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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..95a9609 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #53996 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53996) diff --git a/old/53996-0.txt b/old/53996-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 170fad6..0000000 --- a/old/53996-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11822 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Love Is, by William J. Locke - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Where Love Is - -Author: William J. Locke - -Release Date: January 18, 2017 [EBook #53996] -Last Updated: March 12, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE LOVE IS *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - - -WHERE LOVE IS - -By William J. Locke - -New York - -Grosset & Dunlap Publishers - -Copyright, 1903 By John Lane - - - -“_Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and -hatred therewith_.” - -_The Proverbe of Solomon_ - - - - -WHERE LOVE IS - - - - -Chapter I--THE FIRST GLIMPSE - - -HAVE you dined at Ranelagh lately?” asked Norma Hardacre. - -“I have never been there in my life,” replied Jimmie Padgate. “In fact,” - he added simply, “I am not quite sure whether I know where it is.” - -“Yours is the happier state. It is one of the dullest spots in a dull -world.” - -“Then why on earth do people go there?” - -The enquiry was so genuine that Miss Hardacre relaxed her expression of -handsome boredom and laughed. - -“Because we are all like the muttons of Panurge,” she said. “Where one -goes, all go. Why are we here to-night?” - -“To enjoy ourselves. How could one do otherwise in Mrs. Deering's -house?” - -“You have known her a long time, I believe,” remarked Norma, taking the -opportunity of directing the conversation to a non-contentious topic. - -“Since she was in short frocks. She is a cousin of King's--that's the -man who took you down to dinner--” - -She nodded. “I have known Mr. King many weary ages.” - -“And he has never told me about you!” - -“Why should he?” - -She looked him full in the face, with the stony calm of the fashionable -young woman accustomed to take excellent care of herself. Her companion -met her stare in whimsical confusion. Even so ingenuous a being as -Jimmie Padgate could not tell a girl he had met for the first time that -she was beautiful, adorable, and graced with divine qualities above all -women, and that intimate acquaintance with her must be the startling -glory of a lifetime. - -“If I had known you for ages,” he replied prudently, “I should have -mentioned your name to Morland King.” - -“Are you such friends then?” - -“Fast friends: we were at school together, and as I was a lonely little -beggar I used to spend many of my holidays with his people. That is how -I knew Mrs. Deering in short frocks.” - -“It's odd, then, that I have n't met you about before,” said the girl, -giving him a more scrutinising glance than she had hitherto troubled to -bestow upon him. A second afterwards she felt that her remark might have -been in the nature of an indiscretion, for her companion had not at all -the air of a man moving in the smart world to which she belonged. His -dress-suit was old and of lamentable cut; his shirt-cuffs were frayed; -a little bone stud, threatening every moment to slip the button-hole, -precariously secured his shirt-front. His thin, iron-grey hair was -untidy; his moustache was ragged, innocent of wax or tongs or any of -the adventitious aids to masculine adornment. His aspect gave the -impression, if not of poverty, at least of narrow means and humble ways -of life. Although he had sat next her at dinner, she had paid little -attention to him, finding easier entertainment in her conversation with -King on topics of common interest, than in possible argument with a -strange man whom she heard discussing the functions of art and other -such head-splitting matters with his right-hand neighbour. Indeed, her -question about Ranelagh when she found him by her side, later, in the -drawing-room was practically the first she had addressed to him with any -show of interest. - -She hastened to repair her maladroit observation by adding before he -could reply,-- - -“That is rather an imbecile thing to say considering the -millions of people in London. But one is apt to talk in an imbecile -manner after a twelve hours' day of hard racket in the season. Don't you -think so? One's stock of ideas gets used up, like the air at the end of -a dance.” - -“Not if you keep your soul properly ventilated,” he answered. - -The words were, perhaps, not so arresting as the manner in which they -were uttered. Norma Hardacre was startled. A little shutter in the -back of her mind seemed to have flashed open for an elusive second, and -revealed a prospect wide, generous, alive with free-blowing airs. -Then all was dark again before she could realise the vision. She was -disconcerted, and in a much more feminine way than was habitual with her -she glanced at him again. This time she lost sight of the poor, untidy -garments, and found a sudden interest in the man's kind, careworn face, -and his eyes, wonderfully blue and bright, set far apart in the head, -that seemed to look out on the world with a man's courage and a child's -confidence. She was uncomfortably conscious of being in contact with -a personality widely different from that of her usual masculine -associates. This her training and habit of mind caused her to resent; -despising the faint spiritual shock, she took refuge in flippancy. - -“I fear our Tobin tubes get choked up in London,” she said with a little -laugh. “Even if they did n't they are wretched things, which create -draughts; so anyway our souls are free from chills. Look at that -woman over there talking to Captain Orton--every one knows he's -paymaster-general. A breath of fresh air in Mrs. Chance's soul would -give it rheumatic fever.” - -The abominable slander falling cynically from young lips brought a look -of disapproval into Jimmie Padgate's eyes. - -“Why do you say such things?” he asked. “You know you don't believe -them.” - -“I do believe them,” she replied defiantly. “Why shouldn't one -believe the bad things one hears of one's neighbours? It's a vastly more -entertaining faith than belief in their virtues. Virtue--being its own -reward--is deadly stale to one's friends and unprofitable to oneself.” - -“Cynicism seems cheap to-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile that redeemed -his words from impertinence. “Won't you give me something of yourself a -little more worth having?” - -Norma, who was leaning back in her chair fanning herself languidly, -suddenly bent forward, with curious animation in her cold face. - -“I don't know who you are or what you are,” she exclaimed. “Why should -you want more than the ordinary futilities of after-dinner talk?” - -“Because one has only to look at you,” he replied, “to see that it must -be very easy to get. You have beauty inside as well as outside, -and everybody owes what is beautiful and good in them to their -fellow-creatures.” - -“I don't see why. According to you, women ought to go about like -mediaeval saints.” - -“Every woman is a saint in the depths of her heart,” said Jimmie. - -“You are an astonishing person,” replied Norma. - -The conversation ended there, for Morland King came up with Constance -Deering: he florid, good-looking, perfectly groomed and dressed, the -type of the commonplace, well-fed, affluent Briton; she a pretty, -fragile butterfly of a woman. Jimmie rose and was led off to another -part of the room by his hostess. King dropped into the chair Jimmie had -vacated. - -“I see you have been sampling my friend Jimmie Padgate. What do you make -of him?” - -“I have just told him he was an astonishing person,” said Norma. - -“Dear old Jimmie! He's the best fellow in the world,” said King, -laughing. “A bit Bohemian and eccentric--artists generally are--” - -“Oh, he's an artist?” inquired Norma. - -“He just manages to make a living by it, poor old chap! He has never -come off, somehow.” - -“Another neglected genius?” - -“I don't know about that,” replied Morland King in a matter-of-fact way, -not detecting the sneer in the girl's tone. “I don't think he's a great -swell--I'm no judge, you know. But he has had a bad time. Anyway, he -always comes up smiling. The more he gets knocked the more cheerful -he seems to grow. I never met any one like him. The most generous, -simple-minded beggar living.” - -“He must be wonderful to make you enthusiastic,” said Norma. - -“Look at him now, talking to the Chance woman as if she were an angel of -light.” - -Norma glanced across the room and smiled contemptuously. - -“She seems to like it. She's preening herself as if the wings were -already grown. Connie,” she called to her hostess, who was passing by, -“why have you hidden Mr. Padgate from me all this time?” - -The butterfly lady laughed. “He is too precious. I can only afford to -give my friends a peep at him now and then. I want to keep him all to -myself.” - -She fluttered away. Norma leaned back and hid a yawn with her fan; then, -rousing herself with an effort, made conversation with her companion. -Presently another man came up and King retired. - -“How is it getting on?” whispered Mrs. Deering. - -“Oh, steady,” he replied with his hands in his pockets. - -“Lucky man!” - -Morland King shrugged his shoulders. “The only thing against it is papa -and mamma--chiefly mamma. A Gorgon of a woman!” - -“You'll never get a wife to do you more credit than Norma. With that -face I wonder she is n't a duchess by now. There _was_ a duke once, but -a fair American eagle came and swooped him off under Norma's nose. You -see, she's not the sort of girl to give a man much encouragement.” - -“Oh, I can't stand a woman who throws herself at your head,” said King, -emphatically. - -“What a funny way men have nowadays of confessing to the tender -passion!” said Mrs. Deering, laughing. - -“What would you have a fellow do?” he asked. “Spout blank verse about -the stars and things, like a Shakespearean hero?” - -“It would be prettier, anyhow.” - -“Well, if you will have it, I'm about as hard hit as a man ever -was--there!” - -“I 'm delighted to hear it,” said his cousin. - -A short while afterwards the dinner-party broke up. - -“I don't know whether you care to mix with utter worldlings like us, Mr. -Padgate,” said Norma, as she bade him good-bye, “but we are always in on -Tuesdays.” - -“I'll tie him hand and foot and bring him,” said King. “Good-night, old -chap. I'm giving Miss Hardacre a lift home in the brougham.” - -Before Jimmie could say yes or no, they were gone. He found himself the -last. - -“You are certainly not going for another hour, Jimmie,” said Mrs. -Deering, as he came forward to take leave. “You will sit in that chair -and smoke and tell me all about yourself and make me feel good and -pretty.” - -“Very well,” he assented, laughing. “Turn me out when it's time for me -to go.” - -It had been the customary formula between them for many years; for -Jimmie Padgate lacked the sense of time and kept eccentric hours, and -although Connie Deering delighted in her rare confidential chats with -him, a woman with a heavy morrow of engagements must go to bed at a -reasonable period of the night. She was a woman in the middle thirties, -a childless widow after a brief and almost forgotten married life, rich, -pleasure-loving, in the inner circle of London society, and possessing -the gayest, kindest, most charitable heart in the world. Her friendship -with Norma Hardacre had been a thing of recent date. - -She had cultivated it first on account of her cousin Morland King; she -had ended in enthusiastic admiration. - -“It is awfully good of you,” she said, when they were comfortably -settled down to talk, “to waste your time with my unintelligent -conversation.” - -“There's no such thing as unintelligent conversation,” he declared. - -“For a man like you there must be.” - -“I could hold an intelligent conversation with a rabbit,” said Jimmie. - -Norma Hardacre, on arriving home, entered the drawing-room, where her -mother was reading a novel. - -“Well?” said Mrs. Hardacre, looking up. - -Norma threw her white silk cloak over the back of a chair. - -“Connie sent her love to you.” - -“Is that all you have to say?” asked her mother, sharply. She was a -faded woman who had once possessed beauty of a cold, severe type; but -the years had pinched and hardened her features, as they had pinched and -hardened her heart. Her eyes were of that steel grey which the light -of laughter seldom softens, and her smile was but a contraction of the -muscles of the lips. Even this perfunctory tribute to politeness which -had greeted Norma's entrance vanished at the second question. - -“Morland King drove me home. What a difference there is between a -private brougham and the beastly things we get from the livery-stable!” - -“He has said nothing?” - -“Of course not. I should have told you if he had.” - -“Whose fault is it?” - -Norma made a gesture of impatience. “My fault, if you like. I don't -lay traps to catch him. I don't keep him dangling about me, and I don't -flatter his vanities or make appeal to his senses, I suppose. I can't do -it.” - -“Don't behave like a fool, Norma,” said Mrs. Hardacre, rapping her book -with a paper-knife. “You have got to marry him. You know you have. Your -father and I are coming to the end of things. You ought to have married -years ago, and when one thinks of the chances you have missed, it makes -one mad. Here have we been pinching and scraping--” - -“And borrowing and mortgaging,” Norma interjected. - -“--to give you a brilliant position,” Mrs. Hardacre continued, unheeding -the interruption, “and you cast all our efforts in our teeth. It's sheer -ingratitude. Why you threw over Lord Wyniard I could never make out.” - -“You seem to forget that, after all, there is a physical side to -marriage,” said Norma, with a little shudder of disgust. - -“I hate indelicacy in young girls,” said Mrs. Hardacre, freezingly. “One -would think you had been brought up in a public house.” - -“Then let us avoid indelicate subjects,” retorted Norma, opening the -first book to her hand. “Where is papa?” - -“Oh, how should I know?” said Mrs. Hardacre, irritably. - -There was silence. Norma pretended to read, but her thoughts, away from -the printed lines, caused her face to harden and her lips to curl -scornfully. She had been used to such scenes with her mother ever since -she had worn a long frock, and that was seven years ago, when she came -out as a young beauty of eighteen. The story of financial embarrassment -had lost its fine edge of persuasion by overtelling. She had almost -ceased to believe in it, and the lingering grain of credence she put -aside with the cynical feeling that it was no great concern of hers, so -long as her usual round of life went on. She had two hundred a year of -her own, all of which she spent in dress, so that in that one -particular at least, if she chose to be economical, she was practically -independent. Money for other wants was generally procurable, with or -without unpleasant dunning of her parents. She lived very little in -their home in Wiltshire, a beautiful and stately young woman of fashion -being a decorative adjunct to smart country-house parties. In London, if -she sighed for a more extensive establishment and a more luxurious style -of living, it was what she always had done. She had hated the furnished -house or flat and the livery-stable carriage ever since her first -season. In the same way she had always considered the omission from -her scheme of life of a yacht and a villa at Cannes and diamonds at -discretion as a culpable oversight on the part of the Creator. But -the sordid makeshift of existence to which she was condemned was not -a matter of yesterday. In spite of the financial embarrassments of the -maternal fable she had noticed no cutting down of customary expenditure. -Her father still played the fool on the stock exchange, her mother still -attired herself elaborately and disdained to eat otherwise than _à la -carte_ at expensive restaurants, and she, Norma, went whithersoever -the smart set drifted her. She had nothing to do with the vulgarity of -financial embarrassments. - -As to the question of marriage she was as fully determined as her -mother that she should make a brilliant match. She had had two or three -disappointments--the unwary duke, for instance. On the other hand she -had refused eligibles like Lord Wyniard out of sheer caprice. - -The only man who had given her a moment's stir of the pulses, a moment's -thought of throwing her cap over the windmills, was a young soldier in -the Indian Staff Corps. But he belonged to her second season, before -she had really seen the world and grasped the inner meaning of life. -Besides, her mother had almost beaten her; and in an encounter between -the dragon who guarded the gold of her daughter's affections and the -young Siegfried, it was the hero that barely escaped destruction; he -fled to India for his life. Norma lost all sight and count of him for -three years. Then she heard that he had married a schoolfellow of -hers and was a month-old father. It was with feelings of peculiar -satisfaction and sense of deliverance that she sent her congratulations -to him, her love to his wife, and a set of baby shoes to the child. She -had cultivated by this time a helpful sardonic humour. - -There was now Morland King, within reasonable distance of a proposal. -Her experience detected the signs, although little of sentimentality -had passed between them. He was young, as marrying men go--a year or two -under forty--of good family, fairly good-looking, very well off, with a -safe seat in Parliament being kept warm for him by a valetudinarian ever -on the point of retirement. Norma meant to accept him. She contemplated -the marriage as coldly and unemotionally as King contemplated the seat -in Parliament. But through the corrupted tissue of her being ran one -pure and virginal thread. She used no lures. She remained chastely -aloof, the arts of seduction being temperamentally repugnant to her. -Knowledge she had of good and evil (a euphemism, generally, for an -exclusive acquaintance with the latter), and she was cynical enough in -her disregard of concealment of her knowledge; but she revolted from -using it to gain any advantage over a man. At this period of her life -she set great store by herself, and though callously determined on -marriage condescended with much disdain to be wooed. Her mother, bred in -a hard school, was not subtle enough to perceive this antithesis. Hence -the constant scenes of which Norma bitterly resented the vulgarity. “We -pride ourselves on being women of the world, mother,” she said, “but -that does n't prevent our remembering that we are gentlefolk.” Whereat, -on one occasion, Mr. Hardacre, in his flustering, feeble way, had told -Norma not to be rude to her mother, only to draw upon himself the vials -of his wife's anger. - -He came in now, during the silence that had fallen on the two women--a -short, stout, red-faced man, with a bald head, and a weak chin, and -a drooping foxy moustache turning grey. He was bursting with an -interminable tale of scandal that he had picked up at his club--a -respectable institution with an inner coterie of vapid, middle-aged -dullards whose cackle was the terror of half London society. It is -a superstition among good women that man is too noble a creature to -descend to gossip. Ten minutes in the members' smoking-room of the -Burlington Club would paralyse the most scandal-mongering tabby of Bath, -Cheltenham, or Tunbridge Wells. - -“We were sure she was a wrong 'un from the first,” he explained in a -thick, jerky voice to his listless auditors. “And now it turns out that -she was in thick with poor Billy Withers, you know, and when Billy broke -his neck--that was through another blessed woman--I'll tell you all -about her by'm bye--when Billy broke his neck, his confounded valet got -hold of Mrs. Jack's letters, and how she paid for 'em's the cream of the -story--” - -“We need not have that now, Benjamin,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a -warning indication that reverence was due to the young. - -“Well, of course that's the end of it,” replied Mr. Hardacre, in some -confusion. - -But Norma rose with a laugh of hard mockery. - -“The valet entered the service of Lord Wyniard, and now there's a pretty -little divorce case in the air, with Jack Dugdale as petitioner and -Lord Wyniard as corespondent. Are n't you sorry, mother, I did n't marry -Wyniard and reform him, and save society this terrible scandal?” - -Turning from her disconcerted parents, Norma pulled back the thick -curtains from the French window and opened one of the doors. - -“What are you doing that for?” cried Mrs. Hardacre irritably, as the -cold air of a wet May night swept through the room. - -“I'm going to try to ventilate my soul,” said Norma, stepping on to the -balcony. - - - - -Chapter II--THE FOOL'S WISDOM - -LIKE the inexplicable run on a particular number at the roulette-table, -there often seems to be a run on some particular phenomenon thrown up -by the wheel of daily life. Such a recurrent incident was the meeting of -Norma and Jimmie Padgate during the next few weeks. She met him at Mrs. -Deering's, she ran across him in the streets. Going to spend a weekend -out of town, she found him on the platform of Paddington Station. -The series of sheer coincidences established between them a certain -familiarity. When next they met, it was in the crush of an emptying -theatre. They found themselves blocked side by side, and they laughed as -their eyes met. - -“This seems to have got out of the domain of vulgar chance and become -Destiny,” she said lightly. - -“I am indeed favoured by the gods,” he replied. - -“You don't deserve their good will because you have never come to see -me.” - -Jimmie replied that he was an old bear who loved to growl selfishly in -his den. Norma retorted with a reference to Constance Deering. In her -house he could growl altruistically. - -“She pampers me with honey,” he explained. - -“I am afraid you'll get nothing so Arcadian with us,” she replied, “but -I can provide you with some excellent glucose.” - -They were moved a few feet forward by the crowd, and then came to a halt -again. - -“This is my ward, Miss Aline Marden,” he said, presenting a pretty -slip of a girl of seventeen, who had hung back shyly during the short -dialogue, and looked with open-eyed admiration at Jimmie's new friend. -“That is how she would be described in a court of law, but I don't mind -telling you that really she is my nurse and foster-mother.” - -The girl blushed at the introduction, and gave him an imperceptible -twitch of the arm. Norma smiled at her graciously and asked her how she -had liked the play. - -“It was heavenly,” she said with a little sigh. “Did n't you think so?” - -Norma, who had characterised the piece as the most dismal performance -outside a little Bethel, was preparing a mendacious answer, when a -sudden thinning in the crush brought to her side Mrs. Hardacre, from -whom she had been separated. Mrs. Hardacre inquired querulously for -Morland King, who had gone in search of the carriage. Norma reassured -her as to his ability to find it, and introduced Jimmie and Aline. -Mr. Padgate was Mr. King's oldest friend. Mrs. Hardacre bowed -disapprovingly, took in with a hard glance the details of Aline's cheap, -homemade evening frock, and the ready-made cape over her shoulders, and -turned her head away with a sniff. She had been put out of temper the -whole evening by Norma's glacial treatment of King, and was not disposed -to smile at the nobodies whom it happened to please Norma to patronise. - -At last King beckoned to them from the door, and they crushed through -the still waiting crowd to join him. By the time Jimmie Padgate and his -ward had reached the pavement they had driven off. - -“Wonder if we can get a cab,” said Jimmie. - -“Cab!” cried the girl, taking his arm affectionately. “One would think -you were a millionaire. You can go in a cab if you like, but I'm going -home in a 'bus. Come along. We'll get one at Piccadilly Circus.” - -She hurried him on girlishly, talking of the play they had just seen. It -was heavenly, she repeated. She had never been in the stalls before. -She wished kind-hearted managers would send them seats every night. Then -suddenly: - -“Why did n't you tell me how beautiful she was?” - -“Who, dear?” - -“Why, Miss Hardacre. I think she is the loveliest thing I have ever -seen. I could sit and look at her all day long. Why don't you paint her -portrait--in that wonderful ivory-satin dress she was wearing to-night? -And the diamond star in her hair that made her look like a queen--did -you notice it? Why, Jimmie, you are not paying the slightest attention!” - -“My dear, I could repeat verbatim every word you have said,” he replied -soberly. “She is indeed one of the most beautiful of God's creatures.” - -“Then you'll paint her portrait?” - -“Perhaps, deary,” said Jimmie, “perhaps.” - -Meanwhile in the brougham King was giving Norma an account of Jimmie's -guardianship. She had asked him partly out of curiosity, partly to -provide him with a subject of conversation, and partly to annoy her -mother, whose disapproving sniff she had noted with some resentment. And -this in brief is the tale that King told. - -Some ten years ago, John Marden, a brother artist of Jimmie Padgate's, -died penniless, leaving his little girl of seven with the alternative of -fighting her way alone through an unsympathetic world, or of depending -on the charity of his only sister, a drunken shrew of a woman, the wife -of a small apothecary, and the casual mother of a vague and unwashed -family. Common decency made the first alternative impossible. On their -return to the house after the funeral, the aunt announced her intention -of caring for the orphan as her own flesh and blood. Jimmie, who had -taken upon himself the functions of the intestate's temporary executor, -acquiesced dubiously. The lady, by no means sober, shed copious tears -and a rich perfume of whisky. She called Aline to her motherly -bosom. The child, who had held Jimmie's hand throughout the mournful -proceedings, for he had been her slave and playfellow for the whole of -her little life, advanced shyly. Her aunt took her in her arms. But the -child, with instinctive repugnance to the smell of spirits, shrank from -her kisses. The shrew arose in the woman; she shook her vindictively, -and gave her three or four resounding slaps on face and shoulders. -Jimmie leaped from his chair, tore the scared little girl from the -vixen's clutches, and taking her bodily in his arms, strode with her -out of the house, leaving the apothecary and his wife to settle matters -between them. It was only when he had walked down the street and hailed -a cab that he began to consider the situation. - -“What on earth am I to do with you?” he asked whimsically. - -The small arms tightened round his neck. “Take me to live with you,” - sobbed the child. - -“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings we learn wisdom. So be it,” - said Jimmie, and he drove home with his charge. - -As neither aunt nor uncle nor any human being in the wide world claimed -the child, she became mistress of Jimmie's home from that hour. Her -father's pictures and household effects were sold off to pay his -creditors, and a little bundle of torn frocks and linen was Aline's sole -legacy. - -“I happened to look in upon him the evening of her arrival,” said King, -by way of conclusion to his story. “In those days he managed with a -charwoman who came only in the mornings, so he was quite alone in -the place with the kid. What do you think I found him doing? Sitting -cross-legged on the model-platform with a great pair of scissors and -needles and thread, cutting down one of his own night garments so as to -fit her, while the kid in a surprising state of _déshabillé_ was -seated on a table, kicking her bare legs and giving him directions. His -explanation was that Miss Marden's luggage had not yet arrived and she -must be made comfortable for the night! But you never saw anything so -comic in your life.” - -He leaned back and laughed at the reminiscence, not unkindly. Mrs. -Hardacre, bored by the unprofitable tale, stared at the dim streets out -of the brougham window. Norma, on friendlier terms with King, the little -human story having perhaps drawn them together, joined in the laugh. - -“And now, I suppose, when she grows a bit older, Mr. Padgate will marry -her and she will be a dutiful little wife and they will live happy and -humdrum ever after.” - -“I hope he will provide her with some decent rags to put on,” said Mrs. -Hardacre. “Those the child was wearing to-night were fit for a servant -maid.” - -“Jimmie would give her his skin if she could wear it,” said Morland, -somewhat tartly. - -This expression of feeling gave him, for the first time, a special place -in Norma's esteem. After all, a woman desires to like the man who in a -few months' time may be her husband, and hitherto Morland had presented -a negativity of character which had baffled and irritated her. The -positive trait of loyalty to a friend she welcomed instinctively, -although if charged with the emotion she would have repudiated the -accusation. When the carriage stopped at the awning and red strip of -carpet before the house in Eaton Square where a dance awaited her, and -she took leave of him, she returned his handshake with almost a warm -pressure and sent him away, a sanguine lover, to his club. - -The next morning Constance Deering, taking her on a round of shopping, -enquired how the romance was proceeding. - -“He has had me on probation,” replied Norma, “and has been examining all -my points. I rather think he finds me satisfactory, and is about to make -an offer.” - -“What an idyllic pair you are!” laughed her friend. - -Norma took the matter seriously. - -“The man is perfectly right. He is on the lookout for a woman who can -keep up or perhaps add to his social prestige, who can conduct the -affairs of a large establishment when he enters political life, who -can possibly give him a son to inherit his estate, and who can wear -his family diamonds with distinction--and it does require a woman of -presence to do justice to family diamonds, you know. He looks round -society and sees a girl that may suit him. Naturally he takes his time -and sizes her up. I have learned patience and so I let him size to his -heart's content. On the other hand, what he can give me falls above the -lower limit of my requirements, and personally I don't dislike him.” - -“Mercy on us!” cried Constance Deering, “the man is head over ears in -love with you!” - -“Then I like him all the better for dissembling it so effectually,” said -Norma, “and I hope he'll go on dissembling to the end of the chapter. I -hate sentiment.” - -They were walking slowly down Bond Street, and happened to pause before -a picture-dealer's window, where a print of a couple of lovers bidding -farewell caught Mrs. Deering's attention. - -“I call that pretty,” she said. “Do you hate love too?” - -Norma twirled her parasol and moved away, waiting for the other. - -“Love, my dear Connie, is an appetite of the lower middle classes.” - -“My dear Norma!” the other exclaimed, “I do wish Jimmie Padgate could -hear you!” - -Norma started at the name. “What has he got to do with the matter?” - -“That's one of his pictures.” - -“Oh, is it?” said Norma, indifferently. But feminine curiosity compelled -a swift parting glance at the print. - -“I imagine our guileless friend has a lot to learn,” she added. “A few -truths about the ways of this wicked world would do him good.” - -“I promised to go and look round his studio to-morrow morning; will you -come and give him his first lesson?” asked Mrs. Deering, mischievously. - -“Certainly not,” replied Norma. - -But the destiny she had previously remarked upon seemed to be fulfilling -itself. A day or two afterwards his familiar figure burst upon her at -a Private View in a small picture-gallery. His eyes brightened as she -withdrew from her mother, who was accompanying her, and extended her -hand. - -“Dear me, who would have thought of seeing you here? Do you care for -pictures? Why have n't you told me? I am so glad.” - -“Love of Art did n't bring me here, I assure you,” replied Norma. - -“Then what did?” - -Jimmie in his guilelessness had an uncomfortable way of posing -fundamental questions. In that respect he was like a child. Norma smiled -in silent contemplation of the real object of their visit. At first her -mother had tossed the cards of invitation into the waste-paper basket. -It was advertising impudence on the part of the painter man, whom she -had met but once, to take her name in vain on the back of an envelope. -Then hearing accidentally that the painter man had painted the portraits -of many high-born ladies, including that of the Duchess of Wiltshire, -and that the Duchess of Wiltshire herself--their own duchess, who gave -Mrs. Hardacre the tip of her finger to shake and sometimes the tip of a -rasping tongue to meditate upon, whom Mrs. Hardacre had tried any time -these ten years to net for Heddon Court, their place in the country--had -graciously promised to attend the Private View, in her character of Lady -Patroness-in-Chief of the painter man, Mrs. Hardacre had hurried home -and had set the servants' hall agog in search of the cards. Eventually -they had been discovered in the dust-bin, and she had spent half an hour -in cleansing them with bread-crumbs, much to Norma's sardonic amusement. -The duchess not having yet arrived, Mrs. Hardacre had fallen back upon -the deaf Dowager Countess of Solway, who was discoursing to her in a -loud voice on her late husband's method of breeding prize pigs. Norma -had broken away from this exhilarating lecture to greet Jimmie. - -He kept his eager eyes upon her, still waiting for an answer to his -question: - -“What did?” - -Norma, fairly quick-witted, indicated the walls with a little -comprehensive gesture. - -“Do you call this simpering, uninspired stuff Art?” she said, begging -the question. - -“Oh, it's not that,” cried Jimmie, falling into the trap. “It's really -very good of its kind. Amazingly clever. Of course it's not highly -finished. It's impressionistic. Look at that sweeping line from the -throat all the way down to the hem of the skirt,” indicating the -picture in front of them and following the curve, painter fashion, with -bent-back thumb; “how many of your fellows in the Academy could get that -so clean and true?” - -“I have just met Mr. Porteous, who said he could n't stay any longer -because such quackery made him sick,” said Norma. - -Jimmie glanced round the walls. Porteous, the Royal Academician, was -right. The colour was thin, the modelling flat, the drawing tricky, the -invention poor. A dull soullessness ran through the range of full-length -portraits of women. He realised, with some distress, the clever -insincerity of the painting; but he had known Foljambe, the author of -these coloured crimes, as a fellow-student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, -and having come to see his work for the first time, could not bear to -judge harshly. It was characteristic of him to expatiate on the only -merit the work possessed. - -“Mr. Porteous even said,” continued Norma, “that it was scandalous -such a man should be making thousands when men of genius were making -hundreds. It was taking the bread out of their mouths.” - -“I am sorry he said that,” said Jimmie. “I think we ought rather to be -glad that a man of poor talent has been so successful. So many of them -go to the wall.” - -“Do you always find the success of your inferior rivals so comforting?” - asked Norma. “I don't.” She thought of the depredatory American. - -Jimmie pushed his hat to the back of his head--a discoloured Homburg hat -that had seen much wear--and rammed his hands in his pockets. - -“It's horrible to regard oneself and one's fellow-creatures as so many -ghastly fishes tearing one another to pieces so as to get at the same -piece of offal. That's what it all comes to, does n't it?” - -The picture of the rapt duke as garbage floating on the tide of London -Society brought with it a certain humourous consolation. That of her own -part in the metaphor did not appear so soothing. Jimmie's proposition -being, however, incontrovertible, she changed the subject and enquired -after Aline. Why had n't he brought her? - -“I am afraid we should have argued about Foljambe's painting,” said -Jimmie, with innocent malice. - -“And we should have agreed about it,” replied Norma. She talked about -Aline. Morland King had been tale-bearing. It was refreshing, she -confessed, once in a way to hear good of one's fellow-creatures: like -getting up at six in the morning in the country and drinking milk fresh -from the cow. It conferred a sense of unaccustomed virtue. The mention -of milk reminded her that she was dying for tea. Was it procurable? - -“There's a roomful of it. Can I take you?” asked Jimmie, eagerly. - -She assented. Jimmie piloted her through the chattering crowd. On the -way they passed by Mrs. Hardacre, still devoting the pearls of her -attention to the pigs. She acknowledged his bow distantly and summoned -her daughter to her side. - -“What are you _affiché_-ing yourself with that nondescript man for?” she -asked in a cross whisper. - -Norma moved away with a shrug, and went with Jimmie into the crowded -tea-room. There, while he was fighting for tea at the buffet, she -fell into a nest of acquaintances. Presently he emerged from the -crush victorious, and, as he poured out the cream for her, became the -unconscious target of sharp feminine glances. - -“Who is your friend?” asked one lady, as Jimmie retired with the -cream-jug. - -“I will introduce him if you like,” she replied. He reappeared and was -introduced vaguely. Then he stood silent, listening to a jargon he was -at a loss to comprehend. The women spoke in high, hard voices, with -impure vowel sounds and a clipping of final consonants. The conversation -gave him a confused impression of Ascot, a horse, a foreign prince, and -a lady of fashion who was characterised as a “rotter.” Allusion was also -made to a princely restaurant, which Jimmie, taken thither one evening -by King, regarded as a fairy-land of rare and exquisite flavours, and -the opinion was roundly expressed that you could not get anything fit to -eat in the place and that the wines were poison. - -Jimmie listened wonderingly. No one seemed disposed to controvert the -statement, which was made by quite a young girl. Indeed one of her -friends murmured that she had had awful filth there a few nights before. -A smartly dressed woman of forty who had drawn away from the general -conversation asked Jimmie if he had been to Cynthia yet. He replied that -he very seldom went to theatres. The lady burst out laughing, and then -seeing the genuine enquiry on his face, checked herself. - -“I thought you were trying to pull my leg,” she explained. “I mean -Cynthia, the psychic, the crystal gazer. Why, every one is going crazy -over her. Do you mean to say you have n't been?” - -“Heaven forbid!” said Jimmie. - -“You may scoff, but she's wonderful. Do you know she actually gave me -the straight tip for the Derby? She did n't mean to, for she does n't -lay herself out for that sort of thing--but she said, after telling me -a lot of things about myself--things that had really happened--she was -getting tired, I must tell you--'I see something in your near future--it -is a horse with a white star on its forehead--it has gone--I don't know -what it means.' I went to the Derby. I had n't put a cent on, as I had -been cleaned out at Cairo during the winter and had to retrench. The -first horse that was led out had a white star on his forehead. None of -the others had. It was St. Damien--a thirty to one chance. I backed him -outright for £300. And now I have £9000 to play with. Don't tell me -there's nothing in Cynthia after that.” - -The knot of ladies dissolved. Jimmie put Norma's teacup down and went -slowly back with her to the main room. He was feeling depressed, having -lost his bearings in this unfamiliar world. Suddenly he halted. - -“I wish you could pinch me,” he said. - -“Why?” - -“To test whether I am awake. Have I really heard a sane and educated -lady expressing her belief in the visions of a crystal-gazing -adventuress?” - -“You have. She believes firmly. So do heaps of women.” - -“I hope to heaven you don't!” he cried with a sudden intensity. - -“What concern can my faith be to you?” she asked. - -“I beg your pardon. No concern at all,” he said apologetically. “But I -generally blurt out what is in my mind.” - -“And what is in your mind? I am a person you can be quite frank with.” - -“I could n't bear the poem of your life to be sullied by all these -vulgarities,” said Jimmie. - -“As I remarked to you the first evening I met you, Mr. Padgate,” she -said, holding out her hand by way of dismissal, “you are an astonishing -person!” - -The poem of her life! The phrase worried her before she slept that -night. She shook the buzzing thing away from her impatiently. The poem -of her life! The man was a fool. - - - - -Chapter III--A MODERN BETROTHAL - -A YOUNG woman bred to a material view of the cosmos and self-trained to -cynical expression of her opinions may thoroughly persuade herself that -marriage is a social bargain in which it would be absurd for sentiment -to have a place, and yet when the hour comes for deciding on so trivial -an engagement, may find herself in an irritatingly unequable frame of -mind. For Norma the hour had all but arrived. Morland King had asked -to see her alone in view of an important conversation. She had made an -appointment for ten o'clock, throwing over her evening's engagements. -Her parents were entertaining a couple of friends in somebody else's -box at the opera, and would return in time to save the important -conversation from over-tediousness. She intended to amuse herself -placidly with a novel until King's arrival. - -This was a week or two after her encounter with Jimmie at the -picture-gallery, since which occasion she had neither seen nor heard of -him. He had faded from the surface of a consciousness kept on continued -strain by the thousand incidents and faces of a London season. To Jimmie -the series of meetings had been a phenomenon of infinite import. She had -come like a queen of romance into his homely garden, and her radiance -lingered, making the roses redder and the grass more green. But the -queenly apparition herself had other things to think about, and when she -had grown angry and called him a fool, had dismissed him definitely from -her mind. It was annoying therefore that on this particular evening the -fool phrase should buzz again in her ears. - -She threw down her book and went on to the balcony, where, on this close -summer night, she could breathe a little cool air. A clock somewhere in -the house chimed the half-hour. Morland was to come at ten. She longed -for, yet dreaded, his coming; regretted that she had stayed away from -the opera, where, after all, she could have observed the everlasting -human comedy. She had dined early; the evening had been interminable; -she felt nervous, and raged at her weakness. She was tired, out of -harmony with herself, fretfully conscious too of the jarring notes in -a room furnished by uneducated people of sudden wealth. The -Wolff-Salamons, out of the kindness of their shrewd hearts, had offered -the house for the season to the Hardacres, who had accepted the free -quarters with profuse expressions of gratitude; which, however, did not -prevent Mr. Hardacre from railing at the distance of the house (which -was in Holland Park) from his club, or his wife from deprecating to -her friends her temporary residence in what she was pleased to term the -Ghetto. Nor did the Wolff-Salamons' generosity mitigate the effect of -their furniture on Norma's nerves. When Jimmie's phrase came into her -head with the suddenness of a mosquito, she could bear the room no -longer. - -She sat on the balcony and waited for Morland. There at least she was -free from the flaring gold and blue, and the full-length portrait of the -lady of the house, on which with delicate savagery the eminent painter -had catalogued all the shades of her ancestral vulgarity. Perhaps it was -this portrait that had brought back the irony of Jimmie's tribute. The -poem of her life! She sat with her chin on her palm, thinking bitterly -of circumstance. She had never been happy, had grown to disbelieve in so -absurd and animal a state. It had always been the same, as far back -as she could remember. Her childhood: nurses and governesses--a swift -succession of the latter till she began to regard them as remote from -her inner life as the shop girl or railway guard with whom she came into -casual contact. The life broken by visits abroad to fashionable watering -or gambling places where she wandered lonely and proud, neglected by her -parents, watching with keen eyes and imperturbable face the frivolities, -the vices, the sordidnesses, taking them all in, speculating upon -them, resolving some problems unaided and storing up others for future -elucidation. Her year at the expensive finishing school in Paris where -the smartest daughters of America babbled and chattered of money, money, -till the air seemed unfit for woman to breathe unless it were saturated -with gold dust. As hers was not, came discontent and overweening -ambitions. Yet the purity was not all killed. She remembered her first -large dinner-party. The same Lord Wyniard of the unclean scandal had -taken her down. He was thirty years older than she, and an unsavoury -reputation had reached even her young ears. The man regarded her with -the leer of a satyr. She realised with a shudder for the first time the -meaning of a phrase she had constantly met with in French novels--“_il -la dévêtit de ses yeux_.” His manner was courtly, his air of breeding -perfect; yet he managed to touch her fingers twice, and he sought to -lead her on to dubious topics of conversation. She was frightened. - -In the drawing-room, seeing him approach, she lost her head, took -shelter with her mother, and trembling whispered to her, “Don't let that -man come and talk to me again, mother, he's a beast.” She was bidden not -to be a fool. The man had a title and twenty thousand a year, and she -had evidently made an impression. A week afterwards her mother invited -a bishop and his wife and Lord Wyniard to dinner, and Lord Wyniard took -Norma down again. And that was her start in the world. She had followed -the preordained course till now, with many adventures indeed by the way, -but none that could justify the haunting phrase--the poem of her life! - -Was the man such a fool, after all? Was it even ignorance on his part? -Was it not, rather, wisdom on a lofty plane immeasurably above the -commonplaces of ignorance and knowledge? The questions presented -themselves to her vaguely. She was filled with a strange unrest, a -craving for she knew not what. Yet she would shortly have in her grasp -all--or nearly all--that she had aimed at in life. She counted the tale -of her future possessions--houses, horses, diamonds, and the like. She -seemed to have owned them a thousand years. - -The clock in the house chimed ten in a pretentious musical way, which -irritated her nerves. The silence after the last of the ten inexorable -tinkles fell gratefully. Then she realised that in a minute or two -Morland would arrive. Her heart began to beat, and she clasped her hands -together in a nervous suspense of which she had not dreamed herself -capable. A cab turned the corner of the street, approached with -crescendo rattle, and stopped at the house. She saw Morland alight and -reach up to pay the cabman. For a silly moment she had a wild impulse to -cry to him over the balcony to go away and leave her in peace. She -waited until she heard the footman open the front door and admit him, -then bracing herself, she entered the drawing-room, looked instinctively -in a mirror, and sat down. - -She met him cordially enough, returned his glance somewhat defiantly. -The sight of him, florid, sleek, faultlessly attired, brought her back -within the every-day sphere of dulled sensation. He held her hand long -enough for him to say, after the first greeting: - -“You can guess what I've come for, can't you?” - -“I suppose I do,” she admitted in an off-hand way. “You will find -frankness one of my vices. Won't you sit down?” - -She motioned him to a chair, and seating herself on a sofa, prepared to -listen. - -“I've come to ask you to marry me,” said King. - -“Well?” she asked, looking at him steadily. - -“I want to know how it strikes you,” he continued after a brief pause. -“I think you know practically all that I can tell you about myself. I -can give you what you want up to about fifteen thousand a year--it will -be more when my mother dies. We're decent folk--old county family--I can -offer you whatever society you like. You and I have tastes in common, -care for the same things, same sort of people. I'm sound in wind and -limb--never had a day's illness in my life, so you would n't have to -look after a cripple. And I'd give the eyes out of my head to have you; -you know that. How does it strike you?” - -Norma had averted her glance from him towards the end of his speech, -and leaning back was looking intently at her hands in her lap. For the -moment she felt it impossible to reply. The words that had formulated -themselves in her mind, “I think, Mr. King, the arrangement will be -eminently advantageous to both parties,” were too ludicrous in their -adequacy to the situation. So she merely sat silent and motionless, -regarding her manicured finger-nails, and awaiting another opening. King -changed his seat to the sofa, by her side, and leaned forward. - -“If you had been a simpler, more unsophisticated girl, Norma, I should -have begun differently. I thought it would please you if I put sentiment -aside.” - -Her head motioned acquiescence. - -“But I'm not going to put it aside,” he went on. “It has got its place -in the world, even when a man makes a proposal of marriage. And when I -say I'm in love with you, that I have been in love with you since the -first time I saw you, it's honest truth.” - -“Say you have a regard, a high regard, even,” said Norma, still not -looking at him, “and I'll believe you.” - -“I'm hanged if I will,” said Morland. “I say I'm in love with you.” - -Norma suddenly softened. The phrase tickled her ears again--this time -pleasantly. The previous half-hour's groping in the dark of herself -seemed to have resulted in discovery. She gave him a fleeting smile of -mockery. - -“Listen,” she said. “If you will be contented with regard, a high -regard, on my side, I will marry you. I really like you very much. Will -that do?” - -“It is all I ask now. The rest will come by and by.” - -“I'm not so sure. We had better be perfectly frank with each other from -the start, for we shall respect each other far more. Anyhow, if you -treat me decently, as I am sure you will, you may be satisfied that -I shall carry out my part of the bargain. My bosom friends tell one -another that I am worldly and heartless and all that--but I've never -lied seriously or broken a promise in my life.” - -“Very well. Let us leave it at that,” said Morland. “I suppose your -people will have no objection?” - -“None whatever,” replied Norma, drily. - -“When can I announce our engagement?” - -“Whenever you like.” - -He took two or three reflective steps about the room and reseated -himself on the sofa. - -“Norma,” he said softly, bending towards her, “I believe on such -occasions there is a sort of privilege accorded to a fellow--may I?” - -She glanced at him, hesitated, then proffered her cheek. He touched it -with his lips. - -The ceremony over, there ensued a few minutes of anticlimax. Norma -breathed more freely. There had been no difficulties, no hypocrisies. -The mild approach to rapture on Morland's part was perhaps, after all, -only a matter of common decency, to be accepted by her as a convention -of the _scène à faire_. So was the kiss. She broke the spell of -awkwardness by rising, crossing the room, and turning off an electric -pendant that illuminated the full-length portrait on the wall. - -“We can't stand Mrs. Wolff-Salamon's congratulations so soon,” she said -with a laugh. - -Conversation again became possible. They discussed arrangements. -King suggested a marriage in the autumn. Norma, with a view to the -prolongation of what appealed to her as a novel and desirable phase of -existence--maidenhood relieved of the hateful duty of husband-hunting -and unclouded by parental disapprobation--pleaded for delay till -Christmas. She argued that in all human probability the Parliamentary -vacancy at Cosford, the safe seat on which Morland reckoned, would occur -in the autumn, and he could not fix the date of an election at his -own good pleasure. He must, besides, devote his entire energy to the -business; time enough when it was over to think of such secondary -matters as weddings, bridal tours, and the setting up of establishments. - -“But you have to be considered, Norma,” he said, half convinced. - -“My dear Morland,” she replied with a derisive lip, “I should never -dream of coming between you and your public career.” - -He reflected a moment. “Why should we not get married at once?” - -Norma laughed. “You are positively pastoral! No, my dear Morland, that's -what the passionate young lover always says to the coy maiden in the -play, but if you will remember, it does n't seem to work even there. -Besides, you must let me gratify my ambitions. When I was very young, -I vowed I would marry an emperor. Then I toned him down into a prince. -Later, becoming more practical, I dreamed of a peer. Finally I descended -to a Member of Parliament. I can't marry you before you are a Member.” - -“You could have had dozens of 'em for the asking, I'm sure,” returned -the prospective legislator with a grin. “Take them all round, they're a -shoddy lot.” - -He yielded eventually to Norma's proposal, alluding, however, with an -air of ruefulness, to the infinite months of waiting he would have to -endure. Tactfully she switched him off the line of sentiment to that -of soberer politics. She put forward the platitude that a Parliamentary -life was one of great interest. Morland did not rise even to this level -of enthusiasm. - -“'Pon my soul, I really don't know why I'm going in for it. I promised -old Potter years ago that I would come in when he gave up, and the -people down there more or less took it for granted, the duchess -included, and so without having thought much of it one way or the other, -I find myself caught in a net. It will be a horrible bore. The whole of -the session will be one dismal yawn. Never to be certain of sitting down -to one's dinner in peace and comfort. Never to know when one will have -to rush off at a moment's notice to take part in a confounded division. -To have shoals of correspondence on subjects one knows nothing of and -cares less for. It will be the life of a sweated tailor. And I, of all -people, who like to take things easy! I'm not quite sure whether I'm an -idiot or a hero.” - -He ended in a short laugh and leaned against the mantelpiece, his hands -in his pockets. - -“It would be the sweet and pretty thing for me to say,” remarked Norma, -“that in my eyes you will always be heroic.” - -“Well, 'pon my soul, I shall be. We 'll see precious little of one -another.” - -“We'll have all the more chance of prolonging our illusions,” she -replied. - -On the whole, however, her conduct towards him was irreproachable. The -thaw from her usual iciness to this comparatively harmless raillery -flattered the lover's self-esteem. Woman-wise, as every man in the -profundity of his vain heart believes himself to be, he not only -attributed the change to his own powers of seduction, but interpreted as -significant of a yet greater transformation. A man of Morland's type is -seldom afflicted with a morbid subtlety of perception; and when he has -gained for his own personal use and adornment a woman of singular -distinction, he may be readily pardoned for a slight attack of fatuity. - -The idyllic hour was brought to a close by the return of Norma's -parents. As Norma, shrinking from the vulgarity of the prearranged scene -and intolerable maternal coaching in her part, had not informed them of -her appointment with Morland, alleging as an excuse for not going to the -opera a disinclination to be bored to tears by _Aida_, they were mildly -surprised by his presence in the house at so late an hour. In a few -words he acquainted them with what had taken place. He formally asked -their consent. Mr. Hardacre wrung his hand fervently. Mrs. Hardacre's -steel-grey eyes glittered welcome into her family. She turned to -her dear child and expressed her heartfelt joy. Norma, submissive -to conventional decencies, suffered herself to be kissed. Mother and -daughter had given up kissing as a habit for some years past, though -they practised it occasionally before strangers. Mr. Hardacre put -his arm around her in a diffident way and patted her back, murmuring -incoherent wishes for her happiness. Everything to be said and done -was effected in a perfectly well-bred manner. Norma spoke very little, -regarding the proceedings with an impersonal air of satiric interest. At -last Mr. Hardacre suggested to Morland a chat over whisky and soda and -a cigar in the library. In unsophisticated circles it is not unusual -at such a conjuncture for a girl's friends and relations to afford -the lovers some unblushing opportunity of bidding each other a private -farewell. Norma, anticipating any such possible though improbable -departure from sanity on the part of her parents, made good her escape -after shaking hands in an ordinary way with Morland. Mrs. Hardacre -followed her upstairs, eager to learn details, which were eventually -given with some acidity by her daughter, and the two men retired below. - -“My boy,” said Mr. Hardacre, as they parted an hour afterwards, “you -will find that Norma has had the training that will make her a damned -fine woman.” - - - - -Chapter IV--THE GREAT FROCK EPISODE - -JIMMIE PADGATE was the son of a retired commander in the Navy, of -irreproachable birth and breeding, of a breezy impulsive disposition, -and with a pretty talent as an amateur actor. Finding idleness the root -of all boredom, he took to the stage, and during the first week of his -first provincial tour fell in love with the leading lady, a fragile waif -of a woman of vague upbringing. That so delicate a creature should have -to face the miseries of a touring life--the comfortless lodgings, -the ill-cooked food, the damp death-traps of dressing-rooms, the long -circuitous Sunday train-journeys--roused him to furious indignation. He -married her right away, took her incontinently from things theatrical, -and found congenial occupation in adoring her. But the hapless lady -survived her marriage only long enough to see Jimmie safe into short -frocks, and then fell sick and died. The impulsive sailor educated the -boy in his own fashion for a dozen years or so, and then he, in his -turn, died, leaving his son a small inheritance to be administered by -his only brother, an easy-going bachelor in a Government office. This -inheritance sufficed to send Jimmie to Harrow, where he began his -life-long friendship with Morland King, and to the École des Beaux-Arts -in Paris, where he learned many useful things beside the method of -painting pictures. When he returned to London, his uncle handed him over -the hundred or two that remained, and, his duty being accomplished, fell -over a precipice in the Alps, and concerned himself no more about his -nephew. Then Jimmie set to work to earn his living. - -When he snatched the child Aline from the embraces of her tipsy aunt and -carried her out into the street, wondering what in the world he should -do with her, he was just under thirty years of age. How he had earned a -livelihood till then and kept himself free from debt he scarcely knew. -When he obtained a fair price for a picture, he deposited a lump sum -with his landlord in respect of rent in advance, another sum with the -keeper of the little restaurant where he ate his meals, and frittered -the rest away among his necessitous friends. In the long intervals -between sales, he either went about penniless or provided himself with -pocket money by black and white or other odd work that comes in the -young artist's way. His residence at that time consisted in a studio and -a