Chapter X: Part II: I (3)

She returned unexpectedly after the Christmas holidays, walking a thought more lamely than before, and with a new absorbed gentleness in her manner. She kept her room for three days, writing busily. Many callers, some of them strangers to the servants who admitted them, drove up in cabs and carriages. For the first time since she had taken the rooms her brother, Lord Windybank, spent two nights in the house. Fenella's empty bed was made up for him. On the evening of the second day, after dinner, the two maid-servants were called up to Lady Anne's sitting-room. The earl, a little horsey-legged man, with the face, hair, chin, and voice of his sister, was standing on the hearth-rug. His eyes were inflamed, and he blew his nose violently from time to time on an Indian silk handkerchief, an assortment of which he seemed to keep in the various pockets of his frieze suit. Old Mr. Attneave, the solicitor, stood by the writing-desk, wrapped in the grave professional manner that covers all human contingencies. The girls curtsied, signed a document, laboriously, in a space indicated by the lawyer's chalky finger, curtsied again, and turned to leave the room. Lady Anne called them back, handed each of them a couple of bank-notes from a little pile beneath an enamelled paper-weight, and kissed the dazed hand-maidens on the cheek.

"Be good women," she said, gravely. "Do your duty by your mistress. If I have given cause of offence to either of you, or made your work hard and ungrateful, by word or deed, remember I asked your pardon for it. And now bid your mistress come and see me as soon as is convenient."

Mrs. Barbour entered the room five minutes later with a white, scared face.

"Mrs. Barbour, this is Lord Windybank, my brother. Mr. Attneave I think you have met before. Stop snivelling, Windy;--please do. Won't you sit down? I'm going away to-morrow, Mrs. Barbour, for a short stay in another neighborhood, and whether I shall come back is rather doubtful. No, it isn't nonsense, Windy; I caught the red-headed one's eye when he didn't know I was looking. The other was too old to let anything out. Mrs. Barbour, I want to see your little girl before I go away."

"I'll telegraph for her at once, m'lady."

Lady Anne pursed her lip. "Telegraph for her in the morning," she said. "It's late, and I don't want the child to come up at night. Besides, it will spoil her rest."

"Are you ill, m'lady?" Mrs. Barbour asked, much mystified. There seemed to be so little change in the long white fretful face.

"Oh, dear, yes; quite seriously, ceremoniously ill, I assure you. Please don't look at me that way. You can't see anything. I don't believe any of them can, though they pretend to. And now about Fenella. Mr. Attneave, will you please explain?"

As the lawyer, in dry calculated sentences, explained the details and conditions of the little legacy, Mrs. Barbour broke down and wept after the fashion of her class, with great whoops, and holding her housekeeping apron to her eyes. All her little world seemed to be crumbling. She was not, by nature, an impressionable woman, but had it been her lot, as it is the lot of so many of her kind, to hear, month by month, new footsteps echo on her stairs; to see, month by month, strange faces people her rooms, the dignity of proprietorship, the sense of being mistress of a home, which had done so much to soften and sweeten her, must have missed her altogether, and the wear and tear upon her perceptions vulgarized her heart far quicker than feet or hands shabbied her house. During fifteen years, as far as Lady Anne was concerned, without the slightest temptation to anything that could be construed as a "liberty," or a single soul-searching as regards her own equivocal social status, the service of love had, little by little, been substituting itself for the service of gain. Custom and habit are strong with all who have attained middle life, but with women, after a certain age is reached, they are tyrants. Nor was it in its monetary aspect chiefly, though that might well have given her pause, that the sense of bereavement reached her. Simple words are most convincing. She was wondering how, "if anything should happen," poor Lady Anne in the nursing home, to which she was evidently bound, she could ever find the heart to wait upon strangers in her rooms.

"----five hundred pounds, until the age of twenty-one, unless upon an occasion of urgent necessity, the nature of which shall be determined by said trustees, appointed on the one part by the said Honorable Mrs. Nigel Kedo Barbour----"

"Boo-hoo!" wept the honorable lady.

The invalid patted her upon the shoulder. "My dear, good friend, do control yourself!"

"Oh, I can't, I can't! Oh! I never shall stop in this house. It won't be the same to me."

The broken phrases struggled through her tears like bubbles through water. The lawyer had to stop.

"I suppose," Lady Anne said, after the faithful Druce had led her weeping mistress away, "that class doesn't really know what their ideas are until they've put them into words. They say a lot over, and then pick out the ones they want to keep. Oh, I shall be glad when it's over one way or another, Windy. I think I know now how poor Uncle Eustace must have felt the day before Major Hartnett shot him. There's not much difference between a duel and an operation."

* * * * *

Thus it was to a house cold and dark with the shadow of change and worse that Fenella came home. Mercifully she was spared questioning on her own pale cheeks and dull eyes. Mrs. Barbour was in no mood to be entertained with a description of her doings among the fine folk. Lady Anne was dozing when she arrived, and might not be disturbed. The poor lady was already invested with something of her perilous state. A nurse in a blue linen dress and goffered cap, whose lightest word was law, moved softly up and down stairs in felt ward slippers, carrying various mysterious burdens. She called Fenella at about midnight. The girl had taken off her outer garments and put on a fleecy dressing-gown.

"You must be very quiet," Nurse Adelaide said, "and not stay more than half an hour. I want her to settle for the night while she is out of pain."

