was a mighty rustling of papers while the agenda was examined by some twenty thousand persons at the same moment.

The chairman's opening speech was brief. He left them, he said, to the care of the man who had their interests at heart; a man whose aim was to keep British factories in England, to give to her sons of the Colonies, who had so lately fought and bled for her in South Africa, a preference in trade above that offered to foreign nations whose secret ambition was to lower our flag and dim our glory. He called upon "the man of the evening" to speak; cheers followed. A moment later "the man of the evening" was upon his feet.

His first words justified the presence of the great audience. One of his hearers heard them with sickening dread. One by one, straight and to the point, the telling phrases fell, delivered in a quiet voice that carried even to the gallery, as fiery comments from that quarter testified. As an Imperialist, Evelyn rejoiced; the speech was historic, it would live: but as a woman, her heart fell, aware, as only the sensitive are aware, of every point the great leader made and how he made it.

What remote chance had Farquharson of making his mark to-night? The ground was being cut under his feet. How hard to follow on an expert speech like this, which seemed to say all that could be said, which dealt sharply and subtly with every argument against Protection in a voice that became ever the gentler and more penetrating after the characteristic pause which, to one versed in the ways of public speakers, invariably heralded some especially telling or sarcastic phrase.

Farquharson was to second an important resolution which followed the great Fiscal Reformer's speech, a resolution which Beadon was to propose. The Leader of the Opposition had pleaded influenza as an excuse for dealing with the subject very tersely, and leaving its actual explanation to a man who, should he win his political spurs to-night, would be his colleague in the House. He was giving Farquharson his chance in every sense of the word for Evelyn's sake.

And now the long-looked-for moment had come, and she trembled. That critical crowd! So eager to thrust at the one weak point in the armour even of its own knights. How would Farquharson face it? He had told her that he did not excel especially in public speaking; what if he failed? And why--why did it matter so to her of all people?

Beadon could always be relied upon to amuse his audience. He did not attempt to meet his leader on his own ground; the aim of his brief speech seemed to be merely to lighten the tension which succeeded the conclusion of the former speech, given in words of solemn warning, rendered the more intense in view of the speaker's having appeared so little in public of late years.

As the Leader of the Opposition took his seat a pleasurable flutter of anticipation moved the audience. Like women at a bargain sale, they eagerly watched the advent of the latest novelty. Hare, well to the fore amongst the critics, raised his field-glasses towards the platform. In the arena there was a little hum of expectation. Even the reporters below the platform laid their fountain pens and pencils down to stare up half in curiosity, half in interest, wondering what signs of nervousness the administrator of a place which had never been heard of until ten years ago would show as he rose to confront the largest concourse of people he had addressed, amidst the perfunctory applause of a few friends.

But there were no signs of nervousness to detect in Farquharson's assured step as he moved forward or in the glance he flashed over the hall. He had himself in hand from the first. So much Evelyn could see. Not a movement, not a tremor betrayed his emotion, yet the emotion was there, she knew. She knew that his heart beat to it; that, as before the eyes of a drowning man, a vision of past and present opened before him as he looked down upon the audience.

Evelyn caught her breath. Only once before had this wave of absolute momentary unconsciousness swept over her, leaving behind a definite physical sensation as though every drop of blood had ebbed from her body and the little torch of life was flickering out. All was dark. For the moment she heard nothing and saw nothing and could do nothing but pray. All her remaining will seemed concentrated on one point, a frantic appeal to God that this man, to whom it meant so much, and who had no near kith or kin at hand to ask for him, should do his best, that the crisis should prove no crisis at all, but triumph.

The wave of faintness passed; presently, out of a tangled confusion of sound she distinguished the notes of a voice familiar and yet strange, a voice whose magnetism seemed to have drawn every soul in the hall to one central spot on the platform. Her tired brain righted itself by sheer strength of will. She meant to notice every detail; next morning he would expect her to know just what portions of his speech had told, how the crowd had taken this and that dubious point. She called up every faculty of criticism and judgment in view of his demand, weighing and balancing, like an opponent, the new line Farquharson had taken, his methods, his choice of language, his rare actions--not with those of the average politician, not even with an acknowledged master of debate like Beadon, but with the orator of the evening, the man who, since Gladstone's death, had been known as the best speaker in the House of Commons.

And as she listened her thoughts swept back to all that she had read of other statesmen--Pitt, Burke, Peel, Palmerston, Bright, Cobden, Disraeli and Gladstone--men whose names lived still in England, and would live for ever. For Farquharson beat his leader. His was the real gift of oratory, form combined with substance, a flow of eloquence and imagination kept in check by reason--the Heaven-sent inspiration which comes, perhaps, to half-a-dozen men within the century. His audience did not applaud--applause would have interrupted. They listened spell-bound, every thought given up to the quiet figure on the platform, who made use neither of sensational phrase nor dramatic gesture, but held them by sheer force of brain and personality, as he marshalled an array of facts against which there seemed to be no appeal.

"The mantle of Elijah..." said Lady Wereminster below her breath. But Evelyn did not answer. Through her opera-glasses she saw the tears of pride on Calvert's cheeks and Creagh's delighted expression--"Wasn't I right this time, you fellows?" she could almost hear him say. There was a tender smile on Hare's face as he turned in Evelyn's direction and nodded, bringing the palms of his hands together in noiseless applause at the same time. And she saw more still. A wonderful light had leapt in Farquharson's eyes as he bowed his acknowledgments; the light which, having once seen, no woman can mistake, as he looked straight at her and through her, as though laying his triumph at her feet.

There was a voice in her ear.