bedroom in Camden Town. His wants were few, his hopes were many. He -loved his art, he loved the world. His optimistic temperament brought -him smiles from all those with whom he came in contact--even from -dealers, when he wasted their time in expounding to them the -commercial value of an unmarketable picture. He was quite happy, quite -irresponsible. When soberer friends reproached him for his hand-to-mouth -way of living, he argued that if he scraped to-day he would probably -spread the butter thick tomorrow, thus securing the average, the golden -mean, which was the ideal of their respectability. As for success, -that elusive will-o'-the-wisp, the man who did not enjoy the humour of -failure never deserved to succeed. - -But when he had rescued Aline from the limbo over the small apothecary's -shop, as thoughtlessly and as gallantly as his father before him had -rescued the delicate lady from the trials of theatrical vagabondage, he -found himself face to face with a perplexing problem. That first night -he had risen from an amorphous bed he had arranged for himself on the -studio floor, and entered his own bedroom on tiptoe, and looked with -pathetic helplessness on the tiny child asleep beneath his bedclothes. -If it had been a boy, he would have had no particular puzzle. A boy -could have been stowed in a corner of the studio, where he could have -learned manners and the fear of God and the way of smiling at adversity. -He would have profited enormously, as Jimmie felt assured, by his -education. But with a girl it was vastly different. An endless vista -of shadowy, dreamy, delicate possibilities perplexed him. He conceived -women as beings ethereal, with a range of exquisite emotions denied -to masculine coarseness. Even the Rue Bonaparte had not destroyed his -illusion, and he still attributed to the fair Maenads of the Bal des -Quatre-z' Arts the lingering fragrance of the original Psyche. Of course -Jimmie was a fool, as ten years afterwards Norma had decided; but this -view of himself not occurring to him, he had to manage according to his -lights. Here was this mysterious embryo goddess entirely dependent on -him. No corner of the studio and rough-and-tumble discipline for her. -She must sleep on down and be covered with silk; the airs of heaven must -not visit her cheek too roughly; the clatter of the brazen world must -not be allowed to deafen her to her own sweet inner harmonies. Jimmie -was sorely perplexed. - -His charwoman next morning could throw no light on the riddle. She had -seven children of her own, four of them girls, and they had to get along -the best way they could. She was of opinion that if let alone and just -physicked when she had any complaint, Aline would grow up of her own -accord. Jimmie said that this possibility had not struck him, but -doubtless the lady was right. Could she tell him how many times a day -a little girl ought to be fed and what she was to eat? The charwoman's -draft upon her own family experiences enlightened Jimmie so far that -he put a sovereign into her hand to provide a dinner for her children. -After that he consulted her no more. It was an expensive process. - -Meanwhile it was obvious that a studio and one bedroom would not be -sufficient accommodation, and Jimmie, greatly daring, took a house. He -also engaged a resident housekeeper for himself and a respectable cat -for Aline, and when he had settled down, after having spent every penny -he could scrape together on furniture, began to wonder how he could pay -the rent. A month or two before he would have as soon thought of buying -a palace in Park Lane as renting a house in St. John's Wood--a cheap, -shabby little house, it is true; but still a house, with drawing-room, -dining-room, bedrooms, and a studio built over the space where once the -garden tried to smile. He wandered through it with a wonderment quite as -childish as that of Aline, who had helped him to buy the furniture. But -how was he ever going to pay the rent? - -After a time he ceased asking the question. The ravens that fed Elijah -provided him with the twenty quarterly pieces of gold. Picture-dealers -of every hue and grade supplied him with the wherewithal to live. -In those early days he penetrated most of the murky byways of his -art--alleys he would have passed by with pinched nose a year before, -when an empty pocket and an empty stomach concerned himself alone. -Now, when the money for the last picture had gone, and no more was -forthcoming by way of advance on royalties on plates, and the black and -white market was congested, he did amazing things. He copied old Masters -for a red-faced, beery print-seller in Frith Street, who found some -mysterious market for them. The price can be gauged by the fact that -years afterwards Jimmie recognised one of his own copies in an auction -room, and heard it knocked down as a genuine Velasquez for eleven -shillings and sixpence. He also painted oil landscapes for a dealer -who did an immense trade in this line, selling them to drapers and -fancy-warehousemen, who in their turn retailed them to an art-loving -public, framed in gold, at one and eleven pence three farthings; and the -artist's rate of payment was five shillings a dozen--panels supplied, -but not the paint. To see Jimmie attack these was the child Aline's -delight. In after years she wept in a foolish way over the memory. He -would do half a dozen at a time: first dash in the foregrounds, either -meadows or stretches of shore, then wash in bold, stormy skies, then a -bit of water, smooth or rugged according as it was meant to represent -pool or sea; then a few vigorous strokes would put in a ship and a -lighthouse on one panel, a tree and a cow on a second, a woman and a -cottage on a third. And all the time, as he worked at lightning speed, -he would laugh and joke with the child, who sat fascinated by the magic -with which each mysterious mass of daubs and smudges grew into a living -picture under his hand. When his invention was at a loss, he would -call upon her to suggest accessories; and if she cried out “windmill,” - suddenly there would spring from under the darting brush-point a mill -with flapping sails against the sky. Now and again in his hurry Jimmie -would make a mistake, and Aline would shriek with delight: - -“Why, Jimmie, that's a cow!” - -And sure enough, horned and uddered, and with casual tail, a cow was -wandering over the ocean, mildly speculating on the lighthouse. Then -Jimmie would roar with laughter, and he would tether the cow to a buoy -and put in a milkmaid in a boat coming to milk the cow, and at Aline's -breathless suggestion, a robber with a bow and arrow shooting the -unnatural animal from the lighthouse top. Thus he would waste an hour -elaborating the absurdity, finishing it off beautifully so that it -should be worthy of a place on Aline's bedroom wall. - -The months and years passed, and Jimmie found himself, if not on the -highroad to fortune, at least relieved of the necessity of frequenting -the murky byways aforesaid. He even acquired a little reputation as a -portrait painter, much to his conscientious, but comical despair. “I -am taking people's money under false pretences,” he would say. “I am an -imaginative painter. I can't do portraits. Your real portrait painter -can jerk the very soul out of a man and splash it on to his face. I -can't. Why do they come to me to be photographed, when Brown, Jones, -or Robinson would give them a portrait? Why can't they buy my -subject-pictures which are good? In taking their money I am a mercenary, -unscrupulous villain!” Indeed, if Aline had not been there to keep him -within the bounds of sanity, his Quixotism might have led him to send -his clients to Brown or Jones, where they could get better value for -their money. But Aline was there, rising gradually from the little child -into girlhood, and growing in grace day by day. After all, the charwoman -seemed to be right. The tender plant, left to itself, thrived, shot up -apparently of its own accord, much to Jimmie's mystification. It never -occurred to him that he was the all in all of her training--her -mother, father, nurse, teacher, counsellor, example. Everything she was -susceptible of being taught by a human being, he taught her--from the -common rudiments when she was a little child to the deeper things of -literature and history when she was a ripening maiden. Her life was -bound up with his. Her mind took the prevailing colour of his mind as -inevitably as the grasshopper takes the green of grass or the locust the -grey-brown of the sand. But Jimmie in his simple way regarded the girl's -sweet development as a miracle of spontaneous growth. - -Yet Aline on her part instinctively appreciated the child in Jimmie, and -from very early years assumed a quaint attitude of protection in common -every-day matters. From the age of twelve she knew the exact state of -his financial affairs, and gravely deliberated with him over items of -special expenditure; and when she was fourteen she profited by a change -in housekeepers to take upon herself the charge of the household. Her -unlimited knowledge of domestic science was another thing that astounded -Jimmie, who to the end of his days would have cheerfully given two -shillings a pound for potatoes. And thus, while adoring Jimmie and -conscious that she owed him the quickening of the soul within her, she -became undisputed mistress of her small material domain, and regarded -him as a kind of godlike baby. - -At last there came a memorable day. According to a custom five or six -years old, Jimmie and Aline were to spend New Year's Eve with some -friends, the Frewen-Smiths. - -He was a rising architect who had lately won two or three important -competitions and had gradually been extending his scale of living. The -New Year's Eve party was to be a much more elaborate affair than usual. -Aline had received a beautifully printed card of invitation, with -“Dancing” in the corner. She looked through her slender wardrobe. Not -a frock could she find equal to such a festival. And as she gazed -wistfully at the simple child's finery laid out upon her bed, a desire -that had dawned vaguely some time before and had week by week broadened -into craving, burst into the full blaze of a necessity. She sat down on -her bed and puckered her young brows, considering the matter in all -its aspects. Then, with her sex's guilelessness, she went down to the -studio, where Jimmie was painting, and put her arms round his neck. Did -he think she could get a new frock for Mrs. Frewen-Smith's party? - -“My dear child,” said Jimmie in astonishment, “what an idiotic -question!” - -“But I want really a nice one,” said Aline, coaxingly. - -“Then get one, dear,” said Jimmie, swinging round on his stool, so as to -look at her. - -“But I'd like you to give me this one as a present. I don't want it -to be like the others that I help myself to and you know nothing -about--although they all are presents, if it comes to that--I want you -to give me this one specially.” - -Jimmie laid down palette and mahl-stick and brush, and from a -letter-case in his pocket drew out three five-pound notes. - -“Will this buy one?” - -The girl's eyes filled with tears. “Oh, you are silly, Jimmie,” she -cried. “A quarter of it will do.” - -She took one of the notes, kissed him, and ran out of the studio, -leaving Jimmie wondering why the female sex were so prone to weeping. -The next day he saw a strange woman established at the dining-room -table. He learned that it was a dressmaker. For the next week an air of -mystery hung over the place. The girl, in her neat short frock and with -her soft brown hair tied with a ribbon, went about her household duties -as usual; but there was a subdued light in her eyes that Jimmie noticed, -but could not understand. Occasionally he enquired about the new frock. -It was progressing famously, said Aline. It was going to be a most -beautiful frock. He would have seen nothing like it since he was born. - -“Vanity, thy name is little girls,” he laughed, pinching her chin. - -On the evening of the 31st of December Jimmie, in his well-worn evening -suit, came down to the dining-room, and for the first time in his life -waited for Aline. He sat down by the fire with a book. The cab that had -been ordered drew up outside. It was a remarkable thing for Aline to -be late. After a while the door opened, and a voice said, “I am ready.” - Jimmie rose, turned round, and for a moment stared stupidly at the sight -that met his eyes. It was Aline certainly, but a new Aline, quite a -different Aline from the little girl he had known hitherto. Her brown -hair was done up in a mysterious manner on the top of her head, and the -tip of a silver-mounted tortoise-shell comb (a present, she afterwards -confessed, from Constance Deering, who was in her secret) peeped -coquettishly from the coils. The fashionably-cut white evening dress -showed her neck and shoulders and pretty round arms, and displayed in a -manner that was a revelation the delicate curves of her young figure. A -little gold locket that Jimmie had given her rose and fell on her bosom. -She met his stare in laughing, blushing defiance, and whisked round so -as to present a side view of the costume. The astonishing thing had a -train. - -“God bless my soul!” cried Jimmie. “It never entered my head!” - -“What?” - -“That you're a young woman, that you're grown up, that we'll have all -the young men in the place falling in love with you, that you'll be -getting married, and that I'm becoming a decrepit old fogey. Well, God -bless my soul!” - -She came up and put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. - -“You think it becoming, don't you, Jimmie?” - -“Becoming! Why, it's ravishing! It's irresistible! Do you mean to -say that you got all that, gloves and shoes and everything, out of a -five-pound note?” - -She nodded. - -“Good Lord!” said Jimmie in astonishment. - -In this manner came realisation of the fact that the tiny child he had -undressed and put to sleep in his own bed ten years before had grown -into a woman. The shock brought back some of the old perplexities, and -created for a short while an odd shyness in his dealings with her. He -treated her deferentially, regarded apologetically the mean viands on -which he forced this fresh-winged goddess to dine, went out and wasted -his money on adornments befitting her rank, and behaved with such -pathetic foolishness that Aline, crying and laughing, threatened to -run away and earn her living as a nursery-maid if he did not amend -his conduct. Whereupon there was a very touching scene, and Jimmie's -undertaking to revert to his previous brutality put their relations -once more on a sound basis; but all the same there stole into Jimmie's -environment a subtle grace which the sensitive in him was quick to -perceive. Its fragrance revived the tender grace of a departed day, -before he had taken Aline--a day that had ended in a woeful flight to -Paris, where he had arrived just in time to follow through the streets -a poor little funeral procession to a poor little grave-side in the -cemetery of Bagneux. Her name was Sidonie Bourdain, and she was a good -girl and had loved Jimmie with all her heart. - -The tender grace was that of March violets. The essence of a maid's -springtide diffused itself through the house, and springtide began -to bud again in the man's breast. It was a strange hyperphysical -transfusion of quickening sap. His jesting pictured himself as of a -sudden grown hoary, the potential father of a full-blown woman, two or -three years short of grandfatherdom. But these were words thrown off -from the very lightness of a mood, and vanishing like bubbles in the -air. Deep down worked the craving of the man still young for love -and romance and the sweet message in a woman's eyes. It was a gentle -madness--utterly unsuspected by its victim--but a madness such as -the god first inflicts upon him whom he desires to drive to love's -destruction. In the middle of it all, while Aline and himself were -finding a tentative footing on the newly established basis of their -relationship, the ironical deity took him by the hand and led him into -the cold and queenly presence of Norma Hardacre. - -After that Jimmie fell back into his old ways with Aline, and the Great -Frock Episode was closed. - - - - -Chapter V--A BROKEN BUTTERFLY - -ALINE sat in the studio, the picture of housewifely concern, mending -Jimmie's socks. It was not the unoffending garments that brought the -expression into her face, but her glance at the old Dutch clock--so -old and crotchety that unless it were tilted to one side it would not -consent to go--whose hands had come with an asthmatic whir to the hour -of eleven. And Jimmie had not yet come down to breakfast. She had called -him an hour ago. His cheery response had been her sanction for putting -the meal into preparation, and now the bacon would be uneatable. She -sighed. Taking care of Jimmie was no light responsibility. Not that he -would complain; far from it. He would eat the bacon raw or calcined if -she set it before him. But that would not be for his good, and hence the -responsibility. In slipping from her grasp and doing the things he ought -not to do, he was an eel or a twelve-year-old schoolboy. Last night, -for instance, instead of finishing off some urgent work for an art -periodical, he had assured her in his superlative manner that it was of -no consequence, and had wasted his evening with her at the Earl's Court -Exhibition. It had been warm and lovely, and the band and the bright -crowd had set her young pulses throbbing, and they had sat at a little -table, and Jimmie had given her some celestial liquid which she had -sucked through a straw, and altogether, to use her own unsophisticated -dialect, it had been perfectly heavenly. But it was wrong of Jimmie to -have sacrificed himself for her pleasure, and to have deceived her into -accepting it. For at three or four o'clock she had heard him tiptoeing -softly past her door on his way to bed, and the finished work she -had found on his table this morning betrayed his occupation. Even the -consolation of scolding him for oversleep and a spoiled breakfast was -thus denied. She spread out her hand in the sock so as to gauge the -extent of a hole, and, contemplating it, sighed again. - -The studio was a vast room distempered in bluish grey, and Aline, -sitting solitary at the far end, in the line of a broad quivering beam -of light that streamed through a lofty window running the whole width -of the north-east side, looked like a little brown saint in a bare -conventual hall. For an ascetic simplicity was the studio's key-note. -No curtains, draperies, screens, Japaneseries, no artistic scheme of -decoration, no rare toys of furniture filled the place with luxurious -inspiration. Here and there about the walls hung a sketch by a brother -artist; of his own unsold pictures and studies some were hung, others -stacked together on the floor. An old, rusty, leather drawing-room suite -distributed about the studio afforded sitting accommodation. There was -the big easel bearing the subject-picture on which he now was at work, -with a smaller easel carrying the study by its side. On the model-stand -a draped lay figure sprawled grotesquely. A long deal table was the -untidy home of piles of papers, books, colours, brushes, artistic -properties. A smaller table at the end where Aline sat was laid for -breakfast. It was one of Jimmie's eccentricities to breakfast in the -studio. The dining-room for dinner--he yielded to the convention; for -lunch, perhaps; for breakfast, no. All his intimate life had been -passed in the studio; the prim little drawing-room he scarcely entered -half-a-dozen times in the year. - -Aline was contemplating the hole in the sock when the door opened. -She sprang to her feet, advanced a step, and then halted with a little -exclamation. - -“Oh, it's you!” - -“Yes. Are you disappointed?” asked the smiling youth who had appeared -instead of the expected Jimmie. - -“I can get over it. How are you, Tony?” - -Mr. Anthony Merewether gave her the superfluous assurance that he was in -good health. He had the pleasant boyish face and clean-limbed figure of -the young Englishman upon whom cares sit lightly. Aline resumed her work -demurely. The young man seated himself near by. - -“How is Jimmie?” - -“Whom are you calling 'Jimmie'?” asked Aline. “Mr. Padgate, if you -please.” - -“You call him Jimmie.” - -“I've called him so ever since I could speak. I think it was one of the -first three words I learned. When you can say the same, you can call him -Jimmie.” - -“Well, how is Mr. Padgate?” the snubbed youth asked with due humility. - -“You can never tell how a man is before breakfast. Why are n't you at -work?” - -He bowed to her sagacity, and in answer to her question explained the -purport of his visit. He was going to spend the day sketching up the -river. Would she put on her hat and come with him? - -“A fine lot of sketching you'd do, if I did,” said Aline. - -The young man vowed with fervour that as soon as he had settled down to -a view he would work furiously and would not exchange a remark with her. - -“Which would be very amusing for me,” retorted Aline. “No, I can't come. -I'm far too busy. I've got to hunt up a model for the new picture.” - -Tony leant back in his chair, dispirited, and began to protest. She -laughed at his woeful face, and half yielding, questioned him about -trains. He overwhelmed her with a rush of figures, then paused to give -her time to recover. His eyes wandered to the breakfast-table, where lay -Jimmie's unopened correspondence. One letter lay apart from the others. -Tony took it up idly. - -“Here's a letter come to the wrong house.” - -“No; it is quite right,” said Aline. - -“Who is David Rendell, Esquire?” - -“Mr. Rendell is a friend of Jimmie's, I believe.” - -“I have never heard of him. What's he like?” - -“I don't know. Jimmie never speaks of him,” replied Aline. - -“That's odd.” - -The young man threw the letter on the table and returned to the subject -of the outing. She must accompany him. He felt a perfect watercolour -working itself up within him. One of those dreamy bits of backwater. He -had a title for it already, “The Heart of Summer.” The difference her -presence in the punt would make to the picture would be that between -life and deadness. - -The girl fluttered a shy, pleased glance at him. But she loved to tease; -besides, had she not but lately awakened to the sweet novelty of her -young womanhood? - -“Perhaps Jimmie won't let me go.” - -Tony sprang to his feet. “Jimmie won't let you go!” he exclaimed in -indignant echo. “Did he ever deny you a pleasure since you were born?” - -Her eyes sparkled at his tribute to the adored one's excellences. -“That's just where it is, you see, Tony. His very goodness to me won't -let me do things sometimes.” - -The servant hurried in with the breakfast-tray and the news that the -master was coming down. Aline anxiously inspected the bacon. To her -relief it was freshly cooked. In a minute or two a voice humming an air -was heard outside, and Jimmie entered, smilingly content with existence. - -“Hallo, Tony, what are you doing here, wasting the morning light? Have -some breakfast? Why haven't you laid a place for him?” - -Tony declined the invitation, and explained his presence. Jimmie rubbed -his hands. - -“A day on the river! The very thing for Aline. It will do her good.” - -“I did n't say I was going, Jimmie.” - -“Not going? Rubbish. Put on your things and be off at once.” - -“How can I until I have given you your breakfast? And then there's the -model--you would never be able to engage her by yourself. And you must -have her to-morrow.” - -“I know I'm helpless, dear, but I can engage a model.” - -“And waste your time. Besides, you won't be able to find the address.” - -“There are cab-horses, dear, with unerring instinct.” - -“Your breakfast is getting cold, Jimmie,” said Aline, not condescending -to notice the outrage of her economic principles. - -Eventually Jimmie had his way. Tony Merewether was summarily dismissed, -but bidden to return in an hour's time, when Aline would be graciously -pleased to be ready. She poured out Jimmie's coffee, and sat at the side -of the table, watching him eat. He turned to his letters, picked up the -one addressed to “David Rendell.” Aline noticed a shade of displeasure -cross his face. - -“Who is Mr. Rendell, Jimmie?” asked Aline. - -“A man I know, dear,” he replied, putting the envelope in his pocket. He -went on with his breakfast meditatively for a few moments, then opened -his other letters. He threw a couple of bills across the table. His face -had regained its serenity. - -“See that these ill-mannered people are paid, Aline.” - -“What with, dear?” - -“Money, my child, money. What!” he exclaimed, noting a familiar -expression on her face. “Are we running short? Send them telegrams to -say we'll pay next week. Something is bound to come in by then.” - -“Mrs. Bullingdon ought to send the cheque for her portrait,” said Aline. - -“Of course she will. And there's something due from Hyam. What a thing -it is to have great expectations! Here's one from Renshaw,” he said, -opening another letter. “'Dear Padgate'--Dear Padgate!” He put his hands -on the table and looked across at Aline. “Now, what on earth can I have -done to offend him? I've been 'Dear Jimmie' for the last twelve years.” - -Aline shook her young head pityingly. “Don't you know yet that it is -always 'Dear Padgate' when they want to borrow money of you?” - -Jimmie glanced at the letter and then across the table again. - -“Dear me,” he said thoughtfully. “Your knowledge of the world at your -tender age is surprising. He does want money. Poor old chap! It is -really quite touching. 'For the love of God lend me four pounds ten to -carry me on to the end of the quarter.'” - -“That's two months off. Mr. Renshaw will have to be more economical than -usual,” said Aline, drily. “I am afraid he drinks dreadfully, Jimmie.” - -“Hush, dear!” he said, becoming grave. “A man's infirmities are his -infirmities, and we are not called upon to be his judges. How much have -we in the house altogether?” he asked with a sudden return to his bright -manner. - -“Ten pounds three and sixpence.” - -“Why, that's a fortune. Of course we can help Renshaw. Wire him his four -pounds ten when you go out.” - -“But, Jimmie----” expostulated this royal person's minister of finance. - -“Do what I say, my dear,” said Jimmie, quietly. - -That note in his voice always brought about instant submission, fetched -her down from heights of pitying protection to the prostrate humility -of a little girl saying “Yes, Jimmie,” as to a directing providence. She -did not know from which of the two positions, the height or the depth, -she loved him the more. As a matter of fact, the two ranges of emotion -were perfect complements one of the other, the sex in her finding -satisfaction of its two imperious cravings, to shelter and to worship. - -The Renshaw incident was closed, locked up as it were in her heart by -the little snap of the “Yes, Jimmie.” One or two other letters were -discussed gaily. The last to be opened was a note from Mrs. Deering. -“Come to lunch on Sunday and bring Aline. I am asking your friend Norma -Hardacre.” Aline clapped her hands. She had been longing to see that -beautiful Miss Hardacre again. Of course Jimmie would go? He smiled. - -“Another unconscious sitting for the portrait,” he said. His glance -wandered to a strainer that stood with its face to the wall, at a -further end of the room, and he became absent-minded. Lately he had been -dreaming a boy's shadowy dreams, too sweet as yet for him to seek to -give them form in his waking hours. A warm touch on his hand brought him -back to diurnal things. It was the coffee-pot held by Aline. - -“I have asked you twice if you would have more coffee,” she laughed. - -“I suppose I'm the happiest being in existence,” he said irrelevantly. - -Aline poured out the coffee. “You have n't got much to make you happy, -poor dear!” she remarked, when the operation was concluded. - -His retort was checked by a violent peal at the front door-bell and a -thundering knock. - -“That's Morland,” cried Jimmie. “He is like the day of doom--always -heralds his approach by an earthquake.” - -Morland it was, in riding tweeds, a whip in his hand. He pointed an -upbraiding finger at the half-eaten breakfast. The sloth of these -painters! Aline flew to the loved one's protection. Jimmie had not gone -to bed till four. The poor dear had to sleep. - -“I did n't get to bed till four, either,” said Morland, with the -healthy, sport-loving man's contempt for people who require sleep, “but -I was up at eight and was riding in the Park at nine. Then I thought I'd -come up here. I've got some news for you.” - -Aline escaped. Morland's air of health and prosperity overpowered her. -She did not dare whisper detraction of him to Jimmie, in whose eyes he -was incomparable, but to Tony Merewether she had made known her wish -that he did not look always so provokingly clean, so eternally satisfied -with himself. All the colour of his mind had gone into his face, was her -uncharitable epigram. Aline, it will be observed, saw no advantage in a -tongue perpetually tipped with honey. - -“What is your news?” asked Jimmie, as soon as they were alone. - -“I have done it at last,” said Morland. - -“What?” - -“Proposed. I'm engaged. I'm going to be married.” - -Jimmie's honest face beamed pleasure. He wrung Morland's hand. The best -news he had heard for a long time. When had he taken the plunge into the -pool of happiness? - -“Last night.” - -“And you have come straight to tell me? It is like you. I am touched, it -is good to know you carry me in your heart like that.” - -Morland laughed. “My dear old Jimmie--” - -“I am so glad. I never suspected anything of the kind. Well, she's an -amazingly lucky young woman whoever she is. When can I have a timid peep -at the divinity?” - -“Whenever you like--why, don't you know who it is?” - -“Lord, no, man; how should I?” - -“It's Norma Hardacre.” - -“Norma Hardacre!” The echo came from Jimmie as from a hollow cave, and -was followed by a silence no less cavernous. The world was suddenly -reduced to an empty shell, black, meaningless. - -“Yes,” said Morland, with a short laugh. He carefully selected, cut, -and lit a cigar, then turned his back and examined the half-finished -picture. He felt the Briton's shamefacedness in the novelty of the -position of affianced lover. The echo that in Jimmie's ears had sounded -so forlorn was to him a mere exclamation of surprise. His solicitude as -to the cigar and his inspection of the picture saved him by lucky chance -from seeing Jimmie's face, which wore the blank, piteous look of a child -that has had its most cherished possession snatched out of its hand and -thrown into the fire. Such episodes in life cannot be measured by time -as it is reckoned in the physical universe. To Jimmie, standing amid the -chaos of his dreams, indefinite hours seemed to have passed since he had -spoken. For indefinite hours he seemed to grope towards reconstruction. -He lived intensely in the soul's realm, where time is not, was swept -through infinite phases of emotion; finally awoke to a consciousness -of renunciation, full and generous. Perhaps a minute and a half had -elapsed. He crossed swiftly to Morland and clapped him on the shoulder. - -“The woman among all women I could have wished for you.” - -His voice quavered a little; but Morland, turning round, saw nothing in -Jimmie's eyes but the honest gladness he had taken for granted he should -find there. The earnest scrutiny he missed. He laughed again. - -“There are not many in London to touch her,” he said in his -self-satisfied way. - -“Is there one?” - -“You seem more royalist than--well, than Morland King,” said the happy -lover, chuckling at his joke. “I wish I had the artist's command -of superlatives as you have, Jimmie. It would come in deuced handy -sometimes. Now if, for instance, you wanted to describe the reddest -thing that ever was, you would find some hyperbolic image for it, -whereas I could only say it was damned red. See what I mean?” - -“It does n't matter what you say, but what you feel,” said Jimmie. -“Perhaps we hyperbolic people fritter away emotions in the mere frenzy -of expressing them. The mute man often has deeper feelings.” - -“Oh, I'm not going to set up as an unerupted volcano,” laughed Morland. -“I'm only the average man that has got the girl he has set his heart -on--and of course I think her in many ways a paragon, otherwise I should -n't have set my heart on her. There are plenty to pick from, God knows. -And they let you know it too, by Jove. You're lucky enough to live out -of what is called Society, so you can't realise how they shy themselves -at you. Sometimes one has to be simply a brute and dump 'em down hard. -That's what I liked about Norma Hardacre. She required no dumping.” - -“I should think not,” said Jimmie. - -“There's one thing that pleases me immensely,” Morland remarked, “and -that is the fancy she has taken for you. It's genuine. I've never heard -her talk of any one else as she does of you. She is not given to gush, -as you may have observed.” - -“It's a very deep pleasure to me to hear it,” said Jimmie, looking -bravely in the eyes of the happy man. “My opinion of Miss Hardacre I -have told you already.” - -Morland waved his cigar as a sign of acceptance of the tribute to the -lady. - -“I was thinking of myself,” he said. “There are a good many men I shall -have to drop more or less when I'm married. Norma would n't have 'em -in the house. There are others that will have to be on probation. Now I -shouldn't have liked you to be on probation--to run the risk of my -wife not approving of you--caring to see you--you know what I mean. But -you're different from anybody else, Jimmie. I'm not given to talking -sentiment--but we've grown up together--and somehow, in spite of our -being thrown in different worlds, you have got to be a part of my life. -There!” he concluded with a sigh of relief, putting on his hat and -holding out his hand, “I've said it!” - -The brightening of Jimmie's eyes gave token of a heart keenly touched. -Deeply rooted indeed must be the affection that could have impelled -Morland to so unusual a demonstration of feeling. His nature was as -responsive as a harp set in the wind. His counterpart in woman would -have felt the tears well into her eyes. A man is allowed but a breath, a -moisture, that makes the eyes bright. Morland had said the final word of -sentiment; equally, utterly true of himself. Morland was equally a part -of his life. It were folly to discuss the reasons. Loyal friendships -between men are often the divinest of paradoxes. - -The touch upon Jimmie's heart was magnetic. It soothed pain. It set free -a flood of generous emotion, even thanksgiving that he was thus allowed -vicarious joy in infinite perfections. It was vouchsafed him to be happy -in the happiness of two dear to him. This much he said to Morland, with -what intensity of meaning the fortunate lover was a myriad leagues from -suspecting. - -“I'll see you safely mounted,” said Jimmie, opening the studio door. -Then suddenly like a cold wind a memory buffeted him. He shut the door -again. - -“I forgot. I have a letter for you. It came this morning.” - -Morland took the letter addressed to “David Rendell” which Jimmie drew -from his pocket, and uttered an angry exclamation. - -“I thought this infernal business was over and done with.” - -He tore open the envelope, read the contents, then tilted his hat to -the back of his head, and sitting down on one of the dilapidated -straight-backed chairs of the leather suite, looked at Jimmie in -great perplexity. In justice to the man it must be said that anger had -vanished. - -“I suppose you know what these letters mean that you have been taking in -for me?” - -“I have never permitted myself to speculate,” said Jimmie. “You asked me -to do you a very great service. It was a little one. You are not a man -to do anything dishonourable. I concluded you had your reasons, which it -would have been impertinent of me to inquire into.” - -“It's the usual thing,” said Morland, with a self-incriminatory shrug. “A -girl.” - -“A love affair was obvious.” - -Morland spat out an exclamation of impatient disgust for himself and -rose to his feet. - -“Heaven knows how it began--she was poor and lonely--almost a lady--and -she had beauty and manners and that sort of thing above her class.” - -“They always have,” said Jimmie, with a pained expression. “You need n't -tell me the story. It's about the miserablest on God's earth, is n't it -now?” - -“I suppose so. Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie!” - -The unwonted rarefied air of sentiment that he had been breathing for -the last twelve hours had, as it were, intoxicated him. Had the letter -reached him the day before, he would have left the story connected -with it in the cold-storage depository where men are wont to keep such -things. No one would have dreamed of its existence. But now he felt an -exaggerated remorse, a craving for confession, and yet he made the naked -remorseful human's instinctive clutch at palliatives. - -“Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie. I swear I loved her at first. -You know what it is. You yourself loved a little girl in Paris--you told -me about it--did n't you?” - -Jimmie set his teeth, and said, “Yes.” - -Morland went on. - -“Some women have ways with them, you know. They turn you into one of -those toy thermometers--you hold the bulb, and the spirit in it rises -and bubbles. She got hold of me that way--I bubbled, I suppose--it -was n't her fault, she was sweet and innocent. It was her nature. You -artistic people call the damned thing a temperament, I believe. Anyhow -I was in earnest at the beginning. Then--one always does--I found it was -only a passing fancy.” - -“And like a passing cab it has splashed you with mud. How does the -matter stand now?” - -“Read this,” said Morland, handing him the letter. - -“Dearest,” it ran, “the time is coming when you can be very good to me. -Jenny.” That was all. Jimmie, holding the paper in front of him, looked -up distressfully at Morland. - -“'The time is coming when you can be very good to me.' How confoundedly -pathetic! Poor little girl! Oh, damn it, Morland, you are going to be -good to her, are n't you?” - -“I'll do all I can. Of course I'll do all I can. I tell you I'm not a -beast. Heaps of other men would n't care a hang about it. They would -tell her to go to the devil. I'm not that sort.” - -“I know you're not,” said Jimmie. - -Morland lit another cigar with the air of a man whose virtues deserve -some reward. - -“The letter can only have one interpretation. Have you known of it?” - -“Never dreamed of it.” - -“Was there any question of marriage?” - -“None whatever. Difference of position and all the rest of it. She quite -understood. In fact, it was like your Quartier Latin affair.” - -Jimmie winced. “It was n't the Quartier Latin--and I was going to marry -her--only she died before--oh, don't mind me, Morland. What's going to -be done now?” Morland shrugged his shoulders again, having palliated -himself into a more normal condition. His conscience, to speak by the -book, was clothed and in its right mind. - -“It's infernally hard lines it should come just at this time. You see, -I've heaps of things to think about. My position--Parliament--I'm going -to contest Cosford in the autumn. If the constituency gets hold of any -scandal, I'm ruined. You know the Alpine heights of morality of a -British constituency--and there's always some moral scavenger about. And -then there's Norma--” - -“Yes, there's Norma,” said Jimmie, seriously. - -“It's unpleasant, you see. If she should know--” - -“It would break her heart,” said Jimmie. - -Morland started and looked at Jimmie stupidly, his mental faculties -for the second paralysed, incapable of grappling with the idea. Was it -scathing sarcasm or sheer idiocy? Recovering his wits, he realised -that Jimmie was whole-heartedly, childishly sincere. With an effort he -controlled a rebellious risible muscle at the corner of his lip. - -“It would give her great pain,” he said in grave acquiescence. - -“It's a miserable business,” said Jimmie. - -Morland paced the studio. Suddenly he stopped. - -“Should there be any unpleasantness over this, can I rely on your help -to pull me through?” - -“You know you can,” said Jimmie. - -Morland looked relieved. - -“May I write a note?” - -Jimmie pointed to a corner of the long deal table. - -“You'll find over there all the materials for mending a broken -butterfly,” he said sadly. - - - - -Chapter VI--THE LOVERS - -PROUD in the make-believe that he was a fashionable groom, the loafer -holding Morland's horse touched his ragged hat smartly at his temporary -master's approach. - -“Give him something, Jimmie; I have n't any change,” cried Morland. He -mounted and rode away, debonair, with a wave of farewell. Jimmie drew -from his pocket the first coin to hand, a florin, and gave it to the -loafer, who came down forthwith from his dreams of high estate to -commonplace earth, and after the manner of his class adjured the Deity -to love the munificent gentleman. The two shillings would bring gladness -into the hearts of his sick wife and starving children. Subject to the -attestation of the Deity, he put forward as a truth the statement that -they had not eaten food for a week. He himself was a hard-working man, -but the profession of holding horses in the quiet roads of St. John's -Wood was not lucrative. - -“You're telling me lies, I'm afraid,” said Jimmie, “but you look -miserable enough to say anything. Here!” He gave him two more shillings. -The loafer thanked him and made a bee-line for the nearest public-house, -while Jimmie, forgetting for the moment the pitiable aspect that poor -humanity sometimes wears in the persons of the lowly, watched Morland's -well-set-up figure disappear at the turn of the road. There was no sign -of black care sitting behind that rider. It perched instead on Jimmie's -shoulders, and there stayed for the rest of the day. In spite of his -staunch trust in Morland's honour and uprightness, he found it hard to -condone the fault. The parallel which Morland had not too ingenuously -drawn with the far-away passionate episode in his own life had not -seemed just. He had winced, wondered at the failure in tact, rebelled -against the desecration of a memory so exquisitely sad. The moment after -he had forgiven the blundering friend and opened his heart again to -pity. He was no strict moralist, turning his head sanctimoniously aside -at the sight of unwedded lovers. His heart was too big and generous. -But between the romance of illicit love and the commonplace of vulgar -seduction stretched an immeasurable distance. The words of the pathetic -note, however, lingering in his mind, brought with them a redeeming -fragrance. They conjured up the picture of sweet womanhood. They hinted -no reproach; merely a trust which was expected to be fulfilled. To her -Morland was the honourable gentleman all knew; he had promised nothing -that he had not performed, that he would not perform. All day long, as -he sat before his easel, mechanically copying folds of drapery from the -lay figure on the platform, Jimmie strove to exonerate his friend from -the baser fault, and to raise the poor love affair to a plane touched by -diviner rays. But the black care still sat upon his shoulders. - -The next morning he rose earlier than usual, and sought Morland at his -house in Sussex Gardens. He found him eating an untroubled breakfast. -Silver dishes, tray, and service were before him. A great flower-stand -filled with Maréchal Niel roses stood in the centre of the table. Fine -pictures hung round the walls. Rare china, old oak chairs, and sideboard -bright with silver bowls--all the harmonious and soothing luxury of a -rich man's dining-room, gave the impression of ease, of a life apart -from petty cares, petty vices, petty ambitions. A thick carpet sheltered -the ears from the creaking footsteps of indiscretion. Awnings before the -open windows screened the too impertinent light of the morning sun. And -the face and bearing of the owner of the room were in harmony with its -atmosphere. Jimmie reproached himself for the doubts that had caused -his visit. Morland laughed at them. Had he not twice or thrice declared -himself not a beast? Surely Jimmie must trust his oldest friend to have -conducted himself honourably. There was never question of marriage. -There had been no seduction. Could n't he understand? They had parted -amicably some three months ago, each a little disillusioned. Morland was -generous enough to strip a man's vanity from himself and stand confessed -as one of whom a superior woman had grown tired. The new development of -the affair revealed yesterday had, he repeated, come upon him like -an unexpected lash. The irony of it, too, in the first flush of his -engagement! Naturally he was remorseful; naturally he would do all that -a man of honour could under the circumstances. - -“More is not expected and not wanted. On my word of honour,” said -Morland. - -He had been upset, he continued smilingly. The consequences might be -serious--to himself, not so much to Jenny. There were complications -in the matter that might be tightened--not by Jenny--into a devil of -a tangle. Had he not pleaded special urgency when he had first asked -Jimmie to take in the letters under a false name? It might be a devil -of a tangle, he repeated. - -“But till that happens--and please God it may never happen--we may -dismiss the whole thing from our minds,” said Morland, reassuringly. -“Jenny will want for nothing, and want nothing. Do you think if there -were any melodramatic villainy on my conscience I would go and engage -myself to marry Norma Hardacre?” - -This was the final argument that sent the black care, desperately -clinging with the points of its claws, into infinite space. Jimmie -smiled again. Morland waved away the uncongenial topic and called for a -small bottle of champagne on ice. A glass apiece, he said, to toast the -engagement. Rightly, champagne was the wine of the morning. - -“It is the morning sunshine itself distilled,” said Jimmie, lifting up -his glass. - -He went home on the top of an omnibus greatly cheered, convinced that, -whatever had happened, Morland had done no grievous wrong. When Aline -went to the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him busy upon the -sketch portrait of Norma, and humming a tune--a habit of his when work -was proceeding happily under his fingers. She looked over his shoulder -critically. - -“That's very good,” she condescended to remark. “Now that Miss Hardacre -is engaged to Mr. King, why don't you ask her to come and sit?” - -“Do you think it's a good likeness?” he asked, leaning back and -regarding the picture. - -“It is the best likeness you have ever got in a portrait,” replied -Aline, truthfully. - -“Then, wisest of infants, what reason could I have for asking Miss -Hardacre to sit? Besides, I don't want her to know anything about it.” - -Aline glowed with inspiration. Why should things the most distantly -connected with somebody else's marriage so exhilarate the female heart? - -“Is it going to be a wedding present, Jimmie?” - -“It is a study in indiscretion, my child,” he replied enigmatically. - -“You are perfectly horrid.” - -“I suppose I am,” he admitted, looking at the portrait with some -wistfulness. “Ugly as sin, and with as much manners as a kangaroo -=--does your feminine wisdom think a woman could ever fall in love with -me?” - -She touched caressingly the top of his head where the hair was thinning, -and her feminine wisdom made this astounding answer: - -“Why, you are too old, Jimmie dear.” - -Too old! He turned and regarded her for a moment in rueful wonder. -Absurd though it was, the statement gave him a shock. He was barely -forty, and here was this full-grown, demure, smiling young woman telling -him he was too old for any of her sex to trouble their heads about him. -His forlorn aspect brought a rush of colour to the girl's cheeks. She -put her arms round his neck. - -“Oh, Jimmie, I have hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm a silly little goose. It's -a wonder that every woman on earth is n't in love with you.” - -“That is the tone of exaggerated affection, but not of conviction,” he -said. “I am the masculine of what in a woman is termed _passée_. I might -gain the esteem of a person of the opposite sex elderly like myself, but -my gallant exterior can no longer inspire a romantic passion. My day is -over. No, you have not hurt me. The sword of truth pierces, but it does -not hurt.” - -Then he broke into his good, sunny laughter, and rose and put his arm -with rough tenderness round her shoulder, as he had done ever since she -could walk. - -“You are the youngest thing I have come across for a long time.” - -Aline, as she nestled up against him on their way out of the studio, was -thus impressed with a salutary consciousness of her extreme youth. -But this in itself magnified Jimmie's age. She loved him with a pure -passionate tenderness; no one, she thought, could know him without -loving him; but her ideal of the hero of romance for whom fair ladies -pined away in despairing secret was far different. She was too young -as yet, too little versed in the signs by which the human heart can -be read, to suspect what his playful question implied of sadness, -hopelessness, renunciation. - -On Sunday they lunched with Connie Deering. Morland and Norma and old -Colonel Pawley, an ancient acquaintance of every one, were the only -other guests. It was almost a family party, cried Connie, gaily; and it -had been an inspiration, seeing that the invitations had been sent out -before the engagement had taken place. Jimmie and Aline, being the first -arrivals, had their hostess to themselves for a few moments. - -“They both think it bad form to show a sign of it, but they are awfully -gone upon each other,” Connie said. “So you must n't judge Norma by what -she says. All girls like to appear cynical nowadays. It's the fashion. -But they fall in love in the same silly way, just as they used to.” - -“I am glad to hear they are fond of one another,” said Jimmie. “The -deeper their love the happier I shall be.” - -The little lady looked at him for a second out of the corner of her eye. - -“What an odd thing to say!” - -“It ought to be a commonplace thing to feel.” - -“In the happiness of others there is always something that is pleasing. -By giving him the lie like that you will make poor Rochefoucauld turn in -his grave.” - -“He ought to be kept revolving like Ixion,” said Jimmie. “His maxims are -the Beatitudes of Hell.” - -He laughed off the too trenchant edge of his epigram, qualifying it in -his kind way. After all, you must n't take your cynic too literally. No -doubt a kindly heart beats in the ducal bosom. - -“I should like to know your real opinion of the devil,” laughed Mrs. -Deering. - -The opportunity for so doing was lost for the moment. The lovers -entered, having driven together from the Park. At the sight of Norma, -Aline twitched Jimmie's arm with a little gasp of admiration and -Jimmie's breath came faster. He had not seen her hitherto quite so -coldly, radiantly beautiful. Perhaps it was the great white hat she -wore, a mystery of millinery, chiffon and roses and feathers melting -one with the other into an effect of broad simplicity, that formed an -unsanctified but alluring halo to a queenly head. Perhaps it was the -elaborately simple cream dress, open-worked at neck and arms, that -moulded her ripe figure into especial stateliness. Perhaps, thought -poor Jimmie, it was the proud loveliness into which love was wont to -transfigure princesses. - -She received Connie's kiss and outpouring of welcome with her usual -mocking smile. “If you offer me congratulations, I shall go away, -Connie. I have been smirking for the last hour and a half. We were so -exhausted by playing the sentimental idiots that we did n't exchange a -word on our way here; though I believe Morland likes it. We saw those -dreadful Fry-Robertsons bearing down upon us. He actually dragged me up -to meet them, as who should say 'Let us go up and get congratulated.'” - -“I don't see why I should hide my luck under a bushel,” laughed Morland. - -“Thank you for the compliment,” said Norma. “But if you won at Monte -Carlo you would n't pin the banknotes all over your coat and strut about -the street. By the way, Connie, we're late. Need we apologise?” - -“You're not the last. Colonel Pawley is coming.” - -“Oh dear! that old man radiates boredom. How can you stand him, Connie?” - -“He's the sweetest thing on earth,” said her hostess. - -Norma laughed a little contemptuously and came forward to greet Aline -and Jimmie. As she did so, her face softened. Jimmie, drawing her aside, -offered his best wishes. - -“The happiness of a man whom I have loved like a brother all my life -can't be indifferent to me. On that account you must forgive my speaking -warmly. May you be very happy.” - -“I shall be happy in having such a champion of my husband for a -brother-in-law,” said Norma, lightly. - -“A loyal friend of your own, if you will,” said Jimmie. - -There was a short pause. Norma ran the tip of her gloved finger down the -leaf of a plant on a stand. They were by the window. A vibration in his -voice vaguely troubled her. - -“What do you really mean by 'loyal'?” she said at last, without looking -at him. - -“The word has but one meaning. If I tried to explain further, I should -only appear to be floundering in fatuity.” - -“I believe you are the kind that would stick to a woman through thick -and thin, through good repute and ill repute. That's what you mean. Only -you don't like to hint that I might at any time become disreputable. I -may. All things are possible in this world.” - -“Not that,” said Jimmie. “Perhaps I was unconsciously pleading for -myself. Say you are a queen in your palace. While humbly soliciting -a position in your household, I somewhat grandiloquently submit my -qualifications.” - -“What's all this about?” asked Morland, coming up, having overheard the -last sentence. - -“I am pleading for a modest position in Her Majesty's Household,” said -Jimmie. - -“We'll fit him up with cap and bells,” laughed Morland, “and make him -chief jester, and give him a bladder to whack us over the head with. -He's fond of doing that when we misbehave ourselves. Then he can get us -out of our scrapes, like the fellow in Dumas--what's his name--Chicot, -was n't it?” - -Pleased with his jest, he turned to acquaint Connie with Jimmie's new -dignity. Both the jest and the laugh that greeted it jarred upon Norma. -Jimmie said to her good-humouredly: - -“I might be Chicot, the loyal friend, without the cap and bells. I am a -dull dog.” - -She looked out of the window and laughed somewhat bitterly. - -“I think you are a great deal too good to have anything to do with any -of us.” - -“It pleases you to talk arrant nonsense,” said he. - -Luncheon was announced. At table Jimmie and Norma were neighbours. Aline -sat between Morland, who was next to Norma, and old Colonel Pawley. As -the latter at first talked to Mrs. Deering, Aline and Morland carried -on a frigid conversation. They had never been friends. To Morland, -naturally, she was merely a little girl of no account, who had often -been annoyingly in the way when he wanted to converse with Jimmie; and -Aline, with a little girl's keen intuition, had divined more of his real -character than she was aware of, and disliked and distrusted him. Like -a well-brought-up young lady she answered “yes” and “no” politely to -his remarks, but started no fresh topic. At last, to her relief, Colonel -Pawley rescued her from embarrassed silence. To him she had extended -her favour. He was a short fat man, with soft hands and a curious soft -purring voice, and the air rather of a comfortable old lady than of -a warrior who had retired on well-merited laurels. He occupied his -plentiful leisure by painting on silk, which he made into fans for -innumerable lady acquaintances. In his coat-tail pocket invariably -reposed a dainty volume bound in crushed morocco--a copy of little -poems of his own composition--and this, when he was in company with a -sympathetic feminine soul, he would abstract with apoplectic wheezing -and bashfully present. He also played little tunes on the harp. Aline, -with the irreverence of youth, treated him as a kind of human toy. - -His first word roused the girl's spontaneous gaiety. She bubbled over -with banter. The mild old warrior chuckled with her, threw himself -unreservedly into the childish play. Connie whispered to Jimmie: - -“I should like to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck and turn him -loose in a meadow. I am sure he would frisk.” - -Morland exchanged casual remarks with Norma. She answered absently. The -change in Aline from the unsmiling primness wherewith Morland's society -had cloaked her to sunny merriment with Colonel Pawley was too marked to -escape her attention. In spite of the ludicrousness of the comparison, -she could not help perceiving that the old man who radiated boredom -had a quality of charm unpossessed by Morland, and she felt absurdly -disappointed with her lover. During the last few days she had made -up her mind to like him. Sober forecast of a lifetime spent in the -inevitable intimacy of marriage had forced her to several conclusions. -One, that it was essential to daily comfort that a woman should find the -personality of a husband pleasing rather than antipathetic. With more -ingenuousness than the world would have put to her credit, she had -set herself deliberately to attain this essential ideal. The natural -consequence was a sharply critical attitude and a quickly developing -sensitiveness, whereby, as in a balance of great nicety, the minor -evidences of his character were continually being estimated. Thus, -Morland's jest before luncheon had jarred upon her. His careless air -of patronage had betrayed a lack of appreciation of something--the word -“spiritual” was not in her vocabulary, or she might have used it--of -something, at all events, in his friend which differentiated him from -the casual artist and which she herself had, not without discomfort, -divined at their first meeting. The remark had appeared to her in bad -taste. Still ruffled, she became all the more critical, and noted with -displeasure his failure to have won a child's esteem. And yet she felt -a touch of resentment against Jimmie for being the innocent cause of her -discomposure. It gave rise to a little feline impulse to scratch him and -see whether he were not mortal like every one else. - -“Do you ever exhibit at the Royal Academy?” she asked suddenly. - -“They won't have me,” said he. - -“But you send in, don't you?” - -“With heart-breaking regularity. They did have me once.” He sighed. “But -that was many years ago, when the Academy was young and foolish.” - -“I have heard they are exceedingly conservative,” said Norma, with the -claws still unsheathed. “Perhaps you work on too original lines.” - -But she could draw from him no expression of vanity. He smiled. “I -suppose they don't think my pictures good enough,” he said simply. - -“Jimmie's work is far too good for that wretched Academy,” said Connie -Deering. “The pictures there always give you a headache. Jimmie's never -do.” - -“I should like to kill the Academy,” Aline broke in sharply, on the -brink of tears. A little tragedy of murdered hopes lurked in her tone. -Then, seeing that she had caused a startled silence, she reddened and -looked at her plate. Jimmie laughed outright. - -“Is n't she bloodthirsty? All the seventy of them weltering in their -gore! Only the other day she said she would like to slaughter the whole -Chinese Empire, because they ate puppies and birds'-nests!” - -Connie chimed a frivolous remark in tune with Jimmie. Morland, as -befitted a coming statesman, took up the parable of the march westwards -of the yellow races. Colonel Pawley, who had been through the Taeping -rebellion, was appealed to as an authority on the development of the -Chinaman. He almost blushed, wriggled uncomfortably, and as soon as he -could brought the conversation to the milder topic of Chinese teacups. -Successful, he sighed with relief and told Aline the story of the willow -pattern. The Royal Academy was forgotten. But Norma felt guilty and -ashamed. - -Nor was she set more at ease with herself by a careless remark of -Morland's as Connie's front door closed behind them an hour or so later. - -“I am afraid you rather rubbed it into poor old Jimmie about the -Academy. The little girl looked as if she would like to fly at you. She -is a spoiled little cat.” - -“I have noticed she does n't seem to like you,” answered Norma, sourly. - -The drive as far as Grosvenor Place, where Norma proposed to pay a -solitary call, was not as pleasant as he had anticipated. He parted from -her somewhat resentful of an irritable mood, and walked back towards -Sussex Gardens through the Park, reviling the capriciousness of woman. - - - - -Chapter VII--A MAD PROPHET - -A VIOLENT man, pallid and perspiring, with crazy dark eyes and a -voice hoarse from the effort to make himself heard above the noise of -a hymn-singing group a few yards to the right and of a brazen-throated -atheist on the left, was delivering his soul of its message to -mankind--a confused, disconnected, oft-delivered message, so -inconsequent as to suggest that it had been worn into shreds and tatters -of catch-phrases by process of over-delivery, yet uttered with the -passion of one inspired with a new and amazing gospel. - -“I am speaking to you, the working-men, the proletariat, the downtrodden -slaves of the plutocracy, the creators in darkness of the wealth that -the idlers enjoy in dazzling halls of brightness. I do not address the -bourgeoisie rotting in sloth and apathy. They are the parasites of the -rich. They sweat the workers in order to pander to the vices of the -rich. They despise the poor and grovel before the rich. They shrink from -touching the poor man's hand, but they offer their bodies slavishly to -the kick of the rich man's foot. It is not in their hands, but in yours, -brother toilers and brother sufferers, that lies the glorious work -of the great social revolution whose sun just rising is tipping the -mountain-tops with its radiant promise of an immortal day. It is -against them and not with them that you have to struggle. In that day -of Armageddon you will find all tailordom, all grocerdom, all -apothecarydom, all attorneydom arrayed in serried ranks around the -accursed standards of plutocracy, of aristocracy, of bureaucracy. Beware -of them. Have naught to do with them on peril of your salvation. The -great social revolution will come not from above, but from below, from -the depths. _De profundis clamavi!