Inside a fire burnt cheerily, and a kettle sung its happy and heartless song. A tilted lamp plunged half the room into shadow and the air was sickly with the smell of some anodyne.

"Is that Nelly?" said a voice from the shadow.

The girl bent over the bed and put her lips to the high bony forehead.

"You mustn't cry so, child. You always had such fat tears, Nelly. There's one running in my eye now. Are you dressed?"

"Only ha-half."

"Get under the quilt, then. Be careful, child. I'm 'this side up; fragile; with care.'"

"Dear Lady Anne, is it true what they say? Are you very ill?"

"My dear, I have about one chance in a thousand of ever walking the streets again. It's all my own fault. I had an awful spill, child; none of them know how bad it was. But what could I do? There was the gate with some patent latch or other and I didn't dare get down. I'd never have got up again. Pepper knew it was no use. He tried to roll his dear old eyes back to tell me, bless his heart. And the off-hoof was just a little lazy. Ugh! I'm very wicked, I suppose. Often, after lying awake all night, I've had to bite my lip not to scream when some clumsy lout put me up wrong. Once I was up, I didn't mind. But it was worth it. Oh, Lord! it was worth it. One only has one life. I'd do it again. I'd have been a poor creature, Nelly, without horses and dogs. They've always understood me better than people. If there's a God for them, He's good enough for me, and if there isn't I don't want one either. Windy was shocked because I wanted to call a vet in consultation.... What did I want to tell you, child? Oh! I've been hearing tales about you in the last week. Of course they're all lies. What's become of your pirate friend?--don't pretend you don't know who I mean--Paul Ingram. Wasn't that the creature's name. All over, is it? So much the better. He was no good, Nelly. I saw that the night we talked together. A man can't play beggar-my-neighbor with the world and win, and that's what he wanted. Bryan's better, but I'm afraid he's spoilt another way. But don't let a lot of old-woman talk frighten you away from him. There's a lot of nonsense talked about girls' 'characters.' Every poor girl has to take risks, and every poor girl's mother knows it. There's only two rules. Never do what would lose you your own self-respect, and never love a poor man for his handsome face. You won't, will you, child? You know, when a person's dying they're allowed to make a deposition; so here's mine: There's nothing matters on this earth but just--money. You think every one knows that? Oh! they don't. It wouldn't do if they did. So all sorts of other things--art and high ideals, and, yes--even religion, are given 'em to amuse themselves with until it's too late. Then, of course, they have to pretend they're satisfied. But give 'em their chance over again; you'd see. And for a girl with a face like yours it ought to be so easy. Oh, Nelly, what does your love matter if _his_ buys you health and beauty fifteen years longer, and angel children, and a house with lovely gracious rooms, and cool green lawns in summer, and the winter in the sun, and motor-cars and horses, while poorer women are scrambling and pushing and taking their turns for 'buses and trams in the rain, and a strong arm to help you whenever you need it, and honor and peace in your gray hairs. My own life hasn't been much, but think what it would have been for little ugly Anne Caslon if great-grandfather hadn't dipped his fingers in the Irish Exchequer. And yet--what am I saying?--if Nigel Barbour would have held up his finger, Nelly, I'd have gone with him and cooked his meals and washed his clothes in a garret----"

The nurse tapped Fenella on the shoulder.

"I think you'd best go now. She's been talking some time. I want to settle her for the night."

She shook a bottle as she spoke and poured out a cloudy mixture into a glass.

"Good-night, my pet! Do you remember when I taught you to read--'Ned had a gad--' and you wanted to know what a 'gad' was, and I forgot to find out. I'm afraid we shall never know now."

"I'll see you in the morning," murmured Fenella, as she kissed her. Miss Rigby was on the landing outside, dishevelled, round-eyed, and in a wrapper, asking news of her dear friend in a tragic whisper.

* * * * *

Perhaps it was because she cried herself to sleep that Nelly slept so late. The house was all topsy-turvy, and by the time they remembered to call her Lady Anne had been taken away. Her bedroom windows were wide open and Twyford was strewing tea-leaves on the carpet as Fenella passed the door. She had taken very little luggage--just a portmanteau full of linen and a dressing-case, and two days later she went a longer journey and took no luggage at all.

IX

THE MAN AT THE WHEEL

Just as we are used to hearing from time to time that the lives of certain great ones of the earth are insured for many thousands of pounds in quarters which their demise will unsettle but certainly not move to grief, so there are lives dismissed at their close with scant obituary notice, the shadow of whose eclipse reaches far beyond the covenanted few who wear mourning for their sakes.