"Ex-cel-lent," whispered Brand. "You've done very well, my dear. I'll make it worth your while." He stooped down and patted the disarranged lace of her fichu with the air of a proprietor. "I saw that look. There's not much I don't see, you know. But I'm an amenable husband, and won't interfere; indeed, if you go on playing your hand as well as you're playing it now, I shall have nothing to complain of. Whatever happens, you are to keep in with Farquharson--do you hear? Whatever happens, mind!"

Lady Wereminster looked down ruefully at her glove. She had herself in hand again.

"Good gracious, look at that. Split right across, my dear, with all this clapping. How my maid will scold me! She ran about all over London for them, trying to match the colour of my gown, and in the end we had to order them from Paris. As for that young man, he's wonderful. The eighth wonder of the world--he must have escaped direct from Ephesus. I only hope his head won't be turned after this. Why, Evelyn, what's the matter?" She turned to a young King's messenger at her side. "Here, help Mr. Brand to get his wife out of the box; she's fainting."

"Indeed, no; I've never fainted properly in all my life," said Evelyn. But she went outside obediently, summoning wit and courage to her aid. The air was cooler there, the platform hidden. She laughed and talked with the others while Brand waited on her assiduously, the image of a devoted husband, plying her in turn with smelling salts and scent, and Dora Beadon's ever-ready fan.

But her thoughts were turbulent; the scruple was no scruple now, but visible danger. A thousand dreads and terrors shaped themselves before her, ghosts of the past, and newer and more terrible phantoms. How far could she trust herself--how far trust him? Then, too, she had looked into a man's heart that night--her husband's; even she, who forgave much, would never forget what she had seen. Cummings was right, she must go at once; escape for a time at least from the hideous knowledge of what her husband was, more clearly defined now than ever before. And meantime and afterwards she must go on living with him, must show herself in public beside him as his possession, must return with him that very night to West Kensington to share his bed and board. She must suffer all, must bear all, insults, wrongs bodily and mental, bracing will and spirit, nerving her frailty to meet such horrors as convention called upon her to endure.

This was life, this was duty; this stern uncompromising Catholic ideal of marriage, the Sacrament. It was not true, it was not true! Those whom God had joined together were joined for all eternity, but what had God had to do with her own and many another such marriage?

*CHAPTER X*

"Faith is required of thee ... not understanding."--THOMAS A KEMPIS.

Public praise does not always come to him who has legitimately earned it. A man gives his life to extend the commercial resources of his native town, and hears the devotion and sacrifice of some man of means who has just presented a handsome donation to the fund openly acclaimed at local meetings. By twelve o'clock next day the steps of No. 50 Carlton House Terrace were besieged by a crowd of district messengers and telegraph boys with an array of communications for Miss Beadon. Everybody believed her to be the one behind Farquharson's success of the previous evening, and Dora was the last woman in the world to deny a rumour so obviously to her advantage. Indeed, by the time she had mastered the contents of all her numerous congratulations, she had persuaded herself that the young man owed his appearance on the Albert Hall platform to her, and to her alone.

And now she set to work seriously to weigh the pros and cons of the situation. Miss Beadon, remember, was no longer a _debutante_. She realized that her name had appeared sufficiently often in daily papers with the same prefix. There is a limit to public credulity--it is difficult to believe that one woman has refused every eligible suitor in the marriage market. But Miss Beadon had still to find that convenient person who would add to, instead of detracting from, her present position.

Farquharson, who, virile and determined, had a fighting spirit and a great capacity for work, seemed to solve the problem. Dora realized that to gain her point she must lay siege to Farquharson before his position was established. She had heard her father and other ex-ministers talk openly of his talents; had heard the wildest predictions of infatuated women taken seriously even by men like Hare and Creagh.

If she were ever to hold him, the chain must be forged soon. But how to deal with such a man? Dora had, of course, no doubt as to her personal charms, but Farquharson was a misogynist. He had made as many enemies as friends by his aloofness. So ordinary wiles and ruses would probably leave him cold, and she must summon stronger forces to her aid. Her father was naturally the trump-card in her hand; moral suasion or dissuasion, in politics, is often a synonym of social blackmail.

Evelyn must be confided in, naturally,--one went to Evelyn for sympathy as one went to Paquin for frocks--both supplied "the superior article." Evelyn, all the same, had done her best to commandeer Farquharson--Dora supposed he pitied her. The Brands were so very badly off. There could be no question of rivalry, of course, where Evelyn was concerned; nor was Dora likely to be jealous. Even had Evelyn not been married and a Catholic, one is not jealous of a woman who has to go through the season with three frocks, and turn last winter's gowns, Miss Beadon mused. Evelyn had a tiresome knack of pandering to men's vanity, though--or why should they all combine to rave so idiotically about her?

Only the generous appreciate generosity. And gratitude is an ephemeral bloom which flowers in too few gardens.

The capture of Farquharson--from a different aspect--was the object of Brand's thoughts too. Eminently practical, he was the first to acknowledge what a mistake he had made the night before. If he knew Evelyn at all, she would avoid Farquharson for the future; religious women were like that--they always ran off at a tangent when you tried to pull them up. Somehow or other she must be conciliated; must be made to meet the man again on some plea impossible to withstand.

Appeal to Evelyn's love of help and you won her at once. Unluckily, in the present instance Farquharson seemed rather in the way of conferring than of receiving favours. Other means must be used, as powerful, if less obvious.

It was precisely at this crisis in his thoughts that, sauntering slowly in the direction of Hyde Park Corner, Brand came face to face with Dora Beadon.