_ “From the depths have I cried, O -Lord!” - -He paused, wiped his forehead, cleared his throat, and went on in -the same strain, indifferent to ribald interjections and the Sunday -apathy of his casual audience. The mere size of the crowd he was -addressing seemed to satisfy him. The number was above the average. A -few working-men in the inner ring drank in the wild utterances with -pathetic thirst. The majority listened, half amused, half attracted by -the personality of the speaker. A great many were captivated by the -sonority of the words, the unfaltering roll of the sentences, the vague -associations and impressions called up by the successive images. It is -astonishing what little account our sociological writers take of the -elementary nature of the minds of the masses; how easily they are -amused; how readily they are imposed upon; how little they are capable -of analytical thought; at the same time, how intellectually vain they -are, which is their undoing. The ineptitudes of the music hall which -make the judicious grieve--the satirical presentment, for instance, of -the modern fop, which does not contain one single salient characteristic -of the type, which is the blatant convention of fifty years back--are -greeted with roars of unintelligent laughter. Books are written, vulgar, -fallacious, with a specious semblance of philosophical profundity, and -sell by the hundred thousand. The masses read them without thought, -without even common intelligence. It is too great an intellectual effort -to grasp the ideas so disingenuously presented; but the readers can -understand just enough to perceive vaguely that they are in touch with -the deeper questions of philosophy, and through sheer vanity delude -themselves into the belief that they are vastly superior people in being -able to find pleasure in literature of such high quality. And the word -Mesopotamia is still blessed in their ears. Nothing but considerations -such as these can explain the popularity of some of the well-known -Sunday orators in Hyde Park. The conductors of the various properly -organised mission services belong naturally to a different category. It -is the socialist, the revivalist, the atheist, the man whose blood and -breath seem to have turned into inexhaustible verbiage, that present the -problem. - -Some such reflections forced themselves into the not uncharitable mind -of Jimmie as he stood on the outer fringe of the pallid man's audience -and listened wonderingly to the inspired nonsense. He had left a -delighted Aline to be taken by Colonel Pawley to the Zoological Gardens, -and had strolled down from Bryanston Square to the north side of the -Park. To lounge pleasantly on a Sunday afternoon from group to group -had always been a favourite Sunday pastime, and the pallid man was a -familiar figure. Jimmie had often thought of painting him as the central -character of some historical picture--an expectorated Jonah crying to -Nineveh, or a Flagellant in the time of the plague, with foaming -mouth and bleeding body, calling upon the stricken city to repent. His -artist's vision could see the hairy, haggard, muscular anatomy beneath -the man's rusty black garments. He could make a capital picture out of -him. - -The man paused only for a few seconds, and again took up his -parable--the battle of the poor and the rich. The flow of words -poured forth, platitude on platitude, in turbid flood, sound and fury -signifying elusively, sometimes the collectivist doctrine, at others the -mere _sans-culotte_ hatred of the aristocrat. Jimmie, speculating on -the impression made by the oratory on the minds of the audience, moved -slightly apart from the crowd. His glance wandering away took in Morland -on his way home, walking sedately on the path towards the Marble Arch. -He ran across the few yards of intervening space and accosted his friend -gaily. - -“Come and have a lesson in public speaking, and at the same time hear -the other side of the political question.” - -“What! go and stand among that rabble?” cried Morland, aghast. - -“You'll have to stand among worse, so you had better get used to it. -Besides, the man is a delightful fellow, with a face like Habakkuk, -capable of everything. To hear him one would think he were erupting -red-hot lava, whereas really it is molten omelette. Come. Your purple -and fine linen will be a red rag to him.” - -Laughing, he dragged the protesting Morland within earshot of the -speaker. Morland listened superciliously for a few moments. - -“What possible amusement can you find in this drivel?” he asked. - -“It is so devilish pathetic,” said Jimmie, “so human--the infinite -aspiration and the futile accomplishment. Listen.” - -The hymn next door had ceased, the atheist was hunting up a reference, -and the words of the pallid man's peroration resounded startlingly in -the temporary silence: - -“In that day when the sovereign people's will is law, when the -weakest and the strongest shall share alike in the plenteous bounty of -Providence, no longer shall the poor be mangled beneath the Juggernaut -car of wealth, no longer shall your daughters be bound to the rich man's -chariot-wheels and whirled shrieking into an infamy worse than death, no -longer shall the poor man's soul burn with hell fire at the rich man's -desecration of the once pure woman that he loves, no more rottenness, -foulness, stench, iniquity, but the earth shall rest in purity, securely -folded in the angel wings of peace!” - -He waved his arms in a gesture of dismissal, turned his back on the -crowd, and sat down exhausted on the little wooden bench that had been -his platform. The crowd gradually moved away, some laughing idly, others -reflectively chewing the cud of their Barmecide meal. Morland pointed a -gold-mounted cane at the late speaker. - -“Who and what is this particular brand of damned fool?” - -Jimmie checked with a glance a working-man who had issued from the inner -ring and was passing by, and translated Morland's question into soberer -English. - -“Him?” replied the working-man. “That's Daniel Stone, sir. Some people -say he's cracked, but he always has something good to say and I like -listening to him.” - -“What does he do when he is n't talking?” asked Jimmie. “Snatches a nap -and a mouthful of food, I should say, sir,” said the man, with a -laugh. He caught Jimmie's responsive smile, touched his cap, like the -downtrodden slave that he was, and went on his way. Jimmie glanced round -for Morland and saw him striding off rapidly. He ran after him. - -“What is the hurry?” - -“That damned man--” - -“Which? The one I was talking to? You surely did n't object--?” - -“Of course not. The other--Daniel Stone--” - -“Well, what of him?” - -“He's a dangerous lunatic. I have heard of him. Why the devil did you -want me to make an exhibition of myself among this scum?” - -Jimmie stared. Morland broke into a laugh and held out his hand. -“Never mind. The beast got on my nerves with his chariot wheels and his -desecration of maidens and the rest of it. I must be off. Good-bye.” - -Jimmie watched him disappear through the gate and turned back towards -the groups. The pallid man was still sitting on his bench; a few -children hung round and scanned him idly. Presently he rose and tucked -his bench under his arm, and walked slowly away from the scene of his -oratory. His burning eyes fixed themselves on Jimmie as he passed by. -Jimmie accosted him. - -“I have been greatly interested in your address.” - -“I saw you with another of the enemies of mankind. You are a gentleman, -I suppose?” - -“I hope so,” said Jimmie, smiling. - -“Then I have nothing to do with you,” retorted the man, with an angry -gesture. “I hate you and all your class.” - -“But what have we done to you?” - -“You have turned my blood into gall and my soul into consuming fire.” - -“Let us get out of the dust and sit down under a tree and talk it over. -We may get to understand each other.” - -“I have no wish to understand you,” said the man, coldly. “Good-day to -you.” - -“Good-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile. “I am sorry you will not let us -be better acquainted.” - -He turned to the next group, who were listening to a disproof of God's -existence. But the atheist was a commonplace thunderer in a bowler -hat, whose utterances fell tame on Jimmie's ears after those of -the haggard-eyed prophet. He wandered away from the crowd, striking -diagonally across the Park, and when he found comparative shade and -solitude, cast himself on the grass beneath a tree. The personality of -Daniel Stone interested him. He began to speculate on his daily life, -his history. Why should he have vowed undying hatred against his social -superiors? He reminded Jimmie of a character in fiction, and after some -groping the association was recalled. It was the monk in Dumas, the son -of Miladi. He wove an idle romance about the man. Perhaps Stone was -the disinherited of noble blood, thirsting for a senseless vengeance. -Gradually the drowsiness of deep June fell upon him. He went fast -asleep, and when he awoke half an hour afterwards and began to walk -homewards, he thought no more of Daniel Stone. - -But on following Sunday afternoons he frequently stood for a while -to listen to the man. It was always the same tale--sound and fury, -signifying nothing. On one occasion he caught Jimmie's eye, and -denounced him vehemently as an enemy of society. After that, Jimmie, -who was of a peaceful disposition, ceased attending his lectures. He -sympathised with Morland. - - - - -Chapter VIII--HER SERENE HIGHNESS - -A PRETTY quarrel between a princess and a duchess gave rise to -circumstances in which the destiny of Jimmie was determined, or in -which, to speak with modern metaphor, the germ of his destiny found the -necessary conditions for development. Had it not been for this quarrel, -Jimmie would not have stayed at the Hardacres' house; and had he not -been their guest, the events hereafter to be recorded would not have -happened. Such concatenation is there in the scheme of human affairs. - -The Duchess of Wiltshire was a mighty personage in the Hardacres' part -of the county. She made social laws and abrogated them. She gave and she -took away the brevet of county rank. She made and unmade marriages. To -fall under the ban of her displeasure was to be disgraced indeed. She -held a double sway in that the duke, her husband, had delegated to her -his authority in sublunary matters, he being a severe mathematician and -a dry astronomer, who looked at the world out of dull eyes, and regarded -it with indifference as a mass of indistinguishable atoms forming a -nebula, a sort of Milky Way, concerning which philosophic minds had from -time to time theorised. He lived icily remote from society; the duchess, -on the contrary, was warmly interested in its doings. In the county she -reigned absolute; but in London, recognising the fact that there -were other duchesses scattered about Mayfair and Belgravia, she was -high-minded enough to modify her claims to despotic government. She felt -it, however, her duty to decree that her last reception should mark the -end of the London season. - -To this reception the Hardacres were always invited. - -In previous years they had mounted the great staircase of Wiltshire -House, their names had been called out, the duchess had given them the -tips of her fingers, and the duke, tall, white-haired, ascetic, had let -them touch his hand with the air of a man absently watching ants crawl -over him; they had passed on, mixed with the crowd, and seen their -host and hostess no more. But this year, to Mrs. Hardacre's thrilling -delight, the duchess gave her quite a friendly squeeze, smiled her -entire approbation of Mrs. Hardacre's existence, and detained her for a -moment in conversation. - -“Don't forget to come and have a little talk with me later. I have n't -seen you since dear Norma's engagement.” - -To dear Norma she was equally urbane, called her a lucky girl, and -presented her as a bride-elect to the duke, who murmured a vague formula -of congratulation which he had remembered from early terrestrial days. - -“I can't tell you how proud I am of you, Norma!” said Mrs. Hardacre, -with a lump in her throat, as they passed on. “The dear duchess! I -wonder if I am sufficiently grateful to Providence.” - -Norma, although in her heart pleased by the manifestation of ducal -favour, could not let the opportunity for a taunt pass by. - -“You can refer to it in your prayers, mother: 'O God, I thank Thee for -shedding Her Grace upon me.' Won't that do, father.” - -“Eh, what?” asked Mr. Hardacre, very red in the face, trailing half a -pace behind his wife and daughter. - -Norma repeated her form of Thanksgiving. - -“Ha! ha! Devilish good! Tell that in the club,” he said in high -good-humour. His wife's glance suddenly withered him. - -“I don't approve of blasphemy,” she said. - -“Towards whom, mother dear?” asked Norma, suavely. “The Almighty or the -duchess?” - -“Both,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a snap. - -Mr. Hardacre, seeing in the distance a man to whom he thought he could -sell a horse, escaped from the domestic wrangle. Mother and daughter -wandered through the crowd, greeted by friends, pausing here and there -to exchange a few words, until they came to the door of the music-room, -filled to overflowing, where an operatic singer held the assembly in -well-bred silence. At the door the crush was ten deep. On the outskirts -conversation hummed like an echo of the noise from the suite of rooms -behind. There they were joined by Morland. Mrs. Hardacre told him of the -duchess's graciousness. He grinned, taking the information with the air -of a man to whom the favour of duchesses bestowed upon his betrothed -is a tribute to his own excellence. He thought she would be pleased, he -said. They must get the old girl to come to the wedding. Mrs. Hardacre -was pained, but she granted young love indulgence for the profanity. -If they only could, she assented, the success of the ceremony would be -assured. Norma turned to Morland with a laugh. - -“We shall be married with a vengeance, if it's sanctified by the -duchess. Do you think a parson is at all necessary?” - -He joined in her mirth. She drew him aside. - -“Well, what's the news?” - -He accounted, loverwise, for his day.. At last he said: - -“I looked in upon Jimmie Padgate this morning. I wanted him to go to -Christie's and buy a picture or two for me--for us, I ought to say,” - he added, with a little bow. “He knows more about 'em than I do. He's a -happy beggar, you know,” he exclaimed, after a short pause. - -“What makes you say so?” - -“His perfect conviction that everything is for the best in the best of -all possible worlds. There he was sitting at lunch over the black scrag -end of a boiled mutton bone and a rind of some astonishing-looking -yellow cheese--absolutely happy. And he waved his hand towards it as if -it had been a feast of Lucullus and asked me to share it.” - -“Did you?” asked Norma. - -“I had n't time,” said Morland. “I was fearfully busy to-day.” - -Norma did not reply. She looked over the heads of the crowd in front -of her towards the music-room whence came the full notes of the singer. -Then she said to him with a little shiver: - -“I am glad you are a rich man, Morland.” - -“So am I. Otherwise I should not have got you.” - -“That's true enough,” she said. “I pretend to scoff at all this, but I -could n't live without it.” - -“It has its points,” he assented, turning and regarding the brilliant -scene. - -Norma turned with him. She was glad it was her birthright and her -marriage-right. The vast state ballroom, lit as with full daylight by -rows of electric lamps cunningly hidden behind the cornices and -the ground-glass panels of the ceiling, stately with its Corinthian -pilasters and classic frieze, its walls adorned with priceless pictures, -notably four full-length cavaliers of Vandyck, smiling down in their -high-bred way upon this assembly of their descendants, its atmosphere -glittering with jewels, radiant with colour, contained all the -magnificence, all the aristocracy, all the ambitions, all the ideals -that she had been trained to worship, to set before her as the lodestars -of her life's destiny. Here and there from amid the indistinguishable -mass of diamonds, the white flesh of women's shoulders, the black and -white chequer and brilliant uniforms of men, flashed out the familiar -features of some possessor of an historic name, some woman of -world-famed beauty, some great personage whose name was on the lips of -Europe. There, by the wall, lonely for the moment, stood the Chinese -Ambassador, in loose maroon silk, and horse-tail plumed cap, his yellow, -wizened face rendered more sardonic by the thin drooping grey moustache -and thin grey imperial, looking through horn spectacles, expressionless, -impassive, inhumanly indifferent, at one of the most splendid scenes a -despised civilisation could set before him. There, in the centre of a -group of envious and unembarrassed ladies, an Indian potentate blazed in -diamonds and emeralds, and rolled his dusky eyes on charms which (most -oddly to his Oriental conceptions) belonged to other men. Here a Turk's -red fez, a Knight of the Garter's broad blue sash, an ambassador's -sparkle of stars and orders; and there the sweet, fresh rosebud beauty -of a girl caught for a moment and lost in the moving press. And there, -at the end of the vast, living hall, a dimly seen haggard woman, with -a diamond tiara on her grey hair, surrounded by a little court of the -elect, sat Her Serene Highness, the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck, sister -to a reigning monarch, and bosom friend, despite the pretty quarrel, of -Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire. - -The song in the music-room coming to an end, the audience for the most -part rose and pressed into the ballroom. The Hardacres and Morland were -driven forward. There was a long period of desultory conversation with -acquaintances. Morland, proud in the possession of Norma's beauty, -remained dutifully attendant, and received congratulations with almost -blushing gratification. Mrs. Hardacre, preoccupied by anticipation of -her promised talk with the duchess, kept casting distracted glances at -the door whereby the great lady would enter. The appearance from a group -of neighbouring people of a pleasant young fellow with a fair moustache -and very thin fair hair, who greeted her cordially, brought her back -to the affairs of the moment. This was the Honourable Charlie Sandys, -a distant relative of the duchess, and her Grand Vizier, Master of the -Horse, Groom of the Chambers, and general right-hand man. He was two and -twenty, and had all the amazing wisdom of that ingenuous age. Morland -shook hands with him, but being tapped on the arm by the fan of a -friendly dowager, left him to converse alone with Mrs. Hardacre and -Norma. The youth indicated Morland's retiring figure by a jerk of the -head. - -“Parliament--Cosford division.” - -“We hope so,” said Mrs. Hardacre. - -“Must get in. Radical for her constituency would make duchess buy her -coffin. The end of the world for her. She has a great idea of King. -Going to take him up _con amore_. And when she does take anybody up-- -well--” - -His wave of the hand signified the tremendous consequences. - -“She does n't merely uproot _him_,” said Norma, whose mind now and -then worked with disconcerting swiftness, “but she takes up also the -half-acre where he is planted.” - -“Just so,” replied the youth. “Not only him, but his manservant and -maidservant, his ox and his ass and everything that is his. Funny woman, -you know--one of the best, of course, but quaint. Thinks the Member for -Cosford is ordained by Providence to represent her in Parliament.” - -He rattled on, highly pleased with himself. Norma cast a malicious -glance at her mother, who perceptibly winced. They were shining in the -duchess's eyes in a light borrowed from Morland. They were taken up with -the ox and the ass and the remainder of Morland's live-stock. That was -the reason, then, of the exceptional marks of favour bestowed on them by -Her Grace. Mrs. Hardacre kept the muscles of her lips at the smile, but -her steely eyes grew hard. Norma, on the contrary, was enjoying herself. -Charlie Sandys was unconscious of the little comedy. - -“I am glad to see the princess here to-night,” said Mrs. Hardacre, by -way of turning the conversation. - -The youth made practically the same reply as he had made at least a -dozen times to the same remark during the course of the evening. He -was an injudicious Groom of the Chambers, being vain of the privileges -attached to his post. - -“There has been an awful row, you know,” he said confidentially, looking -round to see that he was not overheard. “They have scarcely made it up -yet.” - -“Do tell us about it, Mr. Sandys,” said Norma, smiling upon him. - -“It's rather a joke. Let us get out of the way and I'll tell you.” - -He piloted them through the crush into a corridor, and found them a -vacant seat by some palms. - -“It's all about pictures,” he resumed. “Princess wants to have her -portrait painted in London. Why she should n't have it made in Germany I -don't know. Anyhow she comes to duchess for advice. Duchess has taken -up Foljambe, you know--chap that has painted about twenty miles of women -full length--” - -“We saw the dear duchess at his Private View,” Mrs. Hardacre -interjected. - -“Yes. She runs him for all she's worth. Told the princess there was -only one man possible for her portrait, and that was Foljambe. -Princess--she's as hard as nails, you know--inquires his price, knocks -him down half. He agrees. Everything is arranged. Princess to sit -for the portrait when she stays with duchess at Chiltern Towers in -September--” - -“Oh, we are going to have the princess down with us?” Mrs. Hardacre grew -more alert. - -“Yes. Couldn't find time to sit now--going next week to -Herren-Rothbeck--coming back in September. Well, it was all settled -nicely--you know the duchess's way. On Friday, however, she takes the -princess to see Foljambe's show--for the first time. Just like her. -The princess looks round, drops her lorgnon, cries out, 'Lieber Gott -in Himmel! The man baints as if he was bainting on de bavement!' and -utterly refuses to have anything to do with him. I tell you there were -ructions!” - -He embraced a knee and leant back, laughing boyishly at the memory of -the battle royal between the high-born dames. - -“Then who is going to paint the portrait?” asked Norma. - -“That's what I am supposed to find out,” replied the youth. “But I can't -get a man to do it cheap enough. One can't go to a swell R. A. and ask -him to paint a portrait of a princess for eighteen pence.” - -Norma had an inspiration. - -“Can I recommend a friend of mine?” - -“Would he do it?”, - -“I think so--if I asked him.” - -“By Jove, who is he?” asked the youth, pulling down his shirtcuff for -the purpose of making memoranda. - -“Mr. James Padgate, 10 Friary Grove, N. W. He is Mr. King's most -intimate friend.” - -“He can paint all right, can't he?” asked the youth. - -“Beautifully,” replied Norma. “Friary, not Priory,” she corrected, -watching him make the note. She felt the uncommon satisfaction of having -performed a virtuous act; one almost of penance for her cruelty to -him on Sunday week, the memory of which had teased a not over-sensitive -conscience. The scrag end of boiled mutton and the rind of cheese had -also affected her, stirred her pity for the poor optimist, although in -a revulsion of feeling she had shivered at his lot. She had closed her -eyes for a second, and some impish wizardry of the brain had conjured -up a picture of herself sitting down to such a meal, with Jimmie at the -other side of the table. It was horrible. She had turned to fill -her soul with the solid magnificence about her. The pity for Jimmie -lingered, however, as a soothing sensation, and she welcomed the -opportunity of playing Lady Bountiful. She glanced with some malice from -the annotated cuff to her mother's face, expecting to see the glitter -of disapproval in her eyes. To her astonishment, Mrs. Hardacre wore an -expression of pleased abstraction. - -Charlie Sandys pocketed his gold pencil and retired. He was a young man -with the weight of many affairs on his shoulders. - -“That's a capital idea of yours, Norma,” said Mrs. Hardacre. - -“I'm glad you think so,” replied Norma, wonderingly. - -“I do. It was most happy. We'll do all we can to help Morland's friend. -A most interesting man. And if the princess gives him the commission, -we can ask him down to Heddon to stay with us while he is painting the -picture.” - -Norma was puzzled. Hitherto her mother had turned up the nose of -distaste against Mr. Padgate and all his works. Whence this sudden -change? Not from sweet charitableness, that was certain. Hardly from -desire to please Morland. Various solutions ran in her head. Did an -overweening ambition prompt her mother to start forth a rival to the -duchess, as a snapper up of unconsidered painters? Scarcely possible. -Defiance of the duchess? That way madness could only lie; and she was -renowned for the subtle caution of her social enterprises. The little -problem of motive interested her keenly. At last the light flashed upon -her, and she looked at Mrs. Hardacre almost with admiration. - -“What a wonderful brain you have, mother!” she cried, half mockingly, -half in earnest. “Fancy your having schemed out all that in three -minutes.” - -Enjoyment of this display of worldcraft was still in her eyes when -she came across Morland a little later; but she only told him of her -recommendation of Jimmie to paint the princess's portrait. He professed -delight. How had she come to think of it? - -“I think I must have caught the disease of altruism from Mr. Padgate,” - she said. Then following up an idle train of thought: - -“I suppose you often put work--portraits and things--in his way?” - -“I can't say that I do.” - -“Why not? You know hundreds of wealthy people.” - -“Jimmie is not a man to be patronised,” said Morland, sententiously, -“and really, you know, I can't go about touting for commissions for -him.” - -“Of course not,” said Norma; “he is far too insignificant a person to -trouble one's head about.” - -Morland looked pained. - -“I don't like to hear you talk in that way about Jimmie,” he said -reproachfully. - -The little scornful curl appeared on her lip. - -“Don't you?” was all she vouchsafed to say. Unreasonably irritated, -she turned aside and caught a passing _attache_ of the French Embassy. -Morland, dismissed, sauntered off, and Norma went down to supper -with the young Frenchman, who entertained her for half an hour with a -technical description of his motor-car. And the trouble, he said, to -keep it in order. It needed all the delicate cares of a baby. It was as -variable as a woman. - -“I know,” said Norma, stifling a yawn. “_La donna e automobile_.” - -On the drive home in the hired brougham, whose obvious hiredom caused -Norma such chafing of spirit, Mrs. Hardacre glowed with triumph, and -while her husband dozed dejectedly opposite, she narrated her good -fortunes. She had had her little chat with the duchess. They had -spoken of Mr. Padgate, Charlie Sandys having run to show her his cuff -immediately. The duchess looked favourably on the proposal. A friend -of Mr. King's was a recommendation in itself. But the princess, she -asseverated with ducal disregard of metaphor, had her own ideas of art -and would not buy a pig in a poke. They must inspect Mr. Padgate's work -before there was any question of commission. She would send Charlie -Sandys to them to-morrow to talk over the necessary arrangements. - -“I told her,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “that Mr. Padgate was coming to pay us -a visit in any case in September, and suggested that he could drive over -to Chiltern Towers every morning while the princess was honouring him -with sittings, and paint the picture there. And she quite jumped at the -idea.” - -“No doubt,” said Norma, drily. - -But her dryness had no withering effect on her mother's exuberance. The -hard woman saw the goal of a life's ambition within easy reach, and for -the exultant moment softened humanly. She chattered like a school-girl. - -“And she took me up to the princess,” she said, “and presented me -as her nearest country neighbour. Was n't that nice of her? And the -princess is such a sweet woman.” - -“Dear, dear!” said Norma. “How wicked people are! Every one says she is -the most vinegarish old cat in Christendom.” - - - - -Chapter IX--SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION - -FAME and fortune were coming at last. There was no doubt of it in -Jimmie's optimistic mind. For years they had lagged with desperately -heavy feet, but now they were in sight, slowly approaching, hand in -hand. Jimmie made fantastic preparations to welcome them, and wore his -most radiant smile. In vain did Aline, with her practical young woman's -view of things, point to the exiguity of the price fixed by Her Serene -Highness. If that was the advent of fortune, she came in very humble -guise, the girl insinuated. Jimmie, with a magnificent sweep of the -hand, dismissed such contemptible considerations as present pounds, -shillings, and pence. He was going to paint the portrait of the sister -of a reigning monarch. Did not Aline see that this might lead to his -painting the portrait of the reigning monarch himself? Would not the -counterfeit presentment of one crowned head attract the attention of -other crowned heads to the successful artist? Did she not see him -then appointed painter in ordinary to all the emperors, kings, queens, -princes, and princesses of Europe? He would star the Continent, make -a royal progress from court to court, disputed for by potentates and -flattered by mighty sovereigns. He grew dithyrambic, a condition -in which Aline regarded him as hopelessly impervious to reason. His -portraits, he said, would adorn halls of state, and the dreams that he -put on canvas, hitherto disregarded by a blind world, would find places -of honour in the Treasure Houses of the Nations. It would be fame for -him and fortune for Aline. She should go attired in silk and shod with -gold. She should have a stall at the theatre whenever she wanted, and a -carriage and pair to fetch her home. She should eat vanilla ices every -night. And then she might marry a prince and live happy ever after. - -“I don't want to marry a prince or any one else, dear,” Aline said once, -bringing visions down into the light of common day. “I just want to go -on staying with you.” - -On another occasion she hinted at his possible espousal of a princess. -Again Jimmie dropped from the empyrean, and rubbed his head ruefully. -There was only one princess in the world for him, an enthroned personage -of radiant beauty who now and then took warm pity on him and admitted -him to her friendship, but of whom it were disloyalty worse than all -folly to think of. And yet he could not help his heart leaping at the -sight of her, or the thrill quivering through him when he saw the rare -softness come into her eyes which he and none other had evoked. What he -had to give her he could give to no other woman, no other princess. The -gift was unoffered: it remained in his own keeping, but consecrated to -the divinity. He enshrined it, as many another poor chivalrous wretch -has done, in an exquisite sanctuary, making it the symbol of a vague -sweet religion whose secret observances brought consolation. But of all -this, not a whisper, not a sign to Aline. When she spoke of marriageable -princesses, he explained the rueful rubbing of his head by reference to -his unattractive old fogeydom, and his unfitness for the life of high -society. - -But Aline ought to have her prince. The coming fortune would help to -give the girl what was due to her. For himself he cared nothing. Cold -mutton and heel of cheese would satisfy him to the end of his days. -And fame? In quieter moments he shrugged his shoulders. An artist has -a message to deliver to his generation, and how can he deliver it if he -cannot sell his pictures? Let him give out to the world what was best -in him, and he would be content. Let him but be able to say, “I have -delivered my message,” and that would be fame enough. - -These were things of the depths. The surface of his mood was exuberant, -almost childish, delight, tempered with whimsical diffidence in his -power of comporting himself correctly towards such high personages. For -the duchess, who never did things by halves, and was also determined, -as she had said, of not buying a pig in a poke, had conveyed to him -the intimation that Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck -would honour him with a visit to his studio on the following Thursday. -Jimmie and Aline held long counsel together. What was the proper way to -receive a Serene Highness? Jimmie had a vague idea of an awning -outside the door and a strip of red baize down the steps and across the -pavement. Tony Merewether, who was called into consultation, suggested, -with the flippancy of youth, a brass band and a chorus of maidens to -strew flowers; whereat Aline turned her back upon him, and Jimmie, -adding pages in fancy dress to hold up the serene train and a major-domo -in a court suit with a wand, encouraged the offender. Aline retired from -so futile a discussion and went on sewing in dignified silence. At last -she condescended to throw out a suggestion. - -“If I were you, Jimmie, I should get the princess some portraits to look -at.” - -“God bless my soul,” cried Jimmie, putting down his pipe, “I never -thought of it. Tony, my boy, that child with the innocence of the dove -combines the wisdom of the original serpent. My brain reels to think -what I should be without her. We'll telegraph to all the people that -have sat to me and ask them to send in their portraits by Thursday.” - -He crossed the studio and began to rummage among the litter on the long -table. Aline asked him what he was looking for. - -“Telegram forms. Why have n't we got any? Tony, run round the corner to -the post-office, like a good boy, and get some.” - -But Aline checked the execution of this maniacal project. Three -portraits would be quite sufficient. Jimmie would have to pick out three -ladies of whom he could best ask such a favour, and write them polite -little notes and offer to send a van in the orthodox way to collect the -pictures. Jimmie bowed before such sagacity, and wrote the letters. - -In the course of the week the portraits arrived, and the studio for a -whole day became the undisputed kingdom of Aline and a charwoman. The -long untidy table, so dear to Jimmie, was ruthlessly cleared and set in -dismaying order. The frame-maker was summoned, and the unsold pictures -that had long slumbered sadly on the ground with their faces to the -wall, were dusted and hung in advantageous lights. The square of Persian -carpet, which Jimmie during an unprotected walk through Regent Street -had once bought for Aline's bedroom, was brought down and spread on the -bare boards of the model-platform. A few cushions were scattered about -the rusty drawing-room suite, and various odds and ends of artists' -properties, bits of drapery, screens, old weapons, were brought to light -and used for purposes of decoration. So that when Jimmie, who had been -banished the house for the day, returned in the evening, he found a -flushed and exhausted damsel awaiting him in a transfigured studio. - -“My dear little girl,” he said, touched, “my dear little girl, it's -beautiful, it's magical. But you have tired yourself to death. Why did -n't you let me do all this?” - -“You would never have done it yourself, Jimmie. You know you wouldn't,” - said Aline. “You would have gone on talking nonsense about red baize -strips and flower-girls and pages--anything to make those about you -laugh and be happy--and you would never have thought of showing off what -you have to its full advantage.” - -“I should never have dreamed of robbing your poor little room of its -carpet, dear,” he said. - -They went upstairs for their simple evening meal, and returned as usual -to the beloved studio. Aline filled Jimmie's pipe. - -“Do you think I dare smoke in all this magnificence?” - -She laughed and struck a match. - -“You did not realise what a lot of beautiful pictures you had, did you?” - -“They make a brave show,” he said, looking round. “After all, I'm not -entirely sorry they have never been sold. I should not like to part -with them. No, I did not realise how many there were.” In spite of -his cheeriness the last words sounded a note of pathos that caught the -girl's sensitive ear. - -“'Let us make a tour of inspection,” she said. They went the round, -pausing long before each picture. He said little, contrary to his habit, -for he was wont to descant on his work with playful magniloquence. He -saw the years unfold behind him and disclose the hopes of long ago yet -unfulfilled. What endless months of dreams and thrills and passionate -toil hung profitless upon these walls! Things there were, wrought from -the depths of his radiant faith in man, plucked from the heart of his -suffering, consecrated by the purest visions of his soul. Had Aline been -an older woman, a woman who had loved him, lived with him in a wife's -intimate communion, instead of being merely the tender-hearted child -of his adoption, she would have wept her heart out. For she, alone of -mortals, would have got behind such imperfections as there were, and -would have seen nothing but a crucifixion of the quivering things torn -out of the life of the beloved man. Only vaguely, elusively did the -girl feel this. But even her half-comprehending sympathy was of great -comfort. She thought no one in the world could paint like Jimmie, and -held in angry contempt a public that could pass him by. She was hotly -his advocate, furious at his rejection by hanging committees, miserably -disappointed when his pictures came back from exhibitions unsold, or -when negotiations with dealers for rights of reproduction fell through. -But she was too young to pierce to the heart of the tragedy; and Jimmie -was too brave and laughter-loving to show his pain. Other forces, -too, had been at work in her development. Recently her mind had been -grappling with the problem of her unpayable debt to him. This silent -pilgrimage round the years brought her thoughts instinctively to herself -and the monstrous burden she had been. - -“I have been wondering lately, Jimmie dear,” she said at last, “whether -you would not have been more successful if you had not had all the worry -and expense and responsibility of me.” - -“Good Lord!” he cried in simple amazement, “whatever are you talking -of?” - -She repeated her apologia, though in less coherent terms. She felt -foolish, as a girl does when a carefully prepared expression of feeling -falls upon ears which, though inexpressibly dear, are nevertheless not -quite comprehending. - -“You have had to do pot-boilers,” she said, falling into miserable -bathos, “and I remember the five-shillings-a-dozen landscapes--and you -would have spent all that time on your real work--Oh, don't you see what -I mean, Jimmie?” - -She looked up at him pathetically--she was a slight slip of a girl, and -he was above the medium height. He smiled and took her fresh young face -between his hands. - -“My dear,” he said, “you're the only successful piece of work I've -ever turned out in my life. Please allow me to have some artistic -satisfaction--and you have been worth a gold-mine to me.” - -Thus each was comforted. Jimmie settled down to his pipe and a book, -Aline sat over her sewing--the articles to which she devoted her -perennial industry were a never solved mystery to him--and they spent a -pleasant evening. The inevitable topic naturally arose in conversation. -They discussed the princess's visit, the great question--how was she to -be received? - -“The best thing you can do,” said the practical Aline, “is to go to Mrs. -Deering to-morrow and get properly coached.” - -Jimmie looked at her in admiration. - -“You are worth your weight in diamonds,” he said. “I will.” - -He carried out his project, and not only did he have the pleasure of -finding Connie at home undisturbed by strange tea-drinking women, but -Norma Hardacre came in soon after his arrival. The two ladies formed -themselves into a committee of advice, and sent Jimmie home with most -definite notions regarding the correct method of receiving Serene -Highnesses. He also brought Aline the news that the committee would -honour him with a visit the following morning, accompanied by Mrs. -Hardacre, who had been pleased to express a desire to see his pictures. - -The appointed hour came, and with it the ladies. Mrs. Hardacre's lips -smiled sweetly at the man who was to be taken up by a duchess and to -paint the portrait of a princess. She declared herself delighted with -the studio and professed admiration for the pictures. - -“Are they all really your own, Mr. Padgate?” she asked, turning towards -him, her tortoise-shell lorgnon held sceptre-wise. - -“I'm afraid so,” answered Jimmie, with a smile. “Sometimes I wish they -were not so much my own.” - -“But I should feel quite proud of them, if I were you,” said the lady, -desirous to please. - -Connie broke into a laugh, and explained that Jimmie had implied a -regret that they had found no purchasers. Mrs. Hardacre sniffed. She did -not like being laughed at, especially as she had gone out of her way to -be urbane. This was unfortunate for Jimmie; for though he strove hard to -remove the impression that he had consciously dug a pit of ridicule for -her entrapment, Mrs. Hardacre listened to his remarks with suspicion -and became painfully aware of the shabbiness of his coat. Presently she -regarded one of the portraits--that of a pretty, fluffy-haired woman. - -“Dear me,” she remarked somewhat frigidly, “that is Mrs. Marmaduke -Hewson.” - -Jimmie, in the simplicity of his heart, was delighted. - -“Yes. A most charming lady. Do you know her?” - -“Oh, no; I don't know her, but I know of her.” - -Her stress on the preposition signified even deeper and more -far-reaching things than the nod of Lord Burleigh in the play. - -“What do you know of her?” asked Jimmie, bluntly. Mrs. Hardacre smiled -frostily, and her lean shoulders moved in an imperceptible shrug. - -“Those matters belong to the realm of unhappy gossip, Mr. Padgate; but -I'm afraid the duchess won't find her portrait attractive.” - -“It is really rather a good portrait,” said Jimmie, in puzzled modesty. - -“That is the pity of it,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, sweetly. - -The victim smiled. “Surely the private character of the subject can have -nothing to do with a person's judgment of a portrait as a specimen of -the painter's art. And besides, Mrs. Hewson is as dear and sweet and -true a little woman as I have ever met.” - -“You are not the first of your sex that has said so.” - -“And I most sincerely hope I shall not be the last,” said Jimmie, with -a little flush and a little flash in his eyes and the politest of little -bows. Whereupon Mrs. Hardacre bit her lip and hated him. Norma, seizing -the opportunity of contributing to the final rout of her mother, -unwittingly did Jimmie some damage. - -“We women ought not to have given up fancy work,” she said in her -hardest and most artificial tones. “As we don't embroider with our -fingers, we embroider with our tongues. You can have no idea what an -elaborate tissue of lies has been woven about that poor little Mrs. -Hewson. I agree with Mr. Padgate. I am sorry you believe them, mother.” - -Jimmie's grateful glance smote her undeserving heart. She had gained -credit under false pretences and felt hypocritical--an unpleasant -feeling, for the assumption of unpossessed virtues was not one of her -faults. She succeeded, however, in rendering her mother furious. In a -very short time Mrs. Hardacre remembered an engagement and went away in -a hansom-cab, refusing the seat in Connie's carriage, which was put at -her disposal on the condition of her waiting a few moments longer. She -had thanked Jimmie, however, for the pleasure afforded by his delightful -pictures with such politeness when he saw her into the cab, that he did -not for a moment suspect that the lady who had entered the house with -expressions of friendliness had driven away in a rage, with feelings -towards him ludicrously hostile. He returned to the studio at peace -with all womankind; not sorry that Mrs. Hardacre had departed, but only -because courtesy no longer demanded his relegating to the second sphere -of his attention the divine personage of whom he felt himself to be the -slave. No suspicion of Mrs. Hardacre's spiteful motive in deprecating -the display of his most striking piece of portraiture ever entered his -head. He ran down the studio stairs with the eagerness of a boy released -from the flattering but embarrassing society of his elders and free to -enjoy the companionship of his congeners. And he was childishly eager to -show his pictures to Norma, to hear her verdict, to secure her approval, -so that he should stand in her eyes as a person in some humble way -worthy of the regard that Morland said she bestowed on him. - -He found his visitors not looking at pictures at all, but talking to -Aline, who rushed to him as soon as he entered the studio. - -“Oh, Jimmie--just fancy! Mrs. Deering is going to take me to Horlingham -on Saturday, and is coming upstairs with me to see what I can do in the -way of a frock. You don't mind, do you?” - -Jimmie looked down into the happy young face and laughed a happy laugh. - -“Mrs. Deering is an angel from the most exclusive part of heaven,” he -said. And this was one of the rare occasions on which he was guilty of a -double meaning. Had not the angel thus contrived an unlooked-for joy--a -few minutes' undisturbed communion with his divinity? - -The first words that Norma spoke when they were alone were an apology. - -“You must not take what my mother said in ill part. She and I have been -bred, I'm afraid, in a hard school.” - -“It was very kind of Mrs. Hardacre to warn me of the possibility of the -duchess being prejudiced against me by the exhibition of a particular -portrait. I can't conceive the possibility myself. But still Mrs. -Hardacre's intention was kindly.” - -Norma turned her head away for a moment. She could not trust herself to -speak, for a stinging sarcasm with just a touch of the hysterical would -have been all she could utter, and she had not the heart to undeceive -him. She shot into the by-path of the gossip concerning Mrs. Hewson. - -“Mother believes the stories about her. So do I in the loose sort of -way in which our faith in anything is composed--even in our -fellow-creatures' failings.” - -“You defended her,” said Jimmie. - -“You made me do so.” - -“I?” - -“Either you, because you carry about with you an uncomfortable Palace of -Truth sort of atmosphere, or else the desire to rub it into my mother.” - -“Rub what in?” Jimmie was puzzled. - -Norma laughed somewhat bitterly. She saw that he was incapable of -understanding the vulgar pettiness of the scheme of motives that -had prompted the utterances of her mother and herself. She could not -explain. - -“I think you are born out of your century,” she said. - -It was lucky for Jimmie that he was unaware of the passionate tribute -the light words implied. She gave him no time to answer, but carried him -straight to the pictures. - -“I had no idea you did such beautiful work,” she said, looking around -her. - -Jimmie followed her glance, and the melancholy of the artist laid its -touch for a moment upon him. He sighed. - -“They might have been beautiful if I had done what I started out to do. -It is the eternal tragedy of the clipped wings.” - -She was oddly responsive to a vibration in his voice, and gave out, like -a passive violin, the harmonic of the struck note. - -“Better to have wings that are clipped than to have no wings at all.” - -She had never uttered such a sentiment, never thought such a thought in -her life before. Her words sounded unreal in her own ears, and yet she -had a profound sense of their sincerity. - -“There is no apteryx among human souls,” said Jimmie, released from the -melancholy fingers. They argued the point in a lighter vein, discussed -individual pictures. Charmed by her sympathy, he spoke freely of his -work, his motives, his past dreams. Had Norma not begun to know him, she -might have wondered at the lack of bitterness in his talk. To this man -of many struggles and many crushing disappointments the world was still -young and sweet, and his faith in the ultimate righteousness of things -undimmed. The simple courage of his attitude towards life moved her -admiration. She felt somewhat humbled in the presence of a spirit -stronger, clearer than any into which chance had hitherto afforded her -a glimpse. And as he talked in his bright, half-earnest, half-humourous -way, it crossed her mind that there was a fair world of thought and -emotion in which she and her like had not set their feet; not the world -entirely of poetic and artistic imaginings, but one where inner things -mattered more than outer circumstance, where it would not be ridiculous -or affected to think of the existence of a soul and its needs and their -true fulfilment. - -Hitherto meeting him as an alien in her world, she had regarded him with -a touch of patronising pity. From this she was now free. She saw him for -the first time in harmony with his environment, as the artist sensitive -and responsive, integral with the beautiful creations that hung around -the walls, and still homely and simple, bearing the rubs of time as -bravely and frankly as the old drawing-room suite that furnished -the unpretentious studio. Now it was she who felt herself somewhat -disconcertingly out of her element. The sensation, however, had a -curious charm. - -There was one picture that had attracted her from the first. She stood -in front of it moved by its pity and tenderness. - -“Tell me about this one,” she said without looking at him. She divined -that it was very near his heart. - -In the foreground amid laughing woodland crouched a faun with little -furry ears and stumps of horns, and he was staring in piteous terror at -a vision; and the vision was that of a shivering, outcast woman on a wet -pavement in a sordid street. - -“It is the joyous, elemental creature's first conception of pain,” said -Jimmie, after a few moments' silence. “You see, life has been to him only -the sunshine, and the earth drenched with colour and music--as the earth -ought to be--and now he sees a world that is coming grey with rain and -misty with tears, and he has the horror of it in his eyes. I am not -given to such moralising in paint,” he added with a smile. “This is a -very early picture.” He looked at it for some time with eyes growing -wistful. “Yes,” he sighed, “I did it many years ago.” - -“It has a history then?” - -“Yes,” he admitted; and he remembered how the outcast figure in the rain -had symbolised that little funeral procession in Paris and how terribly -grey the world had been. - -Norma's chastened mood had not awed the spirit of mockery within her, -but had rendered it less bitter, and had softened her voice. She waved -her hand towards the crouching faun. - -“And that is you?” she asked. - -Jimmie caught a kind raillery in her glance, and laughed. Yes, she had -his secret; was the only person who had ever guessed him beneath the -travesty of horns and goat's feet. - -“I like you for laughing,” she said. - -“Why?” - -“Other painters have shown me their pictures.” - -“Which signifies--?” - -“That this is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen,” she -replied. - -“But why are you glad that I laughed?” asked Jimmie, in happy puzzledom. - -“I have told you, Mr. Padgate, all that I am going to tell you.” - -“I accept the inscrutable,” said he. - -“Do you believe in the old pagan joy of life?” she asked after a pause. -“I mean, was there, is there such a thing? One has heard of it; in fact -it is a catch phrase that any portentous poseur has on the tip of -his tongue. When one comes to examine it, however, it generally means -champagne and oysters and an unpresentable lady, and it ends with -liver and--and all sorts of things, don't you know. But you are not a -poseur--I think you are the honestest man I have ever met--and yet you -paint this creature as if you utterly believe in what he typifies.” - -“It would go hard with me if I did n't,” said Jimmie. “I can't talk to -you in philosophic terms and explain all my reasons, because I have read -very little philosophy. When I do try, my head gets addled. I knew a -chap once who used to devour Berkeley and Kant and all the rest, and -used to write about them, and I used to sit at his feet in a kind of -awed wonder at the tremendousness of his brain. A man called Smith. He -was colossally clever,” he added after a reflective pause. “But I can -only grope after the obvious. Don't you think the beauty of the world is -obvious?” - -“It all depends upon which world,” said Norma. - -“Which world? Why, God's world. It is sweet to draw the breath of life. -I love living; don't you?” - -“I have never thought of it,” she answered. “I should n't like to die, -it is true, but I don't know why. Most people seem to spend two-thirds -of their existence in a state of boredom, and the rest in sleep.” - -“That is because they reject my poor faun's inheritance.” - -“I have been asking you what that is.” - -“The joy and laughter of life. They put it from them.” - -“How?” - -“They draw the soul's curtains and light the gas, instead of letting -God's sunshine stream in.” - -Norma turned away from the picture with a laugh. - -“That reminds me of the first time I met you. You told me to go and -ventilate my soul. It gave me quite a shock, I assure you. But I have -been trying to follow your precept ever since. Don't you think I am a -little bit fresher?” - -For the moment the girl still lingering in her five-and-twenty hard -years flashed to the surface, adorably warming the cold, finely -sculptured face, and bringing rare laughter into her eyes. Jimmie -marvelled at the infinite sweetness of her, and fed his poor hungry soul -thereon. - -“You look like a midsummer morning,” he said unsteadily. - -The tone caught her, sobered her; but the colour deepened on her cheek. - -“I'll treasure that as a pretty compliment,” she said. There was a -little space of silence--quite a perilous little space, with various -unsaid things lurking in ambush. Norma broke it first. - -“Now I have seen everything, have n't I? No. There are some on the floor -against the wall.” - -Jimmie explained their lack of value, showed her two or three. They were -mostly the wasters from his picture factory, he said. She found in each -a subject for admiration, and Jimmie glowed with pleasure at her praise. -While he was replacing them she moved across the studio. - -“And this one?” she asked, with her finger on the top of a strainer. He -looked round and followed swiftly to her side. It was her own portrait -with its face to the wall. - -“I am not going to show you that,” he said hurriedly. - -“Why not?” - -“It's a crazy thing.” - -“I should love to see it.” - -“I tell you it's a crazy thing,” he repeated. “A mad artist's dream.” - -Norma arched her eyebrows. “Aha! That is very like a confession!” - -“Of what?” - -“The ideal woman?” - -“Perhaps,” he said. - -“I thought everything was so positive in your scheme of life,” she -remarked teasingly. “Don't you know?” - -“Yes,” said Jimmie, “I know.” - -Again the vibration that Jimmie, poorest of actors, could not keep from -his voice, stirred her. She felt the indelicacy of having trodden upon -sanctified ground. She turned away and sat down. They talked of other -matters, somewhat self-consciously. Both welcomed the entrance of Connie -Deering and Aline. The former filled the studio at once with laughing -chatter. She hoped Norma had not turned Jimmie's hair white with the -dreadful things she must have said. - -“I don't turn a hair, as I'm a mere worldling, but Jimmie is an -unsophisticated child of nature, and is n't accustomed to you, my dear -Norma.” - -She went on to explain that she was Jimmie's natural protectress, and -that they who harmed him would have to reckon with her. Jimmie flew -gaily to Norma's defence. - -“And this child's garments?” he asked, indicating Aline, whose face was -irradiated by a vision of splendid attire. - -“Don't meddle with what does n't concern you,” replied Connie, while -she and the girl exchanged the glances of conspirators. - -A short while afterwards the two visitors drove away. For some time -Norma responded somewhat absently to Mrs. Deering's light talk. - -“I am so glad you have taken to Jimmie,” said the latter at last. “Is -n't he a dear?” - -“I remember your saying that before. But is n't it rather an odd word -to use with reference to him?” said Norma. - -“Odd--? But that's just what he is.” - -Norma turned in some resentment on her friend. - -“Oh, Connie, how dare we talk patronisingly of a man like that? He's -worth a thousand of the empty-souled, bridge-playing people we live -among.” - -“But that's just why I call him a dear,” said Mrs. Deering, -uncomprehendingly. - -Norma shrugged her shoulders, fell into a silence which she broke by -risking: - -“Do you know whom he is in love with?” - -“Good gracious, Norma,” cried the little lady, in alarm. “You don't say -that Jimmie is in love? Oh, it would spoil him. He can't be!” - -“There was one picture--of a woman--which he would not let me see,” said -Norma. - -“Well?” - -Norma paused for some seconds before she replied: - -“He called it 'a mad artist's dream.' I have been wondering whether it -was not better than a sane politician's reality.” - -“What is a sane politician's reality, dear?” Connie asked, mystified. - -“I am,” said Norma. - -Then, woman-like, she turned the conversation to the turpitudes of her -dressmaker. - - - - -Chapter X--TWO IDYLLS - -JIMMIE was trudging along the undulating highroad that leads from -Dieppe to the little village of Berneval, very hot, very dusty, very -thirsty, and very contented. He carried a stick and a little black bag. -His content proceeded from a variety of causes. In the first place it -was a glorious August day, drenched with sunshine and with deep blue -ether; and the smiling plain of Normandy rolled before him, a land of -ripening orchards and lazy pastures. He had been longing for the simple -beauty of sun and sky and green trees, and for the homely sights and -sounds of country things, and now he had his fill. Secondly, Aline was -having a much needed holiday. She had been growing a little pale and -languid, he thought, in London, after a year's confined administering to -his selfish wants. She was enjoying herself, too, and the few days she -had already spent in the sea air had brought the blood to her cheeks -again. Thirdly, he was free for the moment from everyday cares. A dealer -had fallen from heaven into his studio and paid money down for the -copyright of two of his worst pictures. Fourthly, he had definitely -received the commission for the portrait of the Princess of -Herren-Rothbeck. Her Serene Highness and her tutelary duchess had paid -their visit, expressed themselves delighted with his work (the duchess -especially commending the portrait of the hapless Mrs. Marmaduke -Hewson), and had driven away in a most satisfactory condition of -serenity and graciousness. - -Jimmie was happy. What could man want more? In addition to all these -blessings, Norma had written to him from Lord Monzie's place in Scotland -a letter _à propos_ of nothing, merely expressive of good-will and -friendliness; and he had received it that morning. He had never seen -her handwriting before. Bold, incisive, distinguished, it seemed to -complement his conception of the radiant lady, and in a foolish way he -tried to harmonise the ink-marks with the curves of her proud lips, the -setting of her eyes, and the poise of her queenly head. The dreariness -of a rainy afternoon with all the men and half the women away on the -grouse-moor had been, she said, her excuse for writing. She sketched -various members of the house-party with light, satiric touches; -notably one Theodore Weever, an American, whose sister had married an -impecunious and embarrassing cousin of the Duchess of Wiltshire. He was -building himself a palace in Fifth Avenue, wrote Norma, and had been -buying pictures in Europe to decorate it with; now he was anxious to -purchase a really decorative wife. Morland was expected in a few days, -and she would be glad when he appeared upon the scene. She did not say -why; but Jimmie naturally understood that her heart was yearning for -the presence of the man she loved. “I have very little to say that can -interest you,” she concluded, “but you can say many things to interest -me: this letter is purely selfish, a mere minnow, after all, that I use -as bait.” So Jimmie walked along the dusty road thinking out an answer -that could bring comfort to the Hero pining for her Leander; thinking -also of Aline, and revelling in the sunshine. - -He delighted, like a child, in all he saw. He stopped before the red, -gold, and green paradise of an orchard and feasted upon its colour. He -lingered in talk with a tiny girl driving a great brown cow; asked her -its age, how many calves it had had, its name, and whether she were -not afraid it would mistake her for a blade of grass and bite her. The -little girl scoffed at the possibility. She could drive three cows, -and, if it came to that, a bull. “_Ça me connaît, les bêtes,_” she -said. Whereupon he put a couple of sous in her hand and went on his way. -Presently he sat down on the rough wooden bench in front of a wayside -café and drank cider from an earthenware bowl, and played with a mongrel -puppy belonging to the establishment. When the latter had darted off -to bark amid the cloud of dust and petroleum fumes left by a passing -motor-car, Jimmie, sipping his second bowl of sour cider in great -content, re-read the precious letter, filled his pipe, and reflected -peacefully on the great harmony of things. The hopelessness of his own -love for Norma struck no discord. The Stephen so closely connected with -the life of Saint Catherine of Siena did not love with less hope or more -devotion. - -He paid the few coppers for his reckoning, took up his stick and little -black bag, and trudged on refreshed, and as he neared Berneval the -expectation of Aline's welcome gladdened him. He had rented for the -month a cottage with a straggling piece of ground behind, from an artist -friend whose possession it was. The friend had fixed the figure absurdly -low; the modest living under Aline's experienced management was cheap, -and the _bonne à tout faire_ cooked divinely for a few halfpence a day. -By a curious coincidence Mr. Anthony Merewether had also pitched -upon Berneval as a summer resting-place. He had come on -business, he gave out, and every morning saw him issue from the hotel -by the beach, armed with easel and camp-stool, and the rest of the -landscape-painter's paraphernalia, and every evening saw him smoking -cigarettes on Jimmie's veranda. Whether the hours of sunshine saw him -consistently hard at work, Jimmie was inclined to doubt. He certainly -bathed a great deal and ran about with Aline a great deal, and Jimmie -read the pair moral lessons on the evil effects of idleness. But Tony -was a fresh-minded boy; his ingenuous conversation provided Jimmie -with much entertainment, and his presence on their holiday gave him the -satisfaction of feeling that Aline had some one of her own age to play -with. - -The ramshackle vehicle, half diligence, half omnibus, that plies -between Berneval and Dieppe, passed him with great cracking of whip and -straining of rusty harness and loud _hue_'s from the driver, just as he -entered the village. It was late afternoon, and the trim white and green -of the place was bathed in mellow sunshine. The short cut home lay up a -lane and through the churchyard, a cluster of grey slabs around a -little grey church; and many of the slabs bore the story of the pitiless -sea--how Jean-Marie Dulac, many years ago, was drowned at the age of -nineteen, and how Jacques Lemerre perished in a storm; for it has been -from time immemorial a tiny village of fisher-folk and every family has -given of its own to the waves. The pathos of the simple legends on the -stones always touched him as he walked by; and now he paused to decipher -some moss-grown letters of fifty years ago. He stooped, made out the -same sad tale, moralised a little thereon, and rose with a sigh of -relief to greet the sunshine and the fair earth. But the sight that -suddenly met his eyes banished dead fishermen and hungry sea and sunny -tree-tops from his mind. It was a boy and a girl very close together, -his arm about her waist, her head upon his shoulder, walking by the -little church. Their backs were towards him. He stared open-mouthed. - -“God bless my soul!” said he, in amazement. - -Then he dropped his stick, which clattered upon a gravestone. - -The foolish pair started at the sound, assumed a correct attitude with -remarkable swiftness, and turning, recognised Jimmie. Tony Merewether, -who was a fair youth, grew very red and looked sheepish; Aline awaited -events demurely, with downcast eyes. Jimmie pushed his old Homburg hat -to the back of his head, and in two or three strides confronted them. He -tried to look fiercely at Tony. The young man drew himself up. - -“I have asked Aline to marry me, sir,” he said frankly. “I was going to -speak to you about it.” - -“Good Lord!” said Jimmie, helplessly. - -“We can't marry just yet,” said Tony, “but I hope you will give your -consent.” - -Jimmie looked from one to the other. - -“Why did n't you let me know of this state of things before?” - -“I have n't done anything underhand. I thought you guessed,” said Tony. - -“And you, Aline?” - -She stole a shy glance at him. - -“I was n't quite sure of it until just now,” she replied. And then she -blushed furiously and ran to Jimmie's arms. “Oh, Jimmie dear, don't be -cross!” - -“Cross, my child?” he said. - -The world of tender reproach in his tone touched her. The ready tears -started. - -“You are an angel, Jimmie.” - -The hand that was on her shoulder patted it comfortingly. - -“No, dear, I am a blind elderly idiot. O Lord, Tony, I hope you feel -infernally ashamed of yourself.” - -“As Tony says, we sha'n't be able to get married for a long, long time,” - said Aline, by way of consolation, “so for years and years we'll go on -in just the same way.” - -“I only ask you to consent to our engagement, sir,” said Tony, -diplomatically. “I am quite willing to wait for Aline as long as you -like.” - -The abandonment of Jimmie by Aline had been the subject of the last -half-hour's discussion between the lovers. The thought of Jimmie alone -and helpless appalled her. She was a horrid selfish wretch, she had -informed Tony, for listening to a word he said. How could Jimmie live -by himself? She shuddered at the dismal chaos of the studio, the gaping -holes in his socks, the impossible meals, the fleecing of him by every -plausible beggar in frock coat or rags, the empty treasury. He needed -more care than a baby. She would marry Tony, some day, because her head -was full of him, and because she had let him kiss her and had found a -peculiar, dreamy happiness during the process, and because she could not -conceive the possibility of marrying any one else. But she was more than -content to leave the date indefinite. Perhaps, in the stretch of aeons -between now and then, something would happen to release her from her -responsibilities. She had made the position luminously clear to Mr. -Merewether before she had consented to be foolish and walk about with -her head on his shoulder. - -“No, until Jimmie gets properly suited,” she said, quickly following -Tony's last remark. - -“My dear foolish children,” said Jimmie, “you had better get married as -soon as ever you can keep the wolf from the door. What on earth is the -good of waiting till you are old? Get all the happiness you can out of -your youth, and God bless you.” - -The young man bowed his head. - -“I will give my life to her.” - -Jimmie touched him on the arm, waved his hand around, indicating the -little grey church, the quiet graves. - -“This is not the place where a man should say such a thing lightly,” he -said. - -“I am not the man to say such a thing lightly in any place,” retorted -the youth, with spirit. - -Jimmie nodded approvingly. “My dear,” he said to Aline, “that is the way -I like to hear a man talk.” - -He turned and collected the fallen stick and the black bag which he had -deposited by the side of the slab. He had gone into Dieppe that morning -partly for the sake of the walk and partly to purchase some odds and -ends for the house. Aline, not trusting to his memory, had given him a -list of items with directions attached as to the places where he was to -procure them, so that when he came to “pepper,” he should seek it at -a grocery and not at a milliner's establishment. Now, without saying -a word, he opened the bag and rummaged among its queer contents, which -Aline regarded with some twinges of a tender conscience. She ought to -have gone into Dieppe herself, and made her purchases like a notable -housewife, instead of sending Jimmie and passing the day in selfish -lovemaking. The twinge grew sharper when Jimmie at last fished out a -little cardboard box and put it in her hands. - -“At any rate, I can give you an engagement present before Tony,” he said -with a laugh. - -It was only an old filigree silver waist-buckle he had picked up at a -curio shop in the town, but it was a gem of infinite value to the girl, -for she knew that Jimmie's love went with it. She showed it to Tony -Merewether, who admired the workmanship. - -“If you can give me anything I shall prize more, you will be a lucky -fellow,” she said in a low voice. - -The three strolled quietly towards the cottage, and it was Jimmie's arm -that Aline clung to, and Mr. Merewether who carried the black bag. That -night, after she had dismissed the young man, she sat a long time with -Jimmie on the veranda, telling him in one shy breath of the wonder that -had suddenly come into her life, and in the next that she would never -leave him until he was rich and famous and able to live by himself. -Jimmie, unguileful in the nature of men and maidens and the ways of -this wicked world, kept on repeating like a refrain his formula of -astonishment: - -“It never entered my head, dear, that you two children would fall in -love with one another.” - -“You don't think I ought n't to have done it, do you, Jimmie?” she said -at last. - -He broke into his happy laugh, and kissed her. “If you want to please -me, you'll go on doing it,” he said. - -It was some time after he had gone to bed that sleep came. Yes; Nature, -the dear mother, had spoken, and who could gainsay her? A clean, bright, -healthy English lad, and a clean, bright, healthy English girl had read -truth in each other's eyes. It was one of the sweet things in the world, -for which we who live in the world should be thankful. The dimly seen -white curtains of his bed became gossamer veils that enveloped him with -beauty. Now, on either side, his inner life was touched by the magic of -romance: the fair dream of these two children, and the love of the other -betrothed pair. It was on happy eyelids that sleep settled at last. And -Aline, too, lay awake, her young cheeks burning at the delicious yet -frightening memory of a kiss in the little churchyard, and her heart -swelling at the thought of the infinite goodness of Jimmie. - -Meanwhile, unconscious of these idyllic happenings and romantic -speculations, Norma was enjoying herself in her worldly way at Lord -Monzie's place in Scotland. Lord Monzie, a dissipated young man who had -lately come into the title, had married a well-to-do young woman in very -smart society. Consequently there was no lack of modern entertainment -in the house. So modern was everything that the host had got down Mr. -Joseph Ascherberg, the financier, to hold a roulette bank every night -against all comers; but he took care that he himself, or his own -confidential man, turned the wheel and spun the marble. Most of the -people had unimaginative nicknames, the extremes of the Submerged -Tenth and the Upper Ten thus curiously meeting. Lord Monzie was called -“Muggins;” his bosom friend, and, as some whispered, his _âme damnée_, -Sir Calthrop Boyle, was alluded to as “The Boiler;” and Ascherberg -responded to the appellation of “Freddy.” There were also modern -conveniences for the gratification of caprices or predilections that -need not be insisted upon. In fact the atmosphere was surcharged with -modernity; so much so that Norma, who would have walked about the -Suburra of Imperial Rome with cynical indifference, gasped a little when -she entered it. One or two things actually shocked her, at which she -wondered greatly. She regarded Mr. Ascherberg with extreme disfavour, -and winced at the women's conversation when they were cosily free -from men. For the first day or two she held herself somewhat apart, -preferring solitude on sequestered bits of terrace, where she could -read a novel, or look at the grey hills that met the stretch of purple -moorland. But gradually the sweeter tone of mind which she had brought -with her lost its flavour, and having won sixty pounds from Ascherberg, -and having told the feminine coterie what she knew of the Wyniard -affair, she began to breathe the atmosphere without much difficulty. Yet -occasionally she had spasms of revolt. In a corner of the drawing-room -stood a marble copy of the little Laughing Faun in the Louvre, put there -by the late baron, and every time her eye fell upon it, the picture of -another faun arose before her, and with it the memory of a homely man -with bright kind eyes, and she seemed to draw a breath of purer air. But -she called the fancy foolishness and hardened her heart. - -Still, had it not been for Theodore Weever, the American man of affairs, -she would probably have found some pretext for an abrupt departure. He -alone was a personality among the characterless, vicious men and women -of the house-party. Short, spare, alert, bald-headed, clean-shaven, -clear-featured, he was of a type apart. Norma, who had a keen -intelligence, divined in him from the first an adversary upon whom she -could sharpen her wit and a companion who would not bore her with dreary -tales of sport or the unprofitable details of his last night's play. And -from the first Theodore Weever was attracted towards Norma. Their lax -associates, in spite of her engagement to Morland being perfectly well -known and in spite of Morland's expected arrival, recognised their -pairing with embarrassing frankness, and said appalling things about -them behind their backs. For a few days therefore they found themselves -inseparable. At last their friendship reached the confidential stage. -Mr. Theodore Weever avowed the object of his present visit to England. -He was in search of a decorative wife. - -“It ought to be as easy as turning over a book of wallpapers,” said -Norma. - -“And as difficult to choose,” said he. - -“You must know what scheme of colouring and design you want.” - -“Precisely. I don't find it in the books of stock patterns, either here -or in America. And I've ransacked America.” - -“Is n't the line--I believe in commercial circles they call it a -line--is n't the line of specially selected duchesses for the English -market good enough for you?” she asked with a smile. - -He was about to light a cigarette when she began her question. He lit it -and blew out the first few puffs of smoke before he replied. They were -sitting in Norma's favourite nook on the terrace, where he, solitary -male who had not gone forth with a gun that morning, had been -gratuitously told by an obliging hostess that he would find her. - -“The American woman makes a good decorative duchess,” he said in -his incisive tone, “because she has to sweep herself clean of every -tradition she was born with and accept bodily the very much bigger and -more dazzling tradition of your old aristocracy. She can do it, because -she is infinitely sensitive and intelligent. But she is a changed -creature. She has to live up to her duke.” - -He puffed for a moment or two at his cigarette. - -“Do you see what I am coming to?” he continued. “I am not an English -duke. I am a plain American citizen. No woman in America would make it -her ideal in life to live up to me.” - -“I don't mean to be rude,” interrupted Norma, with a laugh, “but do you -think any Englishwoman would?” - -“I do,” he replied. “Not to this insignificant, baldheaded thing that is -I, but to what in the way of position and power I represent. An American -woman would bring her traditions along with her--her superior culture, -her natural right to be enthroned as queen, her expectation that I would -take a back seat in my own house. It is I that would become a sort of -grotesque decoration in the place. Now, I may be grotesque, but I will -not consent to be decorative. I fully intend to be master. I am not -going to be Mrs. Theodore Weever's husband. I want an Englishwoman to -bring along her traditions. She will be naturally _grande dame_; she -will come to my house, my social world, frankly the wife of Theodore -Weever, and ready to support the dignity, whatever it may be, of -Theodore Weever, just as she would have supported the dignity of Lord So -and So, had she been married to him in England.” - -“You will find thousands of English girls who can do that,” said Norma. -“I don't see your difficulty.” - -“She must be decorative,” said Weever. - -“And that means?” - -“She must be a queenly woman, but one content to be queen consort. Your -queenly woman--with brains--is not so easy to find. I have met only -one in my life who is beyond all my dreams of the ideal. Of course the -inherent malice of things screws her down like one blade of a pair of -scissors to another fellow.” - -“Who is the paragon?” asked Norma. - -“It wouldn't be fair on the other fellow to tell you,” said he. - -“Is it sheer honesty, or the fear of being cut in half by the pair of -scissors that keeps you from coming between them?” - -“I think it's honesty,” he replied. “If I can guess rightly, the -scissors have n't so fine an edge on them as to make them dangerous.” - -“They may be desperately in love with one another, for all you know.” - -“They are delightful worldlings of our own particular world, dear lady,” - said Weever, with a smile. - -Thus was Norma given to understand that the post of decorative queen -consort in Mr. Theodore Weever's Fifth Avenue palace was at her -disposal. A year ago she might have considered the offer seriously; now -that she felt secure of a brilliant position as Morland's wife, she was -amused by its frank impudence. She held other laughing conversations -with him on the subject of his search, but too prudent to commit -indiscretions, she gave no hint that she had understood his personal -allusion, and Weever was too shrewd to proceed any further towards his -own undoing. They remained paired, however, to their mutual -satisfaction, until Morland's arrival, when Theodore Weever took his -departure. In fact, the same carriage that conveyed the American to the -station remained for a necessary half-hour to meet Morland's train, and -Norma, who dutifully drove down to welcome her affianced, shared the -carriage with the departing guest. - -She stood on the platform chatting with him as he leaned out of the -window. - -“When shall we see each other again?” she said idly. - -“Next month.” - -“Where?” she asked, somewhat taken aback by his decided tone. - -“I am putting in some time at Chiltern Towers. I had a letter this -morning from the duchess, asking me to come and meet the Princess of -Herren-Rothbeck.” - -They looked at each other, and Norma laughed. - -“Beware of Her Serene Highness.” - -“Oh, I've had dealings with her before,” replied Weever. “I reckon I get -my money's worth. Don't you fret about me.” - -The guard came up and touched his cap. - -“We are off now, miss.” - -She shook hands with Weever, saying with a laugh, “I hope you will find -that bit of decoration.” - -“Don't you fret about that, either,” he said with a quick, hard glance. -“I'm in no hurry. I can wait.” - -The train started, and was soon swallowed by a tunnel a few hundred -yards up the line. Norma patrolled the platform of the little wayside -station waiting for Morland. The place was very still. The only porter -had departed somewhither. The station-master had retired into his -office. The coachman outside the station sat like a well-bred image on -his box, and the occasional clink of the harness, as the horses threw -up their heads, sounded sharp and clear. Nothing around but mountain and -moorland; a short distance in front a ravine with a lazily trickling, -half-dried-up mountain stream. Here and there a clump of larch and fir, -and a rough granite boulder. An overcast sky threw dreariness on the -silent waste. Norma shivered, suddenly struck with a sense of isolation. -She seemed to stand in the same relation with her soul's horizon as with -the physical universe. The man that had gone had left her with a little -feeling of fear for the future, a little after-taste of bitterness. -The man that was coming would bring her no thrill of joy. As she stood -between a drab sky and a bleak earth, so stood she utterly alone in the -still pause between a past and a future equally unillumined. She longed -for the sun to break out of the heaven, for the sounds of joyous things -to come from plain and mountain; and she longed for light and song in -her heart. - -She had been watching for the past few days the proceedings of -a half-recognised, irregular union. The woman was the frivolous, -heartless, almost passionless wife of a casual husband at the other end -of the earth; the man an underbred fellow on the stock exchange. She -ordered him about and called him Tommy. He clothed her in extravagant -finery, and openly showed her his sovereign male's contempt. Norma had -overheard him tell her to go to the devil and leave him alone, when she -hinted one night, in a whisper that was meant for his ears alone, that -he was drinking overmuch whisky. It was all so sordid, so vulgar--the -bond between them so unsanctified by anything like tenderness, chivalry, -devotion. Norma had felt the revulsion of her sex. - -What would be the future? By any chance like this woman's life? Would -the day come when she would sell herself for a gown and a bracelet, -thrown at her with a man's contemptuous word? Was marriage very widely -different from such a union? Was not she selling herself? Might not the -man she was waiting for go the way of so many others of his type, drink -and coarsen and tell her to go to the devil? - -She longed for the sun, but not a gleam pierced the leaden sky; she -sought in her soul for a ray of light, but none came. - -At last with a shriek and a billowing plume of smoke the down train -emerged from the tunnel. Norma set her face in its calm ironic mask and -waited for the train to draw up. Only two passengers alighted, Morland -and his man. Morland came to her with smiling looks and grasped her by -the hand. - -“You are looking more beautiful than ever,” he whispered, bringing his -face close to hers. - -She started back as if she had been struck. The fumes of brandy were in -his breath. Her hideous forebodings were in process of fulfilment. - -“The whole station will hear you,” she said coldly, turning away. - -The Imp of Mischance rubbed his hands gleefully at his contrivance. -Morland, a temperate man, had merely felt chilly after an all-night's -journey, and, more out of idleness than from a desire for alcohol, had -foolishly taken a sip out of his brandy flask a moment or two before, -when he was putting up his hand-bag. - -Norma collected herself, summoned with bitter cynicism her common-sense -to her aid, and made smiling amends for her shrewish remark. She -suffered him to kiss her on the drive home, and strove not to despise -herself. - - - - -Chapter XI--DANGER - -HEDDON COURT had been purchased by a wealthy Hardacre at the beginning -of the nineteenth century, and was exhibited by his grandnephew, the -present occupant, as a gem of Georgian architecture. Mr. Hardacre -had but a vague idea what the definition meant, but it sounded very -impressive. As a matter of fact, it was a Palladian stone building, with -pediments over the windows and severe rustication on the lower -courses. As none of the succeeding Hardacres had any money to devote -to extensions, the building had remained in its original perfection of -formality, and Mr. Hardacre did well to be proud of it. The grounds had -been laid out in the Italian style; but the tastes and fashions of -over a hundred years had caused the classic architect's design to be -practically indiscernible. A lawn with trim flower-beds, bounded by an -arc of elm-trees and bordered by a circular carriage drive faced the -south front. Along the east front ran a series of terraces. The highest, -a foot or two below the level of the drawing-room floor, ended on -the north in a porticoed temple, now used as an afternoon lounge, and -incongruously furnished with rugs and frivolous wickerwork chairs and -tables. The next terrace, some eight feet below, was devoted to a tennis -court. A thick hedge of clipped yew and a screen of wire netting hid the -lowest, the most charming of all, which, surrounded on all sides by -a sloping bank and flanked on three sides by tall trees, had been -delicately turfed for a bowling-green and was now used for croquet. - -In this stately paradise, warmed by sunny September weather, Jimmie -had already spent two or three blissful days. His only regret was -the absence of Aline. She had been invited, but for reasons in which -doubtless Tony Merewether had a place, she had declined the invitation. -She gave Jimmie to understand that she had already had her holiday, that -the house could not possibly look after itself any longer, and that -she had no clothes fit to appear in among his grand friends. The last -argument being unanswerable, save by contentions at which the young -woman tossed a superior head, Jimmie had yielded and come down alone. -His regret, however, was tempered by the reflection that Aline was -probably enjoying herself after the manner of betrothed maidens, and it -did not seriously affect his happiness. Either chance or the lady's own -sweet courtesy towards a guest had caused him to see much of Norma. She -had driven him over to Chiltern Towers, where the sittings had -begun. She had walked with him to Cosford to show him the beautiful -fourteenth-century church with its decorated spire. She had strolled -with him up and down the croquet lawn. She had chatted with him in the -morning-room yesterday for a whole rainy hour after lunch. His head was -full of her beauty and condescension. It was not unnatural that they -should be thrown much together. Morland's day was taken up by partridges -and electors. Mr. Hardacre, honestly afraid of Jimmie, not knowing -what on earth to talk to him about, and only half comprehending his -conversation, kept out of his way as much as his duties as host would -allow, and Mrs. Hardacre, who, though exceedingly civil, had not -forgotten her defeat in the studio, felt justified in leaving his -entertainment in the hands of others who professed to admire the -creature. These were Norma, Morland, and Connie Deering. - -This afternoon they found themselves again alone together, at tea in the -classic temple at the end of the terrace. Mrs. Hardacre and Connie had -driven off to pay a call, and the men were shooting over ducal turnips. -Jimmie had received an invitation to join the shooting-party, but -not having handled a gun since boyish days (and even then Jimmie with -firearms was Morland's conception of the terror that walketh by day), -and also having an appointment with the princess for a second sitting, -he had declined, and Morland, when he heard of it, had clapped him on -the back and expressed his fervent gratitude. - -Jimmie had been narrating his morning's adventures at Chiltern Towers, -and explaining the point of view from which he was painting the -portrait. It was to be that of the very great lady, with the blood of -the earth's great rulers in her veins. It was to be half full-length, -just showing the transparent, aristocratic hands set off by rich old -lace at the wrists. A certain acidity of temper betrayed by the pinched -nostrils and thin lips he would try to modify, as it would be out of -keeping with his basic conception. Norma listened, interested more in -the speaker than in the subject, her mind occasionally wandering, as -it had been wont to do of late, to a comparison of ideals. Since that -half-hour's loneliness on the platform of the little Highland station, -she had passed through many hours of unrest. To-day the mood had again -come upon her. A talk with her mother about the great garden-party they -were giving in two days' time, to which the princess and the duchess -were coming, had aroused her scorn; a casual phrase of Morland's in -reference to the election had jarred upon her; a sudden meeting in -Cosford with Theodore Weever, and a laughing reference to the decorative -wife had brought back the little shiver of fear. The only human being -in the world who could settle her mood--and now she felt it -consciously--was this odd, sweet-natured man who seemed to live in a -beautiful world. - -As he talked she listened, and her mind wandered from the subject. She -thought of his life, his surroundings, of the girl whose love affair he -had told her of so tenderly. She took advantage of a pause, occasioned -by the handing of a second cup of tea and the judicious choosing of -cake, to start the new topic. - -“I suppose Aline is very happy.” - -Jimmie laughed. “What put my little girl into your head?” - -“I have been thinking a good deal about her since you wrote of her -engagement. Is it really such an idyll?” - -“The love of two sweet, clean young people is always idyllic. It is so -untainted--pure as a mountain spring; There is nothing quite like it in -the world.” - -“When are they going to set up house together?” - -“Soon, I hope.” - -“You will miss her.” - -“Of course,” said Jimmie, “enormously. But the thoughts of her happiness -will keep me pleasant company. I shall get on all right. Meanwhile it -is beautiful to see her. She does n't know that I watch, but I do. It -is sweet to see her eyes brighten and her cheeks flush and to hear -her laughter. It is like stepping for an enchanted moment into a -fairy-tale.” - -“I wish I could step into it--just for one enchanted moment,” said -Norma.. - -“You?” asked Jimmie. - -“I have never been in one in my life. I disbelieved in them till you -came like an apostle of fairyland and converted me. Now I want the -consolations of my faith.” - -An earnest note in her voice surprised him. She did not meet his eyes. - -“I don't understand you,” he said. - -“I thought perhaps you would,” she answered. “You seem to understand -most things.” - -“You have your own--happiness.” - -He hesitated on the word. A quick glance assured her of his -ingenuousness. She longed to undeceive him, to shriek out her -heartlessness, her contempt for herself and for her life. But pride and -loyalty to Morland restrained her within bounds of sanity. She assented -to his proposition with a gesture of the shapely hand that lay on the -tea-table absently tracing the pattern of the cloth. - -“Yes, I have that. But it isn't the fairyland of those two children. You -yourself say there is nothing like it in the world. You don't know how -I pine for it sometimes--for the things that are sweet and clean and -untainted and pure as a mountain spring. They don't come my way. They -never will.” - -“You are wrong,” said Jimmie. “Love will bring them all to you--that and -a perfect wedded life and little children.” - -For a flash she raised her eyes and looked full into his, and for the -first time the love in the man's heart surged tumultuously. It rose of a -sudden, without warning, flooding his being, choking him. What it was of -yearning, despair, passion, horror that he saw in her eyes he knew not. -He did not read in them the craving of a starved soul for food. To -him their burning light was a mystery. All that ever reached his -consciousness was that it was a look such as he had never before beheld -in a woman's face; and against his will and against his reason it acted -like some dark talisman and unlocked floodgates. He clenched the arms of -the wickerwork chair, and bit his lip hard, and stared at the ground. - -Norma broke into a hard laugh, and lay back in her chair. - -“You must be thinking me a great fool,” she said, in her usual mocking -tones. “When a woman tries to swim in sentiment, she flounders, and -either drowns or has to be lugged ignominiously to shore. She can't swim -like a man. Thanks for the rescue, Mr. Padgate.” - -He looked at her for a moment. - -“What do you mean?” he said curtly. - -“I'm back on dry land. Oh! it is safer for me. There I am protected by -my little bodyguard of three--the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I -can't get on without them.” - -Jimmie leaped from his chair and brought his clenched hands down to his -sides in a passionate gesture. - -“Stop talking like that, I say!” he cried imperiously. - -Then meeting her scared and indignant glance, he bowed somewhat wide of -her. - -“I beg your pardon,” he said, in a tone of no great apology, and marched -out of the little temple and along the gravelled walk of the terrace. -Flight, or the loss of self-control, was his only alternative. What she -thought of him he did not care. The sense of increasing distance from -her alone brought security to his soul. - -At the further end he met Mrs. Deering just back from her drive. - -“Why, what is the matter, Jimmie?” she asked, twirling an idle sunshade -over her pretty head, for the terrace was in deep afternoon shadow. - -“Nothing,” he replied, with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “I am going -for a walk before dinner.” - -He left her standing, reached the highroad and pounded along it. What a -fool he had been! What a mad fool he had been! - -Mrs. Deering, with a puzzled expression on her face, watched him -disappear. She turned and strolled down to Norma, who greeted her with a -satiric smile. - -“What have you been doing to Jimmie?” asked Mr. Deering. - -“I have been giving him lessons in worldly wisdom.” - -“Poor dear! They seem to have disagreed with him.” - -Norma shrugged her shoulders. “That's his affair, not mine.” - -“You don't mean to say that you and Jimmie have quarrelled?” laughed -Connie. “How delightful! I've always wanted to quarrel with Jimmie -just for the pleasure of kissing and making friends. But it has been -impossible. Is it serious?” - -“I hope not,” Norma answered; and then after a pause, “Oh, Connie, I'm -afraid I've been a positive brute.” - -Which evidence of a salutary conviction of her own wrongdoing shows that -Jimmie's amazing shout of command had not aroused within her any furious -indignation. Indeed, after the first moment of breathless astonishment, -she had expressed an odd, almost amusing thrill of admiration for the -man who had dared address her in that fashion. It was only a small -feminine satisfaction in the knowledge that by going away he would -punish himself for his temerity that had restrained her from summoning -him back. As soon as he was out of call, she reproached herself for -misconduct. She could have strangled the wanton devil that had prompted -her cynical speech. And yet the same devil had saved an embarrassing -situation. Wedded life and little children! If she had spoken what was -trembling on her lips, how could she have looked the man in the face -again? Her sex was revolting against that very prospect, was clamouring -wildly for she knew not what. She dared not betray herself. - -She greeted him smilingly in the drawing-room before dinner, as if -nothing had occurred, and chatted pleasantly with Morland over his day's -fortunes. Jimmie observed her with a sigh of relief. He had passed the -last two hours greatly agitated; he had trembled lest he had revealed -to her his soul's secret, and also lest his unmannerliness had given -unpardonable offence. In any case, now he saw himself forgiven, and -breathed freely. But he remained unusually silent during dinner, and -spent most of the evening in the billiard-room with Mr. Hardacre. - -That gentleman, joining the ladies later, fell into conversation with -his daughter. - -“How long is Padgate going to stay?” he asked, mopping his forehead with -his handkerchief. - -“Till the princess has completed her sittings, I suppose,” said Norma. - -“I wish she'd be quick. I don't know what to do with the fellow. Does -n't shoot, can't play billiards worth a cent, and does n't seem to -know anybody. It's like talking to a chap that does n't understand your -language. I've just been at it. Happened to say I'd like to go to -Rome again. He fetches a sigh and says so should he. 'Some of the best -wild-duck shooting in the world,' I said. He stared at me for a moment -as if I were an escaped lunatic. Now, what on earth should a reasonable -being go to that beastly place for except to shoot wild-duck on the -marshes?” - -Norma laughed the little mocking laugh that always irritated her father. - -“You need n't be afraid of not entertaining Mr. Padgate. He must have -enjoyed the conversation hugely.” - -“Damme--if the fellow is laughing at me--” he began. - -“He would not be the very fine gentleman that he is,” said Norma. “Where -is he now?” - -“Morland relieved guard in the billiard-room, when the post came in,” - growled Mr. Hardacre, who shrank from crossing swords with his daughter, -and indeed with anybody. “He is happy enough with Morland.” - -At that particular moment, however, there was not overmuch happiness in -the billiard-room. A letter from Aline had been accompanied by one for -“David Rendell, Esquire” which she had enclosed. Morland read it, and -crushed it angrily into the pocket of his dinner-jacket, and began to -knock the balls about in an aimless way. Jimmie watched him anxiously -and, as he did not speak, unfolded his own letter from Aline. Suddenly -he rose from the divan where he had been sitting and approached the -table. - -“There is something here that you ought to know, Morland. A man has been -enquiring for you at my house.” - -“Well, why should n't he?” asked Morland, making a savage shot. - -“He enquired for David Rendell.” - -Morland threw down his cue. - -“Well?” - -“I am afraid Aline, who is a miracle of sagacity as a general rule, has -made a mess of it. You mustn't be angry with my poor little girl. Her -head is full of sweeter things.” - -“What has she done?” Morland asked impatiently. - -“I'll read: 'I told him that Mr. Rendell was a friend of yours, and gave -him your present address. He muttered something about a false name and -went away without thanking me.'” - -“Good God!” cried Morland, “what damned fools women are! Did she say -what kind of a man he was?” - -Jimmie looked through the letter, and finding the passage, read: “'An -odd-looking creature, like a mad Methodist parson!'” - -Morland uttered an exclamation of anger and apprehension. His brow grew -black, and his florid comely features coarsened into ugliness. - -“I thought so. It could n't have been any one else. He was the only -person who knew. She has given me away nicely. The devil only knows what -will happen.” - -Jimmie leant up against the table and folded his arms, and looked at -Morland moving restlessly to and fro and giving vent to his anger. - -“Who is this man you seem to be so afraid of?” he asked quietly. - -Morland stopped upon the unpleasant word, then shrugged his shoulders. - -“Yes, I suppose I am afraid of him. One can't reckon upon anything that -he might or might not do. He's like a mad cat. I've seen him. So have -you.” - -“I?” - -“Yes--that socialist maniac you dragged me to hear one Sunday in Hyde -Park.” - -“Whew!” said Jimmie. He remembered the look in the orator's eyes, his -crazy, meaningless words, his fierce refusal to enter into friendly -talk; also Morland's impatient exclamation and abrupt departure as soon -as they had learned the man's name. - -“He's as mad as a hatter,” he said. “If he should take it into his head -to come down here and make a row, there will be the deuce to pay,” said -Morland. - -Jimmie reflected for a moment. The man, with his wild talk of maidens -lashed to the chariot-wheels of the rich, must have been tortured by the -sense of some personal wrong. - -“How does he come into the story?” he asked. “You had better tell me.” - -“The usual way. Oh, I wish to God I had never got into this mess! A man -of position is an infernal fool to go rotting about after that sort of -thing. Oh, don't you see? He had a crazy passion for her, was engaged to -her--he was mad then. When I came along, he had to drop it, and he has -been persecuting her ever since--divided between the desire to marry her -in spite of everything, and to murder me. That's why I had the assumed -name and false address. I would n't have let you in for this bother, -but I could n't go and run the risk of being blackmailed at a confounded -little stationer's shop up a back street. He has been trying to get on -my track all the time--and now he's succeeded, thanks to Aline. Why the -devil could n't she hold her tongue?” - -“Because she is an innocent child, who has never dreamed of evil,” said -Jimmie. - -Morland walked about the room, agitated, for a few moments, then halted. - -“Oh, yes, I know, Jimmie. She is n't to blame. Besides, the mischief is -done, so it's no use talking.” - -“Were you thinking of any such possibility in the summer when you asked -me to help you?” said Jimmie. Morland cast a quick, hopeful glance at -his friend. - -“Something of the sort. One never knows. You were the only man I could -rely on.” - -“Does this man know you by sight?” - -“Not to my knowledge.” - -“Then what are you so afraid of? Look here, my dear old boy,” he -said cheerily, “you are being frighted by false fire. If it is only a -question of dealing with the man when he comes here--that is, supposing -he does come--which is very unlikely, I will tackle him as the only -person who knows anything about David Rendell. I'll tell him David -Rendell is in Scotland or Honolulu.” - -“He is on the track of the false name,” said Morland, uneasily. “Aline -mentions that.” - -“He is bound to come to me first,” said Jimmie. “I'll fix him. We'll get -on capitally together. There's a freemasonry between lunatics. Leave it -all to me.” - -“Really?” cried Morland, in great eagerness. - -“Of course,” said Jimmie. “Let us go upstairs.” - -They passed out of the billiard-room in silence. On their way to the -drawing-room Morland murmured in a shamefaced way his apologia. He was -just at the beginning of his electoral campaign. It was his own county. -He was hand in glove with the duchess, sovereign lady of these parts, -and she never forgave a scandal. “Besides,” he added, “to quote your -own words, it would break Norma's heart.” Also, employing the limited -vocabulary of his class and type, he reiterated the old assurance -that he had not been a beast. He had done all that a man could to make -amends. If Jimmie had not loved him so loyally, he would have seen -something very pitiful in these excuses; but convinced that Morland had -atoned as far as lay in his power for his fault, he trembled for the -happiness of only those dear to him. - -Norma met them on the drawing-room landing. - -“I was coming down to see what had become of you,” she said. - -“I have been the culprit. I restore him to you,” laughed Jimmie. He -entered the room and closed the door. The betrothed pair stood for a -moment in an embarrassed silence. She laid a hesitating hand on his -sleeve. - -“Morland--” she said diffidently. “I was really wanting to have a little -talk with you. Somehow we don't often see one another.” - -Morland, surprised at the softness in her voice, led her back to the -billiard-room. - - - - -Chapter XII--NORMA'S ENLIGHTENMENT - -THE development of the germ of goodness in woman may be measured by -her tendency towards self-sacrifice. Even the most selfish of her sex, -provided she has some rudimentary virtues, hugs close to her bosom some -pet little thorn which she loves to dig into her shrinking flesh. She -enjoys some odd little mortification, some fantastic humiliation, that -is known only to the inner chamber of her soul. Your great-hearted woman -practises Suttee daily, greatly to the consternation of an observant yet -unperceptive husband. Doubtless this characteristic has a sexual basis, -psychological perhaps rather than directly physiological, being an -instinctive assertion of the fundamental principle of passivity, which -in its turn is translated into the need to be held down and subdued. -Thus, if the man does not beat her, she will beat herself; if he is -a fool, she will often apply caustic to her wisdom, so that she may -reverence him; if he is a knave, she will choke her honesty. Side by -side with the assertion of this principle, and indeed often inextricably -confused with it, is the maternal impulse, which by manifold -divergences from its primary manifestation causes women to find a joy, -uncomprehended by men, in pangs of suffering. The higher the type the -stronger the impulse towards this sweet self-martyrdom. - -Some such theory alone explains the softer tones in Norma's voice -when she spoke to Morland. She had passed through two periods of sharp -development--the half-hour in Scotland and the hours she had spent -since her talk with Jimmie that afternoon. She acted blindly, obeying an -imperative voice. - -They sat down together on the raised divan. She was dressed in black, -with a bunch of yellow roses at her bosom, and her neck and arms gleamed -white in the shadow cast by the green shades over the billiard-table. -Her face had softened. She was infinitely desirable. - -“I have been thinking over our relations, Morland,” she said. “Perhaps I -have been wrong.” - -“What do you mean?” he asked in some alarm. - -“I told you when you asked me to marry you that it would be wise to put -sentiment aside. You agreed, against your will, and have observed the -convention very loyally. But I have not treated you well. In putting -sentiment aside I was, perhaps, wrong. That is what I wanted to say to -you.” - -“Let me see that I understand you, Norma,” said Morland. “You wish that -we should be more like--like ordinary lovers?” - -“We might try,” she whispered. - -She waited. Heaven knows what she waited for; but it did not come. The -Imp of Mischance again scored his point. The man's mind was filled with -the thoughts of another woman in her agony and of a crazy avenger coming -with murder in his heart. He took her hand mechanically and raised it -to his lips. Her yielding to the caress told him that he could throw -his arms around her and treat her loverwise; her words told him that he -ought to do so. - -Yet he did not. For the moment he was passionless; and to men of -his type is not given the power, possessed by men of imaginative -temperament, of simulating passion. He forced a laugh. - -“How do you think we might begin?” - -She went on bravely with her self-imposed task of submission. - -“I have heard that the man generally takes the initiative.” - -He kissed her on the cheek. To do less would have been outrageous. - -“I am glad you realise that I am in love with you, at last,” he said. - -“Are you sure that you are in love with me?” she asked, the chill that -had fallen upon her after the lack of response to her first whisper -growing colder and colder. - -“Of course I am.” - -“That is all I wanted to hear. Good-night,” she said in an odd voice. -She rose and put out her hand. Morland opened the door for her to pass -and closed it behind her. - -Norma went straight to her room, feeling as though she had been tied by -the heels to a cart-tail and dragged through the mud. Half undressed, -she dismissed her maid summarily. Every place on her body that the -girl's fingers touched seemed to be a bruise. She went to bed stupefied -with herself. - -Meanwhile Morland rang for whisky and soda, and cursed all that -appertained to him, knowing that he had missed an amazing opportunity. -After the way of feeble men, he thought of a hundred things he might -have said and done that would have brought her to his feet. Had he not -been watching patiently, ever since his engagement, for her to put off -her grand airs, and become a woman like the rest of them? He should -have said the many things he had often said to others. Or, if words were -difficult, why in the world had he not kissed her properly after the -manner accepted by women as the infallible argument? He conjured up the -exceeding pleasantness of such an act. He could feel the melting of -her lips, the yielding of her bosom; gradually he worked himself into -a red-hot desire. A sudden resolve took him upstairs. There he learned -that Norma had retired for the night, and returning to his whisky in the -billiard-room, he cursed himself more loudly than before. A hand thrust -into the pocket of his dinner-jacket met the poor girl's crumpled -letter. Mechanically he took it to the empty grate, and then cursed the -fire for not being lit. When Mr. Hardacre came down for a final game of -billiards, he found his future son-in-law in an irritable temper, and -won an easy game. Rallied upon his lack of form, Morland explained that -the damned election was getting on his nerves. - -“Did n't get on them when you were shooting to-day,” said Mr. Hardacre. - -“I made believe that the birds were the beastly voters,” replied -Morland. - -Norma had not yet come down the next morning when he started for Cosford -on electioneering business. Nor did he meet her, as he hoped, in the -town, carrying on the work of canvassing which she had begun with great -success. A dry barrister having been sent down to contest the division -in the Liberal interest, was not making much headway in a constituency -devoted to the duchess and other members of the tyrannical classes, and -thus the task of Norma and her fellow-canvassers was an easy one. Today, -however, she did not appear. Morland consoled himself with the assurance -that he would put things right in the evening. After all, it was easy -enough to kiss a woman who had once shown a desire to be made love to. -Every man has his own philosophy of woman. This was Morland's. - -Jimmie also started upon his morning's pursuits without seeing Norma. -He was somewhat relieved; for he had spent a restless night, dozing off -only to dream grotesque dreams of the mad orator and waking to fight -with beasts that gnawed his vitals. He came down unstrung, a haggard -mockery of himself, and he was glad not to meet her clear eyes. The -three-mile walk to Chiltern Towers refreshed him, his work on the -portrait absorbed his faculties, and his neighbours at the ducal -luncheon-table, to which the duchess in person had invited him, -clear-witted women in the inner world of politics and diplomacy, kept -his attention at straining point. It was only when he walked back to -Heddon Court, although he made a manful attempt to whistle cheerily, -that he felt heavy upon his heart the burden of the night. It was a -languorous September afternoon, and the tired hush of dying summer -had fallen upon the world. The smell of harvest, the sense of golden -fulfilment of life hung on the air. Jimmie swung his stick impatiently, -and filled his lungs with a draught of the mellow warmth. - -“The old earth is good. By God, it's good!” he cried aloud. - -Brave words of a resolute optimism; but they did not lighten his burden. - -He reached the house. Beneath an umbrella-tent on the front lawn sat -Norma, her hands listlessly holding a closed book on her lap. Jimmie -would have lifted his hat and passed her by, but with, a brightening -face she summoned him. They talked awhile of commonplace things. -Then, after a pause, she asked him, half mockingly, to account for his -behaviour the day before. Why had he rated her in that masterful way? - -“I can't bear you to speak evilly of yourself,” he said. - -“Why, since I deserve it?” - -“The _you_ that you sometimes take a pleasure in assuming to be -may deserve it. The real you does n't. And it is the real you that I -know--that has given me friendship and is going to marry my dearest -friend. The other you is a phantom of a hollow world in which -circumstances have placed you.” - -“I think the phantom is happier than the reality,” said Norma, with a -laugh. “'The dream is better than the drink.' The hollow world is the -safer place, after all.” - -“Where imagination doth not corrupt and enthusiasms do not break in and -steal,” said Jimmie, with unusual bitterness. “I have seen very little -of it--but you have told me things,” he continued lamely, “and your -being in it and of it seems a profanation. When you wilfully identify -yourself with its ideals, you hurt me; and when I am hurt, I cry out.” - -“But why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” she -asked in a tone half of genuine enquiry and half of expectancy, wholly -kind and soft.. - -He dug the point of his stick into the turf and did not raise his eyes. -He knew now what a fool's game of peril he was playing, and kept himself -in check. Yet his voice trembled as he replied: - -“Morland is very dear to me. You, his future wife, have grown dear to -me also. I suppose I have lived rather a simple sort of life and take my -emotions seriously.” - -“I hope you thank God for it,” said Norma. - -The swift rattle of a carriage turning into the drive broke the talk, -which had grown too personal to be left voluntarily. Jimmie felt -infinitely grateful to the visitors, like a man suddenly saved from a -threatening precipice. Leaving Norma with a bow, he fled into the house -and selecting a book from the library, went onto the terrace. He needed -solitude. Something of which he was unaware was happening. Circumstances -were not the same as when he had first arrived. Then he had looked on -Norma with brave serenity. He was happy, loving her and receiving frank -friendship from her condescending hands. Now it was growing to be a -pain to watch her face, a dread to hear her voice. Sweet intercourse had -become a danger. And a few days had brought about the change. Why? Of -the riot in the woman's nature he knew nothing. In his blank ignorance, -seeking the cause within himself, he asked, Why? - -He crossed the tennis lawn, went through the little opening at the end -of the hedge, and down to the seclusion of the croquet ground. Half-way -along the sloping bank beneath the upper terrace some one had left a -rug. He threw himself upon it, and tried like many another poor fool -to reason down his hunger. But all the sensitive nerves with which -the imaginative man, for his curse or his blessing, is endowed, were -vibrating from head to foot. Her words sang in his ears: “Why should you -care so much about what I am and what I am not?” The real answer burst -passionately from his heart. - -He had lain there for about half an hour when a gay little laugh aroused -him. - -“You idyllic creature!” - -It was Connie Deering, bewitchingly apparelled, a dainty, smiling pale -yellow butterfly, holding as usual an absurd parasol over her head. - -“I have been looking for you all over the place,” she remarked. “They -told me you were somewhere about the grounds. May I sit down?” - -He made room for her on the rug, and taking the parasol from her hand, -closed it. She settled herself gracefully by his side. - -“I repeat I have been looking for you,” she said. - -“The overpowering sense of honour done me has deprived me of speech,” -replied Jimmie, with an attempted return to his light-hearted manner. - -“Norma is entertaining those dreadful Spencer-Temples,” said Mrs. -Deering, irrelevantly. - -“I must have had a premonition of their terrors, for I fled from before -their path,” he said. “After all, poor people, what have they done to be -called names?” he added. - -“They are ugly.” - -“So am I, yet people don't run away from me.” - -“I saw you run away from them,” she said with a significant nod. “I -was at my bedroom window. They spoiled a most interesting little -conversation.” - -Jimmie was startled. He looked at her keenly, but only met laughing -eyes. - -“They interrupted me certainly. But I could n't have inflicted my -society on Miss Hardacre all the afternoon.” - -“You would have liked to, wouldn't you? Jimmie dear,” she said with a -change of tone, “I want to have a talk with you. I'm the oldest woman -friend you have--” - -“And by far the sweetest and kindest and prettiest and fascinatingest.” - -She tapped his hand with her fingers. “Ssh! I'm serious, awfully -serious. I've never been so serious in my life before. I've got a duty. -I don't often have it, but when I do, it's a terrible matter.” - -“You had better go and have it extracted at once, Connie,” he laughed, -determined to keep the talk in a frivolous channel. But the little lady -was determined also. - -“Jimmie dear,” she said, holding up her forefinger, “I am afraid you -are running into danger. I want to warn you. An old friend can do that, -can't she?” - -“You can say anything you like to me, Connie. But I don't know what you -mean.” - -He suspected her meaning, however, only too shrewdly, and his heart beat -with apprehension. Had he been fool enough to betray his secret? - -“Are n't you getting just a little too fond of Norma, Jimmie?” - -“I could n't get too fond of her,” he said, “seeing that she is to be -Morland's wife.” - -“That's just why you must n't. Come, Jimmie, have n't you fallen a bit -in love with her?” - -“No,” he said with some heat. “Certainly not. How dare I?” - -Kindness and teasing were in her eyes. - -“My poor dear husband used to say I had the brain of a bird, but I may -have the sharp eyes of a bird as well. Come--not just one little bit in -love?” - -She had sought him with the best intentions in the world. She had long -suspected; yesterday and to-day had given her certainty. She would put -him on his guard, talk to him like an elder sister, pour forth upon him -her vast wisdom in affairs of the heart, and finally persuade him-from -his folly to more sensible courses. - -“He sha'n't come to grief over Norma if I can prevent it,” she had said -to herself. - -And now, in spite of her altruistic resolve, she could not resist the -pleasure of teasing him. She had done so all her life. Her method -became less elder-sisterly than she had intended. But she was miles from -realising that she touched bare nerves, and that the man was less a man -than a living pain. - -“I tell you I'm not in love with her, Connie,” he said. “How could I -dream of loving her? It would be damnable folly.” - -“Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie,” she said, enjoying his confusion, “what a -miserably poor liar you make--and what a precious time you would have in -the witness-box if you were a co-respondent! You can't deceive for nuts. -You had better confess and have done with it.” Then seeing something of -the anguish on his face, she bethought her of the serious aspect of her -mission. “I could not bear you to break your heart over Norma, dear,” - she said quite softly. - -“Don't madden me, Connie--you don't know what you are saying,” he -muttered below his breath. - -Connie Deering had never heard a man speak in agony of spirit. Her lot -had fallen among pleasant places, where life was a smooth, shaven lawn -and emotions not more violent than the ripples on a piece of ornamental -water. His tone gave her a sudden fright. - -“You do love her, then?” she whispered. - -“Yes,” said Jimmie, drawing himself up in a tight, awkward heap on -the slope. “My God, yes, I do love her. I love her with every fibre of -brain and body.” - -The words were out. More came. He could not restrain them. He gave up -the attempt, surrendered himself to the drunkenness of his passion, -poured out a torrent of riotous speech. What he said he knew not. -Such divine madness comes to a man but few times in a life. The -sweet-hearted, frivolous woman, sitting there in the trim little -paradise of green, with its velvet turf and trim slopes, and tall mask -of trees, all mellow in the shade of the soft September afternoon, -listened to him with wondering eyes and pale cheeks. It was no longer -Jimmie of the homely face that was talking; he was transfigured. His -very voice had changed its quality.... Did he love her? The word was -inept in its inadequacy. He worshipped her like a Madonna. He adored her -like a queen. He loved her as the man of hot blood loves a woman. Soul -and heart and body clamoured for her. Compared with hers, every other -woman's beauty was a glow-worm unto lightning. Her voice haunted him -like music heard in sleep. Her presence left a fragrance behind that -clouded his senses like incense. Her beauty twined itself into every -tendril of every woman's hair he painted, stole into the depths of every -woman's eyes. It was a divine obsession. - -“You must fight against it,” Connie whispered tonelessly. - -“Why should I? Who is harmed? Norma? Who will tell her? Not I. If I -choose to fill my life with her splendour, what is that to any one? The -desire of the moth for the star! Who heeds the moth?” - -He went on reckless of speech until his passion had spent itself. Then -he could only repeat in a broken way: - -“Love her? Heaven knows I love her. My soul is a footstool for her to -rest her feet upon.” - -Connie Deering laid her hand on his. - -“I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry, Jimmie. God bless you, dear.” - -He raised the hand to his lips. Neither spoke. He plucked at the grass -by his side; at length he looked up. - -“You won't give me away, will you?” he said with a smile, using her -dialect. - -She went on her knees and clasped both his wrists. She said the first -thing that came, as something sacred, into her head. - -“I could no more speak of this to any one than of some of my dead -husband's kisses.” - -“I know you are a good true woman, Connie,” he said. - -In the silence that followed, Norma, who had come to summon Connie to -tea (the Spencer-Temples having called on their drive past the gates -merely to deliver a message), and hearing the voice behind the hedge had -been compelled against her will to listen--Norma, deadly white, shaken -to the roots of her being, crept across the tennis lawn and fled in -swaying darkness to her room. - - - - -Chapter XIII--THE OPTIMIST AT LARGE - -CONNIE DEERING walked back to the house with a silent and still -tremulous Jimmie. She had slid her hand through his arm, and now and -then gave it an affectionate pat. Within the limitations of her light, -gay nature she was a sympathetic and loyal woman, and she had loved -Jimmie for many years with the unquestioning fondness that one has for -a beloved and satisfying domestic animal. She had recovered from -the fright his frantic demonstration had caused her, and her easy -temperament had shaken off the little chill of solemnity that had -accompanied her vow of secrecy. But she pitied him with all her kind -heart, and in herself felt agreeably sentimental. - -They strolled slowly into the hall, and paused for a moment before -parting. - -“When you come to think of it seriously, you won't consider I have made -too impossible a fool of myself?” he asked with an apologetic smile. - -“I promise,” she said affectionately. Then she laughed. Not only -was Jimmie's smile contagious, but Connie Deering could not face the -pleasant world for more than an hour without laughter. - -“I have always said you were a dear, Jimmie, and you are. I almost wish -I could kiss you.” - -Jimmie looked around. They were quite unperceived. - -“I do quite,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek. - -“Now we are really brother and sister,” she said with a flush. “You are -not going to be too unhappy, are you?” - -“I? Oh no, not I,” he replied heartily. He repeated this asseveration to -himself while dressing for dinner. Why indeed should he be unhappy? Had -he not looked a few hours before at God's earth and found that it was -good? Besides, to add to the common stock of the world's unhappiness -were a crime. “Yes, a crime,” he said aloud, with a vigorous pull at his -white tie. Then he perceived that it was hopelessly mangled, and wished -for Aline, who usually conducted that part of the ceremony of his -toilette. - -“It will have to do,” he said cheerfully, as he turned away from the -glass. - -Yet, for all his philosophising, he was surprised at the relief that his -wild confession to Connie had afforded him. The burden that had seemed -too heavy for him to bear had now grown magically light. He attributed -the phenomenon to Connie Deering, to the witchery of her sweet sympathy -and the comfort of her sisterly kiss. By the time he had finished -dressing the acute pain of the past two days had vanished, and as -he went down the stairs he accounted himself a happy man. In the -drawing-room he met Norma, and chatted to her almost light-heartedly. -He did not notice the constraint in her manner, her avoidance of his -glance, the little pucker of troubled brows; nor was he aware of her -sigh of relief when the door opened and the servant announced Mr. -Theodore Weever, who with one or two other people were dining at the -house. Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre followed on the American's heels, and -soon the rest of the party had assembled. Jimmie had no opportunity -for further talk with Norma, who studiously kept apart from him all the -evening, and during dinner devoted herself to subacid conversation with -Morland and to a reckless interchange of cynical banter with Weever. -Jimmie, talking with picturesque fancy about his student days in the Rue -Bonaparte to his neighbour, a frank fox-hunting and sport-loving young -woman, never dreamed of the chaos of thoughts and feelings that whirled -behind the proud face on the opposite side of the table; and Norma, -when her mind now and then worked lucidly, wondered at the strength -and sweetness of the man who could subdue such passion and laugh with a -gaiety so honest and sincere. For herself, Theodore Weever, with his icy -humour that crystallised her own irony into almost deadly wit, was her -sole salvation during the interminable meal. Once Morland, listening -with admiration, whispered in her ear: - -“I've never heard you in such good form.” - -She had to choke down an hysterical impulse of laughter and swallow -a mouthful of champagne. Later, when the women guests had gone, she -slipped up to her room without saying good-night to Morland, and, -dismissing her maid, as she had done the night before, sat for a long -time, holding her head in her hands, vainly seeking to rid it of words -that seemed to have eaten into her brain. And when she thought of -Morland, of last night, of her humiliation, she flushed hot from hair -to feet. She was only five-and-twenty, and the world had not as yet -completed its work of hardening. It was a treacherous and deceitful -world; she had prided herself on being a finished product of -petrifaction, and here she lay, scorched and bewildered, like any soft -and foolish girl who had been suddenly brought too near the flame of -life. Keenly she felt the piteousness of her defeat. In what it exactly -consisted she did not know. She was only conscious of broken pride, the -shattering of the little hard-faced gods in her temple, the tearing up -of the rails upon which she had reckoned to travel to her journey's end. -Hers was a confused soul state, devoid of immediate purpose. A breach -of her engagement with Morland did not occur to her mind, and Jimmie was -merely an impersonal utterer of volcanic words. She slept but little. In -the morning she found habit by her bedside; she clothed herself therein -and faced the day. - -Much was expected of her. The great garden-party was to take place -that afternoon. Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck had -signified that she would do Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre the honour of -being present. Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire would accompany the -princess. The _ban_ and _arriere-ban_ of the county had been invited, -and the place would be filled with fair women agog to bask in the smiles -of royalty, and ill-tempered men dragged away from their partridges -by ambitious wives. A firm of London caterers had contracted for the -refreshments. A military band would play on the terrace. A clever French -showman whom Providence had sent to cheer the dying hours of the London -season, and had kept during the dead months at a variety theatre, was -coming down with an authentic Guignol. He had promised the choicest -pieces in his repertoire--_la vraie grivoiserie française_--and men -who had got wind of the proposed entertainment winked at one another -wickedly. The garden-party was to be an affair of splendour worthy of -the royal lady who had deigned to shed her serenity upon the county -families assembled; and Mr. Hardacre had raised a special sum of money -to meet the expenses. - -“I shall have to go to the Jews, my dear,” he had said to his wife when -they were first discussing ways and means. - -“Oh, go to the--Jews then,” said Mrs. Hardacre, almost betrayed, in her -irritation, into an unwifely retort. “What does it matter, what does any -sacrifice matter, when once we have royalty at the house? You are such a -fool, Benjamin.” - -He had a singular faculty for arousing the waspishness of his wife; yet, -save on rare occasions, he was the meekest of men in her presence. - -“Well, you know best, Eliza,” he said. - -“I have n't been married to you for six-and-twenty years without being -perfectly certain of that,” she replied tartly. - -So Mr. Hardacre went to the Jews, and the princess promised to come to -Mrs. Hardacre. - -Norma was not the only one that morning who was aroused to a sense of -responsibility. The footman entering Jimmie's bedroom brought with him -a flat cardboard box neatly addressed in Aline's handwriting. The box -contained a new shirt, two new collars, a new silk tie, and a pair of -grey suède gloves; also a letter from Aline instructing him as to the -use of these various articles of attire. - -“Be sure to wear your frock-coat,” wrote the director of Jimmie's -conduct. “I wish you had one less than six years old; but I went over it -with benzine and ammonia before I packed it up, so perhaps it won't be -so bad. And wear your patent-leather evening shoes. They'll look quite -smart if you'll tie the laces up tight, and stick the ends in between -the shoe and the sock. Oh, I wish I could come and turn you out -decently! and _please_, Jimmie dear, don't cut yourself shaving and go -about all day with a ridiculous bit of cotton wool on your dear chin. -Tony says you need n't wear the frock-coat, but I know better. What -acquaintance has he with princesses and duchesses? And that reminds -me to tell you that Tony--” _et caetera, et caetera,_ in a manner that -brought the kindest smile in the world into Jimmie's eyes. - -He dressed with scrupulous regard to directions, but not in the -frock-coat. He had a morning sitting with the princess at Chiltern -Towers to get through before airing himself in the splendour of benzine -and ammonia. He put on his old tweed jacket and went downstairs. Morland -was the only person as yet in the breakfast-room. He held a morning -paper tight in his hand, and stared through the window, his back to -the door. On Jimmie's entrance he started round, and Jimmie saw by a -harassed face that something had happened. - -“My dear fellow--” he began in alarm. - -Morland smoothed out the paper with nervous fingers, and threw it -somewhat ostentatiously on a chair. Then he walked to the table and -poured himself out some tea. The handle of the silver teapot slid in -his grasp, and awkwardly trying to save the pouring flood of liquid, he -dropped the teapot among the cups and saucers. It was a disaster, but -one that could have been adequately greeted by a simpler series of -expletives. He cursed vehemently. - -“What's the matter, man?” asked Jimmie. - -Morland turned violently upon him. - -“The very devil's the matter. There never was such a mess since the -world began. What an infernal fool I have been! You do well to steer -clear of women.” - -“Tell me what's wrong and I may be able to help you.” - -Morland looked at him for a moment in gloomy doubt. Then he shook his -head. - -“You can't help me. I thought you could, but you can't. It's a matter -for a lawyer. I must run up to town.” - -“And cut the garden-party?” - -“That's where I'm tied,” exclaimed Morland, impatiently. “I ought to -start now, but if I cut the garden-party the duchess would never forgive -me--and by Jove, I may need the duchess more than ever--and I've got a -meeting to attend in Cosford this morning to which a lot of people are -coming from a distance.” - -“Can't I interview the lawyer for you?” - -“No. I must do it myself.” - -The butler entered and looked with grave displeasure at the wreckage on -the tea-tray. While he was repairing the disaster, Morland went back to -the window and Jimmie stood by his side. - -“If you fight it through squarely, it will all come right in the end.” - -“You don't mind my not telling you about it?” said Morland, in a low -voice. - -“Why should I? In everything there is a time for silence and a time for -speech.” - -“You're right,” said Morland, thrusting his hands into his trousers' -pockets; “but how I am to get through this accursed day in silence I -don't know.” - -They sat down to breakfast. Morland rejected the offer of tea, and -called for a whisky and soda which he nearly drained at a gulp. Mr. -Hardacre came in, and eyed the long glass indulgently. - -“Bucking yourself up, eh? Why did n't you ask for a pint of champagne?” - -He opened the newspaper and ran through the pages. Morland watched him -with swift nervous glances, and uttered a little gasp of relief when he -threw it aside and attacked his grilled kidneys. His own meal was -soon over. Explaining that he had papers to work at in the library, he -hurried out of the room. - -“Can't understand a man being so keen on these confounded politics,” his -host remarked to Jimmie across the table. A polite commonplace was all -that could be expected in reply. Politics were engrossing. - -“That's the worst of it,” said Mr. Hardacre. “In the good old days a man -could take his politics like a gentleman; now he has got to go at them -like a damned blaspheming agitator on a tub.” - -“Cosford was once a pretty little pocket borough, wasn't it?” said -Jimmie. “Now Trade's unfeeling train usurp the privileges of His Grace -of Wiltshire and threaten to dispossess his nominee. Instead of -one simple shepherd recording his pastoral vote we have an educated -electorate daring to exercise their discretion.” - -Mr. Hardacre looked at Jimmie askance; he always regarded an allusive -style with suspicion, as if it necessarily harboured revolutionary -theories. - -“I hope you're not one of those--” He checked himself as he was going -to say “low radical fellows.” Politeness forbade. “I hope you are not a -radical, Mr. Padgate?” - -“I am sure I don't quite know,” replied Jimmie, cheerfully. - -“Humph!” said Mr. Hardacre, “I believe you are.” - -Jimmie laughed; but Mr. Hardacre felt that he held the key to the -eccentric talk of his guest. Jimmie Padgate was a radical; a fearful -wildfowl of unutterable proclivities, to whom all things dreadful were -possible. - -“I,” he continued, “am proud to be a Tory of the old school.” - -The entrance of the ladies put a stop to the distressful conversation. - -Jimmie, whose life during the past few days had been a curious compound -of sunshine and shadow, went about his morning's work with only -Morland's troubles weighing upon him. Of their specific nature he had -no notion; he knew they had to do with the unhappy love affair; but -as Morland was going to put matters into the hands of his lawyers, a -satisfactory solution was bound to be discovered. Like all simple-minded -men, he had illimitable faith in the powers of solicitors and -physicians; it was their business to get people out of difficulties, and -if they were capable men they did their business. Deriving much comfort -from this fallacy, he thought as little as might be about the matter. In -fact he quite enjoyed his morning. He sat before his easel at the end -of a high historic gallery, the bright morning light that streamed in -through the windows tempered by judiciously arranged white blinds; and -down the vista were great paintings, and rare onyx tables, and priceless -chairs and statuary, all harmonising with the stately windows and -painted ceiling and polished floor. In front of him, posed in befitting -attitude, sat the royal lady, with her most urbane expression upon -her features, and, that which pleased him most, the picture was just -emerging from the blurred mass of paint, an excellent though somewhat -idealised portrait. So he worked unfalteringly with the artist's joy in -the consciousness of successful efforts, and his good-humour infected -even his harsh sitter, who now and then showed a wintry gleam of gaiety, -and uttered a guttural word of approbation. - -“You shall come to Herren-Rothbeck and baint the bortrait of the brince -my brother,” she said graciously. “Would that blease you?” - -“I should just think it would,” said Jimmie. - -The princess laughed--a creaking, rusty laugh, but thoroughly well -intentioned. Jimmie glanced at her enquiringly. - -“I like you,” she responded. “You are so natural--what you English call -refreshing. A German would have made a ceremonious speech as long as -your mahl-stick.” - -“I am afraid I must learn ceremony before I come to court, Madam,” said -Jimmie. - -“If you do, you will have forgotten how to baint bor-traits,” said the -princess. - -Thus, under the sun of princely favour, was Jimmie proceeding on -the highroad to fortune. Never had the future seemed so bright. His -bombastic jest about being appointed painter in ordinary to the crowned -heads of Europe was actually going to turn out a reality. He lost -himself in daydreams of inexhaustible coffers from which he could toss -gold in lapfuls to Aline. She should indeed walk in silk attire, and set -up housekeeping with Tony in a mansion in Park Lane. - -On the front lawn at Heddon Court he met Connie and waved his hat in the -air. She went to him, and, peering into his smiling face, laid her hand -on his sleeve. - -“Whatever has happened? Have you two stepped into each other's shoes?” - -“What on earth do you mean? - -“You know--Norma.” - -“My dear Connie--” he began. - -“Well, it seemed natural. Here are you as happy as an emperor; and there -is Morland come back from Cosford with the look of a hunted criminal.” - - - - -Chapter XIV--THE BUBBLE REPUTATION - -THE princess had the affability to inform Mrs. Hardacre that it was a -“charming barty,” and Mrs. Hardacre felt that she had not lived in vain. - -Henceforth she would be of the innermost circle of the elect of the -county. Exclusive front doors would open respectfully to her. She would -be consulted on matters appertaining to social polity. She would be a -personage. She would also make her neighbour, Lady FitzHubert, sick with -envy. A malignant greenness on that lady's face she noted with a thrill -of pure happiness, and she smilingly frustrated all her manoeuvres to -get presented to Her Serene Highness. She presented her rival, instead, -to Jimmie. - -“My dear Lady FitzHubert, let me introduce Mr. Padgate, who is painting -the dear princess's portrait. Mr. Padgate is staying with us.” - -Whereby Mrs. Hardacre conveyed the impression that Heddon Court and -Chiltern Towers contained just one family party, the members of which -ran in and out of either house indiscriminately. It may be mentioned -that Jimmie did not get on particularly well with Lady FitzHubert. He -even confided afterwards to Connie Deering his suspicion that now and -again members of the aristocracy were lacking in true urbanity. - -By declaring the garden-party to be charming the princess only did -justice to the combined efforts of the Hardacres and Providence. The -warm golden weather and the chance of meeting august personages had -brought guests from far and near. The lawns were bright with colour and -resonant with talk. A red-coated band played on the terrace. Between the -items of music, Guignol, housed in the Greek temple, with the portico -for a proscenium, performed his rogueries to the delight of hastily -assembling audiences. Immediately below, a long white-covered table -gleamed with silver tea-urns and china, and all the paraphernalia of -refreshments. At the other end of the lawn sat the august personages -surrounded by the elect. - -Among these was Morland. But for him neither blue September skies nor -amiable duchesses had any charm. To the man of easy living had come -the sudden shock of tragedy, and the music and the teacups and the -flatteries seemed parts of a ghastly farce. The paragraph he had read -in the paper that morning obsessed him. The hours had seemed one long -shudder against which he vainly braced his nerves. He had loved the poor -girl in his facile way. The news in itself was enough to bring him face -to face with elementals. But there was another terror added. The chance -word of a laughing woman had put him on the rack of anxiety. Getting out -of the train at Cosford, she had seen the queerest figure of a man step -on to the platform, with the face of Peter the Hermit and the costume of -Mr. Stiggins. Morland's first impulse had been to retreat precipitately -from Cosford, and take the next train to London, whither he ought to -have gone that morning. The tradition-bred Englishman's distaste for -craven flight kept him irresolutely hanging round the duchess. He -thought of whispering a private word to Jimmie; but Jimmie was far -away, being introduced here and there, apparently enjoying considerable -popularity. Besides, the whisper would involve the tale of the newspaper -paragraph, and Morland shrank from confiding such news to Jimmie. No one -on earth must know it save his legal adviser, an impersonal instrument -of protection. He did what he had done once during five horrible weeks -at Oxford, when an Abingdon barmaid threatened him with a breach of -promise action. He did nothing and trusted to luck. Happy chance brought -to light the fact that she was already married. Happy chance might save -him again. - -Beyond the mere commonplaces of civility he had exchanged no words that -day with Norma. Moved by an irritating feeling of shame coupled with a -certain repugnance of the flesh, he had deliberately avoided her; and -his preoccupation had not allowed him to perceive that the avoidance was -reciprocated. When they happened to meet in their movements among the -guests, they smiled at each other mechanically and went their respective -ways. Once, during the afternoon, Mr. Hardacre, red and fussy, took him -aside. - -“I have just heard a couple of infernal old cats talking of Norma and -that fellow Weever. There they are together now. Will you give Norma a -hint, or shall I?” - -Morland looked up and saw the pair on the terrace, midway between the -band and the Guignol audience. - -“I'm glad she has got somebody to amuse her,” he said, turning away. He -was almost grateful to Weever for taking Norma off his hands. - -Meanwhile Jimmie was continuing to find life full of agreeable -surprises. Lady FitzHubert was not the only lady to whom he was -presented as the Mr. Padgate who was painting the princess's portrait. -Mrs. Hardacre waived the personal grudge, and flourished him -tactfully in the face of the county; and the county accepted him with -unquestioning ingenuousness. He was pointed out as a notability, became -the well-known portrait-painter, the celebrated artist, _the_ James -Padgate, and thus achieved the bubble reputation. A guest who was -surreptitiously reporting the garden-party for the local paper took -eager notes of the personal appearance of the eminent man, and being a -woman of the world, professed familiarity with his works. For the first -time in his life he found himself a person of importance. The fact -of his easy inclusion in the charmed circle cast a glamour over the -crudities of the gala costume designed and furbished up with so much -anxious thought by Aline, and people (who are kindly as a rule when -their attention is diverted from the trivial) looked only at his face -and were attracted to the man himself. Only Lady FitzHubert, who had -private reasons for frigidity, treated him in an unbecoming manner. -Other fair ladies smiled sweetly upon him, and spread abroad tales of -his niceness, and thus helped in the launching of him as a fashionable -portrait-painter upon the gay world. - -He had a brief interlude of talk with Norma by the refreshment-table. - -“I hope you are not being too much bored by all this,” she said in her -society manner. - -“Bored!” he cried. “It's delightful.” - -“What about the hollow world where imagination doth not corrupt and -enthusiasms do not break in and steal?” - -“It's a phantom dust-heap for inept epigrams. I don't believe it -exists.” - -“You mustn't preach a gospel one day and give it the lie the next,” she -said, half seriously; “for then I won't know what to believe. You don't -seem to realise your responsibilities.” - -He echoed the last word in some surprise. Norma broke into a little -nervous laugh. - -“You don't suppose you can go about without affecting your -fellow-creatures? It is well that you don't know what a disturbing -element you are.” - -She turned her head away and closed her eyes for a second or two, for -the words she had overheard there by the hedge, last evening, rang in -her ears. Perhaps it had been well for Jimmie if he had known. Before he -had time to reply, she recovered herself, and added quickly: - -“I am glad you are enjoying yourself.” - -“How can I help it when every one is so kind to me?” he said brightly. -“I came down here an obscure painter, a veritable _pictor ignotus_, and -all your friends are as charming to me as if I were the President of -the Royal Academy.” - -Connie Deering came up with a message for Norma and carried her off to -the house. - -“How does Jimmie like being lionised?” she asked on the way. - -Norma repeated his last speech. - -“He has n't any idea of the people's motives.” She added somewhat -hysterically: - -“The man is half fool, half angel--” - -“And altogether a _man_. Don't you make any mistake about that,” said -Connie, with a pretty air of finality. “You don't know as much about him -as I do.” - -“I'm not so sure about that,” said Norma. - -“I am,” said Connie. - -Jimmie was wandering away from the refreshment-table when Theodore -Weever stopped him. - -“That's a famous portrait of yours, Mr. Padgate. I saw it to-day after -lunch. I offer you my congratulations.” - -Jimmie thanked him, said modestly that he hoped it was a good likeness. - -“Too good by a long chalk,” laughed the American. “Her Serene Skinflint -does n't deserve it. I bet you she beat you down like a market-woman -haggling for fish.” - -Jimmie stuck his hands on his hips and laughed. - -“You don't deny it. You should n't have let her. She is rolling in -money.” - -“I am afraid one does n't bother much with the commercial side of -things,” said Jimmie. - -“That's where you make the mistake. Money is money, and it is better in -one's own pockets than in anybody else's. But that's not what I wanted -to speak to you about. I wonder if you would let me have the pleasure -of calling at your studio some day? I'm collecting a few pictures, and I -should regard it as a privilege to be allowed to look round yours.” - -Jimmie, having no visiting cards, scribbled his address on the back of -an envelope. He would be delighted to see Mr. Weever any time he was -passing through London. Weever bowed, and turned to greet a passing -acquaintance, leaving a happy artist. A miracle had happened; the -star of his fortunes had arisen. A week ago it was below the horizon, -shedding a faint, hopeful glimmer in the sky. Now it shone bright -overhead. The days of struggle and disappointment were over. He had come -into his kingdom of recognition. All had happened to-day: the princess's -promise of another and more illustrious royal portrait; the sudden leap -into fame; the patronage of the American financier. One has to be the -poor artist, with his youth--one record of desperate endeavour--behind -him, to know what these things mean. The delicate flattery of strange -women, however commonplace or contemptible it may be to the successful, -was a new, rare thing to Jimmie and appeased an unknown hunger. The -prospect of good work done and delivered to the world, without sordid, -heart-breaking bargainings, shimmered before him like a paradise. Old -habit made him long for Aline. How pleased the child would be when she -heard the glad news! He saw the joy on her bright face and heard -her clap her hands together, and he smiled. He would return to her a -conqueror, having won the prizes she had so often wept for--name -and fame and fortune. The band was playing the “Wedding March” from -“Lohengrin.” By chance, as he was no musician, he recognised it. - -“Aline shall have a wedding dress from Paris,” he said half aloud, and -he smiled again. The world had never been so beautiful. - -He embraced all of it that was visible in a happy, sweeping glance. -Then with the swiftness of lightning the smile on his face changed into -consternation. - -For a moment he stood stock still, staring at the sudden figure of a -man. It was Stone, the mad orator of Hyde Park. There was no possibility -of mistaking him at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards. He wore the -same rusty black frock-coat and trousers, the same dirty collar and -narrow black tie, the same shapeless clerical hat. His long neck above -the collar looked raw and scabious like a vulture's. In his hand he -carried a folded newspaper. He had suddenly emerged upon the end of the -terrace from the front entrance, and was descending the steps that led -down to the tennis lawn. If he walked straight on, he would come to -the group surrounding the princess and the Duchess of Wiltshire. Two or -three people were already eyeing him curiously. - -Morland's strange dread of the man flashed upon Jimmie. He hurried -forward to meet him. Of what he was about to do he had no definite idea. -Perhaps he could head Stone off, take him away from the grounds on the -pretext of listening to his grievances. At any rate, a scandal must be -avoided. As he drew near, he observed Morland, who had been bending down -in conversation with the duchess, rise and unexpectedly recognise Stone. - -A manservant bearing a small tray with some teacups ran up to the -extraordinary intruder, who waved him away impatiently. The servant put -down his tray and caught him by the arm. - -“You have no business here.” - -Stone shook himself free. - -“I have. Where is Mr. Rendell? Tell him I have to speak with him.” - -“There is no such person here,” said the servant. “Be off!” - -Jimmie reached the spot, as a few of the nearer guests were beginning to -take a surprised interest in the altercation. Morland came forward from -behind the duchess's chair and cast a swift glance at Jimmie. - -“If you don't go, I shall make you,” said the servant, preparing to -execute his threat. The man looked dangerous. - -“I must see Mr. David Rendell,” he cried, beginning to struggle. - -Jimmie drew the servant away. - -“I know this gentleman,” he said quietly. “Mr. Stone, Mr. Rendell is not -here, but if you will come with me, I will listen to you, and tell him -anything you have to say.” - -Mr. Hardacre, who had seen the scuffle from a distance, came up in a -fluster. - -“What's all this? What's all this? Who is this creature? Please go -away.” He began to hustle the man. - -“Stop! He's an acquaintance of Padgate's,” said Morland, huskily. - -There was a short pause. Stone stared around at the well-dressed men -and women, at the seated figures of the princess and the duchess, at the -servant who had picked up the tray, at the band who were still playing -the “Wedding March” from “Lohengrin,” at the red-faced, little, -blustering man, at the beautiful cool setting of green, and the look in -his eyes was that of one who saw none of these things. Morland edged to -Jimmie's side. - -“For God's sake, get him away,” he said in a low voice. - -Jimmie nodded and touched the man's arm. - -“Come,” said he. - -“Yes, please take him off! What the dickens does he want?” said Mr. -Hardacre. - -Stone turned his burning eyes upon him. - -“I have come to find an infamous seducer,” he replied, with a -melodramatic intensity that would have been ludicrous had his face not -been so ghastly. “His name is Rendell.” - -There was a shiver of interest in the crowd. - -“_Was sagt er?_” the princess whispered to her neighbour. - -Jimmie again tried to lead Stone away, but the distraught creature -seemed lost in thought and looked at him fixedly. - -“I have seen you before,” he said at last. - -“Of course you have,” said Jimmie. “In Hyde Park. Don't you remember?” - -Suddenly, with a wrench of his hands he tore an unmounted photograph -from the folded newspaper and threw it on the ground. His eyes blazed. - -“I thought I should find him. One of you is David Rendell. It is not -your real name. That I know. Which of you is it?” - -Jimmie had sprung upon the photograph. Instinct rather than the evidence -of sight told him that it was an amateur portrait of himself and Morland -taken one idle afternoon in the studio by young Tony Merewether. It -had hardly lain the fraction of a second on the ground but to Jimmie it -seemed as if the two figures had flashed clear upon the sight of all -the bystanders. He glanced quickly at Morland, who stood quite still now -with stony face and averted eyes. He too had recognised the photograph, -and he cursed himself for a fool for having given it to the girl. He had -had it loose in his pocket; she had pleaded for it; she had no likeness -of him at all. He was paying now for his imprudent folly. Like Jimmie, -he feared lest others should have recognised the photograph. But he -trusted again to chance. Jimmie had undertaken the unpleasant business -and his wit would possibly save the situation. - -Jimmie did not hesitate. A man is as God made him, heart and brain. To -his impulsive imagination the photograph would be proof positive for the -world that one of the two was the infamous seducer. It did not occur to -him to brazen the man out, to send him about his business; wherein -lies the pathos of simple-mindedness. The decisive moment had come. To -Morland exposure would mean loss of career, and, as he conceived -it, loss of Norma; and to the beloved woman it would mean misery and -heartbreak. So he committed an heroic folly. - -“Well, I _am_ Rendell,” he said in a loud voice. “What then?” - -Heedless of shocked whisperings and confused voices, among which rose a -virtuously indignant “Great heavens!” from Mrs. Hardacre, he moved away -quickly towards the slope, motioning Stone to follow. But Stone remained -where he stood, and pointed at Jimmie with lean, outstretched finger, -and lifted up his voice in crazy rhetoric, which was heard above -the “Wedding March.” No one tried to stop him. It was too odd, too -interesting, too dramatic. - -“The world shall know the tale of your lust, and the sun shall not go -down upon your iniquity. Under false promises you betrayed the sweetest -flower in God's garden. Basely you taunted her in her hour of need. -Murder and suicide are on your head. There is the record for all who -wish to read it. Read it,” he cried, flinging the newspaper at Mrs. -Hardacre's feet. “Read how she killed her newborn babe, the child of -this devil, and then hanged herself.” - -Jimmie came two or three steps forward. - -“Stop this mad foolery,” he cried. - -Stone glared at him for a fraction of a second, thrust his hand into the -breast-pocket of his frock-coat, drew out a revolver, and shot him. - -Jimmie staggered as a streak of fire passed through him, and swung -round. The women shrieked and rushed together behind the princess and -the duchess, who remained calmly seated. The men with one impulse sprang -forward to seize the madman; but as he leaped aside and threatened his -assailants with his revolver, they hung back. The band stopped short in -the middle of a bar. - -Norma and Connie Deering and one or two others who had been in the -house, unaware of the commotion of the last few minutes, ran out on the -terrace as they heard the shot and the sudden cessation of the band. -They saw the crowd of frightened, nervous people below, and the -grotesque figure in his rusty black pointing the pistol. And they saw -Jimmie march up to him, and in a dead silence they heard him say: - -“Give me that revolver. What is a silly fool like you doing with -fire-arms? You could n't hit a haystack at a yard's distance. Give it to -me, I say.” - -The man's arm was outstretched, and the pistol was aimed point-blank at -Jimmie. Connie Deering gripped Norma's arm, and Norma, feeling faint, -grew white to the lips. - -“Give it to me,” said Jimmie again. - -The man wavered, his arm drooped slightly; with the action of one -who takes a dangerous thing from a child, Jimmie quietly wrenched the -revolver from his grasp. - -Norma gave a gasp of relief and began to laugh foolishly. Connie clapped -her hands in excitement. - -“Did n't I tell you he was a man? By heavens, the only one in the lot!” - -Jimmie pointed towards the terrace steps. - -“Go!” he said. - -But there was a rush now to seize the disarmed Stone, the red coats -of the bandsmen mingling with the black of the guests. Jimmie, with a -curious flame through his shoulder and a swimming in his head, swerved -aside. Morland ran up, with a white face. - -“My God! He has hit you. I thought he had missed.” - -“No,” said Jimmie, smiling at the reeling scene. “I'm all right. Keep -the photograph. It was silly to give one's photograph away. I always was -a fool.” - -Morland pocketed the unmounted print. He tried to utter a word of -thanks, but the eyes of the scared and scandalised crowd a few steps -away were upon them, and many were listening. For a moment during the -madman's crazy indictment of Jimmie--for the horrible facts were only -too true--he had had the generous impulse to come forward and at all -costs save his friend; but he had hesitated. The shot had been fired. -The dramatic little scene had followed. To proclaim Jimmie's innocence -and his own guilt now would be an anticlimax. It was too late. He would -take another opportunity of exonerating Jimmie. So he stood helpless -before him, and Jimmie, feeling fainter and fainter, protested that he -was not hurt. - -They stood a bit apart from the rest. By this time men and women had -flocked from all quarters, and practically the whole party had assembled -on the tennis lawn. Norma still stood with Connie on the terrace, her -hand on her heart. A small group clustered round a man who had picked -up the newspaper and was reading aloud the ghastly paragraph marked by -Stone in blue pencil. The Hardacres were wringing their hands before -a stony-faced princess and an indignant duchess, who announced their -intention of immediate departure. Every one told every one else the -facts he or she had managed to gather. Human nature and the morbidly -stimulated imagination of naturally unimaginative people invented -atrocious details. Jimmie's new-born fame as a painter was quickly -merged into hideous notoriety. His star must have been Lucifer, so swift -was its fall. - -Mr. Hardacre left his wife's side, and dragged Morland a step or two -away, and whispered excitedly: - -“What a scandal! What a hell of a scandal! Before royalty, too. It will -be the death of us. The damned fellow must go. You must clear him out of -the house!” - -“He's hit. Look at him,” exclaimed Morland. - -Jimmie heard his host's whisper in a dream. It seemed a hoarse voice -very, very far off. He laughed in an idiotic way, waved his hand to the -gyrating crowd, and stumbled a few yards towards the slope. The world -swam into darkness and he fell heavily on his face. - -Then, to the amazement of the county, Norma with a ringing cry rushed -down the slope, and threw herself beside Jimmie's body and put his head -on her lap. And there she stayed until they dragged her away, uttering -the queer whimpering exclamations of a woman suddenly stricken with -great terror. She thought Jimmie was dead. - - - - -Chapter XV--MRS. HARDACRE LAUGHS - -THEY took Jimmie into the house, and Norma, looking neither to right -nor left, walked by the side of those carrying him, the front of her -embroidered dress smeared with blood. Every time her hands came in -contact with the delicate fabric, they left a fresh smear. Of this she -was unconscious. She was unconscious too, save in a dull way, of the -staring crowd; but she held her head high, and when Morland spoke to her -by the drawing-room window through which they passed, she listened to -what he had to say, bowed slightly, and went on. - -“It is only a flesh wound. If it had been the lung, he would have spat -blood. I don't think it is serious.” - -He spoke in a curiously apologetic tone, as if anxious to exculpate -himself from complicity in the attempted murder.. He was horribly -frightened. Two deaths laid in one day at a man's door are enough. The -possibility of a third was intolerable. The sense of the unheroic part -he had just played was beginning to creep over him like a chilling mist. -The consequences of confession, the only means whereby Jimmie could be -rehabilitated, loomed in front of him more and more disastrous. It would -be presenting himself to the world as a coward as well as a knave. -That prospect, too, frightened him. Lastly, there was Norma, white, -terror-stricken, metamorphosed in a second into a creature of primitive -emotions. Like the other shocks of that unhallowed day, her revelation -of unsuspected passions brought him face to face with the unfamiliar; -and to the average sensual man the unfamiliar brings with it an -atmosphere of the uncanny, the influence to be feared. His attitude, -therefore, when he addressed her was ludicrously humble. - -She bowed and passed on. By this time she knew that Jimmie was not dead. -Morland's words even reassured her. Her breath came hard through -her delicate nostrils, and her bosom heaved up and down beneath the -open-work bodice with painful quickness. Only a few were allowed to stay -in the dining-room, Morland, Mr. Hardacre, Theodore Weever on behalf of -the duchess, and one or two others, while the Cosford doctor, who had -been invited to the garden-party, made his examination. Norma went -through into the hall. At the bottom of the stairs she met Connie in -piteous distress. - -“Oh, my poor dear, my poor dear, we did n't know! I have just heard all -about it. It is terrible!” - -Norma put up her hand beseechingly. - -“Don't, Connie dear; don't talk of it. I can't bear it. I must be alone. -Send me up word what the doctor says.” She went to her room, sat there -and waited. Presently her maid entered with the message from Mrs. -Deering. The doctor's report was favourable--the wound not in any way -dangerous, the bullet easily extractable. They had carried the patient -to his bedroom, and Mrs. Deering had wired for Miss Marden to come down -by the first train. Norma dismissed the maid, and tried, in a miserable -wonder, to realise all that had happened. - -A woman accustomed to many emotions can almost always hold herself in -check, if she be of strong will. Experience has taught her the -meaning and the danger of those swift rushes of the blood that lead to -unreasoning outburst. She is forewarned, forearmed, and can resist or -not as occasion demands. But even she is sometimes taken unawares. -How much the more likely to give way is the woman who has never felt -passionate emotion in her life before. The premonitory symptoms fail to -convey the sense of danger to her inexperienced mind. Before the -will has time to act she is swept on by a new force, bewildering, -irresistible. It becomes an ecstatic madness of joy or grief, and to the -otherwise rational being her actions are of no account. This curse -of quick responsiveness afflicts men to a less degree. If the first -chapters of Genesis could be brought up to date, woman would be endowed, -not with an extra rib, but with an extra nerve. - -Now that she knew the shooting of Jimmie to be an affair of no great -seriousness, her heart sickened at the thought of her wild exhibition of -feeling. She heard the sniggering and ridicule in every carriage-load -of homeward-bound guests. From the wife of the scrubby curate to the -Princess of Herren-Rothbeck, her name was rolled like a delicate morsel -on the tongue of every woman in the county. And the inference they could -not fail to draw from her action was true--miserably true. But she had -only become poignantly aware of things at the moment when she saw the -lean haggard man in rusty black covering Jimmie with the revolver. Then -all the unrest of soul which she had striven to allay with her mockery, -all the disquieting visions of sweet places to which she had scornfully -blinded her eyes, all the burning words of passion whose clear echoing -had wrapped her body in hateful fever the night before, converged like -electric currents into one steady light radiant with significance. Two -minutes afterwards, when Jimmie fell, civilisation slipped from her like -a loose garment, and primitive woman threw herself by his side. But now, -reclothed, she shivered at the memory. - -The door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Hardacre entered. There was battle -in every line of the hard face and in every movement of the thin, stiff -figure. Norma rose from the window where she had been sitting and faced -her mother defiantly. - -“I know what you are going to say to me. Don't you think you might wait -a little? It will keep.” - -“It won't. Sit down,” said Mrs. Hardacre between her teeth. - -“I prefer to stand for the moment,” said Norma. - -Mrs. Hardacre lost her self-control. - -“Are we to send you to a madhouse? What do you mean by your blazing -folly? Before the whole county--before the duchess--before the princess! -Do you know what I have had to go through the last half-hour? Do you -know that we may never set foot in Chiltern Towers again? Do you know -we are the scandal and the laughing-stock of the county? As if one thing -was n't sufficient--for you to crown it by behaving like a hysterical -school-girl! Do you know what interpretation every scandal-mongering -tabby in the place is putting on your insane conduct?” - -“Oh, yes,” said Norma, looking at her mother stonily; “and for once in -their spiteful lives they are quite right.” - -“What do you mean?” gasped Mrs. Hardacre. - -“I think my meaning is obvious.” - -“That man--that painter man dressed like a secondhand -clothes-dealer--that--that beast?” - -Mrs. Hardacre could scarcely trust her senses. The true solution of her -daughter's extraordinary behaviour had never crossed her most desperate -imaginings. But then she had not had much time for quiet speculatien. -The speeding of her hurriedly departing guests had usurped all the wits -of the poor lady. - -“You have indeed given us a dramatic entertainment, dear Mrs. Hardacre,” - Lady FitzHubert had said with a sympathetic smile. “And poor Norma has -supplied the curtain. I hope she won't take it too much to heart.” - -And Mrs. Hardacre, livid with rage, had had no weapon wherewith to -strike her adversary who thus took triumphant vengeance. It had been -a half-hour of grievous humiliation. The fount and origin thereof was -lying unconscious with a bullet through his shoulder. The subsidiary -stream, so to speak, was in her room safe and sound. Human nature, -for which she is not deserving of over-blame, had driven Mrs. Hardacre -thither. At least she could vent some of her pent-up fury upon her -outrageous daughter, who, from Mrs. Hardacre's point of view, indeed -owed an explanation of her action and deserved maternal censure. This -she was more than prepared to administer. But when she heard Norma -calmly say that Lady FitzHubert and the other delighted wreakers of -private revenges were entirely in the right, she gasped with amazement. - -“That beast!” she repeated with a rising intonation. Norma gave her -habitual shrug of the shoulders. With her proud, erect bearing, it was a -gesture not ungraceful. - -“Considering what I have just admitted, mother, perhaps it would be in -better taste not to use such language.” - -“I don't understand your admitting it. I don't know what on earth you -mean,” said Mrs. Hardacre. - -There was a short pause, during which she scanned her daughter's face -anxiously as if waiting to see a gleam of reason dawn on it. Norma -reflected for a moment. Should she speak or not? She decided to speak. -Brutal frankness had ever been her best weapon against her mother. It -would probably prevent future wrangling. - -“I am sorry I have n't made my meaning clear,” she said, resuming -her seat by the window; “and I don't know whether I can make it much -clearer. Anyhow, I'll try, mother. I used to think that love was either -a school-girl sentimentality, a fiction of the poets, or else the sort -of thing that lands married women who don't know how to take care of -themselves in the divorce court. I find it is n't. That's all.” - -Mrs. Hardacre ran up to the window and faced Norma. “And Morland?” - -“It won't break his heart.” - -“What won't?” - -“The breaking off of our engagement.” - -Mrs. Hardacre looked at her daughter in a paralysis of bewilderment. - -“The madhouse is the only place for you.” - -“Perhaps it is. Anyway I can't marry a man when I care for his intimate -friend--and when the intimate friend cares for me. Somehow it's not -quite decent. Even you, mother, can see that.” - -“So you and the intimate friend have arranged it all between you?” - -“Oh, no. He does n't know that I care, and he does n't know that I -know that he cares. I'll say that over again if you like. It is quite -accurately expressed. And you know I'm not in the habit of lying.” - -“And you propose to marry----” - -“I don't propose to do anything,” interrupted Norma, quickly. “I at -least can wait till he asks me. And now, mother, I've had rather a bad -time--don't you think we might stop?” - -“It seems to me, my dear Norma, we are only just beginning,” said Mrs. -Hardacre. - -Norma rose with nervous impatience. - -“O heavens, mother,” she said, in the full deep notes of her voice, -which were only sounded at rare moments of feeling, “can't you see that -I'm in earnest? This man is like no one else I have ever met. I have -grown to need him. Do you know what that means? With him I am a changed -woman--as God made me, I suppose; natural, fresh, real--” Mrs. Hardacre -sat in Norma's vacated chair by the window and stared at her, as she -moved about the room. “I somehow feel that I am a woman, after all. I -have got something higher than myself that I can fall at the feet of, -and that's what every woman craves when she's decent. As for marrying -him--I'm not fit to marry him. There is n't any one living who is. -That's an end of it, mother. I can't say anything more.” - -“And do you propose to go on seeing this person when he recovers?” asked -Mrs. Hardacre. - -“Why not?” - -“I really can't argue with you,” said her mother, mystified. “If you -had told me this rubbish yesterday, I should have thought you touched in -your wits. To-day it is midsummer madness.” - -“Why to-day?” asked Norma. - -“The man has shown himself to be such a horrible beast. Of course, -if you think confessing to having seduced a girl under infamous -circumstances and driven her by his brutality to child-murder and -suicide, and blazoning the whole thing out at a fashionable garden-party -and getting himself shot for his pains, are idyllic virtues, nothing -more can be said. It's a case, as I remarked, for a madhouse.” Norma -came and stood before her mother, her brows knitted in perplexity. - -“Perhaps I am going crazy--I really don't understand what you are -talking about.” - -Mrs. Hardacre leant forward in her chair and drew a long breath. A gleam -of intelligence came into her eyes as she looked at Norma. - -“Do you mean to say you don't know what the row was about before the man -fired the shot?” - -“No,” said Norma, blankly. - -Her mother fell back in her chair and laughed. It was the first moment -of enjoyment she had experienced since Stone's black figure had -appeared on the terrace. Reaction from strain caused the laughter to -ring somewhat sharply. Norma regarded her with an anxious frown. - -“Please tell me exactly what you mean.” - -“My dear child--it's too funny. I thought you would have been too clever -to be taken in by a man like this. I see, you've been imagining him a -Galahad--a sort of spotless prophet--though what use you can have -for such persons I can't make out. Well, this is what happened.” - Embellishing the story here and there with little spiteful adornments, -she described with fair accuracy, however, the scene that had occurred. -Norma listened stonily. - -“This is true?” she asked when her mother had finished. - -“Ask any one who was there--your father--Morland.” - -“I can't believe it. He is not that sort of man.” - -“Is n't he? I knew he was the first time I set eyes on him. Perhaps -another time you'll allow me to have some sense--of course, if it is -immaterial to you whether a man is a brute--What are you ringing the -bell for?” - -“I am going to ask Morland to come up here.” - -The maid appeared, received Norma's message, and retired. Norma sat by -her little writing-table, with her head turned away from her mother, and -there was silence between them till the maid returned. - -“Mr. King has just driven off to catch the train, miss. He left a note -for you.” - -Mrs. Hardacre listened with contracted brow. When the maid retired, she -bent forward anxiously. - -“What does he say?” - -“You can read it, mother,” replied Norma, wearily. She held out the -note. Mrs. Hardacre came forward and took it from her hand and sat down -again. - -It ran: - -_“Dear Norma,--I think it best to run up to town on this afternoon's -business. I have only just time to catch the train at Cosford, so you -will forgive my not saying good-bye to you more ceremoniously. Take care -of poor Jimmie._ - -_“Yours affectionately,_ - -_“Morland.”_ - -“Poor Jimmie, indeed!” said Mrs. Hardacre, somewhat relieved at finding -the note contained no reference to the part played by Norma. “It's -very good of Morland, but I wish he would not mix himself up in this -scandal.” - -“I can't see what less he could do than look after his friend's -interests,” said Norma. - -“I wish the man had been shot or hanged before he came down here,” said -Mrs. Hardacre, vindictively. “That's the worst of associating with such -riff-raff. One never knows what they will do. It will teach you not -to pick people out of the gutter and set them in a drawing-room.” Mrs. -Hardacre rose. She did not often have the opportunity of triumphing over -her daughter. She crossed the room and paused for a moment by Norma, -who sat motionless with her chin in her hand, apparently too dismayed to -retort. - -“I am glad to see symptoms of sanity,” she remarked. - -Norma brought down her hand hard upon the table and leaped to her feet -and faced her mother. - -“I tell you, it's impossible! Impossible! He is not that kind of man. -It is some horrible mistake. I will ask him myself. I will get the truth -from his own lips.” - -“You shall certainly do nothing of the kind,” cried her mother; and in -order to have the last word she went out and slammed the door behind -her. - -Norma sat by the window again. The red September sun was setting, and -bathed downs and trees in warm light, and glinted on the spire of a -little village church a mile away. Everything it touched was at peace, -save the bowed head of the girl, clasped with white fingers which still -retained the dull brown marks of blood. Could she believe the revolting -story? A woman so driven to desperation must have been cruelly handled. -Her sex rose up against the destroyer. Her social training had caused -her to regard with cynical indifference ordinary breaches of what -is popularly termed the moral law. In the fast, idle set which she -generally frequented it was as ordinary for a man to neigh after his -neighbour's wife as to try to win his friend's money; as unsurprising -for him to keep a mistress as a stud of race-horses; the crime was to -marry her. But it was not customary, even in smart society, to drive -women to murder their new-born babes and kill themselves. A callous -brutality suggested itself, and the contemplation of it touched -humanity, sex, essential things. Could she believe the story? She -shuddered. - -The dressing-gong sounded through the house. Her maid entered, drew the -curtains, and lit the gas; then was dismissed. Norma would not go down -to dinner. A little food and drink in her own room would be all that she -could swallow. - -Later, Connie Deering, who had changed her dress, tapped at the door -and was bidden to enter. A quantity of powder vainly strove to hide the -traces of recent tears on her pretty face. She was a swollen-featured, -piteous little butterfly. - -“How is he?” asked Norma. - -“Better, much better. They have taken out the bullet. There is no -danger, and he has recovered consciousness. I almost wish he hadn't. Oh, -Norma dear--” - -She broke down and sat on the bed and sobbed. Norma came up and laid her -hand on her shoulder. - -“Surely you don't believe this ghastly story?” - -The fair head nodded above the handkerchief. A voice came from-below it. - -“I must--it's horrible--Jimmie, of all men! I thought his life was so -sweet and clean--almost like a good woman's--I can't understand it. If -he is as bad as this, what must other men be like? I feel as if I shall -never be able to look a man in the face again.” - -“But why should you take it for granted that he has done this?” asked -Norma, tonelessly. - -Mrs. Deering raised her face and looked at her friend in blue-eyed -dismay. - -“I did n't take it for granted. He told me so himself. Otherwise do you -think I should have believed it?” - -“He told you so himself! When?” - -“A short while ago. I went into his room. I could n't help it--I felt as -if I should have gone mad if I didn't know the truth. Parsons was there -with him. She said I could come in. He smiled at me in his old way, and -that smile is enough to make any woman fall in love with him. 'You've -been crying, Connie,' he said. 'That's very foolish of you.' So I began -to cry more. You would have cried if you had heard him. I asked him how -he was feeling. He said he had never felt so well in his life. Then -I blurted it out. I know I was a beast, but it was more than I could -stand. 'Tell me that this madman's story was all lies.' He looked at me -queerly, waited for a second or two, and then moved his head. 'It's -all true,' he said, 'all true.' 