The house in Suffolk Square never really recovered the shock of poor Lady Anne's taking off. Her rooms, stripped of their household gods, repapered and repainted, stood empty for weeks before Mrs. Barbour could even be prevailed upon to notify their vacancy, and when she did move, the paying guests whom they attracted were not of a sort to efface the hard-riding lady's wholesome memory or to make her the less keenly regretted. London is changing daily, and in nothing so much as in the accommodation it offers the stranger within its gates. Cheap hotels, the diseased craving for a veneered luxury, rapid transit from outskirts to centre--all combine to render what was always a precarious living well-nigh a hopeless one. In vain do old-fashioned people, unable or unwilling to read the signs of the times, advertise the family atmosphere to a public anxious to escape from it--quiet and seclusion to a generation that droops unless it feels its spirits uplifted by the wind and whirl of life. Between the tragic end of the old dispensation and the final dispersion there was a squalid interlude which Fenella never could recall in after years without a sinking of the heart as at the memory of a ravaged sanctuary. A dreadful Anglo-Indian _ménage_, which washed the dirty linen of ten stations with doors and windows open; a grumbling _ayah_ whose gaudy rags clung to her, like wet cloths to a clay model, and whose depredations upon kitchen and larder on behalf of her screaming charges drove cook to revolt. A prim flaxen-tailed family who practised upon the piano all day by turns, and whose high-nosed parent did not think Miss Rigby "respectable." Was she, indeed, respectable? Mrs. Barbour had had her doubts from the first, and in spite of Lady Anne's breezy assurances, or perhaps on account of them, had long suspected a secret treaty of oblivion and protection between the two women. It had seemed, however, to include a tacit clause against direct communication, and with the new order the weaker woman appeared to see her way to break through this restriction upon her social aptitudes. She contracted a distressing habit of rapping at the doors of the first-floor rooms, to borrow, to return, to remonstrate, to apologize for remonstrating. Her friendship with little Mrs. Lovelace of Mian Meer, especially was, until its stormy close, over a disputed bargain at a "White Sale," of a suddenness and intensity calculated to revive a weakened faith in human affinities. Even the mother of the musical Miss Measons, after a glance at a skilfully disposed basket of calling-cards, called her "my dear" before she called her "that woman." In short, to express in one word a delayed and painful process, Jasmine Rigby deteriorated day by day, paid at long intervals, under pressure, and with cheques that were not her own, and finally, yielding no doubt to the instinct of flight from those whose good opinion we have forfeited, took a tearful and sentimental departure from the rooms which had been witness to fifteen futile years, and God alone knows what frenzied resolutions, what agonies of remorse and self-contempt as well. Financially, her loss was a serious matter, for she had rich and powerful connections, who might be trusted never to let her sink too deeply into debt nor beyond a certain standard of outward respectability: in other ways it would be idle to deny Mrs. Barbour felt it a relief. It afforded her an opportunity to reduce her establishment and to sell off some of the furniture. But the joy of turning our possessions into ready money and of ridding ourselves of old associates who have become encumbrances is a dearly bought one. It is likely that her health had been secretly unsatisfactory for years. It failed visibly from the day poor Druce, with the tears streaming down her honest wooden face, clasped her young mistress to her sparely covered chest in the hall and said "Good-bye." She had never been a good sleeper, but insomnia now became her nightly habit. Her cheeks grew flabby, her eyes dull; her comely face exchanged its pleasant pallor for a disquieting earthen tint.

Fenella would have been less than human if, amid all these anxieties, regrets, and annoyances, Lumsden's letters had come to her otherwise than as cheerful heralds from a happier world, bright assurances of a better time in store. He wrote oftener than many friends, though not as often as most lovers. He was generous enough or wise enough not to depart from the note he had struck during their conversation upon the day of winter sports at Freres Lulford. She was still his "investment," always "in training." And yet it was marvellous what a very wide field of inquiry, of advice and speculation, this position was held to justify. Her cheeks sometimes burned at Bryan's letters. Even when they were mere cheery chronicles of sport and pleasure, there was a little mocking undercurrent of sarcasm in them--sarcasm, as a rule, at the expense of society's hypocrisies--its standards of what might and what might not be permitted between two friends of opposite sexes, which she secretly resented--resented, that is to say, to the extent of never referring to it in her answers. Why should Bryan expect her to take the more cynical view, she wondered? Surely illusions were permissible to a girl of her age. What man who respected one, wished one well, would see her cheated of them? Clever letters are seldom written without ulterior motive. When heart speaks to heart it does so in language that admits of no double construction. It would save many a tangle were more sophisticated ones subjected to a merciless paraphrase.

For the rest, the time had probably passed when, in any sense of the word, she could be said to be "afraid" of Lumsden. He stood before her imagination now in all his pleasant power, holding open the gates of the fairyland to which he had the golden key, encouraging, inviting her to enter. Once through the gates, she had no doubt of her ability to justify and to repay. That money can discharge any obligation was just one of the obscuring simplicities of her youth. Another was that a stigma attached to the acceptance of money or money's visible worth. Beyond a cab-fare, she would have shrunk from such a thing as from actual dishonor; yet that money, to the extent of many hundreds of pounds, was being risked upon her untested power to please gave her only a very vague sense of indebtedness. It is true that to Bryan's personal interest she referred, with a completeness that was a little unfair to Mr. Dollfus's really kind heart, the ameliorations in her hard task--the warm dressing-room, the polite seriousness with which her views were entertained by the leader of the orchestra, the chair in the wings at rehearsals. She even fancied that she could detect a conspiracy to keep the seamy side of theatrical life from her. Mr. Lavigne, the stage-manager, never swore in her presence, though from her dressing-room she often heard language whose very volume implied profanity reverberate like stage thunder through the dark empty auditorium.