'But you must have some explanation!' -I cried. He shut his eyes as if he were tired and said I must take the -facts as they were. Then Parsons came up and said I mustn't excite him, -and sent me out of the room. But I did n't want to hear any more. I had -heard enough, had n't I?” - -Norma, as she listened to the little lady's tale, felt her heart grow -cold and heavy. Doubt was no longer possible. The man himself had -spoken. He had not even pleaded extenuating circumstances; had merely -admitted the plain, brutal facts. He had gone under a feigned name, -seduced an honest girl, abandoned her, driven her to tragedy. It was all -too simple to need explanation. - -“But what are we to do, dear?” cried Connie, as Norma made no remark, -but stood motionless and silent. - -“I think we had better drop his acquaintance,” she replied with bitter -irony. - -Connie flinched at the tone, being a tender-natured woman. She retorted -with some spirit: - -“I don't believe you have any heart at all, Norma. And I thought you -cared for him.” - -“You thought I cared for him?” Norma repeated slowly and cuttingly while -her eyes hardened. “What right had you to form such an opinion?” - -“People can form any opinions they like, my dear,” said Connie. “That -was mine. And on the terrace this afternoon you know you cared. If ever -a woman gave herself away over a man, it was Norma Hardacre.” - -“It was n't Norma Hardacre, I assure you. It was a despicable fool whom -I will ask you to forget. My mother was for putting it into a madhouse. -She was quite right. Anyhow it has ceased to exist and I am the real -Norma Hardacre again. Humanity is afflicted, it seems, periodically with -a peculiar disease. It turns men into beasts and women into idiots. I -have quite recovered, my dear Connie, and if you'll kindly go down -and ask them to keep dinner back for five minutes, I'll dress and come -down.” - -She rang the bell for her maid. Connie rose from the bed. She longed to -make some appeal to the other's softer nature for her own sake, as she -had held Jimmie very dear and felt the need of sympathy in her trouble -and disillusion. - -But knowing that from the rock of that cynical mood no water would gush -forth for any one's magic, she recognised the inefficacy of her own -guileless arts, and forbore to exercise them. She sighed for answer. -By chance her glance fell upon Norma's skirt. Human instinct, not -altogether feminine, seized upon the trivial. - -“Why, whatever have you been doing to your dress?” - -Norma looked down, and for the first time noticed the disfiguring smears -of blood. - -“I must have spilt something,” she said, turning away quickly, and -beginning to unfasten the hooks and eyes of her neckband. - -“I hope it will come out,” said Connie. “It's such a pretty frock.” - -As soon as she was alone, Norma looked at the stains with unutterable -repulsion. She tore off the dress feverishly and threw it into a corner. -When her maid entered in response to her summons, she pointed to the -shapeless heap of crêpe and embroidery. - -“Take that away and burn it,” she said. - - - - -Chapter XVI--IN THE WILDERNESS - -NORMA went down to dinner resolved to present a scornful front to -public opinion. She found the effort taxed her strength. During the -night her courage deserted her. The cold glitter of triumph in her -mother's eyes had been intolerable. Her father, generally regarded with -contemptuous indifference, had goaded her beyond endurance with his -futile upbraiding. Aline had arrived, white-faced and questioning, -and had established herself by Jimmie's bedside. Norma shrank from the -ordeal of the daily meeting with her and the explanation that would -inevitably come. She dreaded the return of Morland, uncertain of her own -intentions. As she tossed about on her pillow, she loathed the idea of -the marriage. Innermost sex had spoken for one passionate moment, and -its message still vibrated. She knew that time might dull the memory; -she knew that her will might one day triumph over such things as sex and -sentiment; but she must have a breathing space, a period of struggle, of -reflection, above all, of disassociation from present surroundings. If -she sold herself, it must be in the accustomed cold atmosphere of -brain and heart. Not now, when her head burned and flaming swords were -piercing her through and through. And last, and chief of all her dreads, -was the wounded man now sleeping beneath that roof. Father, mother, -Aline, Morland--these, torture though it were, she could still steel -her nerves to meet; but him, never. He had done what no other man in the -wide world had done. He had awakened the sleeping, sacredest inmost of -her, and he had dealt it a deadly wound. If she could have consumed him -and all the memories surrounding him with fire, as she had consumed the -garment stained with his blood, she would have done so in these hours of -misery. And fierce among the bewildering conflict of emotions that -raged through the long night was one that filled her with overwhelming -disgust--a horrible, almost grotesque jealousy of the dead girl. - -In the morning, exhausted, she resolved on immediate flight. In the -little village of Penwyrn on the Cornish coast, her aunt Janet Hardacre -led a remote, Quakerish existence. The reply to a telegram before she -left her room assured Norma of a welcome. By eleven o'clock she had -left Heddon Court and was speeding westwards without a word to Jimmie or -Aline. - -Morland returned in the afternoon, and after a whisky and soda to brace -his nerves, at once sought Jimmie, who roused himself with an effort to -greet his visitor. - -“Getting on famously, I hear,” said Morland, with forced airiness. “So -glad. We'll have you on your feet in a day or two.” - -“I hope to be able to travel back to London to-morrow.” - -“To-morrow?” - -“Yes,” said Jimmie, with a curious smile. “I fear I have outstayed my -welcome.” - -“Not a bit of it,” said Morland, seating himself at the foot of the bed. -“We'll put all that right. But you will give one a little time, won't -you? You mustn't think you've been altogether left. I ran up to town -at once to see my solicitors--not my usual people, you know, but some -others, devilish smart fellows at this sort of thing. They'll see that -nothing gets into the beastly papers.” - -“I don't see that it matters much,” said Jimmie. - -“Why, of course it does. I'm not going to let you take the whole blame. -I could n't come forward yesterday, it was all so sudden. The scandal -would have rotted my election altogether. But you shall be cleared--at -any rate in the eyes of this household. I came down with the intention -of telling Norma, but she has bolted to Cornwall. Upset, I suppose. -However, as soon as she comes back--” - -“Let things be as they are,” interrupted Jimmie, closing his eyes for a -moment wearily, for he had been suffering much bodily pain. “When I -said I was David Rendell, I meant it. I can go on acting the part. It's -pretty easy.” - -“Impossible, my dear old chap,” said Morland, with an air of heartiness. -“You went into the affair with your eyes shut. You didn't know it was -such a horrible mess.” - -“All the more reason for Norma to remain ignorant. It was for her sake -as well as yours.” - -A peculiar tenderness in Jimmie's tone caused Morland, not usually -perceptive, to look at him sharply. - -“You are very keen upon Norma,” he remarked. - -Jimmie closed his eyes again, and smiled. He was very weak and tired. -The pain of his wound and a certain mental agitation had kept him awake -all night, and just before Morland entered he had been dropping off -to sleep for the first time. An unconquerable drowsiness induced -irresponsibility of speech. - -“'The desire of the moth for the star,'” he murmured. - -Morland slid from the bed to his feet, and with his hands in his pockets -gazed in astonishment at his friend. - -An entirely novel state of affairs dawned upon him which required a -few moments to bring into focus. The ghastly tragedy for which he was -responsible, presenting itself luridly at every instant of the night and -day, had hidden from his reminiscent vision Norma's rush down the slope. -and her scared tending of the unconscious man. Jimmie's words -brought back the scene with unpleasant vividness and provided the -interpretation. When he saw this clearly, he was the most amazed man in -the three kingdoms. That Jimmie should have conceived and nourished -a silly, romantic passion for Norma, although he had never interested -himself sufficiently in Jimmie's private affairs to suspect it, was -humorously comprehensible. Ludicrously incomprehensible, however, was -a reciprocation of the sentiment on the part of Norma. In spite of -remorse, in spite of anxiety, in spite of the struggle between cowardice -and manhood, his uppermost sensation at that moment was one of lacerated -vanity. He had been hoodwinked, befooled, deceived. His own familiar -friend had betrayed him; the woman he was about to honour with his name -had set him at naught. He tingled with anger and sense of wrong. - -The sick man opened his eyes drowsily, and seeing Morland's gaze full -upon him, started into wakefulness. He motioned him to come nearer. - -“If you marry Norma--” he began. - -“If I marry her!” cried Morland. “Of course I'm going to marry her. I'll -see any other man damned before he marries her! She's the only woman -in the world I've ever set my mind on, and no matter what happens, I'm -going to marry her. There are no damned if's about it.” - -“Yes, there are,” Jimmie retorted weakly. “I was going to preach, but -I'm too tired. You'll have to be especially good to her--to make up.” - -“For what?” - -“For the wrong done to the other.” - -Morland was silent. He went up to the window and stared out across the -lawns and tugged at his moustache. The reproach stung him, and he felt -that Jimmie was ungenerous. After all, he had only done what thousands -of other men had done with impunity. The consequences had been enough to -drive him mad, but they had been the hideous accident of a temperament -for which he had not been responsible. - -“You surely don't believe all that mad fool said yesterday?” he muttered -without turning round. - -“The promise of marriage?” - -“It's a crazy invention. There never was any question of marriage. I -told you so months ago. I did everything in my power.” - -“I'm glad,” said Jimmie. - -Morland made no reply, but continued to stare out of the window and -meditate upon the many injuries that fate had done him. He arraigned -himself before the bar of his wounded vanity. He had broken the moral -law and deserved a certain penalty. The magnanimous verdict received -the applause of an admiring self. He was willing to undergo an adequate -punishment--the imposition of a fine and the hard labour of setting -devious things straight. But the alternative sentence to which he saw -himself condemned--on the one hand, the ruin of his political career, -his social position, and his marriage with Norma, to all of which he -clung with a newly found passion, and on the other, ignoble shelter -behind an innocent man who had done him a great wrong--he rebelled -against with all his average, sensual Briton's sense of justice. It was -grossly unfair. If there had been a spiritual “Times,” he would have -written to it. - -The opening of the door caused him to turn round with a start. It was -Aline, anxious and pale from an all-night sitting by Jimmie's bedside, -but holding her slim body erect, and wearing the uncompromising air of -a mother who has found her child evilly entreated at the hands of -strangers. She glanced at the bed and at Morland; then she put her -finger to her lip, and pointed at Jimmie, who lay fast asleep. Morland -nodded and went on tiptoe out of the room. Aline looked round, and being -a sensitive young person, shivered. She threw open the window wide, as -if to rid the place of his influence. Jimmie stirred slightly. She bent -down and kissed his hair. - -During the dark and troubled time that followed, Morland fell away from -Jimmie like the bosom friend of a mediaeval artist stricken with the -Black Death. At first, common decency impelled him to send the tainted -one affectionate messages, invitations to trust him awhile longer, and -enlarged, with the crudity of his mental habit, on the noble aspects of -Jimmie's sacrifice. But after Jimmie left the Hardacres' house, which -happened as soon as he could bear the journey, Morland shrank from -meeting him face to face; and when public exposure came, the messages -and the invitations and the protestations ceased, and Jimmie was left -in loneliness upon a pinnacle of infamy. Morland, in the futile hope -of the weak-willed man that he could, by some astonishing chance, sail a -middle course, did indeed give himself peculiar pains to keep the story -out of the newspapers, and his ill-success was due to other causes than -his own lack of effort. It was a tale too picturesque to be wasted -in these days of sensation-hunger. The fact of the dénouement of -the tragedy having taken place in the presence of royalty lent it a -theatrical glamour. A sardonic press filled an Athenian public with what -it lusted after. Indeed, who shall say with authority that the actual -dramas re-enacted before our courts and reported in our newspapers -have not their value in splashing with sudden colour the drab lives of -thousands? May it not be better for the dulled soul to be occasionally -arrested by the contemplation of furious passions than to feed -contentedly like a pig beside the slaughtered body of its fellow? - -Be that as it may. The press paid no heed to Morland or the smart -fellows of solicitors whom he employed. It published as many details as -it could discover or invent. For the tragical business did not end with -the scene on the Hardacres' lawn. There was an inquest on the dead girl. -There was the trial of Daniel Stone for attempted murder. The full glare -of publicity shed itself upon the sordid history. In the one case the -jury gave a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity; in the other -the prisoner was found to be insane and was sent to an asylum. These -were matters of no great public interest. But letters to the dead girl -in a disguised handwriting were discovered, and Stone gave his crazy -evidence, and a story of heartless seduction under solemn promise of -marriage and of abandonment with cynical offer of money was established, -and the fashionable portrait-painter, who was supposed to be the hero -of the tale, awoke one morning and found himself infamous. The thing, -instead of remaining a mere police-court commonplace, became a society -scandal. Exaggeration was inevitable, not only of facts but of the -reprobation a virtuous community pronounces on the specially pilloried -wrongdoer. The scapegoat in its essential significance is by no means a -thing of legendary history. It exists still, and owes its existence to -an ineradicable instinct in human nature. The reprobation aforesaid is -due not entirely to hypocrisy, as the social satirist would have it, -but in a great measure to an unreasoning impulse towards expiation of -offences by horrified condemnation of some notorious other. Thus it -came to pass that upon Jimmie's head were put all the iniquities of the -people and all their transgressions in all their sins, and he was led -away into the social wilderness. After that, the world forgot him. He -had been obscure enough before he burst for a day into the blaze of -royal patronage; but now blackest darkness swallowed him up. Only Aline -remained by his side. - -Morland wrote to Jimmie once after the exposure. As he had been the -cause, said he, of the probable ruin of Jimmie's professional prospects, -it was only right that he should endeavour to make some compensation. It -was, besides, a privilege of their life-long friendship. He enclosed a -cheque for two thousand pounds. Jimmie returned it. - -“My dear Morland,” he wrote in answer, “loyalty can only be repaid by -loyalty, love by love. If I accepted money, it would dishonour both -yourself and me. It is true that I took upon me a greater burden than I -was aware of. The world, if it knew the facts, would, as you say, call -me a quixotic fool. But if I took your money it would have the right to -call me a mercenary knave. I have always suffered fools gladly, -myself the greatest. I can go on doing so. Meanwhile you can make full -compensation in the only way possible. Devote your life and energies -to the happiness of the woman you are about to marry.” This was a stern -letter for Jimmie to write. After he had posted it he reproached himself -for not having put in a kind word. - - - - -Chapter XVII--THE INCURABLE MALADY - -I'll never let you inside the house again until you go down on your -knees and beg Jimmie's pardon,” cried Aline. - -She stood, a slim incarnation of outraged womanhood, with her hand on -the knob of the open door. A scared but stubborn youth hesitated on the -threshold. Few men, least of all lovers, like being turned out. - -“I don't believe you care a hang for me!” he said. - -“I don't,” she retorted bravely, but with tremulous lip. “Not a hang, as -you call it. I dislike you exceedingly and I don't want to see you any -more. I'll never speak to anybody who believes such things of Jimmie.” - -“But, my good child,” expostulated Tony Merewether, “they are facts; he -never has denied them.” - -“He could if he liked.” - -“How do you know?” - -“How do I know?” Aline repeated scornfully. “That just shows how far we -are apart. There's not the slightest reason for talking any more. You -have insulted Jimmie and you are going on insulting him. I can't stand -by this door forever. I want you to go.” - -“Oh, very well, I'll go,” said the young fellow. “But you've behaved -damnably to me, Aline--simply damnably.” He strode down the passage -and slammed the front door behind him. Aline turned back into the prim -little drawing-room where the interview had taken place, and after an -attempt to remain composed and dignified, suddenly broke into tears. She -could struggle no more against the cruelty of man and the hopelessness -of life. It had been a stormy interview. Tony Merewether had come, as -her natural protector, to insist upon immediate marriage. A small legacy -recently bequeathed to him would enable them to marry with reasonable -prudence. Why should they wait? Aline pleaded for time. How could she -leave her beloved Jimmie in his blackest hour? - -“It's just because I don't think it quite right for you to live here any -longer, that I want you to come away at once,” Tony had said. - -“Not right to live here? What on earth do you mean?” The luckless lover -tried to explain. Aline regarded him icily, and in his confusion and -discomfiture he lost the careful wrappings which he had prepared for his -words. - -“You think that Jimmie is not a fit person for me to associate with?” - she had asked in a dangerous tone. - -“Yes, since you choose to put it that way,” he had replied, nettled. -He believed that women liked a man of spirit and generally yielded to -a show of masterfulness. He was very young. Taking up his parable with -greater confidence, he showed her the social and moral necessity of -immediate recourse to his respectable protection. Naturally he admired -her loyalty, he signified, with a magnanimous wave of the hand; but -there were certain things girls did not quite comprehend; a man's -judgment had to be trusted. He invited her to surrender entirely to his -wisdom. The end of it all was his ignominious dismissal. She would not -see him until he had begged Jimmie's pardon on his knees. - -But now she buried her face in the sofa-cushions and sobbed. It was her -first poignant disillusion. Tony, whom she loved with all her heart, was -just like everybody else, incapable of pure faith, ready to believe the -worst. He was cruel, uncharitable. She would never speak to him -again. And the sweet shy dream of her young life was over. It was very -tragical. - -Jimmie's step coming up the studio stairs caused her to spring from the -sofa and frantically dry her eyes before the mirror. The steps advanced -along the passage, and soon Jimmie's head appeared at the door. - -“Where have you hidden the little watercolour box?” he asked cheerily. - -“In the cupboard. On the second shelf,” she replied, without turning -round. - -He caught sight of the reflection of a tear-stained face, and came and -stood by her side. - -“Why, you've been crying!” - -“I suppose I have,” she admitted with affectionate defiance, looking up -into his face. “Why should n't I, if I like? It's not a crime.” - -“It's worse--it's a blunder,” he quoted with a smile. “It can't do any -one any good, and it makes your pretty nose red. That will spoil your -good looks.” - -“I wish it would. My looks will never matter to anybody,” she said -desperately. - -He put his arm round her shoulders, just as he had done since she could -remember. - -“What has happened to distress you--more than usual?” he added. - -She was silent for a moment, and hung her head. - -“I've broken off with Tony,” she said in a low voice. - -“You'll mend it up with Tony at once, my dear.” - -“I'll never marry him,” declared Aline. - -“You'll write and tell him that you'll marry him at the very first -opportunity. There are reasons why you should, Aline, grave reasons.” - -“You wouldn't have me marry any one I dislike intensely?” she flashed. - -“Wouldn't you do it to please me, even though you hated him violently? -I have been going to speak to you about this. It's high time you were -married, dear, and I particularly wish it. So make friends with Tony as -soon as ever you can.” - -“I never want to see Tony again--until he has gone on his bended knees -to you,” said Aline, with a quivering lip. “I don't want to breathe the -same air with any one who does n't think of you as I do.” - -This was the first allusion that the girl had made to unhappy things, -since they had become common knowledge a month ago. She had conveyed to -him by increased tenderness and devotion that she loved him all the more -for his suffering, and it had been easy for him to perceive that the -main facts of the story were not unknown to her. But hitherto there had -been absolute silence on the part of each. He had been greatly -puzzled as to the proper course he should take. An interview with Tony -Merewether that morning had decided him. It had been short, coldly -courteous on the young fellow's side, who merely asked and obtained -consent to marry Aline forthwith, and wistfully dignified on Jimmie's. - -He sat down on the arm of a chair and took her hand, deeply moved by her -passionate faith in him. - -“Listen, dear. I am a dishonoured man and it is n't right that you -should live with me any longer. Tony, dear good fellow, is no more to -blame for what he thinks of me than the crazy wronged man who shot me. -But the only way for you to make him think better is to marry him. No, -don't interrupt. Stand quietly and let me talk to you. I've been making -plans and I should be tremendously upset if there was any difficulty. -I'm going to give up the house and studio.” - -Aline regarded him in frightened amazement, and then looked round as -if the familiar walls and furniture were in danger of incontinent -disappearance. - -“What?” she gasped. - -“I shall give it up and wander about painting abroad, so it's absolutely -necessary that you should marry Tony. Otherwise I don't know what on -earth I should do with you.” - -He swung her hand and looked smilingly into her eyes. - -“You see I really am in a hurry to get rid of you,” he added. - -Aline gazed at him for a long time, gradually recovering from her -stupefaction. Then she withdrew her hand from his clasp and laughed. - -“You are talking unadulterated rubbish, Jimmie,” she said. - -Upon this declaration she took her stand, and no protest or argument -could move her. She withstood triumphantly a siege of several days. -Jimmie tried to exert his quasiparental authority. But the submissive -little girl, who had always yielded when Jimmie claimed obedience, had -given place to a calmly inflexible woman. Jimmie swore that he would not -commit the crime of spoiling her life's happiness. She replied, with a -toss of her head and a pang of her heart, that her life's happiness had -nothing to do with Tony Merewether, and that if it did, the crime would -lie at his door and not at Jimmie's. - -“As for leaving you alone in the wide world, I would just as soon think -of deserting a new-born baby in the street,” she said. “You are not fit -to be by yourself. And whether you like it or not, Jimmie, I must stay -and look after you.” - -At last, by the underhand methods which women often employ for the -greater comfort of men, she cajoled him into an admission. The plan of -giving up the house had, as its sole object, the forcing of her hand. -Victorious, she allowed herself to shed tears over his goodness. Just -for her miserable sake he had proposed to turn himself into a homeless -wanderer over the face of Europe. - -“Do tell me, Jimmie,” she said, “how it feels to be an angel!” - -He laughed in his old bright way. - -“Very uncomfortable when a tyrannical young woman cuts your wings off.” - -“But I do it for your good, Jimmie,” she retorted. “If I did n't, you -would be flying about helplessly.” - -Thus the clouds that lay around them were lit with tender jesting. -During this passage through the darkness he never faltered, serene in -his faith, having found triumphant vindication thereof in the devotion -of Aline. That he had made a sacrifice greater than any human being had -a right to demand of another, he knew full well; he had been driven on -to more perilous reefs than he had contemplated; the man whom he had -imagined Morland to be would have thrown all planks of safety to the -waves in order to rescue him. He felt acutely the pain of his shipwreck; -but he did not glorify himself as a martyr: he was satisfied that it was -for the worshipped woman's happiness, and that in itself was a reward. -His catholic sympathy even found extenuating circumstances in Morland's -conduct. Once when Aline inveighed against his desertion, he said in the -grave manner in which he delivered himself of his moral maxims: - -“We ought never to judge a human being's actions until we know his -motives.” - -Aline thought the actions were quite sufficient for a working -philosophy, but she did not say so. Jimmie half guessed the motives and -judged leniently. Though he had lost much that made life sweet to him, -his heart remained unchanged, his laugh rang true through the house; and -were it not for the loneliness and the dismal blight in her own little -soul, Aline would not have realised that any calamitous event had -happened. - -One other of Jimmie's friends maintained relations with him. This was -Connie Deering. She had gone abroad soon after the disaster, and moved -by various feelings for which she rather forbade her impulsive self to -account, had written one or two oddly expressed letters. In the first -one she had touched lightly upon the difficult subject. She would not -have believed a word of it, if she had not heard it from his own lips. -If he would write to her and say that it was all a lie, she would accept -his word implicitly. He was either a god or a devil--a remark that -filled Jimmie with considerable alarm. A shrewd brain was inside the -pretty butterfly head. In his reply he ignored the question, an example -which Connie followed in her second letter. This consisted mainly in a -rambling account of the beauty of Stresa and the comforts and excellent -cuisine of the hotel by the lake; but a postscript informed him that -Norma was travelling about with her for an indefinite period, and that -she had heard nothing of Morland, who having easily won his election -was now probably busy with the beginning of the autumn session. Jimmie, -unversed in the postscriptal ways of women, accepted the information as -merely the literal statement of facts. A wiser man would have grasped -the delicate implication that the relations between the affianced pair -were so strained that an interval of separation had seemed desirable. - -The unshaken faith of the man in the ultimate righteousness of things -kept him serene; but the young girl who had no special faith, save in -the perfect righteousness of Jimmie and the dastardly unrighteousness of -the world in general and of Mr. Anthony Merewether in particular, found -it difficult to live in these high altitudes of philosophy. Indeed she -was a very miserable little girl when Jimmie was not by, and pined, -and cried her heart out, and grew thin and pale and sharp-tempered, -and filled her guardian with much concern. At last Jimmie took heroic -measures. Without Aline's knowledge he summoned Tony Merewether to an -interview. The young man came. Jimmie received him in the studio, begged -him to take a seat, and rang the bell. The middle-aged housekeeper ran -down in some perturbation at the unusual summons, for it was Jimmie's -habit to shout up the stairs, generally to Aline, for anything he -wanted. She received his instructions. Miss Aline would oblige him by -coming down at once. During the interval of waiting he talked to -Mr. Merewether of indifferent things, flattering himself on a sudden -development of the diplomatic faculty. Aline ran into the room, and -stopped short at the sight of the young man, uttering a little cry of -indignant surprise. Jimmie cleared his throat, but the oration that -he had prepared was never delivered. Aline marched straight up to the -offending lover. - -“I don't see you on your knees,” she said. - -Tony, who was entirely unexpectant of this uncompromising attitude, -having taken it for granted that by some means or other the way had been -made smooth for him, retorted somewhat sharply: - -“You're not likely to.” - -“Then I wonder,” said Aline, “at your audacity in coming to this house.” - She turned and marched back to the door, her little figure very erect -and her dark eyes blazing. Jimmie intercepted her. - -“Tony came at my request, my child.” - -For the first and only time in her life she cast a look of anger upon -Jimmie. - -“Let me pass, please,” she said, like an outraged princess; and waving -Jimmie aside, she made the exit of offended majesty. - -The two men looked stupidly at each other. Their position was -ignominious. - -“I did it for the best, my boy,” said Jimmie, taking up a pipe which -he began to fill mechanically. He was just the kind creature of happier -days. The young fellow's heart was touched. After a minute's silence he -committed a passionate indiscretion. - -“I wish to God you would tell me there is something hidden beneath this -ghastly story, and that it's quite different from what it appears to -be!” - -Jimmie drew himself up and looked the young man between the eyes. - -“That's a question I discuss with no human being,” said he. - -“I beg your pardon,” said Tony Merewether, in sincere apology. “I would -not have taken such a liberty if it had n't been a matter of life and -death for me. Perhaps you think I ought to do more or less as Aline asks -me; but she is too precious to purchase with an infernal lie. I'm hanged -if I'll do it, and I don't think you're the man to misunderstand my -frankness.” - -Jimmie had lit his pipe during the foregoing speech. He drew two or -three meditative puffs. - -“Have as little to do with lies, my boy, as ever you can,” said he. “And -cheer up, all is sure to come right in the end.” - -He was sunk in reflection for a long time after the young man had gone, -and again for a long time after Aline had done remorseful penance -for her loss of temper. Then he went out for a walk and brought back -something in his pocket. At dinner-time he was unusually preoccupied. -When the meal was over, he fished up a black bottle from beneath -the table, and going to the sideboard, came back with a couple of -wineglasses. Aline watched him as though he were performing some rite in -black magic. - -“This is rich fruity port,” said he, filling the glasses. “Evans, the -grocer, told me I should get nothing like it at the price in London. You -are to drink it. It will do you good.” - -Aline, still penitent, obeyed meekly. - -“How could you be so extravagant, Jimmie?” she said in mild protest. “It -must have cost quite three shillings.” - -“And sixpence,” said Jimmie, unabashed. He lifted up his glass. “Now -here's to our _Wanderjahr_, or as much of it as we can run to.” - -“Whatever do you mean, Jimmie?” - -“I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a -tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and -beg our way through southern Europe.” - -He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations, -in his laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating -expensive fog in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would -be cheaper. They would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on -lagoons, and whisper with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling -palaces. They would go over hills on donkeys. They would steep their -souls in Perugino, Del Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt -Italian flea to respect British Keating's powder. They would fraternise -with the beautiful maidens of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's -Campanile. They would do all kinds of impossible things. Afford it? Of -course they could. Had he not received his just dues from the princess -and sold two pictures a week or two ago? At this point he fell thinking -for a couple of dreamy minutes. - -“I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology. -“I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.” - -“A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I -could walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out -just for my sake?” - -“Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light. -“I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have -no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.” - -Aline laughed a joyous laugh which did Jimmie good to hear, and came -behind his chair and put her arms about his neck, behaving foolishly as -a young girl penetrated with the sense of the loved one's goodness is -privileged to do. What she said is of infinitesimal importance, but it -lifted care from Jimmie's heart and made him as happy as a child. Like -two children, they discussed the project; and Aline fetching from -the top shelf of the bookcase in Jimmie's bedroom a forlorn, dusty, -yellow-paged Continental Bradshaw, twenty years old, they looked up -phantom trains that had long ceased running, speculated on the merits -of dead-and-gone hotels, and plunged into the fairyland of anachronistic -information. - -A few days were enough for Jimmie's simple arrangements; and then began -the pilgrimage of these two, each bearing a burden, a heart-ache, a pain -from which there was no escaping, but each bearing it with a certain -splendour of courage that made life beautiful to the other. For the girl -suffered keenly, as Jimmie knew. She had given a passionate heart for -good and all to the handsome young fellow who had refused to bow the -knee to the man whom he had every reason to consider a blackguard. They -had come together, youth to youth, as naturally as two young birds in -the first mating-season; but, fortunately or unfortunately for Aline, -she was not a bird, but a human being of unalterable affections and -indomitable character. She had the glorious faith, _quia incredibile_, -in Jimmie, and rather than swerve aside from it she would have walked -on knife edges all the rest of her days. So she scorned the pain, and -scorned herself for feeling it when she saw the serenity with which he -bore his cross. Dimly she felt that if the truth were known he would -stand forth heroically, not infamously. She had revered him as a child -does its father; but in that sweet and pure relationship of theirs, she -had also watched him with the minute, jealous solicitude that a mother -devotes to an only child who is incapable of looking after itself. -Nothing in his character had escaped her. She knew both his strength -and his enchanting weaknesses. To her trained eyes, he was all but -transparent; and of late her quickened vision had read in letters of -fire across his heart, “The desire of the moth for the star.” - -So they travelled through the world, hand in hand, as it were, and drank -together of its beauty. They were memorable journeyings. Sleeping-cars -and palatial hotels and the luxuries of modern travel were not for them. -Aline, who knew that Jimmie, as far as he himself was concerned, would -have slept upon wood quite as cheerfully as upon feathers, but for -her sake would have royally commanded down, held the purse-strings and -dictated the expenditure. They had long, wonderful third-class journeys, -stopping at every wayside station, at each having some picturesque -change of company in the ever-crowded, evil-smelling, wooden-seated -compartment. She laughed at Jimmie's fears as to her discomfort; -protested with energetic sincerity that this was the only way in the -world to travel with enjoyment. It was a never-failing interest to see -Jimmie disarm the suspicion of peasants by his sympathetic knowledge of -their interests, to listen to his arguments with the chance-met curé, -perspiring and polite, or the mild young soldier in a brass helmet a -size too big for him. In France she understood what they were saying, -and maintained a proper protectorate over Jimmie by means of a rough and -ready acquaintance with the vernacular. But in Italy she was dumb, could -only regard Jimmie in open-mouthed astonishment and admiration. He -spoke Italian. She had known him all her life and never suspected this -accomplishment. It required some tact to keep him in his proper position -as interpreter and restrain him from acting on his own initiative. In -the towns they put up at little humble hostelries in by-streets and in -country-places at rough inns, eating rude fare and drinking sour wine -with great content. The more they economised the longer would the -idyllic vagabondage last. - -Through southern France and northern Italy they wandered without fixed -plans, going from place to place as humour seized them, seeking the -sunshine. At last it seemed to be their normal existence. London with -its pain and its passion grew remote like the remembered anguish of a -dream. Few communications reached them. The local newspaper gave them -all the tidings they needed of the great world. It was a life free -from vexation. The decaying splendour of the larger cities with their -treasure-houses of painting and sculpture and their majestic palaces -profoundly stirred the young girl's imagination and widened her -conceptions and sympathies. But she loved best to arrive by a crazy, -old-world diligence at some little townlet built on a sunny hillside, -whose crumbling walls were the haunts of lizards and birds and strange -wild-flowers; and having rested and eaten at the dark little _albergo_, -smelling of wine and garlic and all Italian smells, to saunter out with -Jimmie through the narrow, ill-paved, clattering streets alive with -brown children and dark-eyed mothers, and men sitting on doorsteps -violently gesticulating and screaming over the game of _morra_, and to -explore the impossible place from end to end. A step or two when they -desired it would bring them to the sudden peace of the mediaeval church, -with its memories of Romanesque tradition and faint stirrings of -Gothic curiously reflecting the faith of its builders; the rough, -weather-beaten casket of one flawless gem of art, a Virgin smiling -over the child on her lap at many generations of worshippers, superbly -eternal and yet quaintly woman. And then they would pass out of the -chilly streets and down the declivitous pathways below the town and sit -together on the hillside, in a sun-baked spot sheltered from the wind. -This Aline, vaguely conscious of the Infinite, called “hanging on the -edge of Nowhere.” - -One day, on such a hillside Jimmie had been painting three brown-faced -children whom he had cajoled into posing for him, while Aline looked on -dreamily. The urchins, dismissed with a few halfpennies, bowed polite -thanks, the two boys taking off their caps with the air of ragged -princes, and scampered away like rabbits out of sight. - -“There!” cried Jimmie, throwing down his brush and holding out the -little panel at arm's length. “I have never done anything so good in all -my life! Have n't I got it? Is n't it better than ten cathedralfuls of -sermons? Is n't it the quintessence of happiness, the perfect trust in -the sweet earth to yield them its goodness? Could any one after seeing -that dare say the world was only a dank and dismal prison where men do -nothing but sit and hear each other groan? Look at it, Aline. What do -you think of it?” - -“It's just lovely, Jimmie,” said Aline. - -“If I painted a pink hippopotamus standing on its head, you would say it -was lovely. Why did n't you tell me that arm was out of drawing?” - -He took up his brush and made the necessary correction. Aline laughed. - -“Do you know one of the few things I can remember my father saying was -about you?” - -“God bless my soul,” said Jimmie. “I had almost forgotten you ever had a -father--dear old chap! What did he say?” - -“I remember him telling you that one day you would die of incurable -optimism. For years I used to think it was some horrible disease, and I -used to whisper in my prayers, 'O God, please cure Jimmie of optimism,' -and sometimes lie awake at nights thinking of it.” - -“Well, do you think your prayer has been answered?” asked Jimmie, -amused. - -She shifted herself a little nearer him and put her hand on his knee. - -“Thank goodness, no. You've got it as bad as ever--and I believe I've -caught it.” Then, between a sob and a laugh, she added: - -“Oh, Jimmie dear, your stupid old head could never tell you what you -have done for me since we have been abroad. If I had stayed at home I -think I should have died of--of--of malignant pessimism. You will never, -never, never understand.” - -“And will you ever understand what you have done for me, my child?” said -Jimmie, gravely. “We won't talk about these things. They are best in our -hearts.” - - - - -Chapter XVIII--A RUDDERLESS SHIP - -THAT autumn pressed heavily upon Mrs. Hardacre. Norma's engagement, -without being broken off, was indefinitely suspended, and Norma, by -going abroad with Mrs. Deering immediately on her return from Cornwall, -had placed herself beyond reach of maternal influence. It is true -that Mrs. Hardacre wrote many letters; but as Norma's replies mainly -consisted of a line or two on a picture post-card, it is to be doubted -whether she ever read them. Mrs. Hardacre began to feel helpless. -Morland could give her little assistance. He shrugged his shoulders at -her appeals. He was perfectly determined to marry Norma, but trusted to -time to restore her common-sense and lead her into the path of reason. -Nothing that he could do would be of any avail. Mrs. Hardacre urged him -to join the ladies on the Continent and bring matters to a crisis. He -replied that an election was crisis enough for one man in a year, and -furthermore the autumn session necessitated his attendance in the House. -He was quite satisfied, he told her stolidly, with things as they -were, and in the meantime was actually finding an interest in his new -political life. But Mrs. Hardacre shared neither his satisfaction nor -his interest, a mother's point of view being so different from that of a -lover. - -As if the loss of ducal favour and filial obedience were not enough for -the distraught lady, her husband one morning threw a business letter -upon the table, and with petulant curses on the heads of outside -brokers, incoherently explained that he was ruined. They were liars and -knaves and thieves, he sputtered. He would drag them all into the police -court, he would write to the “Times,” he would go and horsewhip the -blackguards. Damme if he would n't! - -“I wish the blackguards could horsewhip you,” remarked his wife, grimly. -“Have you sufficient brains to realise what an unutterable fool you have -been?” - -If he did not realise it by the end of the week, it was not Mrs. -Hardacre's fault. She reduced the unhappy man to craven submission -and surreptitious nipping of old brandy in order to keep up the feeble -spirit that remained in him, and took the direction of affairs into her -own hands. They were not ruined, but a considerable sum of money had -been lost through semi-idiotic speculation, and for a time strict -economy was necessary. By Christmas the establishment in the country -was broken up, a tenant luckily found for Heddon Court, and a small -furnished house taken in Devonshire Place. These arrangements gave Mrs. -Hardacre much occupation, but they did not tend to soften her character. -When Norma came home, sympathetically inclined and honestly desirous to -smooth down asperities--for she appreciated the aggravating folly of her -father--she found her advances coldly repulsed. - -“What is the good of saying you are sorry for me,” Mrs. Hardacre asked -snappishly, “when you refuse to do the one thing that can mend matters?” - -Then followed the old, old story which Norma had heard so often in days -past, but now barbed with a new moral and adorned with new realism. -Norma listened wearily, surprised at her own lack of retort. When the -familiar homily came to an end, her reply was almost meek: - -“Give me a little longer time to think over it.” - -“You had better cut it as short as possible,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “or -you may find yourself too late. As it is, you are going off. What have -you been doing to yourself? You look thirty.” - -“I feel fifty,” said Norma. - -“You had better go and have your face massaged, or you'll soon not be -fit to be seen.” - -“I think I want a course of soul massage,” answered Norma, with a hard -little laugh. - -But when she was alone in her own room, she looked anxiously at her face -in the glass. Her mother had confirmed certain dismal imaginings. She -had grown thinner, older looking; tiny lines were just perceptible at -the corners of eyes and lips and across the forehead. The fresh bloom of -youth was fading from her skin. She was certainly going off. She had not -been a happy woman since her precipitate flight to Cornwall. The present -discovery added anxiety to depression. - -A day or two afterwards Mrs. Hardacre returned to the unedifying attack. -Had Norma written to Morland to inform him of her arrival? Norma replied -that she had no inordinate longing to see Morland. Mrs. Hardacre -used language that only hardened and soured women of fashion who are -beginning to feel the pinch of poverty dare use nowadays. It is far more -virulent than a fishwife's, for every phrase touches a jangling nerve -and every gibe tears a delicate fibre, whereas Billingsgate merely -shocks and belabours. Norma bore it in silence for some time, and then -went away quivering from head to foot. A new and what seemed a horrible -gift had been bestowed upon her--the power to feel. Once a sarcastic -smile, a scornful glance, a withering retort would have carried her in -triumph from her mother's presence. Secure in her own callous serenity, -she would have given scarcely a further thought to the quarrel. Now -things had inexplicably changed. Her mother's stabs hurt. Some curious -living growth within her was wrung with pain. She could only grope -humbled and broken to her room and stare at nothing, wishing she could -cry like other women. - -No wonder she looked old, when the spirit had left her and taken with -it the cold, proud setting of the features that had given her beauty -its peculiar stamp. Dimly she realised the disintegration. When a nature -which has taken a colossal vanity for strength and has relied thereon -unquestioningly for protection against a perilous world, once loses -grip of that sublime mainstay, it is impossible for it to take firm hold -again. It must content itself with lesser planks or flounder helplessly, -fearful of imminent shipwreck. Norma, during those autumn months, had -found her strength vanity. The fact in rude, symbolic form was brought -home to her a short time after her return. - -It was a bright Sunday afternoon, when, on her way to pay a call in -Kensington, she had dismissed her cab at Lancaster Gate and was walking -through Kensington Gardens. Half-way a familiar figure met her eye. It -was her own maid sitting on a bench with a man by her side. The girl was -wearing a cheap long jacket over an elaborate dress, absurdly light -for the time of year. It caught Norma's attention, and then suddenly it -flashed upon her that it was the dress she had given to be burned months -ago. She walked on, aching with a sense of the futility of grandiose -determinations. She had consigned the garment stained with Jimmie's -blood contemptuously to the flames. It was incongruously whole in -Kensington Gardens. She had cast her love for Jimmie out of her heart in -the same spirit of comedic tragedy. Forlorn and bedraggled it was still -there, mockingly refusing to be reduced to its proper dust and ashes. -Her strength had not availed her to cast it out. Her strength was a vain -thing. Yet being forlorn and bedraggled the love was as hateful as -the unconsumed garment. It haunted her like an unpurged offence. -The newspaper details had made it reek disgustfully. At times Connie -Deering's half faith filled her with an extravagant hope that these -sordid horrors which had sullied the one pure and beautiful thing that -had come into her life were nothing but a ghastly mistake; that it was, -as Connie suggested, a dark mystery from which if Jimmie chose he could -emerge clean. But then her judgment, trained from childhood to look -below the surface of even smiling things and find them foul, rebelled. -The man had proclaimed himself, written himself down a villain. It was -in black and white. And not only a villain--that might be excusable--but -a hypocritical canting villain, which was the unforgivable sin. Every -woman has a Holy Ghost of sorts within her. - -Norma did not write to Morland. She dreaded renewal of relations, and -yet she had not the courage to cut him finally adrift. The thought of -withered spinsterhood beneath her father's roof was a dismaying vision. -Marriage was as essential as ever to the scheme of her future. Why not -with Morland? Her mother's words, though spoken as with the tongues of -asps, were those of wisdom. - -All that she could bring to a husband was her beauty, her superb -presence, her air of royalty. These gone, her chances were as illusory -as those of the pinched and faded gentlewomen who tittle-tattled at -Cosford tea-parties. Another year, and at the present rate of decay -her beauty would have vanished into the limbo of last year's snows. She -exaggerated; but what young woman of six-and-twenty placed as she has -not looked tremulously in her mirror and seen feet of crows and -heaven knows what imaginary fowls that prey upon female charms? At -six-and-thirty she smiles with wistful, longing regret at the remembered -image. Yet youth, happily, is not cognisant of youth's absurdities. -It takes itself tragically. Thus did Norma. Her dowry of beauty was -dwindling. She must marry within the year. Sometimes she wished that -Theodore Weever, who had not yet discovered his decorative wife and had -managed to find himself at various places which she had visited abroad, -would come like a Paladin and deliver her from her distress and carry -her off to his castle in Fifth Avenue. He would at least interest her as -a human being, which Morland, with all his solid British qualities, -had never succeeded in doing. But Theodore Weever had not spoken. He -retained the imperturbability of the bald marble bust of himself that -he had taken her to see in a Parisian sculptor's studio. There only -remained Morland. But for some reason, for which she could not account, -he seemed the last man on earth she desired to marry. When she had -written to him, soon after her flight to Cornwall, to beg for a -postponement of the wedding, giving him the very vaguest reasons for her -request, he had assented with a cheerfulness ill befitting an impatient -lover. It would be impertinence, he wrote, for him to enquire further -into her reasons. She was too much a woman of the world to act without -due consideration, and provided that he could look forward to the -very great happiness of one day calling her his wife, he was perfectly -satisfied with whatever she chose to arrange. The absence of becoming -fervour, in spite of her desire to postpone the dreaded day, produced -a feeling of irritated disappointment. None of us, least of all women, -invariably like to be taken at our word. If Morland lay so little value -upon her as that, he might just as well give her up altogether. She -replied impulsively, suggesting a rupture of the engagement. Morland, -longing for time to raise him from the abasement in which he grovelled, -had welcomed the proposal to defer the marriage; but as he smarted at -the same time under a sense of wrong--had he not been betrayed by -his own familiar friend and the woman he loved?