When general rehearsals began in March, among her new comrades upon the draughty, echoing boards, who stood blowsy or haggard in the perverse up-thrown light and exchanged the knowing, raffish jargon of their craft, there was abundant discussion as to her precise position, but no doubt at all. It is a pitiful thing to relate, but Bryan even got the credit of the clothes in which poor foolish Mrs. Barbour had sunk the profits of her enterprise. Fenella's dress had always possessed sophistication, and although by this time she was "economizing," enough of elegance remained from the old life to wreck her character in the new. But where she was now such things were a common-place. The misconception even was of use to her in one way. It removed her from the envy of those who were struggling upward on the strength of mere talents. Seen from the wings, her dancing made little impression upon a race not prone to enthusiasm, and notoriously bad judges of their own craft. She was to have the lime-light, the big letters on the bills, the "fat"--that was enough. She was _hors concours_, a thing apart. The latest recruit might dream, and did dream, of having the same chance some day. A strange thing, that it should be not so much "luck" which failure resents as the crown upon hard work.

By an unhappy coincidence, the first dress rehearsal was called upon the day when her spirits were at lowest ebb. The night before, her mother, unable to keep the secret locked up in her breast any longer, had exposed with tears and incoherent self-reproach, the whole disastrous domestic situation. It was all mismanagement, muddle, abused confidence, rights signed away for a tithe of their value, mortgages and life assurances effected in the interests of people whose one service seemed to have been to draw the strangling net a little tighter. Fenella closed the eyes of her mental vision firmly and wisely against the disastrous prospect. She let her mother have her cry out upon her shoulder.

"No, dear; of course I'm not angry with you, or only a tiny bit for letting me be a foolish over-dressed little pig all these years. We'll give up this great big house before it's swallowed all that's left and move into a smaller one. They must give us something for the lease. And I've got Lady Anne's money coming to me in two years. We can raise something on that now. I'll speak to Mr. Dollfus about it. And Mr. Lavigne told me the _Dime Duchess_ comes on early in May; then I shall begin to draw salary, and all our troubles will be over. And, mummy, you _must_ give those disgusting people upstairs notice. Never mind what they owe. Turn them out! I'll live in a garret with you, dear, but I won't have our home turned into a common lodging-house."

But, for all her brave words, her own spirits sank. Was she so sure of success, after all? To have so much depending upon it was only a reason the more for misgiving. Dancing seemed to be in the air. The flaming posters that met her eye on every side, of women in one stage or another of uncoveredness, filled her with nausea. Nothing depresses true genius so much as to feel that an inspiration with which they could deal worthily is given broadcast, under various mean forms of impulse or emulation, to those whose touch can only degrade. It is a failing so like unworthy envy that even to be forced to admit it to oneself is demoralizing.

When she reached the theatre a drama that was no part of the _Dime Duchess_ was in progress. Miss Enid Carthew stood down centre. Her dress was Doucet and her hat Virot. Her sable coat was open at the throat and a diamond _collier_ streamed blue fire on her agitated bosom. Her arm, thrust through a muff whose tails swept the dusty stage, was akimbo on her slender hip. She had a pretty, dissipated, sour face and a quantity of fair hair.

"Oh! I can't have it at all, Mr. Dollfus," she was saying, evidently not for the first time, biting her lips and tapping the stage with her foot. The manager, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his back to the footlights, straddled his legs in a truculent manner.

"You can't haf it!" he repeated, derisively. "Well, can yer lump it? Ah! Think yer the only tin can in the alley, dontcher, eh? Think you're de manachment, ain't it? I tell you once for all: I bills who I like, unt I bills 'em as big's I like. Now then--ah! eh?"

"You can tell all this to my solicitor," said Miss Carthew, loftily.

The word seemed to goad Mr. Dollfus to frenzy. He took a stride forward and shook a brown, ringed finger within an inch or two of Miss Carthew's Grecian profile.

"Now, don't gif me no contract talk. Pleace--_pleace_ don't. 'Cos I drew up de contract, and I know what's in um. You can't holt me on de contract--see? You can go on rehearsing or you can t'row yer part down, and that's all--now?"

"I've a good mind to do it."

"Vell, make yer goot mind up quick, pleace, 'cos this happens ter be my busy day."

Before poor Fenella could retreat from the storm, the leading lady looked her up and down with an expression that was meant for contempt, but only succeeded in expressing dislike. The advantage of five years is not to be annihilated by a glance.

"Another of Lumsden's kindergarten," she observed, with a short, disagreeable laugh, and, having launched this Parthian shaft, exit left.

Mr. Dollfus turned upon the cause of the trouble rather irritably.

"Vot! aintcher dressed yet, neither. Good Got! ve oughter be t'rough the first act. Run upstairs at once! And while we're waiting let's haf the finale ofer again. I ain't satisfied yet, Mr. Lavigne. Come, _kapell-meister_!"

Somehow, and by an effort of her whole will, Fenella got through her two dances without actual disaster. For the first time in her life discouragement failed to react in bodily movement. Her limbs felt heavy--out of accord with the music, and, though this is a strange term for arms and legs, maliciously stupid. Once she stumbled and all but fell. Mr. Dollfus looked puzzled, and in the wings, where a brisk murmur of sympathy with the deposed favorite had been running, significant glances were exchanged.

She was leaving the stage-door, glad to be in the cool, wet street, when a big man who was holding cheerful converse with an exquisite youth--all waist and relaxed keenness--raised his hat and made a little familiar sign with his head for her to wait. Next moment Lumsden had cut his conversation short, resisting an obvious appeal for introduction, and was holding out his hand.

"Hello, Flash!"

At another time she would have been glad to see him, but, with that dreadful sentence ringing in her ears, his touch seemed an abasement. She plucked her hand away.

"I thought you were in Cannes."

"Came back Tuesday. Had lunch?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Get in, then, and let me drive you home."