--he now unequivocally -refused to accept her suggestion. He had made up his mind to marry her. -He had made all his arrangements for marrying her. The check he -had experienced had stimulated a desire which only through unhappy -circumstances had languished for a brief season. He persuaded himself -that he was more in love with her than ever. At all costs, in his -stupid, dogged way, he determined to marry her. He told her so bluntly. -He merely awaited her good pleasure. Norma accepted the situation and -thought, by going abroad, to leave it at home to take care of itself. It -might die of inanition. Something miraculous might happen to transform -it entirely. She returned and found it alive and quite undeveloped. -It grinned at her with a leer which she loathed from the depths of her -soul; and the more Mrs. Hardacre pointed at it the more it leered, and -the greater became the loathing. - -At last Mrs. Hardacre took matters into her own hands and summoned -Morland to London. “Norma is in a green, depressed state,” she wrote, -“and I think your proper place is by her side. I imagine she regrets her -foolishness in postponing the marriage and is ashamed to confess it. A -few words with you face to face would bring her back to her old self. -Women have these idiotic ways, my dear Morland, and men being so much -stronger and saner must make generous allowances. I confidently expect -you.” - -Morland's vanity, spurred by this letter, brought him in a couple of -days to London. - -“My dear Morland, this is a surprise,” cried Mrs. Hardacre -dissemblingly, as he entered the drawing-room, “we were only just -talking of you. I'll ring for another cup.” - -She moved to the bell by the side of the fireplace, and Norma and -Morland shook hands with the conventional words of greeting. - -“I hope you've had a good time abroad?” - -“Oh, yes. The usual thing, the usual places, the usual people, the usual -food. In fact, a highly successful pursuit of the usual. I've invented a -verb--'to usualise.' I suppose you've been usualising too?” - -The sudden sight of him had braced her, and instinctively she had -adopted her old, cool manner as defensive armour. Her reply pleased -him. There was something pungent in her speech, irreconcilable in her -attitude, which other women did not possess. He was not physiognomist or -even perceptive enough to notice the subtle change in her expression. He -noted, as he remarked to her later, that she was “a bit off colour,” but -he attributed it to the muggy weather, and never dreamed of regarding -her otherwise than as radically the same woman who had engaged herself -to many him in the summer. To him she was still the beautiful shrew -whose taming appealed to masculine instincts. The brown hair sweeping -up in a wave from the forehead, the finely chiselled sensitive features, -the clear brown eyes, the mocking lips, the superb poise of the head, -the stately figure perfectly set off in the dark blue tailor-made dress, -all combined to impress him with a realisation of the queenliness of the -presence that had grown somewhat shadowy of late to his unimaginative -mental vision. - -“And how do you like Parliament?” she asked casually, when the teacup -had been brought and handed to him filled. - -“I find it remarkably interesting,” he replied sententiously. “It is -dull at times, of course, but no man can sit on those green benches and -not feel he is helping to shape the destinies of a colossal Empire.” - -“Is that what you really feel--or is it what you say when you are -responding for the House of Commons at a public dinner?” asked Norma. - -Morland hesitated for a moment between huffiness and indulgence. In -spite of his former gibes at the stale unprofitableness of parliamentary -life, he had always had the stolid Briton's reverence for our -Institutions, and now that he was actually a legislator, his traditions -led him to take himself seriously. - -“I have become a very keen politician, I assure you,” he answered. “If -you saw the amount of work that falls on me, you would be astonished. If -it were n't for Manisty--that's my secretary, you know--I don't see how -I could get through it.” - -“I always wonder,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “how members manage to find time -for anything. They work like galley-slaves for nothing at all. I regard -them as simply sacrificing themselves for the public good.” - -“A member of Parliament is the noblest work of God. Don't, mother. -Please leave us our illusions.” - -“What are they?” asked Morland. - -“One is that there are a few decently selfish people left in an age of -altruists,” said Norma. - -She talked for the sake of talking, careless of the stupid poverty of -her epigram. Morland, as the healthy country gentleman alternating -with the commonplace man about town, was a passable type enough, though -failing to excite exuberant admiration. But Morland, with his narrow -range of sympathies and pathetic ignorance of the thought of the day, -posing solemnly as a trustee of the British Empire, aroused a scorn -which she dare not express in words. - -“I don't know that we are all altruists,” replied Morland, -good-temperedly. “If we are good little members of Parliament, we may -be rewarded with baronetcies and things. But one has to play the game -thoroughly. It's worth it, is n't it, even from your point of view, -Norma?” - -“You're just the class of man the government does best in rewarding,” - remarked Mrs. Hardacre, with her wintry smile that was meant to be -conciliatory. “A man of birth and position upholds the dignity of a -title and is a credit to his party.” - -Morland laughingly observed that it was early in the day to be thinking -of parliamentary honours. He had not even made his maiden speech. As -Norma remained silent, the conversation languished. Presently Mrs. -Hardacre rose. - -“I have no doubt you two want to have a talk together. Won't you stay -and dine with us, Morland?” - -He glanced at Norma, but failing to read an endorsement of the -invitation in her face, made an excuse for declining. - -“Then I will say good-bye and leave you. I would n't stand any nonsense -if I were you,” she added in a whisper through the door which he held -open for her. - -He sauntered up to the fireplace and stood on the hearth-rug, his hands -in his pockets. Norma, looking at him from her easy-chair, wondered at -a certain ignobility that she detected for the first time beneath his -bluff, prosperous air. In spite of birth and breeding he looked common. - -“Well?” he said. “We had better have it out at once. What is it to be? I -must have an answer sooner or later.” - -“Can't it be later?” - -“If you insist upon it. I'm not going to hold a pistol to your head, -my dear girl. Only you must admit that I've treated you with every -consideration. I have n't worried you. You took it into your head to put -off our marriage. I felt you had your reasons and I raised no objection. -But we can't go on like this forever, you know.” - -“Why not?” asked Norma. - -“Human nature. I am in love with you, and want to marry you.” - -“But supposing I am not in love with you, Morland. I've never pretended -to be, have I?” - -“We need n't go over old ground. I accepted all that at the beginning. -The present state of affairs is that we are engaged; when are we going -to be married?” - -“Oh, I don't know,” said Norma, desperately. “I have n't thought of it -seriously. I know I have behaved like a beast to you--you must forgive -me. At times it has seemed as though I was not the right sort to marry -and bring children into the world. I should loathe it!” - -“Oh, I don't think so,” said Morland, in a tone he meant to be soothing. -“Besides--” - -“I know what you are going to say--or at any rate what you would like -to say. It's scarcely decent to talk of such things. But I have n't been -brought up in a nunnery. I wish to God I had been. At all events, I am -frank. I would loathe it--all that side of it. Could n't we suppress -that side? Oh, yes, I am going to speak of it--it has been on my mind -for months,” she burst out, as Morland made a quick step towards her. - -He did not allow her to continue. With his hand on the arm of her chair, -he bent down over her. - -“You are talking wild nonsense,” he said; and she flushed red and did -not meet his eyes. “When a man marries, he marries in the proper sense -of the term, unless he is an outrageous imbecile. There is to be no -question of that sort of thing. I thought you knew your world better. -I want you--you yourself. Don't you understand that?” - -Norma put out her hand to push him away. He seized it in his. She -snatched it from him. - -“Let me get up,” she said, waving him off. She brushed past him, as she -rose. - -“We can't go on talking. What I've said has made it impossible. Let us -change the subject. How long are you going to stay in town?” - -“I'm not going to change the subject,” said Morland, rather brutally. -“I'm far too much interested in it. Hang it all, Norma, you do owe me -something.” - -“What do I owe you? What?” she asked with a sudden flash in her eyes. - -“You are a woman of common-sense. I leave you to guess. You admit you -have n't treated me properly. You have nothing to complain of as far as -I am concerned. Now, have you?” - -“How do I know? No. I suppose not, as things go. Once I did try to--to -feel more like other women--and to make some amends. I told you that -perhaps we were making a mistake in excluding sentiment. If you had -chosen, you could have--I don't know--made me care for you, perhaps. -But you didn't choose. You treated me as if I were a fool. Very likely I -was.” - -“When was that?” asked Morland, with a touch of sarcasm. “I certainly -don't remember.” - -“It was the last night we had any talk together--in the billiard-room. -The night before--before the garden-party.” He turned away with an -involuntary exclamation of anger. He remembered now, tragic events -having put the incident out of his mind. He was caught in a trap. - -“I did n't think you meant it,” he said, hurrying to the base excuse. -“Women sometimes consider it their duty to say such things--to act a -little comedy, out of kindness. Some fellows expect it. I thought it -would be more decent to let you see that I did n't.” - -There was a short silence. Norma stood in the centre of the room, biting -her lip, her head moving slightly from side to side; she was seeking -to formulate her thoughts in conventional terms. Her cheek grew a shade -paler. - -“Listen,” she said at length. “I am anything bad you like to call me. -But I'm not a woman who cajoles men. And I'm not a liar. I'm far too -cynical to lie. Truth is much more deadly. I hate lying. That's the main -reason why I broke with a man I cared for more than for any other man I -have ever met--because he lied. You know whom I mean.” - -He faced her with a conscious effort. Even at this moment of strain and -anger, Norma was struck again with the lurking air of ignobility on his -face; but she only remembered it afterwards. He brazened it out. - -“Jimmie Padgate, I suppose.” - -“I can't forgive him for lying.” - -“I don't see how he lied. He faced the music, at any rate, like a man,” - said Morland, compelled by a remnant of common decency to defend Jimmie. - -“All his pose beforehand was a lie--unless the disclosures afterwards -were lies--” - -“What do you mean?” asked Morland, sharply. - -“Oh, never mind. We have not met to discuss the matter. I don't know why -I referred to it.” - -She paused for a moment. She had begun her tirade at a white heat. -Suddenly she had cooled down, and felt lassitude in mind and limbs. An -effort brought her to a lame conclusion. - -“You accused me of acting a comedy. I was n't acting. I was perfectly -sincere. I have been absolutely frank with you from the hour you -proposed to me.” - -“Well, I'm sorry for having misunderstood you. I beg your pardon,” said -Morland. They took up the conversation from the starting-point, but -listlessly, dispiritedly. The reference to Jimmie had awakened the -ever-living remorse in Morland's not entirely callous soul. The man did -suffer, at times acutely. And now to act the conscious comedy in the -face of Norma's expressed abhorrence was a difficult and tiring task. -Unwittingly he grew gentler; and Norma, her anger spent, weakly yielded -to the change of tone. - -“We have settled nothing, after all our talk,” he said at last, looking -at his watch. “Don't you think we had better fix it up now? Society -expects us to get married. What will people say? Come--what about -Easter?” - -Norma passed her hand wearily over her eyes. - -“I oughtn't to marry you at all. I should loathe it, as I said. I should -never get to care for you in that way. You see I am honest. Let us break -off the engagement.” - -“Well, look here,” said Morland, not unkindly, “let us compromise. I'll -come back in three days' time. You'll either say it's off altogether or -we'll be married at Easter. Will that do?” - -“Very well,” said Norma. - -When Mrs. Hardacre came for news of the interview, Norma told her of the -arrangement. - -“Which is it going to be?” she asked. - -Norma set her teeth. “I can't marry him,” she said. - -But the proud spirit of Norma Hardacre was broken. The three days' -Inferno that Mrs. Hardacre created in the house drove the girl to -desperation. Her father came to her one day with the tears running -down his puffy cheeks. Unknown to her mother he had borrowed money from -Morland, which he had lost on the Stock Exchange. Norma looked in her -mirror, and found herself old, ugly, hag-ridden. Anything was preferable -to the torture and degradation of her home. The next time that Morland -called he stayed to dinner, and the wedding was definitely fixed for -Easter. - - - - -Chapter XIX--ABANA AND PHARPAR - - -Do you know, Miss Hardacre, that I once had a wife?” said Theodore -Weever, suddenly. - -It was after dinner at the Wolff-Salamons', who, it may be remembered, -had lent their house to the Hardacres in the summer. - -“I was not aware of it,” said Norma, wondering at the irrelevance of the -remark, for they had just been discussing the great painter's merciless -portrait of their hostess, which simpered vulgarly at them from the -wall. They were sitting on a sofa in a corner of the room. - -“Yes,” said Weever. “She died young. She came from a New England -village, and played old-fashioned tunes on the piano, and believed in -God.” - -Not a flicker passed over his smooth waxen face or a gleam of sentiment -appeared in his pale steady eyes. Norma glanced round at the little -assembly, mainly composed of fleshy company promoters, who, as far as -decency allowed, continued among themselves the conversation that had -circulated over the wine downstairs, and their women-kind, who adopted -the slangy manners of smart society and talked “bridge” to such men as -would listen to them. Then she glanced back at Weever. - -“I don't want any more wives of that sort,” he went on. “I've outgrown -them. I have no use for them. They would wilt like a snow anemone in -this kind of atmosphere.” - -“Is it your favourite atmosphere, then?” Norma asked, by way of saying -something. - -“More or less. Perhaps I like it not quite so mephitic--You are racking -your brains to know why I'm telling you about my wife. I'll explain. In -a little churchyard in Connecticut is a coffin, and in that coffin is -what a man who is going to ask a woman to marry him ought to give her. I -could never give a quiet-eyed New England girl anything again. At my age -she would bore me to death. But I could give the woman who is accustomed -to hot-houses a perfectly regulated temperature.” - -Norma looked at the imperturbable face, half touched by his unsuspected -humanity, half angered by his assurance. - -“Are you by any chance making me a formal demand in marriage?” she -asked. - -“I am.” - -“And at last you have found some one who would meet your requirements -for the decorative wife?” - -“I found her last summer in Scotland,” replied Weever, with a little -bow. “My countrymen have a habit of finding quickly what they want. They -generally get it. I could n't in this particular instance, as you were -engaged to another man.” - -“I am still engaged,” said Norma. - -“I beg your pardon. I heard the engagement was broken off.” - -“Not at all. In fact only yesterday was it settled that we should be -married at Easter.” - -“Having gone so far on a false assumption,” remarked Weever, placidly, -“may I go without rudeness a step farther? I do not dream of asking you -to throw over King--if my heart were not in Connecticut, I might--but -I'll say this, if you will allow me, Miss Hardacre: I don't believe you -will ever marry Morland King. I have a presentiment that you're going to -marry me--chiefly because I've planned it, and my plans mostly come -out straight. Anyway you are the only woman in the world I should ever -marry, and if at any time there should be a chance for me, a word, -a hint, a message through the telephone to buy you a pug dog--or -anything--would bring me devotedly to your feet. Don't forget it.” - -It was impossible to be angry with a bloodless thing that spoke like -a machine. It was also unnecessary to use the conventional terms of -regretful gratitude in which maidens in their mercy wrap refusals. - -“I'll remember it with pleasure, if you like,” she said with a -half-smile. “But tell me why you don't think I shall marry Mr. King. I -don't believe in your presentiments.” - -She caught his eye, and they remained for some seconds looking hard at -each other. She saw that he had his well-defined reasons. - -“You can tell me exactly what is in your mind,” she said slowly; “you -and I seem to understand each other.” - -“If you understand me, what is the use of compromising speech, my dear -lady?” - -“You don't believe in Morland?” - -“As a statesman I can't say that I do,” replied Weever, with the -puckering of the faint lines round his eyes that passed for a smile. -“That is what astonishes me in your English political life--the little -one need talk and the little one need do. In America the politician is -the orator. He must move in an atmosphere of words half a mile thick. -Wherever he goes he must scream himself hoarse. But here--” - -Norma touched his arm with her fan. - -“We were not discussing American and English institutions,” she -interrupted, “but matters which interest me a little more. You don't -believe in Morland as a man? I want to know, as they are supposed to say -in your country. I disregard your hint, as you may perceive. I am also -indelicate in pressing you to speak unfavourably of the man I'm engaged -to. Of course, having made me an offer, you would regard it as caddish -to say anything against him. But supposing I absolve you from anything -of the kind by putting you on a peculiar plane of friendship?” - -“Then I should say I was honoured above all mortals,” replied Weever, -inscrutably, “and ask you to tell me as a friend what has become of the -artist--the man who got shot--Padgate.” - -The unexpected allusion was a shock. It brought back a hateful scene. It -awoke a multitude of feelings. Its relevance was a startling puzzle. She -strove by hardening her eyes not to betray herself. - -“I've quite lost sight of him,” she answered in a matter of-fact tone. -“His little adventure was n't a pleasant one.” - -“I don't believe he had any little adventure at all,” said Weever, -coolly. - -“What do you mean?” Norma started, and the colour came into her face. - -“That of all the idiots let loose in a cynical, unimaginative world, -Padgate is the greatest I have yet struck. If I were a hundredth part -such an idiot, I should be a better and a happier man. It's getting -late. I'm afraid I must be moving.” - -He rose, and Norma rose with him. - -“I wish you would n't speak in riddles. Can't you tell me plainly what -you mean?” - -“No, I can't,” he said abruptly. “I have said quite enough. Good-night. -And remember,” he added, shaking hands with her, “remember what I told -you about myself.” - -Only after he had gone did it flash upon her that she had not put to -him the vital question--what had Padgate to do with his disbelief -in Morland? As is the way with people pondering over conundrums, the -ridiculously simple solution did not occur to her. She spent many days -in profitless speculation. Weever prophesied that the marriage would not -take place. When pressed for a reason, he brought in the name of Jimmie -Padgate. Obviously the latter was to stand between Morland and herself. -But in what capacity? As a lover? Had Weever rightly interpreted her -insane act on the day of the garden-party, and assumed that she was -still in love with the detested creature? The thought made her grow hot -and cold from head to foot. Why was he an idiot? Because he did not -take advantage of her public confession? or was it because he stood -in Weever's eyes as a wronged and heroic man? This in the depths of her -heart she had been yearning for months to believe. Connie Deering almost -believed it. About the facts once so brutally plain, so vulgarly devoid -of mystery, a mysterious cloud had gathered and was thickening with -time. Reflection brought assurance that Theodore Weever regarded -Jimmie as innocent; and if ever a man viewed human affairs in the dry, -relentless light of reason, it was the inscrutable, bloodless American. - -His offer of marriage she put aside from her thoughts. Morland was the -irrevocably accepted. It was February. Easter falling early, the wedding -would take place in a little over a month. In a cold, dispassionate -way, she interested herself in the usual preparations. Peace reigned -in Devonshire Place. And yet Norma despised herself, feeling the -degradation of the woman who sells her body. - -During the session she saw little of Morland. For this she thanked God, -the duchess, and the electors of Cosford. The sense of freedom caused -her to repent of her contemptuous attitude towards his political -aspirations. To encourage and foster them would be to her very great -advantage. She adopted this policy, much to the edification of Morland, -who felt the strengthening of a common bond of interest. He regularly -balloted for seats in the Ladies' Gallery, and condemned her to sit for -hours behind the grating and listen to uninspiring debates. He came to -her with the gossip of the lobbies. He made plans for their future life -together. They would make politics a feature of their house. It would be -a rallying-place for the new Tory wing, in which Morland after a dinner -at the Carlton Club when his health was proposed in flattering terms, -had found himself enlisted. Norma was to bring back the glories of the -_salon_. - -“When it gets too thick,” he said once laughingly, ashamed of these -wanderings into the ideal, “we can go off into the country and shoot and -have some decent people down and amuse ourselves rationally.” - -Yet, in spite of absorbing political toys, his complete subjugation of -Norma, and the smiling aspect of life, a sense of utter wretchedness -weighed upon the soul of this half-developed man. He could not shake it -off. It haunted him as he sat stolid and stupefied in his place below -the gangway. It dulled all sensation of pleasure when he kissed the -lips which Norma, resigned now to everything, surrendered to him at his -pleasure. It took the sparkle out of his champagne, the joy out of his -life. Now that he had asserted himself as the victorious male who had -won the female that he coveted, the sense of wrong inflicted on him grew -less and the consciousness of his own shame grew greater. In his shallow -way he had loved Jimmie dearly. He also had the well-bred Englishman's -conventional sense of honour. Accusing conscience wrote him down an -unutterable knave. - -One day in March, as he was proceeding citywards to see his solicitors -on some question relating to marriage settlements, his carriage was -blocked for some minutes in Oxford Street. Looking idly out of the near -side window, he saw a familiar figure emerge from a doorway in a narrow -passage come down to the pavement, and stand for a few moments in -anxious thought, jostled by the passers-by. He looked thin and ill and -worried. The lines by the sides of his drooping moustache had deepened. -Jimmie, never spruce in his attire, now seemed outrageously shabby. -Certain men who dress well are quick, like women, to notice these -things. Morland's keen glance took in the discoloured brown boots and -the frayed hem of trousers, the weather stains on the old tweed suit, -the greasiness of the red tie, the irregular mark of perspiration on the -band of the old Homburg hat. An impulse to spring out of the carriage -and greet him was struggling with sheer shame, when Jimmie suddenly -threw up his head--an old trick of his whose familiarity brought a pang -to the man watching him--and crossed the road, disappearing among the -traffic behind the brougham. Morland gazed meditatively at the little -passage. Suddenly he was aware of the three brass balls and the name of -Attenborough. In a moment he was on the pavement and, after a hurried -word to his coachman, in pursuit of Jimmie. But the traffic had -swallowed Jimmie up. It was impossible to track him. Morland returned to -his brougham and drove on. - -There was only one explanation of what he had seen. Jimmie was reduced -to poverty, to pawning his belongings in order to live. The scandal had -killed the sale of his pictures. No more ladies would sit to him for -their portraits. No more dealers would purchase works on the strength -of his name. Jimmie was ill, poor, down at heel, and it was all his, -Morland's, fault, his very grievous fault. In a dim, futile way he -wished he were a Roman Catholic, so that he could go to a priest, -confess, and receive absolution. The idea of confession obsessed him -in this chastened mood. By lunch-time he had resolved to tell Norma -everything and abide by her verdict. At any rate, if he married her, he -would not do so under false pretences. He would feel happier with -the load of lies off his mind. At half-past four he left the House of -Commons to transact its business without him as best it could, and drove -to Devonshire Place. As he neared the door, his courage began to fail. -He remembered Norma's passionate outburst against lying, and shrank from -the withering words that she might speak. The situation, however, had to -be faced. - -The maid who opened the front door informed him that Norma was out, but -that Mrs. Hardacre was at home. He was shown upstairs into the empty -drawing-room, and while he waited there, a solution of his difficulty -occurred to him. He caught at it eagerly, as he had caught at -compromises and palliatives all his life. For he was a man of half-sins, -half-virtues, half-loves, and half-repentances. His spiritual attitude -was that of Naaman. - -Mrs. Hardacre greeted him with smiles of welcome, and regrets at Norma's -absence. If only he had sent a message, Norma would have given up her -unimportant engagement. She would be greatly disappointed. The House -took up so much of his time, and Norma prized the brief snatches she -could obtain of his company. All of which, though obviously insincere, -none the less flattered Morland's vanity. - -“Perhaps it is as well that Norma is away,” said he, “for I want to have -a little talk with you. Can you give me five minutes?” - -“Fifty, my dear Morland,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, graciously. “Will you -have some tea?” - -He declined. It was too serious a matter for the accompaniment of -clattering teaspoons. Mrs. Hardacre sat in an armchair with her back -to the light--the curtains had not yet been drawn--and Morland sat near -her, looking at the fire. - -“I have something on my mind,” he began. “You, as Norma's mother, ought -to know. It's about my friend Jimmie Padgate.” - -Mrs. Hardacre put out a lean hand. - -“I would rather not hear it. I'm not uncharitable, but I wish none of us -had ever set eyes on the man. He came near ruining us all.” - -“He seems to have ruined himself. He's ill, poor, in dreadful low water. -I caught a sight of him this morning. The poor old chap was almost in -rags.” - -“It's very unpleasant for Mr. Padgate, but it fails to strike me as -pathetic. He has only got his deserts.” - -“That's where the point lies,” said Morland. “He does n't deserve it. I -do. I am the only person to blame in the whole infernal business.” - -“You?” cried Mrs. Hardacre, her grey eyes glittering with sudden -interest. “What had you to do with it?” - -“Well, everything. Jimmie never set eyes on the girl in his life. He -took all the blame to shield me. If he had n't done so, there would have -been the devil to pay. That's how it stands.” - -Mrs. Hardacre gave a little gasp. - -“My dear Morland, you amaze me. You positively shock me. Really, don't -you think in mentioning the matter to me there is some--indelicacy?” - -“You are a woman of the world,” said Morland, bluntly, “and you know -that men don't lead the lives of monks just because they happen to be -unmarried.” - -“Of course I know it,” said Mrs. Hardacre, composing herself to -sweetness. “One knows many things of which it is hardly necessary or -desirable to talk. Of course I think it shocking and disreputable of -you. But it's all over and done with. If that was on your mind, wipe it -off and let us say no more about it.” - -“I'm afraid you don't understand,” said Morland, rising and leaning -against the mantel-piece. “What is done is done. Meanwhile another man -is suffering for it, while I go about prospering.” - -“But surely that is a matter between Mr. Padgate and yourself. How can -it possibly concern us?” - -As Morland had not looked at the case from that point of view, he -silently inspected it with a puzzled brow. - -“I can't help feeling a bit of a brute, you know,” he said at length. -“I meant at first to let him off--to make a clean breast of it--but it -wasn't feasible. You know how difficult these things are when they get -put off. Then, of course, I thought I could make it up to Jimmie in -other ways.” - -“Why, so you can,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with the elaborate pretence of -a little yawn, as if the subject had ceased to interest her. “You could -afford it.” - -“Money is no good. He won't touch a penny. I have offered.” - -“Then, my dear Morland, you have done your best. If a man is idiot -enough to saddle himself with other people's responsibilities and -refuses to be helped when he breaks down under them, you must let him go -his own way. Really I haven't got any sympathy for him.” - -Morland, having warmed himself sufficiently and feeling curiously -comforted by Mrs. Hardacre's wise words, sat down again near her and -leant forward with his arms on his knees. - -“Do you think Norma would take the same view?” he asked. After all, in -spite of certain eccentricities inseparable from an unbalanced sex, she -had as much fundamental common-sense as her mother. The latter looked at -him sharply. - -“What has Norma got to do with it?” - -“I was wondering whether I ought to tell her,” said he. - -Mrs. Hardacre started bolt upright in her chair. This time her interest -was genuine. Nothing but her long training in a world of petty strife -kept the sudden fright out of her eyes and voice. - -“Tell Norma? Whatever for?” - -“I thought it would be more decent,” said Morland, rather feebly. - -“It would be sheer lunacy!” cried the lady, appalled at the certain -catastrophe that such a proceeding would cause. Did not the demented -creature see that the whole affair was in unstable equilibrium? A touch, -let alone a shock like this, would bring it toppling down, never to -be set up again by any prayers, remonstrances, ravings, curses, -thumbscrews, or racks the ingenuity of an outraged mother could devise. - -“It would be utter imbecility,” she continued. “My dear man, don't you -think one mad Don Quixote in a romance is enough? What on earth would -you, Norma, or any one else gain by telling her? She is as happy -as possible now, buying her trousseau and making all the wedding -arrangements. Why spoil her happiness? I think it exceedingly -inconsiderate of you--not to say selfish--I do really.” - -“Hardly that. It was an idea of doing penance,” said Morland. - -“If that is all,” said Mrs. Hardacre, relaxing into a bantering tone, as -she joyfully noted the lack of conviction in his manner, “I'll make you -a hair shirt, and I'll promise it shall be scratchy--untanned pigskin -with the bristles on, if you like. Be as uncomfortable, my dear -Morland, as ever you choose--wear a frock-coat with a bowler hat or dine -_tête-à-tête_ with Mr. Hardacre, but do leave other folks to pass their -lives in peace and quiet.” - -Morland threw himself back and laughed, and Mrs. Hardacre knew she had -won what she paradoxically called a moral victory. They discussed the -question for a few moments longer, and then Morland rose to take his -leave. - -“It's awfully good of you to look at things in this broadminded way,” - he said, with the air of a man whom an indulgent lady has pardoned for a -small peccadillo. “Awfully good of you.” - -“There is no other sane way of looking at them,” replied Mrs. Hardacre. -“Won't you wait and see Norma?” - -“I must get back to the House,” replied Morland, consulting his watch. -“There may be a division before the dinner-hour.” - -He smoked a great cigar on his way to Westminster, and enjoyed it -thoroughly. Mrs. Hardacre was quite right. He had done his best. If -Jimmie was too high and mighty to accept the only compensation possible, -he was not to blame. The matter was over and done with. It would be -idiotic to tell Norma. - -Meanwhile, having made confession and received absolution, he felt -spiritually refreshed. - - - - -Chapter XX--ALINE PREPARES FOR BATTLE - -THE look of illness that Morland had noticed upon Jimmie's face was due -to the fact that he had been ill. Italian townlets nestling on hillsides -are picturesque, but they are not always healthy. A touch of fever had -laid him on his back for a week, and caused the local doctor to order -him to England. He had arrived in a limp condition, much to the anxiety -of Aline, who had expected to see the roses return to his cheek as soon -as their slender baggage had passed the custom-house. He was shabbily -dressed because he had fallen on evil times, and had no money to waste -on personal vanities. The four guineas which Aline had put aside out of -their limited resources to buy him a new suit he had meanly abstracted -from the housekeeping drawer, and had devoted, with the surreptitious -help of the servant, to purchasing necessary articles of attire for -Aline. He was looking worried because he had forgotten in which of the -cheap Oxford Street restaurants he had promised to meet that young lady. -When he remembered, the cloud passed from his face and he darted across -the road behind Morland's brougham. He found Aline seated primly at -a little marble table on which were a glass of milk and a lump of -amorphous pastry for herself, and a plate of cold beef and a small -bottle of Bass for Jimmie. It was too early for the regular crowd of -lunchers--only half-past twelve--and the slim, erect little figure -looked oddly alone in the almost empty restaurant. - -Jimmie nodded in a general, kindly way at the idle waitresses about the -buffet, and marched down the room with a quick step, his eyes beaming. -He sat down with some clatter opposite Aline, and took two cheques, a -bank-note and a handful of gold and silver from his pocket, and dumped -them noisily on the table. - -“There, my child. Seven pounds ten. Twenty-five guineas. Five pounds. -And eight pounds three-and-six-pence. Exit wolf at the door, howling, -with his tail between his legs.” - -Aline looked at the wealth with knitted brow. - -“Can I take this?” she asked, lifting up the five-pound note. - -Jimmie pushed the pile towards her. “Take it all, my dear. What on earth -should I do with it? Besides, it's all your doing.” - -“Because I made you go and dun those horrid dealers? And even now Hyam -has only given you half. It was fifty guineas--Oh, Jimmie! Do you mean -to say you forgot? Now, what did you tell him? Did you produce the -agreement?” - -Jimmie looked at her ruefully. - -“I'm afraid I forgot the wretched agreement. I went in and twirled my -moustache fiercely, and said 'Mr. Hyam, I want my money.'” - -Aline laughed. “And you took him by the throat. I know. Oh, you foolish -person!” - -“Well, he asked me if twenty-five would be enough--and it's a lot of -money, you know, dear--and I thought if I did n't say 'yes,' he would -n't give me anything. In business affairs one has to be diplomatic.” - -“I'll have to take Hyam in hand myself,” said Aline, decisively. “Well, -he'll have to pay up some day. Then there's Blathwayt & Co.,--and -Tilney--that's quite right--but where did you get all that gold from, -Jimmie?” - -“Oh, that was somebody else,” he said vaguely. Then turning to the -waitress, who had sauntered up to open the bottle of Bass, he pointed at -Aline's lunch. - -“Do you mind taking away that eccentric pie-thing and bringing the most -nutritious dish you have in the establishment?” - -“But, Jimmie, this is a Bath bun. It's delicious,” protested Aline. - -“My dear child, growing girls cannot be fed like bears on buns. Ah, -here,” he said to the waitress who showed him the little wooden-handled -frame containing the tariff, “bring this young lady some galantine of -chicken.” - -Aline, who in her secret heart loved the “eccentric pie-thing” beyond -all other dainties, and trembled at the stupendous charge, possibly -ninepence or a shilling, that would be made for the galantine, yielded, -after the manner of women, because she knew it would please Jimmie. But -accustomed to his diplomatic methods, she felt that a red herring--or a -galantine--had been drawn across the track. - -“Who was the somebody else?” she asked. - -He nodded and drank a draught of beer and wiped the froth from his -moustache. Something unusual in his personal appearance suddenly caught -her attention. His watch-chain was dangling loose from the buttonhole of -his waistcoat. - -“Your watch!” she gasped. - -Dissimulation being vain, Jimmie confessed. - -“You told me this morning, my dear, that if we didn't get fifty pounds -to-day we were ruined. You spoke alarmingly of the workhouse. My debt -collecting amounted to thirty-eight pounds fifteen. I tried hard to work -the obdurate bosom up to eleven pounds five, but he would only give me -eight.” - -“You don't mean to say you have sold your beautiful gold watch for eight -pounds?” cried the girl, turning as pale as the milk in front of her. - -It had been a present from a wealthy stockbroker who had been delighted -with his portrait painted by Jimmie a couple of years ago, and it was -thick and heavy and the pride of Aline's existence. It invested Jimmie -with an air of solidity, worldly substantiality; and it was the only -timekeeper they had ever had in the house which properly executed its -functions. Now he had sold it! Was there ever so exasperating a man? -He was worse than Moses with his green spectacles. But Jimmie reassured -her. He had only pawned the watch at Attenborough's over the way. - -“Then give me the ticket, do, or you'll lose it, Jimmie.” - -He meekly obeyed. Aline began her galantine with a sigh of relief, and -condescended to laugh at Jimmie's account of his exploits. But when the -meal was ended, she insisted on redeeming the precious watch, and much -happier in knowing it safe in his pocket, she carried him off to a -ready-made tailor's, where she ordered him a beautiful thin overcoat for -thirty shillings, a neat blue serge suit for three pounds ten, handing -over in payment the five-pound note she had abstracted from his -gleanings, and a new hat, for which she paid from a mysterious -private store of her own. These matters having been arranged to her -satisfaction, she made up for her hectoring ways by nestling against him -on top of the homeward-bound omnibus and telling him what a delightful, -lovely morning they had spent. - -Thus it will be seen that Jimmie, aided by Aline's stout little heart, -was battling more than usual against adversity. Aline had many schemes. -Why should she not obtain some lucrative employment? Jimmie made a wry -face at the phrase and protested vehemently against the suggestion. -A hulking varlet like him to let her wear her fingers to the bone by -addressing envelopes at twopence a million? He would sooner return to -the five-shillings-a-dozen oil paintings; he would go round the streets -at dawn and play “ghost” to pavement artists; he would take in washing! -The idea of the street-pictures caught his fancy. He expatiated upon its -advantages. Five pitches, say at two shillings a pitch, that would be -ten shillings a day--three pounds a week. A most business-like plan, to -say nothing of the education in art it would be to the public! He had -his own fantastical way of dealing with the petty cares of life. As for -Aline working, he would not hear of it. Though they lived now from hand -to mouth, they were always fed. He had faith in the ravens. - -But all the fantasy and the faith could not subdue Aline's passionate -rebellion against Jimmie's ostracism. She was very young, very feminine; -she had not his wide outlook, his generous sympathies, his disdain of -trivial, ignoble things, his independence of soul. The world was arrayed -against Jimmie. Society was persecuting him with monstrous injustice. -She hated his oppressors, longed fiercely for an opportunity of -vindicating his honour. It was sometimes more than she could bear--to -think of his straitened means, the absence of sitters, the lowered -prices he obtained, the hours of unremitting toil he spent at his easel -and drawing-table. During their travels she had not realised what the -scandal would mean to him professionally. Now her heart rose in hot -revolt and thirsted for battle in Jimmie's cause. - -Her heart had never been hotter than one morning when, the gem of his -finished Italian studies having been rejected by the committee of -a minor exhibition, she went down to the studio to give vent to her -indignation. At breakfast Jimmie had laughed and kissed her and told -her not to drop tears into his coffee. He would send the picture to -the Academy, where it would be hung on the line and make him famous. -He refused to be downhearted and talked buoyantly of other things. -But Aline felt that it was only for her sake that he hid his bitter -disappointment, and an hour later she could bear the strain of silence -no longer. - -The door of the studio was open. The girl's footstep was soft, and, not -hearing it, he did not turn as she entered. For a few seconds she stood -watching him; feeling shy, embarrassed, an intruder upon unexpected -sacred things. Jimmie's mind was far away from minor exhibitions. He was -sitting on his painting-stool, chin in hand, looking at a picture on -the easel. On his face was unutterable pain, in his eyes an agony of -longing. Aline caught her breath, frightened at the revelation. The eyes -of the painted Norma smiled steadfastly into his. The horrible irony -of it smote the girl. Another catch at the breath became a choking sob. -Jimmie started, and as if a magic hand had passed across his features, -the pain vanished, and Aline saw the homely face again with its look -of wistful kindness. Overwrought, she broke into a passion of weeping. -Jimmie put his arms about her and soothed her. What did the rejection of -a picture matter? It was part of the game of painting. She must be his -own brave little girl and smile at the rubs of fortune. But Aline -shook the head buried on his shoulder, and stretched out a hand blindly -towards the portrait. “It's that. I can't bear it.” - -An impossible thought shot through him. He drew away from her and caught -her wrists somewhat roughly, and tried to look at her; but she bowed her -head. - -“What do you mean, my child?” he asked curtly, with bent brows. - -Women are lightning-witted in their interpretation of such questions. -The blood flooded her face, and her tears dried suddenly and she met -his glance straight. - -“Do you think I'm jealous? Do you suppose I have n't known? I can't bear -you to suffer. I can't bear her not to believe in you. I can't bear her -not to love you.” - -Jimmie let go her wrists and stood before her full of grateful -tenderness, quite at a loss for words. He looked whimsically at the -flushed, defiant little face; he shook her by the shoulder and turned -away. - -“My valiant tin soldier,” he said. - -It was an old name for her, dating from nursery days, when they thought -and talked according to the gospel of Hans Christian Andersen. - -No more passed between them. But thenceforward Jimmie put the finishing -touches to the portrait openly, Instead of painting at it when he knew -he should be undisturbed. The wedding was drawing near. The date had -been announced in the papers, and Jimmie had put a cross against it in -his diary. If only Norma would accept the portrait as a wedding-present, -he would feel happier. But how to approach her he did not know. In her -pure eyes, he was well aware, he must appear the basest of men, and -things proceeding from him would bear a taint of the unspeakable. Yet he -hungered for her acceptance. It was the most perfect picture he had -painted or could ever paint. The divinest part of him had gone to the -making of it. It held in its passionate simplicity the man's soul, as -the Monna Lisa in its mysterious complexity holds Leonardo's. Of -material symbols of things spiritual he could not give her more. But how -to give? - -Connie Deering settled the question by coming to the studio one morning, -a bewildering vision of millinery and smiles and kindness. - -“You have persistently refused, you wicked bear, to come and see me -since my return to London, so I have no choice but to walk into your -den. If it had n't been for Aline, beyond an occasional 'Dear Connie, I -am very well. The weather is unusually warm for the time of year. Yours -sincerely, J. P.', I should n't know whether you were alive or dead. I -hope you're ashamed of yourself.” - -This was the little lady's exordium, to which she tactfully gave Jimmie -no time to reply. She stayed for an hour. The disastrous topic was -avoided. But Jimmie felt that she forbore to judge him for his supposed -offence, and learned to his great happiness that Norma had asked after -his welfare, and would without doubt deign in her divine graciousness -to accept the portrait. She looked thoughtfully at the picture for some -time, and then laid a light touch on his arm. - -“How you must love her, Jimmie!” she said in a low voice. “I have n't -forgotten.” - -“I wish you would,” he answered gravely. “I oughtn't to have said what -I did. I don't remember what I did say. I lost my head and raved. -Every man has his hour of madness, and that was mine--all through your -witchery. And yet somehow it seemed as if I were pouring it all out to -her.” - -Connie Deering perceptibly winced. Plucking up courage, she began: - -“I wish a man would--” - -“My dear Connie,” Jimmie interrupted kindly, “there are hundreds of men -in London who are sighing themselves hoarse for you. But you are such a -hard-hearted butterfly.” - -Her lips twitched. “Not so hard-hearted as you think, my good Jimmie,” - she retorted. - -A moment later she was all inconsequence and jest. On parting he took -both her white-gloved little hands. - -“You can't realise the joy it has been to me to see you, Connie,” he -said. “It has been like a ray of sunlight through prison bars.” - -After a private talk with Aline she drove straight to Devonshire Place, -and on the way dabbed her eyes with the inconsiderable bit of chiffon -called a handkerchief which she carried in her gold chain purse. She saw -Norma alone for a moment before lunch, and told her of her visit. - -“I don't care what he has done,” she declared desperately. “I am -not going to let it make a difference any longer. He's the same dear -creature I have known all my life, and I don't believe he has done -anything at all. If there's a sinner in that horrible business, it is -n't Jimmie!” - -Norma looked out of the window at the bleak March day. - -“That is what Theodore Weever said,” she answered tonelessly. - -“Then why don't you give Jimmie the benefit of the doubt?” - -“It is better that I should n't.” - -“Why, dear?” - -“You are a sweet little soul, Connie,” said Norma, her eyes still fixed -on the grey sky. “But you may do more harm than good. I am better as I -am. I have benumbed myself into a decent state of insensibility and I -don't want to feel anything ever again as long as I live.” - -The door opened, and Mrs. Hardacre appeared on the threshold. Connie -bent forward and whispered quickly into Norma's ear: - -“One would think you were afraid to believe in Jimmie.” - -She swung round, flushed, femininely excited at having seized the unfair -moment for dealing a stab. - -“I hope I _have_ made her feel,” she thought, as she fluttered forward -to greet Mrs. Hardacre. - -She succeeded perhaps beyond her hope. A sharp glance showed her Norma -still staring out of window, but staring now with an odd look of fear -and pain. Her kind heart repented. - -“Forgive me if I hurt you,” she said on their way downstairs to lunch. - -“What does it matter?” Norma answered by way of pardon. - -But the shrewd thrust mattered exceedingly. After Connie had gone, the -wound ached, and Norma found that her boast of having benumbed herself -was a vain word. In the night she lay awake, frightened at the reaction -that was taking place. Theodore Weever had shaken her more than she had -realised. Connie Deering proclaimed the same faith. She felt that she -too would have to accept it--against argument, against reason, against -fact. She would have to accept it wholly, implicitly; and she dreaded -the act of faith. Her marriage with Morland was fixed for that day week, -and she was agonisingly aware that she loved another man with all her -heart. - -The next day she received a hurried note from Connie Deering: - -_“Do come in for half an hour for tea on Sunday. I have a beautiful -wedding-present to show you which I hope you'll like, as great pains -have been spent over it. And I want to have a last little chat with -you.”_ - -She promised unreflectingly, seeing no snare. But as she walked -to Bryanston Square on Sunday afternoon, more of a presentiment, a -foreboding of evil, than a suspicion fixed itself upon her mind, and she -wished she had not agreed to come. She was shown into the drawing-room, -and there, beside a gilt-framed picture over which a cloth was thrown, -with her great brown eyes meeting her defiantly, stood Aline. - - - - -Chapter XXI--THE MOTH MEETS THE STAR - -THUS had Aline, her heart hot for battle in Jimmie's cause, contrived -with Connie Deering as subsidiary conspirator. She had lain awake most -of the night, thinking of the approaching interview, composing speeches, -elaborating arguments, defining her attitude. Her plan of campaign was -based on the assumption of immediate hostilities. She had pictured -a scornful lady moved to sudden anger at seeing herself trapped, and -haughtily refusing to discuss overtures of peace. It was to be war -from the first, until she had brought her adversary low; and when the -door-handle rattled and the door opened to admit Norma, every nerve -in her young body grew tense, and her heart beat like the clapper of a -bell. - -Norma entered, looked for a moment in smiling surprise at Aline, came -quickly forward, and moved by a sudden impulse, a yearning for love, -sweetness, freshness, peace--she knew not what--she put her arms round -the girl and kissed her. - -“My dear Aline, how sweet it is to see you again!” - -The poor little girl stood helpless. The bottom was knocked out of her -half-childish plan of campaign. There was no scornful lady, no haughty -words, no hostilities. She fell to crying. What else could she do? - -“There, there! Don't cry, dear,” said Norma soothingly, almost as -helpless. Seating herself on a low chair and drawing Aline to her side, -she looked up at the piteous face. - -“Why should you cry, dear?” - -“I did n't know you would be so good to me,” answered Aline, wiping her -eyes. - -“Why should n't I be good to you? What reason could I have for not being -glad to see you?” - -“I don't know,” said the girl, with a touch of bitterness. “Things are -so different now.” - -Norma sighed for answer and thought of her premonition. She was aware -that Connie had deliberately planned this interview, but could find -no resentment in her heart. The reproach implied in Aline's words she -accepted humbly. She was at once too spiritless for anger, and too much -excited by the girl's presence for regret at having come. Her eye -fell upon the picture leaning against the chair-back, and a conjecture -swiftly passed through her mind. - -“Mrs. Deering asked me to come and look at a wedding-present,” she said -with a smile. - -“Did she tell you from whom?” asked Aline, thrusting her handkerchief -into her pocket. She had found her nerve again. - -“No.” - -“It's from Jimmie.” - -“Is it that over there?” - -Aline caught and misinterpreted an unsteadiness of voice. She threw -herself on her knees by Norma's side. - -“You won't refuse it, Miss Hardacre. Oh, say you won't refuse it. Jimmie -began it ever so long ago. He put everything into it. It would break -his heart if you refused it--the heart of the best and beautifullest and -tenderest and most wonderful man God ever made.” - -Norma touched with her gloved fingers a wisp of hair straying over the -girl's forehead. - -“How do you know he is all that?” - -“How do I know? How do I know the sun shines and the rain falls? It's -just so.” - -“You have faith, my child,” said Norma, oddly. - -“It isn't faith. It's knowledge. You all believe Jimmie has done -something horrible. He has n't. I know he hasn't. He couldn't. He -couldn't harm a living creature by word or deed. I know he never did it. -If I had thought so for one moment, I should have loathed myself so that -I would have gone out and killed myself. I know very little about it. I -did n't read the newspapers--it's hideous--it's horrible--Jimmie would -as soon think of torturing a child. It's not in his nature. He is all -love and sweetness and chivalry. If you say he has taken the blame on -himself for some great generous purpose--yes. That's Jimmie. That's -Jimmie all over. It's cruel--it's monstrous for any one who knows him to -think otherwise.” - -She had risen from her knees half-way through her passionate speech, and -moved about in front of Norma, wringing her hands. She ended in a sob -and turned away. Norma lay back in her chair, pale and agitated. The -cynical worldling with his piercing vision into men and the pure, -ignorant child had arrived at the same conclusion, not after months of -thought, but instantly, intuitively. She could make the girl no answer. -Aline began again. - -“He could n't. You know he could n't. It's something glorious and -beautiful he has done and not anything shameful.” - -She went on, with little pauses, hurling her short, breathless -sentences across the space that separated her from Norma, forgetful of -everything save the wrong done to Jimmie. At last Norma rose and went to -her. - -“Hush, dear!” she said. “There are some things I mustn't talk about. -I daren't. You are too young to understand. Mr. Padgate has sent me a -wedding-present. Tell him how gladly I accept it and how I shall value -it. Let me see the picture.” - -Aline, her slight bosom still heaving with the after-storm of emotion, -said nothing, but drew the cloth from the canvas. Norma started back -in-surprise. She had not anticipated seeing her own portrait. - -“Oh, but it is beautiful!” she cried involuntarily. - -“Yes--more than beautiful,” said Aline, and mechanically she moved the -chair into the full light of the window. - -Norma looked at the picture for a long time, stepped back and looked at -herself in the mirror of the overmantel, and returned to the picture. -And as she looked the soul behind the picture spoke to her. The message -delivered, she glanced at Aline. - -“It is not I, that woman. I wish to God it were.” She put her hands -up to her face, and took a step or two across the room, and repeated a -little wildly, “I wish to God it were!” - -“It is very, very like you,” said Aline softly, recovering her girl's -worship of the other's stately beauty. - -Norma caught her by the arm and pointed at the portrait. - -“Can't you see the difference?” - -But the soul behind the picture had not spoken to Aline. There was love -hovering around the pictured woman's lips; happy tenderness and -trust and promise mingled in her eyes; in so far as the shadow of a -flower-like woman's passion could strain her features, so were her -features strained. Yet she looked out of the canvas a proud, queenly -woman, capable of heroisms and lofty sacrifice. She was one who -loved deeply and demanded love in return. She was warm of the flesh, -infinitely pure of the spirit. The face was the face of Norma, but the -soul was that of the dream-woman who had come and sat in the sitter's -chair and communed with Jimmie as he painted her. And Norma heard her -voice. It was an indictment of her life, a judgment and a sentence. - -“I am glad you can't, dear,” she said to Aline, regaining her balance. -“Tell him I shall prize it above all my wedding-gifts.” - -They talked quietly, for a while about Jimmie's affairs, the pilgrimage -through southern France and northern Italy, his illness, his work. His -poverty Aline was too proud to mention. - -“And you, my dear?” asked Norma, kindly. - -“I?” - -“What about yourself? You are not looking as happy as you were. My dear -child,” she said, bending forward earnestly, “do you know that no one -has ever come to me with their troubles in all my life--not once. I'm -beginning to feel I should be happier if some one did. You have had -yours---I have heard just a little. You see we all have them and we -might help each other.” - -“You have no troubles, Miss Hardacre,” said Aline, touched. “You are -going to be married in a week's time.” - -“And you?” - -“Never,” said Aline. “Never.” - -Suddenly she poured her disastrous little love-story into Norma's ears. -It was a wonderful new comfort to the child, this tender magic of the -womanly sympathy. Oh! she loved him, of course she loved him, and he -loved her; that was the piteous part of it. If Miss Hardacre only knew -what it was to have the heart-ache! It was dreadful. And there was no -hope. - -“And is that all?” asked Norma, when she had lowered the curtain on her -tragedy. “You are eating out your heart for him and won't see him just -because he won't believe in Jimmie? Listen. I feel sure that he will -soon believe in Jimmie. He must. And then you'll be entirely happy.” - -When the girl's grateful arms suddenly flung themselves about her, Norma -was further on the road to happiness than she had ever travelled before. -She yielded herself to the moment's exquisite charm. Behind her whirled -a tumult of longing, shame, struggling faith, nameless suspicion. Before -her loomed a shivering dread. The actual moment was an isle of enchanted -peace. - -The clock on a table at the far end of the room chiming six brought -her back to the workaday world. She must go home. Morland was coming to -dinner; also one or two Cosford people, who had already arrived in town -in view of the wedding. She would have to dress with some elaborateness. -Her heart grew heavy and cold at the prospect of the dreary party. She -rose, looked again at the picture in the fading light. Moved by the -irresistible, she turned to Aline. - -“I should like to see him--to thank him--before---before Wednesday. Do -you think he would come?” - -Aline blushed guiltily. “Jimmie is in the house now,” she said. - -“Downstairs?” - -“Yes.” - -For a moment irresolute, she looked vacantly into the girl's pleading -eyes. An odd darkness encompassed her and she saw nothing. The -announcement was a shock of crisis. Dimly she knew that she trod the -brink of folly and peril. But she had been caught unawares, and she -longed stupidly, achingly, for the sight of his face. The words of -Aline, eager in defence of her beloved, seemed far away. - -“Of course he does n't know you are here. He was to call for me at a -quarter to six, and I heard the front door open a little while ago. I -brought the picture in a cab, and he is under the impression that Mrs. -Deering will ask you to--will do what I have done. Jimmie is perfectly -innocent, Miss Hardacre. He had not the remotest idea I was to meet -you--not the remotest.” - -Norma recovered herself sufficiently to say with a faint smile: - -“So this has been a conspiracy between you and Connie Deering?” - -Aline caught consent in the tone, and ignored the question. - -“Shall I send him up to you?” she asked breathlessly. - -“Yes,” said Norma. - -There was a girl's glad cry, a girl's impulsive kiss, and Norma was left -alone in the room. She had yielded. In a few moments he would be with -her--the man who had said, “Her voice haunts me like music heard in -sleep... I worship her like a Madonna... I love her as the man of hot -blood loves a woman... My soul is a footstool for her to rest her feet -upon,” and other flaming words of unforgettable passion; the man for -whom one instant of her life had been elemental sex; the man whose love -had transfigured her on canvas into the wonder among women that she -might have been; the man standing in a slough of infamy, whose rising -vapours wreathed themselves into a halo about his head. She clenched her -hands and set her teeth, wrestling with herself. - -“My God! What kind of a fool am I becoming?” she breathed. - -Training, the habit of the mask, came to her aid. Jimmie, entering, -saw only the royal lady who had looked kindly upon him in the golden -September days. She came to meet him frankly, as one meets an old -friend. A new vision revealed to her the heart that leapt into his eyes, -as they rested upon her. Mistress of herself, she hardened her own, but -smiled and spoke softly. - -“It is great good fortune you have come, so that I can thank you,” she -said. “But how can I ever thank you--for that?” - -“It is a small gift enough,” said Jimmie. “Your acceptance is more than -thanks.” - -“I shall prize it dearly. It is like nothing that can be bought. It is -something out of yourself you are giving me.” - -“If you look at it in that light,” said he, “I am happy indeed.” - -With a common instinct they went up to the portrait and regarded it side -by side. Conventional words passed. He enquired after Morland. - -“You have n't seen him for a long time?” she asked hesitatingly. - -“Not for a long time.” - -“You must have been very lonely.” - -“I have had Aline--and Connie Deering--and my work.” - -“Are they sufficient for you?” - -“Any human love a man gets he can make fill his life. It's like the -grain of mustard-seed.” - -Norma felt a thrill of admiration. Not a tone in his voice betrayed -complaint, reproach, or bitterness. Instead, he sounded the note of -thanksgiving for the love bestowed upon him, of faith in the perfect -ordering of the world. She glanced at him, and felt that she had wronged -him. No matter what was the solution of the mystery, she knew him to be -a sweet-souled man, wonderfully steadfast. - -“Your old way,” she replied with a smile, sitting down and motioning him -to a chair beside her. “Do you remember that we first met in this very -room? You have not changed. Have I?” - -“No,” he said gravely, “you were always beautiful, without and within. -I told you that then, if you remember. Perhaps, now, you are a little -truer to yourself.” - -“Do you think so?” she asked, somewhat bitterly. - -“Perhaps it is the approach of your great happiness,” blundered Jimmie, -in perfect conviction. She was silent. “It has been more to me than I -can say,” he went on, “to see you once again--as you are, before your -marriage. I wish you many blessings--all that love can bring you.” - -“Do you think love is necessary for married happiness?” - -“Without it marriage must be a horror,” said Jimmie. For a moment she -was on the brink of harsh laughter. Did he sincerely believe she was -in love with Morland? She could have hurled the question at him. Will -checked the rising hysteria and turned it into other channels. - -“Why have you never married? You must have loved somebody once.” - -It was a relief to hurt him. The dusk was gathering in the room, and she -could scarcely see his face. A Sunday stillness filled the quiet square -outside. The hour had its dangers. - -“My having loved a woman does not necessarily imply that I could have -married her,” said Jimmie. - -The evasion irritated her mood, awoke a longing to make him speak. She -drew her chair nearer, bent forward, so that the brim of her great hat -almost brushed his forehead and the fragrance of her overspread him. - -“Do you remember a picture you would n't show me in your studio? You -called it a mad painter's dream. You said it was the Ideal Woman.” - -“_You_ said so,” replied Jimmie. - -“I should like to see it.” - -“It is mine no longer to show you,” said Jimmie. - -“I think you must have loved that woman very deeply.” She was tempting -him as she had tempted no man before, feeling a cruel, senseless joy in -it. His voice vibrated. - -“Yes. I loved her infinitely.” - -“What was she like?” - -“Like all the splendid flowers of the earth melted into one rose,” said -Jimmie. - -“I wish some one had ever said that about me,” she whispered. - -“Many must have thought it.” - -“She must be a happy woman to be loved by you.” - -“By me? Who am I that I could bring happiness to a woman? I have never -told her.” - -“Why not?” she whispered. “Do you suppose you can love a woman without -her knowing it?” - -“In what way can the star be cognisant of the moth's desire?” said -Jimmie, going back to the refrain of his love. - -“You a moth and she a star! You are a man and she is but a trumpery bit -of female flesh that on a word would throw herself into your arms.” - -“No,” said Jimmie, hoarsely. “No, you don't know what you are saying.” - -The temptation to goad him was irresistible. - -“We are all of us alike, all of us. Tell her.” - -“I dare n't.” - -“Tell me who she is.” - -She looked at him full, with meaning in her eyes, which glowed like deep -moons in the dusk. He brought all his courage into his glance. He was -the master. She turned away her head in confusion, reading his love, his -strength, his loyalty. A lesser man loving her would have thrown honour -to the winds. A curious reverence of him filled her. She felt a small -thing beside him. All doubts vanished forever. Her faith in him was as -crystal clear as Aline's. - -“I have no right to mention her name,” he said after a pause. - -Norma leaned back in her chair and passed her handkerchief across her -lips. - -“Would you do anything in the world she asked you?” she murmured. - -“I would go through hell for her,” said Jimmie. - -There was another span of silence, tense and painful. Jimmie broke it by -saying: - -“Why should you concern yourself about my fantastic affairs? They merely -belong to dreamland--to the twilight and the stillness. They have no -existence in the living world.” - -“If I thought so, should I be sitting in the twilight and the stillness -listening to you?” she asked. “Or even if I did, may I not enter into -dreamland too for a few little minutes before the gates are closed to -me forever? Why should you want to shut me out of it? Do you think much -love has come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of -it.” - -“Morland loves you,” said Jimmie, tremulously. - -The door opened. The electric light was switched on, showing two pale, -passion-drawn faces, and Connie Deering brought her sweet gaiety into -the room. - -“If I had known you two were sitting in the dark like this, I should -have come up earlier. Is n't it nice, Norma, to have Jimmie back again?” - -The spell was broken. Norma gave an anxious look at the clock and fled, -after hurried farewells. - -The mistress of the house arched her pretty eyebrows as she returned to -Jimmie. - -“_Eh bien?