There was a dark green motor-coupé standing by the curb. Fenella took a seat in it automatically. She noticed he had no difficulty in recalling her address.

"I've been sitting in front watching you."

"I wish I'd done better. I made a fool of myself to-day."

"Oh, you were all right. Been over-working?"

She shook her head.

"Dolly told me there was a breeze. Hope it didn't upset you."

No answer.

"Bless you! That sort of thing's an everyday affair with us. Oh, fie, Flash!"

"Sir Bryan"--and a big sob.

"Well, what is it? Having trouble with the boys?"

"I know you'll be furious."

"Never mind. Spit it out in mummy's hand."

"Don't make me laugh. I--I want to give it up."

"Pshaw!"

"Oh, but I do."

"What on earth for?"

She clenched her hands. "Because I feel such a _humbug_ coming on this way. Those other girls have worked and worked and been acting when I was at school. And now I step in front of them because--oh! you know what they think."

"I warned you of that before, you know."

"Yes; but I didn't realize then."

"And now, because a spiteful woman has said the obvious thing, you do. Oh, fie, Flash! This is weak-minded. I wish you knew her own history."

The girl turned to him, and even laid a timid hand on his sleeve.

"Sir Bryan, that's the mistake you make. You're always telling me--I mean in your letters--what a hypocrite this person or that is. But it doesn't make any difference to me. Of course, we understand one another, don't we?"

"I think we've made a start," Lumsden replied, in all seriousness.

"Yes, but those girls at the Dominion--some of them even younger than me. Think what I must seem to them. I can't go to them and say, 'Oh, believe me, it's not what you think.' And so the more they admire me, and the better I succeed, the greater scandal I shall be to them. And perhaps, some day----Oh! it seems such a responsibility, doesn't it?"

"Such a big one, that I advise you to put it out of your head."

"Oh, if I could!"

"Well, don't do anything in a hurry. And, oh, by the way, Flash, I believe I met an old friend of yours last night. World's a small place."

"A friend of mine? One of the people from Lulford?"

"Oh, no. Further back. At La Palèze. By George! that seems ancient history."

His kind, candid expression did not change, and yet not a detail of the girl's agitation was escaping him.

"Where did you meet him? Tell me, quick!"

"Don't look so scared. It was at a very nice house indeed, and he was looking uncommonly well."

"Did you speak to him?"

"No. He hadn't much to say. It was at the Rees house, and he's evidently _épris_."

"What's that?"

"Why, smitten with his pretty hostess--Mrs. Hepworth--the woman who calls herself Althea Rees, and writes rummy books. He stayed behind. I saw it arranged, like the fly, with my little eye. I finished the evening with Nick Templeton, who knows 'em well, and he says every one's expecting----Hello! here we are."

He held her hand again at parting, and this time she didn't snatch it away. Once inside the door, she returned a languid negative to the suggestion of lunch, and went upstairs to change her clothes and think over what she had just heard. First she cried a little, though nothing like as much as she had expected from the apparent weight at her heart; then, opening her trunk, she took out a leather box and emptied all his letters on to the hearth. So often, during that last lonely week by the sea, when she was hungering for news of him in vain, had she taken them down to the dunes to read, that there was almost a teaspoonful of fine sand at the bottom of the case. She had even been reading them over, she remembered, the day Bryan spoke to her first. She sat down on the hearth-rug, struck a match, and, crumbling each letter scientifically in her hand, burned piecemeal about half her little hoard from the wrecked past. Then she lost patience and locked the rest away. She was chilly; there had been no warmth in this sudden eager flame. She stretched herself and looked once more at her reflection in the long mirror. Her tears had thickened her features and throat. Something strangely, suddenly mature--some new adaptibility to life's sterner purposes--was looking back at her. She had wept--oh, how she had wept!--before, and yet only yesterday with her tears it had been the aspect of childhood that returned upon her. You would have said then: "There is a little girl who has broken her doll"; not until to-day: "There is a woman who has broken her heart." Was it so, indeed? Had it survived the first, the crueller blow, to break now at a piece of intelligence that was only to be looked for? Had there been hope, insane and unavowed? And why could she not hate him, as was her right? Why was it that only a brooding, yearning pity for him survived this final evidence of his faithlessness? Oh! it was because life was so hard on him--always would be so hard on him. Into whatever toils he had fallen, she could forgive him, because she knew he had not been seeking his own happiness when he fell. Just as she had never once conjectured concerning the old loves, so now she hazarded no guess as to the history of the new; but her woman's instinct, her appreciation of the nature by whose complexities her clear, sane common-sense had refused to be baffled, served her truly. It was still his compassion that sold him into new bondage--still his fatal fellowship with all that was weak, maimed or forsaken that, like a millstone round his neck, sunk him out of her sight. Hate him? Oh, what an uprush of smothered waters! What a tingling, as love like blood flowed back into her numbed heart, rebuked the suggestion! She reached out her arms to the mirror, and from its frozen depths, like an embodiment of all he had renounced in life--happiness, love, laughter, and ease of heart--the woman whom he had held shyly and awkwardly against his distracted heart, and whom to-morrow a thousand base eyes would covet, reached out her arms, too, in a mocking response.

"Oh, darling! why couldn't you trust me a little longer? Just because I couldn't _say_ things, didn't I feel them? I was what you wanted most. Just because I _was_ so different. Why weren't you a little patient with me, Paul?"

And now for her work. There was another rehearsal next week, but she couldn't wait. She would telephone Joe; have one called for Friday. They should see something then. She had a bit up her sleeve.

She was leaving her bedroom, humming over the first bars of her _Chaconne_, when she cannoned into the little maid who had replaced the irreproachable Druce. The sleeves of the girl's print dress were rolled up to her elbows, her cap awry.

"Frances, it's five o'clock. Why aren't you dressed?"

"Oh, miss! It's the missus."

"Your mistress? What's the matter with her?"

"Oh, miss, I dunno. She's a setting in the big armchair. It ain't sleep. Me nor cook can't rouse 'er, try 'ow we may. She's a moanin', too. I think it must be some kind of a stroke."

X

MONSIEUR DE VALBONNETTE

One of Paul's peculiarities, which I think I have indicated before, was a remissness in paying out the small coin of friendship. His visits were apparently governed by caprice, and as unaccountable as the fall of the red or black in roulette. Not to have seen him for the last month gave no warrant to expect him within the next. On the other hand, to have been honored with a visit last night was some reason for expecting a return on the morrow.

I had not seen him for two months when I ran across him in the foyer of the Elite Theatre. It was the first night of Durnham's _Miss Muffet_. (You will remember Brasier as "the Spider.") Things apparently were inextricably tangled up for all the smart sinners, and I was rather dreading the fourth act. I was surprised to see him there, though I knew he had got into journalism. In the twilight of our under-world one may know a man a long time before one knows what he is doing--perhaps only discover it then because he is found nibbling at the same loaf as oneself. I had never seen Ingram before in evening dress; he looked very gaunt and foreign and distinguished. One mentally added a red ribbon and the enamelled cross of the Légion d'Honneur.

"Hullo, Ingram! you a first-nighter?"

"I'm doing it for the _Parthenon_!"

"Oh! of course." Rumor had not lied, then. I had a horrible feeling that my comment sounded "knowing," and a suspicion that Ingram flushed at my tone. I made haste to change it.

"Lucky devil! You've got nearly a week to do Brasier's genius justice in. What d'you think of it all?"

"Pah! London bouquet. Sin and sachet powder."

"You won't say that in the _Parthenon_?"

"No." I noticed then how tired he looked. The bell began to ring.

"Look here, old man! You're quite impossible, but I want a chat. Where can you come on to afterward? Pimlico's so far away. What do you say to the _Concentric_?" (I belong perforce to an "all-night" club.)

Ingram demurred. "No, thanks. I don't much care for the frescoes at the _Concentric_. I've got rooms--a room, I should say--nearly as close. It's not a bad little crib. Come round there as soon as you've fired in your stuff." And I pencilled the address on my shirt-cuff.

Paul's room was at the top of a narrow, old-world house in Beak Street, almost looking into Golden Square. A creeper wandered over the front, and there were little painted iron balconies at each window. The first floor was taken up by a bowed, weather-stained shop front, and behind its narrow panes, on a rusty wire blind, appeared the following legend in gilt lettering:

"J. FOUDRINIER
Table Liner and Leather Gilder."

The narrow staircase up which we climbed--for he let me in himself--was fragrant with the smell that is said to make radicals.

"What d'you think of it, Prentice?"

"Fine! Atmosphere here, my boy."

"It might be worse," said Paul, apparently misunderstanding my remark. "Imagine fried fish!"

I looked round me as he fought with a stubborn fire. The room was poor and low; its furnishings mere flotsam of the Middle Victorian era. The bureau and tallboy that I used to admire so much at Westminster were gone. My heart sank a little. Paul wasn't getting on.

"Come over here a minute, Prentice," he said, getting up and taking the lamp. "Look!"

Upon the old-fashioned shutter which folded back in the window recess I made out a long name, clumsily cut and half obliterated by paint.

"What do you make of it?"

"It's not very distinct. There's a C and a V."

"I'll read it for you. It's '_C. Gaillard de Valbonette_.' That thing at the top is meant for a coronet. Some French _émigré_ had this room a hundred years ago, and amused himself by cutting his name. All this quarter swarmed with them at one time--Golden Square, Broad Street, King Street. Can't you imagine him at work here for a whole Sunday morning, with a nice pea-soup fog out in the square, and speculating about his wife or sweetheart in the Conciergerie. He's great company at times, is M. de Valbonette."

"I think you live too much alone, Ingram," I said.

He put down the lamp. "I wonder do I?" he said, twisting his beard. "But it's Satan reproving sin."

"Let's club lonelinesses, then," I answered impulsively. "I know what I'll have to put up with by now. Remember the old warning, '_Vae Soli!_' If nothing else in the classics were true, that is."

"No," he said, roughly, "it's the wrong time. How can I afford a friend when I'm throwing out ballast all around. And besides"--he seemed to struggle with an invincible repugnance to speak--"Prentice, I'm living on money a woman--gives me."

"Oh!" Shocked as I was, I tried to keep my voice flat and toneless. Even as it escaped me, the exclamation was rather a request for further enlightenment.

"You won't repeat your invitation now?"

I got to my feet. "Yes, I will. You can come to-morrow--to-night, if you like. You're too good to lose, Ingram. I'm poor; but there's enough for two men like ourselves to struggle along on, even now. I can get you work of a sort almost at once; it'll be hack work, but you won't feel equal to anything better for awhile. Later on, when you're more yourself----"

Ingram shivered, and then, putting his hands on my shoulders, considered me a long while gravely and tenderly. I could have cursed to think of the charm of the man, wasted in loneliness and silence, and put to such base uses at last.

"My! but you're _white_, Prentice, you're _white_," he said. "Sit down"--in a lighter voice. "It's not as bad as it sounds. A man doesn't fall into a pit like that so suddenly. No; at first it was advances--advances; nothing more."

"On your book?" catching at a straw.

"Yes--on my book."

"From publishers?"

"I thought so at first. When I asked the question outright, it was too late. I was in debt already."

"But, my dear Ingram," I said, immensely relieved; "if Mrs. Hepworth--I suppose you mean Mrs. Hepworth----?"

"Yes."

"Well, if she liked to back her own opinion, I don't see where dishonor comes in at all. She's helped other people. And even if, when it's published, it turns out badly----"

"Prentice, it never will be published through her."

"Get it back then. We'll try somewhere else."

"I'm afraid I'd have some trouble even to get it back now."

The mystification was getting too much for me. I shrugged my shoulders helplessly.

"I'm sorry to seem mysterious," said Paul, "but I really am telling you all I know myself. I even hoped you'd be able to throw some light on it. Because you know as well as I do how it started. She was enthusiastic, wasn't she? Would see no fault. She advised me to cut a good deal, it's true; but it wasn't for reasons I could object to. Anyway I didn't object. I was too proud and happy. For once in my life I tasted full appreciation, full understanding. Oh! I know what that look of yours means--that I've been taking a woman's gush for gospel. But, I can tell you, a thing rings true or false to me the first time. Do you know, Prentice, once we were motoring to some place near Aylesbury, and she went ten miles out of our way to see the church where Ffoulkes--the English parson, you know--was a curate once. I'd just picked on the place haphazard, and then described it later. You know my mania for exactness in trifles. Nothing would satisfy her but to get out of the car, have the church opened, and scout around the vicarage. Now, is that genuine or isn't it? I tell you, sir, she made the people of my own book live for me--used to invent comments for them upon things we heard, so much in character that I wondered how I could have forgotten them myself."

"And then----?"

"And then"--wearily--"the subject dropped. When I spoke about it, which wasn't often, her answers were as evasive as a woman's can be who, I think, can't lie. I'm not an insistent person, and she seemed to guess it. Money got short: she guessed that too--offered me advances on the publication. Ever so delicately, mind."

"That was the very time for the _éclaircissement_."

"I know, I know. Don't be too grim. For me it's almost impossible to throw any sort of kindness back in people's faces. It's been responsible for half the unhappiness of my life. Then she got me this thing on the _Parthenon_. Lord, how I hate it! and the people it brings me into contact with, and how they must hate me! Sleek young barristers, on the make--you know the sort--dine out every night and say, 'Dear lady.'"

"Ingram! I say 'dear lady' sometimes."

"Yes, yes--but not the way they do. A precious johnny-cake of an art critic who wears thumb-rings and doesn't wash behind his ears...."

I hadn't been listening very attentively. A light was breaking in upon me.

"You meet a good many priests at Mrs. Hepworth's, don't you?"

Ingram raised his hands expressively. "My dear Prentice, at all hours--dinner, tea and lunch--bishops, deans, canons, monsignori. I don't know half their titles."

"I gather you don't find them sympathetic."

"Prentice, I just writhe."

"Aren't they civil?"

"Oh, intensely! It's their mental attitude that maddens me. So perpetually on guard, so impermeable to argument: bearing the condemnation of the massed intellect of Europe with a pitying smile, denying words their plain significance. What is it, Prentice? Is every one else really wrong? Does to be born at Guipuscoa instead of at Epworth make all the difference? Do these men know something that you and I don't? Sometimes in their company I almost feel I'm under mesmeric influence."

"Perhaps you are. I've always suspected you of being mediumistic. But, tell me, don't you suspect anything from all this?"

"Suspect--what?"

"That your book is really being held up because these men won't give it an _imprimatur_."

"Good Lord! I'm not one of their flock."

"No, but Althea is."

Paul flushed savagely, and muttered something I could not catch.

"Don't be too hard on her, Ingram. Probably her position's harder than either of us can conceive."

"Don't be afraid. There are about a hundred solid reasons why I couldn't be hard, even if I wanted to. Besides, I'm ceasing to care."

"Got the hump, in fact."

"Call it what you like. The book's become a scandal--a reproach. It's a relief not to see or hear of it. Once a certain point is reached a sense of humor comes to your rescue, and you cease to take a thing seriously. Something else is worrying me far more just now."

"What is it?"

"You'll only think me an old woman for my pains."

"Never," I answered stoutly. "Your virility is in your way."

"Do you believe in dreams?"

"Not as a rule. But at two o'clock in the morning, alone with you in a Soho attic whose associations you've just pointed out, I'm not so sure."

"I'm having the same one every night."

"Oh! What is it? A woman, or merely a tartan cat with acetylene eyes?"

"It's a woman."

"Go and see her then. Nothing will exorcise it like that."

"But it doesn't. Oh, Prentice! it's no use beating round the bush. You must know. I mean the woman we've just been talking about."

I confess I had been rather thinking of the Continental Express at Charing Cross.

"Go ahead old man," was all I said. "It will do you good to tell."

"It's in a church--always. A sort of foreign building with colored marble columns, gloomy side chapels, silver lamps, dark paintings of well-nourished virgin martyrs----"

"Wait a minute. Is it any place you've seen?"

"No. I'm sure of that.... She's always kneeling before one of the side altars. I'm not clear why I'm in the church at all. I'm not meeting her. Her back is turned, and she doesn't seem to know I'm there. And yet, mind you, I feel--I'm as certain as a man can be that there's something or other she wants to tell me--wants me to know. Something she's struggling with, and I'm not to go until it's told."

"At this point you wake?"

"I used to until last night. Do I sound childish, yet?"

"I'm immensely interested, Ingram. No one but a gross fool laughs at these things to-day."

"Well, last night I lost patience, and began to look around and to take bearings. I noticed there was a way in between the chapels, so you could pass from one to the other. I could get in front of her, see her face if I wanted to. Of course I wanted to. I tell you, I was tired out with all this nightly waiting. But something or other I couldn't see--'a Voice,' if you like--said, 'No, you can't!' 'Why not?' I argued. The answer was foolish."

"What was it?"

"'_It breaks the Law_'."

I moved restlessly. "But I hope you didn't mind the Law."

"No; I went in."

"Well----?"

He took a long breath. "Prentice, she's been dead for years and years."

"Pshaw!"

"Yes, dead, I tell you. There's nothing gruesome about it. Just--bleached--whiteness. But you can't mistake. You'd only have to lay your hand on her and she'd crumble away."

There was not a sound for a few moments, until becoming conscious my expression must look strange, I grabbed the poker and began to make brisk play with it. I also decided not to tell Paul I recognized the church perfectly from his description.

"What do you think of it?"

"Think? Oh, nothing. It's some sub-conscious crazy notion that has never been definitely formed in your own brain, so waits until you're asleep to sprout. The same thing's happened to me. Once I was visiting some people. They were so far disagreeable that one had to be very careful what one said before them. And every night I spent in their house I used to dream I was crossing the lawn, and underfoot, wherever I walked, were ducklings, and frogs, and new-born kittens, and everything that's most unpleasant to tread upon. You probably won't have the dream again.... What's the matter?"

"Look over there, Prentice! Do you see anything queer?"

I followed his eyes in the direction of the window upon whose shutter he had shown me the half-obliterated carving. To evidence my entire honesty in this matter, I will premise that, having shifted the lamp from the centre of the table in order to find me a pipe, Paul had plunged all that half of the room in shadow, and also that the curtain, which he had drawn roughly aside to show me the _émigré's_ work, still hung in awkward, bulgy folds. This much having been freely allowed, I don't mind going on and declaring that I saw, apparently as plainly as I have seen anything in my life, a man sitting upon the narrow window-seat. Every detail was distinct. He was as small as a woman, apparently old, and dressed entirely in black, with a white collar or cravat. One leg hung down to the floor, the other was drawn up to his chin, and his face rested upon it. He had white hair, gathered up or cut short round his ears, and a black cap. His expression was unforgettable. Serene, disdainful anger best expresses it.

I looked at him only a moment, for I don't believe in encouraging visions. In two strides I was across the room and shook the curtain loose.

"There goes some of your ghost," I said. I put the lamp back on the table. Its white reflection vanished from the blurred and darkened pane. "And there goes the rest!"

Paul didn't seem to listen. He was twisting his beard.

"See his face, Prentice? Now, I wonder what I said that irritated him?"

XI

"INEXTRICIBLE ERROR"

It was quarter to seven when Ingram arrived at the house in Portland Place. Althea, already dressed for dinner, sat writing at her desk in the big white room. It was the same desk, battered and inkstained, at which years ago--a staid little maid with a big pigtail, terminating in a sort of heavy tassel of auburn hair--she had prepared her home lessons. At one corner the leather lining had begun to curl up.

She scarcely looked round when he was announced, but thrust a bare white arm over the back of her chair.

"You find me achieving a last chapter," said she. "Sit down somewhere and, in the name of our common art, respect a fellow-laborer's agony."

"I suppose I'm unpardonably early."

"Doubly privileged mortal, then, to find yourself welcome."

"Do I abuse my privileges, Althea?"

"Never in the world. You are as unobtrusive, my dear friend, as a gray sky."

Paul, as he sat down by the fire, wondered why the phrase rang reminiscently. Who had compared his eyes once before to rain-clouds? Oh! he remembered. It was the little girl, in the summer-time, by the sea. He seldom thought of her now; when he did, it was without such a personal pang of loss as might have been expected. She had come--she had gone. The life before he had known her, the life after, like parted leaden waters in the wake of a ship, closed above her memory.

For form's sake, and in order that his presence might not fret his hostess, he picked up a book at random and opened it on his knee; but his eyes, after a few minutes' aimless reading, left the printed page and rested on her. She was writing quickly. The fountain-pen poised, pounced, ran forward, and was checked anew. A little pucker on her forehead straightened out as each sentence was completed. The shaded electric lamp before her left the brows in a green shadow, but flooded neck and arms with naked light. She was dressed in black; a long limp scarf the color of a dead rose-leaf lay across her shoulders, trailed upon the carpet, moved with the motion of the restless bare arm. Her beautiful chestnut hair was drawn up from her neck and dressed high on her head in soft rolls and plaits. Looking at her, and remembering the furnace through which she had passed, Ingram marvelled once again that the searing flame should have left so little evident trace upon her.