_” - -“Connie--” He cleared his throat. “You have kept my secret?” - -“Loyally,” she said. “Have you?” - -“I have done my best. God knows I have done my best.” - -He sat down, took up a book and began to turn the leaves idly. Connie -knelt down before the fire and put on a fresh log. This done, she came -to his side. He took her hand and looked up into her face. - -“I have n't thanked you, Connie. I do with all my heart.” - -She smiled at him with an odd wistfulness. - -“You once thanked me in a very pretty manner,” she said. “I think I -deserve it again.” - - - - -Chapter XXII--CATASTROPHE - -CONNIE DEERING was dining that Sunday evening with some friends at the -Carlton, an engagement which had caused her to decline an invitation to -the Hardacres'. The prospect, however, for once did not appeal to her -pleasure-loving soul. She sighed as she stepped into her brougham, and -wished as she drove along that she were sitting at home in the tea-gown -and tranquillity harmonious with a subdued frame of mind. Problems -worried her. What had passed between Norma and Jimmie? Ordinary delicacy -had forbidden her questioning, and Jimmie had admitted her no further -into his confidence. In that she was disappointed. When a sentimental -woman asks for a kiss, she expects something more. She was also half -ashamed of herself for asking him to kiss her. A waspish little voice -within proclaimed that it was not so much for Jimmie's sake as for her -own; that her lifelong fondness for Jimmie had unconsciously slid on -to the rails that lead to absurdity. She drew her satin cloak tightly -around her as if to suffocate the imp, and returned to her speculation. -Something had happened--of that there was no doubt--something serious, -agitating. It could be read on both their faces. Had she, who alone knew -the hearts of each, done right in bringing them together? What had been -her object? Even if a marriage between them had not been too ludicrous -for contemplation, it would not have been fair towards her cousin -Morland to encourage this intrigue. She vowed she had been a little fool -to meddle with such gunpowdery matters. And yet she had acted in all -innocence for Jimmie's sake. It was right for Norma to be friends with -him again. It was monstrous he should suffer. If he could not marry the -woman he loved, at least he could have the happiness of knowing himself -no longer a blackened wretch in her eyes. But then, Norma had taken it -into her head to love him too. Had she done right? Her thoughts -flew round in a vicious circle of irritatingly small circumference, -occasionally flying off on the tangent of the solicited kiss. - -The first person she met in the vestibule of the Carlton was Theodore -Weever. They exchanged greetings, discovered they belonged to the same -party. She had come across him frequently of late in the houses that -Norma and herself had as common ground. In a general way she liked him; -since Norma had told her of his view of the scandal, he had risen high -in her estimation; but to-night he seemed to be a link in the drama that -perplexed her, and she shrank from him, as from something uncanny. He -sat next her at table. His first words were of Jimmie. - -“I was buying pictures yesterday from a friend of yours--Padgate.” - -In her pleasure Connie forgot her nervousness. - -“Why, he never told me.” - -“He could scarcely have had time unless he telephoned or telegraphed.” - -“He was at my house this afternoon,” she explained. - -He carefully peppered his oysters, then turned his imperturbable face -towards her. - -“So was Miss Hardacre.” - -“How do you know that?” she cried, startled. - -“I was calling in Devonshire Place. Her mother told me. I am not -necromantic.” - -His swift uniting of the two names perturbed her. She swallowed her -oysters unreflectingly, thus missing one of her little pleasures in -life, for she adored oysters. - -“Which pictures did you buy?” she asked. - -“The one I coveted was not for sale. It was a portrait of Miss Hardacre. -I don't think he meant me to see it, but I came upon him unawares. Have -you seen it?” They discussed the portrait for a while. Connie repeated -her former question. Weever replied that he had bought the picture -of the faun looking at the vision of things to come, and the rejected -Italian study. Connie expressed her gladness. They contained Jimmie's -best work. - -“Very fine,” Weever admitted, “but just failing in finish. Nothing like -the portrait.” - -There was an interval. Connie exchanged remarks with old Colonel -Pawley, her right-hand neighbour, who expatiated on the impossibility -of consuming Bortsch soup with satisfaction outside Russia. The soup -removed, Weever resumed the conversation. - -“Have you read your Lamartine thoroughly? I have. I was sentimental -once. He says somewhere, _Aimer pour être aimé, c'est de l'homme; mais -aimer pour aimer, c'est presque de l'ange_. I remember where it comes -from. It was said of Cecco in 'Graziella.' Our friend Padgate reminds -me of Cecco. Do you care much about your cousin Morland King, Mrs. -Deering?” - -Connie, entirely disconcerted by his manner, looked at him beseechingly. - -“Why do you ask me that?” - -“Because he is one of the _dramatis persona_ in a pretty little comedy -on which the curtain is not yet rung down.” - -She greatly dared. “Are you too in the caste?” - -Theodore Weever deliberately helped himself to fish before replying. -Then with equal deliberation he stared into her flushed and puzzled -face. - -“I hope so. A leading part, perhaps, if you are the clever and -conscientious woman I take you to be.” - -“What part has my cousin Morland played?” she asked. - -“I must leave you the very simple task of guessing,” said Weever; and -he took advantage of her consternation to converse with his left-hand -neighbour. - -“I have painted a peculiarly successful fan, dear Mrs. Deering,” said -Colonel Pawley, in his purring voice. “A wedding-present for our dear -Miss Hardacre. I have never been so much pleased with anything before. I -should like you to see it. When may I come and show it you?” - -“The wedding is fixed for two o'clock on Wednesday,” said Connie, -answering like a woman in a dream. The bright room, the crowd of diners, -the music, the voice of the old man by her side, all faded from her -senses, eclipsed by the ghastly light that dawned upon her. Only one -meaning could be attached to Weever's insinuations. A touch on the -arm brought her back to her surroundings with a start. It was Colonel -Pawley. - -“I hope there is nothing--” he began, in a tone of great concern. - -“No, nothing. Really nothing. Do forgive me,” she interrupted in -confusion. “You were telling me something. Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry.” - -“It was about the fan,” said Colonel Pawley, sadly. - -“A fan?” - -“Yes, for dear Miss Hardacre--a wedding-present.” - -She listened to a repetition of the previous remarks and to a -description of the painting, and this time replied coherently. She would -be delighted to see both the fan and himself to-morrow morning. The kind -old man launched into a prothalamion. The happy couple were a splendidly -matched pair--Norma the perfect type of aristocratic English beauty; -Morland a representative specimen of the British gentleman, the -safeguard of the empire, a man, a thorough good fellow, incapable -of dishonour, a landed proprietor. He had sketched out a little -wedding-song which he would like to present with the fan. Might he show -that, too, to Mrs. Deering? - -It was a dreadful dinner. On each side the distressing topic hemmed -her in. In vain she tried to make her old friend talk of travel or -gastronomy or the comforts of his club; perverse fate brought him always -back to Norma's wedding. She was forced to listen, for to Weever she -dared not address a remark. She longed for escape, for solitude wherein -to envisage her dismay. No suspicion of Morland's complicity in the -scandal had crossed her mind. Even now it seemed preposterous for a man -of honour to have so acted towards his dearest and most loyal friend, -to say nothing of the unhappy things that had gone before. Suddenly, -towards the end of dinner, she revolted. She turned to Weever. - -“I don't believe a word of it.” - -“Of what, dear lady?” - -“Of what you have told me about Morland and Jimmie Padgate.” - -“I have told you nothing--absolutely nothing,” he replied in his -expressionless way. “Please remember that. I don't go about libelling my -acquaintances.” - -“I shall go and ask Morland straight,” she said with spirit. - -“_Au succès_,” said Weever. - -Dinner over, the little party went into the lounge. The screened -light fell pleasantly on palms and pretty dresses, and made the place -reposeful after the glare of the dining-room, whose red and white and -gold still gleamed through the door above the steps. The red-coated band -played a seductive, almost digestive air. A circle of comfortable chairs -reserved by the host, invited the contented diner to languorous ease and -restful gossip. It was the part of a Carlton dinner that Connie usually -enjoyed the most. She still took her pleasures whole-heartedly, wherein -lay much of her charm. The world, as Jimmie once told her, had not -rubbed the dust off her wings. But to-night the sweet after-dinner hour -was filled with fears and agitations, and while the party was settling -down, she begged release from her host on the score of headache, and -made her escape. - -She would carry out her threat to Weever. She would see Morland before -she slept, and ask him to free her from this intolerable suspicion. -She was a loyal, simple woman, for all her inconsequent ways and close -experience of the insincerities of life; devoted to her friends, a -champion of their causes; loving to believe the best, disturbed beyond -due measure at being forced to believe the worst. Jimmie had most of her -heart, more of it than she dared confess. But there were places in it -both for Norma and for Morland. The latter was her cousin. She had known -him all her life. To believe him to have played this sorry part in what -it pleased Theodore Weever to call a pretty comedy was very real pain to -the little lady. Her headache was no pretence. No spirit of curiosity or -interference drove her to the Hardacres', where she knew she would find -Morland; rather a desire to rid herself of a nightmare. Granted the -possibility of baseness on Morland's part, all the dark places in -the lamentable business became light. That was the maddening part of -Weever's solution. And would it apply to the puzzle of the afternoon? -Had Norma known? Had Jimmie told her? The pair had been agitated enough -for anything to have happened. Theodore Weever, too, had calmly avowed -himself an actor in the comedy. What part was he playing? She shivered -at the conjecture. He looked like a pale mummy, she thought confusedly, -holding in his dull eyes the inscrutable wisdom of the Sphinx. -Meanwhile the horses were proceeding at a funereal pace. She pulled the -checkstring and bade the coachman drive faster. - -The scene that met her eyes when the servant showed her into the -Hardacres' drawing-room was unexpected. Instead of the ordinary -after-dinner gathering, only Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre and Morland were -in the room. The master of the house, very red, very puffy, sat in an -armchair before the fire, tugging at his mean little red moustache. Mrs. -Hardacre, her face haggard with anxiety, stood apart with Morland, whose -heavy features wore an expression of worry, apology, and indignation -curiously blended. On a clear space of carpet a couple of yards from -the door lay some strings of large pearls. Connie looked from one to -the other of the three people who had evidently been interrupted in the -midst of an anxious discussion. Here, again, something had happened. - -Mrs. Hardacre shook hands with her mechanically. Mr. Hardacre apologised -for not rising. That infernal gout again, he explained, pointing to the -slashed slipper of a foot resting on a hassock. Norma had made it worse. -He had been infernally upset. - -“Norma?” Connie turned and looked inquiringly at the other two. - -“Oh, an awful scene,” said Morland, gloomily. “I wish to heaven you had -been here. You might have done something.” - -“Perhaps you might bring her to her senses now, though I doubt it. I -think she has gone crazy,” said Mrs. Hardacre. - -“But what has occurred?” - -“She declares she won't marry me, that's all. There's my wedding-present -on the floor. Tore it from her neck as she made her exit. I don't know -what's going to happen!” - -“Where is she now?” - -“Up in her room smashing the rest of her wedding-presents, I suppose,” - said Mrs. Hardacre. - -“Eh, what? Can't do that. All locked up downstairs in the library,” came -from the chair by the fire. - -“Oh, don't make idiotic remarks, Benjamin,” snapped his wife, viciously. - -The air was electric with irritation. Connie, a peacemaker at heart, -forgot her mission in the face of the new development of affairs, and -spoke soothingly. Norma could not break off the engagement three days -before the wedding. Such things were not done. She would come round. It -was merely an attack of nerves. They refused to be comforted. - -“God knows what it is,” said Morland. “I thought things were perfectly -square between us. She was n't cordial before dinner, I'll admit; but -she let me put those beads round her neck. I asked her to wear them all -the evening, as there were only the four of us.” - -“The Spencer-Temples sent an excuse this afternoon,” Mrs. Hardacre -explained. - -“She agreed,” Morland continued. “She wore them through dinner. Then -everything any one of us said seemed to get on her nerves. I talked -about the House. She withered me up with sarcasm. We talked about the -wedding. She begged us, for God's sake, to talk of something else. We -tried, so as to pacify her. But of course it was hardly possible. I said -I had met Lord Monzie yesterday--told me he and his wife were coming on -Wednesday. She asked whether Ascherberg and the rest of Monzie's crew -of money-lenders, harlots, and fools were coming too. I defended -Monzie. He's a friend of mine and a very decent sort. She shrugged her -shoulders. You know her way. Mrs. Hardacre changed the subject. After -dinner I saw her alone for a bit in the drawing-room. She asked me to -take back the pearls. Said they were throttling her. Had n't we -better reconsider the whole matter? There was still time. That was the -beginning of it. Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre came up. We did all we knew. -Used every argument. People invited. Bishop to perform ceremony. Duchess -actually coming. Society expected us. The scandal. Her infernally bad -treatment of myself. No good. Whatever we said only made her worse. -Ended up with a diatribe against society. She was sick of its lies and -its rottenness. She was going to have no more of it. She would breathe -fresh pure air. - -“The Lord knows what she did n't say. All of us came in for it. Said -shocking things about her mother. Said I did n't love her, had never -loved her. A loveless marriage was horrible. Of course I am in love with -her. You all know that. I said so. She would n't listen. Went on with -her harangue. We could n't stop her. She would n't marry me for all the -bishops and duchesses in the world. At last I lost my temper and said it -was my intention to marry her, and marry me she should. Don't you think -I was quite right? She lost hers, I suppose, tore off the pearls, made -a sort of peroration, declaring she would sooner die than commit the -infamy of marrying me--and that's the end of it.” - -He threw out his hands in desperation and turned away. His account -of events from his point of view was accurate. To him, as to Norma's -parents, her final revolt appeared the arbitrary act of unreason. They -still smarted resentfully under her lashes, incapable of realising the -sins for which they were flagellated. - -If she had remained at home that afternoon and continued to practise -insensibility, she would probably have followed the line of least -resistance during the evening. Or, on the other hand, if she could -have been alone, a night's fevered sleeplessness would have caused dull -reaction in the morning. The cold contempt for things outside her, which -had served for strength, was now gone, leaving a helpless woman to be -swayed by passion or led spiritless by convention. The heroic in her -needed the double spur. Passion shook her; miserable bondage, claiming -her, drove her to rebellion. She rose to sublime heights, undreamed of -in her earth-bound philosophy. - -She had gone into the street after her interview with Jimmie, white, -palpitating, torn. Though the man had spoken tremulous words, it was -the unspoken, the wave of longing and all unspeakable things in whose -heaving bosom they had been caught, that mattered. The Garden of -Enchantment had thrown wide its gates; she had been admitted within its -infinitely reaching vistas, and flowers of the spirit had bared their -hearts before her eyes. Dressing, she strove to kill the memory, -to deafen her ears to the haunting music, to clear her brain of the -intoxication. A thing hardly a woman, hardly a coherent entity, but half -marble, half-consuming fire, stood before Morland, as he clasped the -pearl necklace around her throat. The touch of it against her skin -caused a shudder. Up to then sensation had blotted out thought. But now -the brain worked with startling lucidity. There was yet time to escape -from the thraldom. The Idea gathered strength from every word and -incident during the meal. The commonness, sordidness, emptiness of the -life behind and around and before her were revealed in the unpitying -searchlight of an awakened soul. - -She pleaded with Morland for release. The necklace choked her. She -unclasped it. He refused to take it back. She was his. He loved her. Her -conduct was an outrage on his affections. She dared him to an expression -of passionate feeling. He failed miserably, and her anger grew. -Unhappily he spoke of an outrage upon Society. She fastened on the -phrase. His affection and Society! One was worth the other. Society--the -Mumbo Jumbo--the grotesque false god to which women were offered up in -senseless sacrifice! Her mother instanced the bishop and the duchess -as avatars of the divinity. Norma poured scorn on the hierarchy. Mrs. -Hardacre implored her daughter by her love for her not to humiliate her -thus in the world's eyes. She struck the falsest of notes. Norma turned -on her, superb, dramatic, holding the three in speechless dismay. Love! -what love had been given her that she should return? She had grown -honest. The gods of that house were no longer her gods. They were paltry -and dishonoured, shams and hypocrisies. Once she worshipped them. To -that she had been trained from her cradle. Her nurses dangled the shams -before her eyes. The women who taught her bent fawning knees before the -shrines of the false gods. A mother's love? what had she learned from -her mother? To simper and harden her heart. That the envy of other -simpering hardened women was the ultimate good. That the dazzling end of -a young girl's career was to capture some man of rank and fortune--that -when she was married her lofty duty was to wear smarter clothes, give -smarter parties, and to inveigle to her house by any base and despicable -means smarter people than her friends. What had she learned from her -mother? To let men of infamous lives leer at her because they had title -or fortune. To pay court to shameless women in the hope of getting to -know still more shameless men who might dishonour her with their name. -She had never been young--never, never, with a young girl's freshness -of heart. She spoke venom and was praised for wit. She was the finished -product of a vapid world. Her whole existence had been an intricate -elaboration of shams--miserable, empty, despicable futilities. How dared -her mother stand before her and talk of love? - -Then a quick angry scene, a crisp thud of the pearls on the floor, a -stormy exit--and that, as Morland said, was the end of it. The three -were left staring at each other in angry bewilderment. - -In the face of this disaster Connie could not find it in her heart to -reproach Morland, still less to hint at Theodore Weever's insinuation. -Rather did she reproach herself for being the cause of the catastrophe, -and she was smitten with a sense of guilt when Mrs. Hardacre turned upon -her accusingly. - -“She had tea with you, did n't she? Did you notice anything wrong?” - -“She didn't seem quite herself--was nervous and strange,” said Connie, -diplomatically. “I think I had better go up and talk to her,” she added -after an anxious pause. - -“Yes, do, for God's sake, Connie,” said Morland. - -She nodded, smiled the ghost of her bright smile, and, glad of escape, -went upstairs. The three sat in gloomy silence, broken only by Mr. -Hardacre's maledictions on his gout. It was a bitter hour for them. - -In a few moments Connie burst into the room, with a letter in her hand. -She looked scared. - -“We can't find her. She's not in the house.” - -“Not in the house!” shrieked Mrs. Hardacre. - -Morland brought his hand down heavily on the piano. - -“I heard the front door slam half an hour ago!” - -“This is addressed to you, Mrs. Hardacre. It was stuck in her -looking-glass.” - -Mrs. Hardacre opened the note with shaky fingers. It ran: - -_“I mean what I say. I had better leave you all, at least till after -Wednesday. My stopping here would be more than you or I could stand.”_ - -Mr. Hardacre staggered with a gasp of pain to his feet, and his weak -eyes glared savagely out of his puffy red face. - -“Damme, she must come back! If she does n't sleep here to-night, I'll -cut her off. I won't have anything more to do with her. She has got to -come back.” - -“All right. Go and tell her, then,” retorted his wife. “Where do you -suppose you are going to find her?” - -“Oh, she is sure to have gone to my house,” said Connie. “But suppose -she has n't,” said Morland, anxiously. “She was in such a state that -anything is possible.” - -“Come with me if you like. The brougham is here.” - -“And you go too, Eliza, and bring her home with you, d' ye hear?” cried -Mr. Hardacre. “If you don't, she'll never set foot in my house again. -I'm damned if she shall!” - -His wife looked at him queerly for a moment; then she meekly answered: - -“Very well, Benjamin.” - -Once only during their long married life had she flouted him when he had -spoken to her like that. Then in ungovernable fury he had thrown a boot -at her head. - -Mr. Hardacre glared at Morland and Connie, and scrambled cursing into -his chair. - - - - -Chapter XXIII--NORMA'S HOUR - -SOMETHING had happened--something mysterious, quickening; a pulsation -of the inmost harmonies of life. Its tremendous significance Jimmie -dared not conjecture. It was to be interpreted by the wisdom of the -simplest, yet that interpretation he put aside. It staggered reason. It -was enough for them to have met together in an unimagined intimacy of -emotion, to have shared the throb of this spiritual happening. - -She was to be married in three days. He set the fact as a block to -further investigation of the mystery. On this side his loyalty -suffered no taint; their relations had but received, in some sense, -sanctification. Beyond the barrier lay shame and dishonour. The two were -to be married; therefore they loved. He disciplined a disordered mind -with a logic of his own invention. It was a logic that entirely begged -the question. Remembered words of Norma, “Do you think much love has -come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of it,” - fell outside his premises. They clamoured for explanation. So did the -rich tremor of her voice. So did the lamentable lack of conviction in -his reply. To these things he closed his intelligence. They belonged to -the interpretation that staggered reason, that threatened to turn his -fundamental conceptions into chaos. And past incidents came before him. -During those last days in Wiltshire he had seen that her life lacked -completion. That memory, too, disturbed his discipline. Fanatically he -practised it, proving to himself that ice was hot and that the sun shone -at midnight. She was happy in her love for Morland. She was happy -in Morland's love for her. She had not identified with herself the -imaginary woman of his adoration. She had not drunk in the outpouring -of his passion. Her breath had not fallen warm upon his cheek. And -the quickening of a wonderful birth had no reference to emotions and -cravings quite different, intangible, inexpressible, existent in a -far-away spirit land. - -He was strangely silent during their homeward journey in the omnibus and -the simple evening meal, and Aline, sensitive to his mood, choked down -the eager questions that rose to her lips. It was only after supper in -the studio, when she lit the spill for Jimmie's pipe--her economical -soul deprecating waste in matches--that she ventured to say softly: - -“I am afraid you'll miss the picture, Jimmie dear.” - -He waited until the pipe was alight, and breathed out a puff of smoke -with a sigh. - -“Our happiness is made up of the things we miss,” he said. - -“That's a paradox, and I don't believe it,” said Aline. - -“Everything in life is a paradox,” he remarked, thinking of his logic. -He relapsed into his perplexed silence. Aline settled herself in her -usual chair with her workbasket and her eternal sewing. This evening she -was recuffing his shirts. Presently she held up a cuff. - -“See. I'm determined to make you smart and fashionable. I don't care -what you say. These are square.” - -“Are n't you putting a round man into a square cuff, my dear?” he asked. - -She laughed. “Why should you be round? You are smart and rectangular. -When you're tidied up--don't you know you are exceedingly good-looking, -almost military?” - -She was delighted to get him back to foolish talk. His preoccupation had -disturbed her. Like Connie Deering, she was femininely conscious that -something out of the ordinary had passed between Norma and Jimmie, and -apprehension as to her dear one's peace of mind had filled her with many -imaginings. He returned a smiling answer. She bestirred herself to -amuse. Had he remarked the man in the omnibus? His nose cut it into two -compartments. What would he do if he had such a nose? Jimmie felt that -he had been selfish and fell into the child's humour. He said that he -would blow it. They discussed the subject of noses. He quoted Tristram -Shandy. Did she remember him reading to her “Slawkenbergius's Tale”? - -“The silliest story I ever heard in my life!” cried Aline. “It had -neither head nor tail.” - -“That is the beauty of it,” said Jimmie. “It is all nose.” - -“No. The only story about a nose that is worth anything,” Aline declared -with conviction of her age and sex, “is 'Cyrano de Bergerac.'” She -paused as a thought passed swiftly through her mind. “Do you know, if -you had a nose like that, you would remind me of Cyrano?” - -“Why, I don't go about blustering and carving my fellow-citizens into -mincemeat.” - -“No. But you--” She began unreflectingly, then she stopped short in -confusion. Cyrano, Roxana, Christian; Jimmie, Norma, Morland--the -parallel was of an embarrassing nicety. She lost her head, reddened, saw -that Jimmie had filled the gap. - -“I don't care,” she cried. “You _are_ like him. It's splendid, but it's -senseless. You are worth a million of the other man, and she knows it as -well as I do.” - -She vindictively stitched at the cuff. Jimmie made no reply, but lay -back smoking his pipe. Aline recovered and grew remorseful. She had -destroyed with an idiotic word the little atmosphere of gaiety she had -succeeded in creating. She pricked her finger several times At last she -rose and knelt by his side. - -“I'm sorry, Jimmie. Don't be vexed with me.” - -He looked at her, wrinkling his forehead half humorously, half sadly, -and patted her cheek. - -“No, dear,” he said. “But I think Slawkenbergius's the better tale. -Shall I read it you again?” - -“Oh, no, Jimmie,” cried the girl, half crying, half laughing. “Please -don't, for heaven's sake. I've not been as naughty as that!” - -She resumed her sewing. They talked of daily things. Theodore Weever's -purchases. The faun--he was sorry to lose it after its companionship for -all these years. He would paint a replica--but it would not be the same -thing. Other times, other feelings. Gradually the conversation grew -spasmodic, dwindled. Jimmie brooded over his mystery, and Aline stitched -in silence. - -The whirr of the front door-bell aroused them. Aline put down her work. - -“It's Renshaw,” said Jimmie. - -Renshaw, a broken-down, out-at-heels, drunken black-and-white artist, -once of amazing talent, was almost the only member of a large Bohemian -coterie who continued to regard Jimmie as at home to his friends on -Sunday evenings. Jimmie bore with the decayed man, and helped him on his -way, and was pained when Aline insisted upon opening the windows after -his departure. Renshaw had been a subject of contention between them for -years. - -“He has only come to drink whisky and borrow money. Luckily we have n't -any whisky in the house,” said Aline. - -“We can give him beer, my child. And if the man is in need of half a -crown, God forbid we should deny it him. Has Hannah come home yet?” - -“I don't think so. It is n't ten o'clock.” - -“Then let him in, dear,” said Jimmie, finally. - -Aline went upstairs with some unwillingness. She disapproved entirely of -Renshaw. She devoutly hoped the man was sober. As she opened the front -door, the sharp sound of a turning cab met her ears, and the cloaked -tall figure of a woman met her astonished eyes. - -“Miss Hardacre!” - -“Yes, dear. Won't you let me in?” - -The girl drew aside quickly, and Norma passed into the hall. - -“You?” cried Aline. “I don't understand.” - -“Never mind. Is Mr.--is Jimmie at home?” - -“Jimmie!” The girl's heart leaped at the name. She stared wide-eyed at -Norma, whose features she could scarcely discern by the pin-point of gas -in the hall-lamp. “Yes. He is in the studio.” - -“Can I see him? Alone? Do you mind?” - -In dumb astonishment Aline took the visitor to the head of the stairs, -half lit by the streak of light from the open studio door. -Norma paused, bent forward, and kissed her on the cheek. - -“I know my way,” she whispered. - -Jimmie heard the rustle of skirts that were not Aline's, and springing -to his feet, hurried towards the door. But before he could reach it -Norma entered and stood before him. Her long dark silk evening cloak -was open at the throat, showing glimpses of white bare neck. Its high -standing collar set off the stately poise of her head. She wore the -diamond star in her hair. To the wondering man who gazed at her she was -a vision of radiant beauty. They held each other's eyes for a second or -two; and the first dazzling glory in which she seemed to stand having -faded, Jimmie read in her face that desperate things had come to pass. -He caught her hands as she came swiftly forward. “Why are you here? My -God, why are you here?” - -“I could stand it no longer,” she said breathlessly. “I am not going to -marry Morland. I have cut myself adrift. They all know it. I told them -so this evening. The horror of it was unbearable. I have done with it -forever and ever.” - -“The horror of it?” echoed Jimmie. - -“Don't you think it a horror for two people to marry who have never even -pretended to love each other? You said so this afternoon.” - -He released her hands and turned aside. Even the deep exulting sense of -what her presence there must mean could not mitigate a terrible dismay. -The interpretation that staggered reason was the true and only one. He -had been living in a dream, among shadow-shapes which he himself had -cast upon the wall. Even now he could not grasp completely the extent of -his heroical self-deception. - -“There has never been any love between you and Morland? It has been -a cold-blooded question of a marriage of convenience? I thought so -differently.” - -“Since when?” she asked. “Since this afternoon?” - -“No--not since this afternoon.” - -“If it had n't been for you, I should have married him. You made it -impossible. You taught me things. You made me hate myself and my mean -ambitions. That was why I hesitated--put it off till Easter. If I -had n't seen you this afternoon I should have gone through with it on -Wednesday. When I got home I could n't face it. He put some pearls--a -wedding-present--round my neck. They seemed like dead fingers choking -out my soul. At last it grew horrible. I said things I don't remember -now. I could n't stay in the house. It suffocated me. It would have sent -me mad. I think a cab whirled me through the streets. I don't know. I -have burnt my ships.” - -She stopped, panting, with her hands on her bosom. His exultation grew, -and fear with it. He was like a child trembling before a joy too great -to be realised, frightened lest it should vanish. He said without -looking at her: - -“Why have you come here?” - -“Where else should I go? Unless--” She halted on the word. - -“Unless what?” - -She broke into an impatient cry. - -“Oh, can't you speak? Do you want me to say everything? There is no need -for you to be silent any longer.” She faced him. “Who was the woman--the -picture woman we spoke of this afternoon?” - -“You,” he said. “You. Who else?” There was a quiver of silence. Then he -caught her to him. He spoke foolish words. Their lips met, and passion -held them. - -“Had I anywhere else to go?” she whispered; and he said, “No.” - -She released herself, somewhat pale and shaken. Jimmie, scarcely knowing -what he did, took off her cloak and threw it on the long deal table. -The sudden fresh chill on arms and neck made her realise that they were -bare. It was his doing. She blushed. A delicious sense of shyness crept -over her. It soon passed. But evanescent though it was, it remained long -in her memory. - -Jimmie took her in his arms again. He said: - -“You madden me. I have loved you so long. I am like a parched soul by a -pool of Paradise.” - -He took her by the hand, led her to his chair near the stove, and knelt -by her side. She looked at him, the edges of her white teeth together, -her lips parted. She was living the moment that counts for years in a -woman's life. She can only live it once. Great joy or endless shame may -come afterwards, but this moment shall ever be to her comfort or her -despair. - -He asked her how she had known. - -“You told me so.” - -“When?” - -“At Heddon. Do you think I shall ever forget your words?” She laughed -divinely at the puzzledom on his face. “No. You were too loyal to tell -me--but you told Connie Deering. Hush! Don't start. Connie did not -betray you. She is the staunchest soul breathing. You and she were on -the slope by the croquet lawn--do you remember? There was a hedge of -clipped yew above--” - -“And you overheard?” - -She laughed again, happily, at his look of distress. “I should be -rather pleased--now--if I were you,” she said in the softer and deeper -tones of her voice. - -A few moments later he said, “You must give me back the portrait. I -shall burn it.” - -“Why?” - -“You are a million times more beautiful, more adorable.” He asked her -when she had begun to think of him--the eternal, childlike question. She -met his lover's gaze steadily. Frankness was her great virtue. - -“It seems now that I have cared for you since the first day. You soon -came into my life, but I did n't know how much you represented. Then I -heard you speaking to Connie. That mattered a great deal. When that man -shot you, I knew that I loved you. I thought you were dead. I rushed -down the slope and propped you up against my knees--and I thought I -should go mad with agony.” - -“I never heard of that,” said Jimmie in a low voice. - -He became suddenly thoughtful, rose to his feet and regarded her with a -changed expression, like that of a man awakened from a dream. - -“What is going to be the end of this?” he asked. - -Norma, for once unperceptive and replying to a small preoccupation -of her own, flushed to her hair. - -“I know Connie well enough to look her up and ask her for hospitality.” - -“I wasn't thinking of that,” said Jimmie. “We have been like children -and had our hour of joy, without thinking of anything else. Now we must -be grown-up people. After what has passed between us, I could only ask -you to be my wife.” - -“I came here for you to ask me,” she said. - -“I have no right to do so, dear. I bear a dishonoured name. The wonder -and wild desire of you made me forget.” - -She looked at him strangely, her lips working in the shadow of her old -smile of mockery. - -“That proves to me that it is your name and not yourself that is -dishonoured. If it had been yourself, you would not have forgotten.” - -Jimmie drew himself up, and there was a touch of haughtiness in his -manner that Norma in her woman's way noted swiftly. In spite of his -homeliness there was the undefinable spirit of the great gentleman in -Jimmie. - -“I am dishonoured. The matter was public property. I discuss it with no -one, least of all with you.” - -“Very well,” she said. “Let it never be mentioned again between us. I -range myself with Aline. I shall believe what I like. You can't prevent -my doing that, can you? I choose to believe you are the one thing God -made in which I can find happiness. That's enough for me, and it ought -to be enough for you.” - -Jimmie put his hand on her shoulder, deeply moved. - -“My dearest, you must n't say things like that.” He repeated the words, -“You mustn't say things like that.” Then he was conscious of the warm -softness on which his hand rested. She raised her arm and touched his -fingers. It was a moment of deep temptation. He resisted, drew his hand -away gently. - -“There is another reason why it cannot be,” he said. “You belong to -a world of wealth and luxury, I have been in poverty all my life. God -forbid I should complain. I have never done so. But it is a life of -struggle for daily bread. Aline and I are used to it. We laugh. We often -dine with Duke Humphrey. We make believe like the marchioness. What the -discipline of life and a sort of gipsy faith in Providence have made -us regard as a jest, would be to you a sordid shift, an intolerable -ugliness stripping life of its beauty--” - -“Oh, hush!” she pleaded. - -“No, I must talk and you must listen,” he said with a certain masterful -dignity. “Look at you now, in the exquisite loveliness of your dress, -with that diamond star in your hair, with that queenly presence of -yours. Do you fit in with all this? Your place is in great houses, among -historic pictures, rare carpets, furniture that is invested with the -charm of an artist's touch. The chair you are sitting in--the leather -is split and the springs are broken.” He was walking now backwards -and forwards across the studio, fulfilling his task bravely, scarcely -trusting himself to look at her. “Your place,” he continued, “is among -the great ones of the earth--princes, ambassadors, men of genius. Here -are but the little folk: even should they come, as they used to do: -homely men with rough ways and their wives--sweet simple women with a -baby and a frock a year, God help them! I can't ask you to share this -life with me, my dear. I should be a scoundrel if I did. As it is, I -have fallen below myself in letting you know that I love you. You must -forgive me. A man is, after all, a man, whether he be beggar or prince. -You must go back into your world and forget it all. The passion-flower -cannot thrive in the hedge with the dog-rose, my dearest. It will pine -and fade. We must end it all. Don't you see? You don't know what poverty -means. Even decent poverty like ours. Look--the men you know have valets -to dress them--when you came Aline was sewing new cuffs on my shirts. I -don't suppose you ever knew that such things were done. Mere existence -is a matter of ever anxious detail. I am a careless fellow, I am a -selfish brute, like most men, and give over to the women folk around me -the thousand harassing considerations of ways and means for every day in -every year. But I see more than they think. Aline can tell you. I dare -n't, my dear, ask you to share this life with me. I dare n't, I dare -n't.” - -He came to a stop in front of her; saw her leaning over the arm of the -chair away from him, her face covered by her hands. Her white shoulders -twitched in little convulsive movements. - -“Why, my dear--my dear--” he said in a bewilderment of distress; and -kneeling by her, he took her wrists and drew them to him. The palms of -her hands and her cheeks were wet with miserable tears. - -“What must you think of me? What futile, feeble creature must you think -me? Heaven knows I'm degraded enough--but not to that level. Do you -suppose I ever thought you a rich man? Oh, you have hurt me--flayed me -alive. I did n't deserve it! I would follow you in rags barefoot through -the world. What does it matter so long as it is you that I follow?” - -What could mortal man do but take the wounded woman of his idolatry -into his arms? The single-hearted creature, aghast at the havoc he had -wrought, bitterly reproached himself for want of faith in the perfect -being. He had committed a horrible crime, plunged daggers, stab after -stab, into that radiant bosom. She sobbed in his embrace--a little -longer than was strictly necessary. Tears and sobs were a wonder to her, -who since early childhood had never known the woman's relief of weeping. -It came upon her first as a wondrous new-found emotion; when his strong -arms were about her, as an unutterably sweet solace. And the man's voice -in her ears was all that has nearly been said but never been quite said -in music. - -Presently she drew herself away from him. - -“Do you think I am such a fool that I can't sew?” - -He sank back on his heels. She rose, helping herself to rise by a hand -on his arm, an action wonderfully sweet in its intimacy, and crossed -over to Aline's cane-bottomed, armless easy-chair. She plucked the shirt -from the basket on the top of which Aline had thrust it, groped among -the wilderness of spools, tape, bits of ribbon, scissors, needle-cases, -patterns and year-old draper's bills for a thimble, found the needle -sticking in the work, and began to sew with a little air of defiance. -Jimmie looked on, ravished. He drew nearer. - -“God bless my soul,” he said. “Do you mean to say you can do that?” - -There was nothing she could not do in this hour of exaltation. She had -found herself--simple woman with simple man. It was her hour. Her feet -trod the roots of life; her head touched the stars. - -“Sit in your chair and smoke, and let us see what it will be like,” she -commanded. - -He obeyed. But whether it was tobacco or gunpowder in his old briarwood -pipe he could not have told. The poor wretch was mazed with happiness. - -“Poor little Aline is all by herself upstairs,” said Norma, after a -while. - -“Heaven forgive me,” cried Jimmie, starting up. “I had n't thought about -her!” - -Chapter XXIV--MRS. HARDACRE FORGETS - -WHILE this tragical comedy of the domestic felicities was being -enacted, Connie Deering's brougham containing three agitated, silent, -human beings was rapidly approaching the scene. - -They had made certain of finding Norma at Bryanston Square. The news -that she had not arrived disquieted them. Morland anxiously suggested -the police. They had a hurried colloquy, Morland and Connie standing -on the pavement, Mrs. Hardacre inside the carriage, thrusting her head -through the window. Connie falteringly confessed to the meeting of -Jimmie and Norma in the afternoon. Something serious had evidently -passed between them. - -Morland broke into an oath. “By God! That's where she's gone. Damn him!” - -“We must get her away at all costs,” said Mrs. Hardacre, tensely. - -“I am afraid it is my fault,” said Connie. - -“Of course it is,” Mrs. Hardacre replied brutally. “The best you can do -is to help us to rescue her.” - -They started. The brougham was small, the air heavy, their quest -distasteful, its result doubtful. The sense of fretfulness became acute. -Mrs. Hardacre gave vent to her maternal feelings. When she touched on the -vile seducer of her daughter's affections, Connie turned upon her almost -shrewishly. - -“This is my carriage, and I am not going to hear my dearest friend -abused in it.” - -Morland sat silent and worried. When they stopped at the house, he said: - -“I think I shall stay outside.” - -Connie, angry with him for having damned Jimmie, bent forward. - -“Are you afraid of facing Jimmie?” she said with a little note of -contempt. - -“Certainly not,” he replied viciously. - -A few moments later Aline ran into the studio with a scared face. - -“Jimmie!” - -He went up to her, and she whispered into his ear; then he turned to -Norma. - -“Your mother and Connie and Morland are upstairs. I don't suppose you -are anxious to see them. May I tell them what has happened?” - -Norma rose and joined him in the centre of the studio. “I would sooner -tell them myself. Can they come down here?” - -“If you wish it.” - -He gave the order to Aline. Before going, she took him by the arm and -swiftly glancing at Norma, asked eagerly: - -“What has happened?” - -“The wonder of wonders, dear,” said Jimmie. - -With a glad cry she ran upstairs and brought down the visitors, who were -waiting in the hall. - -Jimmie stood by the open door to receive them. Norma retired to the far -end of the studio. She held her head high, and felt astonishingly -cool and self-possessed. Mrs. Hardacre entered first, and without -condescending to look at Jimmie marched straight up to her daughter. -Then came Connie and Aline, the girl excited, her arm round her friend's -waist. Morland, on entering, drew Jimmie aside. - -“So you've bested me,” he said in an angry whisper. “You held the cards, -I know. I did n't think you would use them. I wish you joy.” - -A sudden flash of pain and indignation lit Jimmie's eyes. - -“Good God, man! Have you sunk so low as to accuse me of that? _Me?_” - -He turned away. Morland caught him by the sleeve. - -“I say--” he began. - -But Jimmie shook him off and went to the side of Norma, who was -listening to her mother's opening attack. It was shrill and bitter. When -she paused, Norma said stonily: - -“I am not going home with you to-night, mother. I sleep at Connie's. She -will not refuse me a bed.” - -“Your father means what he says.” - -“So do I, mother. I can manage pretty well without your protection till -I am married. Then I sha'n't need it.” - -“Pray whom are you going to marry?” asked Mrs. Hardacre, acidly. - -“I should think it was obvious,” said Norma. “Mr. Padgate has done me -the very great honour to ask me to be his wife. I have agreed. I am over -age and a free agent, so there's nothing more to be said, mother.” - -Mrs. Hardacre refused to take the announcement seriously. Her thin lips -worked into a smile. - -“This is sheer folly, my dear Norma. Over age or not we can't allow you -to disgrace yourself and us--” - -“We have never had such honour conferred on us in all our lives,” said -Norma. - -Mrs. Hardacre shrugged her shoulders pityingly. - -“Among sane folks it would be a disgrace and a scandal. Even Mr. Padgate -would scarcely take advantage of a fit of hysterical folly.” She turned -to Jimmie. “I assure you she is hardly responsible for her actions. -You are aware what you would be guilty of in bringing her into -this--this--?” She paused for a word and waved her hand around. - -“Hovel?” suggested Jimmie, grimly. “Yes. I am aware of it. Miss -Hardacre must not consider herself bound by anything she has said -to-night.” - -Connie Deering, who had come up waiting for a chance to speak, her -forget-me-not eyes curiously hard and dangerous, broke in quickly: - -“Why did you say _even_ Mr. Padgate, Mrs. Hardacre?” - -“Mr. Padgate has a reputation--” said Mrs. Hardacre, with an expressive -gesture. - -“Jimmie--” - -He checked his advocate. “Please, no more.” - -“I should think not, indeed! Are you coming, Norma?” - -“You had better go,” said Jimmie, softly. “Why quarrel with your -parents? To-morrow, a week, a month hence you can tell me your wishes. I -set you quite free.” - -Norma made a movement of impatience. - -“Don't make me say things I should regret--I am not going to change my -mind. No, mother, I am not coming.” - -Morland had not said a word, but stood in the background, hating -himself. Only Connie's taunt had caused him to enter this maddeningly -false position. He knew that his accusation, though he believed it true -at the time, was false and base. Jimmie was true gold. He had not -betrayed him. Connie, when Jimmie had checked her, went across to -Morland. - -“Do _you_ believe that Jimmie deserves his reputation?” she said for his -ears alone. - -“I don't know,” he answered moodily, kicking at a hassock. - -“I do know,” she said, “and it's damnable.” - -A quick glance exchanged completed her assurance. He saw that she knew, -and despised him. For a few moments he lost consciousness of externals -in alarmed contemplation of this new thing--a self openly despised by -one of his equals. Mrs. Hardacre's voice aroused him. She was saying her -final words to Norma. - -“I leave you. When you are in the gutter with this person, don't come to -ask me for help. You can _encanailler_ yourself as much as you like, for -all I care. This adventurer--” - -Jimmie interposed in his grand manner. - -“Pray remember, Mrs. Hardacre, that for the moment you are my guest.” - -“Your guest!” For the second time that evening she had been rebuked. Her -eyes glittered with spite and fury. She lost control. “Your guest! If -I went to rescue my daughter from a house of ill fame, should I regard -myself as a guest of the keeper? How dare you? How do I know what does -n't go on in this house? That girl over there--” - -Norma sprang forward and gripped her by the arm. - -“Mother!” - -She shook herself free. “How do I know? How _do_ you know? The man's -name stinks over England. No decent woman has anything to do with him. -Have you forgotten last autumn? That beastly affair? If you choose to -succeed the other woman--” - -“Oh, damn it!” burst out Morland, suddenly. “This is more than I can -stand. Have you forgotten what I told you a week ago?” - -The venomous woman was brought to a full stop. She stared helplessly at -Morland, drawing quick panting breaths. She had forgotten that he was in -the room. - -The cynicism was too gross even for him. There are limits to every man's -baseness and cowardice. Moreover, his secret was known. To proclaim it -himself was a more heroic escape than to let it be revealed with killing -contempt by another. The two forces converged suddenly, and found their -resultant in his outburst. It was characteristic of him that there -should be two motives, though which one was the stronger it were hard to -say--most likely revolt at the cynicism, for he was not a depraved man. - -Norma looked swiftly from one to the other. - -“What did you tell my mother a week ago?” - -Jimmie picked up Morland's crush-hat that lay on the table and thrust it -into his hand. - -“Oh, that's enough, my dear good fellow. Don't talk about those horrible -things. Mrs. Hardacre would like to be going. You had better see her -home. Good-night.” - -He pushed him, as he spoke, gently towards Mrs. Hardacre, who was -already moving towards the door. But Norma came up. - -“I insist upon knowing,” she said. - -“No, no,” said Jimmie, in an agitated voice. “Let the dead past bury -its dead. Don't rake up old horrors.” - -Morland cleared himself away from Jimmie. - -“My God! You are a good man. I've been an infernal blackguard. Everybody -had better know. If Jimmie hadn't taken it upon himself, that madman -would have shot me. He would have hit the right man. I wish to heaven he -had.” - -Norma grew white. - -“And this is what you told my mother?” - -“I thought I ought to,” said Morland, looking away from the anxious -faces around him. - -“You shouldn't have done it,” said Jimmie, in a low voice. He was bent -like a guilty person. - -Norma went to the door and opened it. - -“Kindly see my mother into a cab.” - -“Please take the brougham,” said Connie. “Norma and I will take a cab -later.” - -Morland made a movement as if to speak to Jimmie. Norma intercepted him, -waved her hand towards her mother, who stood motionless. - -“Go. Please go,” she said in a constrained voice. “Take the brougham. -She will catch cold while you are whistling for a cab--and you will be -the sooner gone.” - -Mrs. Hardacre, stunned by the utter disaster that she had brought about, -mechanically obeyed Morland's gesture and passed through the open door, -without looking at her daughter. As Morland passed her, he plucked up a -little courage. - -“We both lied for your sake,” he said; which might have been an apology -or a tribute. Norma gave no sign that she had heard him. - -Jimmie followed them upstairs and opened the front door. He put out his -hand to Morland, who took it and said “Good-night” in a shamefaced way. -Mrs. Hardacre stepped into the brougham like a somnambulist. Morland did -not accompany her. He had seen enough of Mrs. Hardacre for the rest of -his life. - -When Jimmie went down to the studio, he saw Norma and Connie bending -over a chair in the far corner. Aline had fainted. - -They administered what restoratives were to hand--water and Connie's -smelling-salts--and took the girl up to her bedroom, where she was left -in charge of Mrs. Deering. Jimmie and Norma returned to the studio. The -preoccupation of tending Aline, whose joy in the utter vindication of -her splendid faith had been too sudden a strain upon an overwrought -nervous system, had been welcomed almost as a relief to the emotional -tenseness. They had not spoken of the things that were uppermost. - -They sat down in their former places, without exchanging a remark. -Jimmie took up his pipe from the table by his side, and knocked the -ashes into the ash-tray and blew through it to clear it. Then he began -to fill it from his old tobacco-pouch, clumsy as all covered pouches are -and rough with faded clumps of moss-roses and forget-me-nots worked by -Aline years before. - -“Why don't you go on with the sewing?” he said. - -She waited a second or two before answering, and when she spoke did not -trust herself to look at him. - -“I ought to say something, I know,” she said in a low voice. “But there -are things one can't talk of, only feel.” - -“We never need talk of them,” said Jimmie. “They are over and done with. -Old, forgotten, far-off things now.” - -“Are they? You don't understand. They will always remain. They make up -your life. You are too big for such as me altogether. By rights I should -be on my knees before you. Thank God, I did n't wait until I learned all -this, but came to you in faith. I feel poor enough to hug that to myself -as a virtue.” - -“I am very glad you believed in me,” said Jimmie, laying down the unlit -pipe which he had been fondling. “I would n't be human if I did n't--but -you must n't exaggerate. Exposure would have ruined Morland's -career, and I thought it would go near breaking your heart. To me, an -insignificant devil, what did it matter?” - -“Did n't my love for you matter? Did n't all that you have suffered -matter? Oh, don't minimise what you have done. I am afraid of you. Your -thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways not my ways. You will always -be among the stars while I am crawling about the earth.” - -Jimmie rose hurriedly and fell at her feet, and took both her hands and -placed them against his cheeks. - -“My dear,” he said, moved to his depths. “My dear. My wonderful, -worshipped, God-sent dear. You are wrong--utterly wrong. I am only a -poor fool of a man, as you will soon find out, whose one merit is to -love you. I would sell my body and my soul for you. If I made a little -sacrifice for the love of you, what have you done tonight for me--the -sacrifice of all the splendour and grace of life?” - -“The lies and the rottenness,” said Norma, with a shiver. “Did you -comprehend my mother?” - -He took her hands from his face and kissed her fingers. - -“Dear, those are the unhappy, far-off things. Let us forget them. They -never happened. Only one thing in the world has ever happened. You have -come to me, Norma,” he said softly, speaking her name for the first -tremulous time, “Norma!” - -Their eyes met, and then their lips. The world stood still for a space. -She sighed and looked at him. - -“You will have to teach me many things,” she said. “You will have to -begin at the very beginning.” - - - - -Chapter XXV--THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT - -EVERY one knew that the marriage arranged between Morland King and -Norma Hardacre would not take place. It was announced in the “Times” - and “Morning Post” on the Tuesday morning; those bidden to the wedding -received hurried messages, and a day or two later the wedding-gifts were -returned to the senders, who stored them up for some happier pair. But -the new engagement upon which Norma had entered remained a secret. -Norma herself did not desire to complete the banquet of gossip she -had afforded society, and Mrs. Hardacre was not anxious to fill to -overflowing the cup of her own humiliation. The stricken lady maintained -a discreet reserve. The lovers had quarrelled, Norma had broken off -the match and would not be going out for some time. She even defied -the duchess, who commanded an explicit statement of reasons. Her grace -retorted severely that she ought to have brought her daughter up better, -and signified that this was the second time Norma had behaved with -scandalous want of consideration for her august convenience. “She shall -not have the opportunity of doing it again. I dislike being mixed up -in scandals,” said the duchess; and Mrs. Hardacre saw the gates of -Wiltshire House and Chiltern Towers closed to her forever. But of the -impossible painter wretch she spoke not a word, hoping desperately -that in some mysterious fashion the God of her fathers would avert this -crowning disgrace from them and would lead Norma forth again into the -paths of decency and virtue. As for her husband, he stormily refused to -speak or hear the outcast's name. He had done with her. She should never -sleep again beneath the roof she had dishonoured. He would not allow her -a penny. He would cut her out of his will. She had dragged him in the -mud, and by heaven! she could go to the devil! It took much to rouse -the passions of the feeble, mean-faced little man; but once they were -roused, he had the snarling tenacity of the fox. Mrs. Hardacre did not -tell him of Morland's confession and the rehabilitation of his rival. -The memory of her stunning humiliation brought on a feeling akin -to physical nausea. She strove to bury it deep down in her -sub-consciousness, beneath all the other unhallowed memories. There were -none quite so rank. On the other hand, her husband's vilification of the -detested creature was a source of consolation which she had no desire -to choke. Why should she deny herself this comfort. The supreme joy of -vitriol throwing was not countenanced in her social sphere. At odd times -she regretted that she was a lady. - -While the black fog of depression darkened Devonshire Place, in -neighbouring parts of London the days were radiant. A thousand suns -glorified the heavens and the breaths of a thousand springs perfumed the -air. It was a period of exaggeration, unreality, a page out of a fairy -tale lived and relived. Norma abandoned herself to the intoxication, -heedless of the fog in Devonshire Place, and the decent grey of the -world elsewhere. She refused to think or speculate. Rose veils shrouded -the future; the present was a fantasy of delight. For material things, -food, shelter, raiment, she had no concern. Connie fed and housed her, -making her the thrice welcome guest, the beloved sister. From -society she withdrew altogether. Visitors paid calls, odd people were -entertained at meals, the routine of a wealthy woman's establishment -proceeded in its ordinary course, and Norma's presence in the house -remained unknown and unsuspected. She was there in hiding. The world was -given to understand that she was in Cornwall. Even common life had thus -its air of romance and mystery. Being as it were a fugitive, she had -no engagements. There was a glorious incongruity in the position. She -regarded the beginnings of the London season with the amused detachment -of a disembodied spirit revisiting the scenes of which it once made -a part. Morning, afternoon, and evening she was free--an exhilarating -novelty. Nobody wanted to see her save Jimmie; save him she wanted to -see nobody. - -They met every day--sometimes in the sitting-room on the ground floor -which Connie had set apart for her guest's exclusive use, and sometimes -in Jimmie's studio. Now and then, when the weather was fine, they walked -together in sweet places unfrequented by the fashionable world, Regent's -Park and Hampstead Heath, fresh woods and pastures new to Norma, who -had heard of the heath vaguely as an undesirable common where the -lower orders wore each other's hats and shied at cocoanuts. Its smiling -loneliness and April beauty, seen perhaps through the artist's eyes, -enchanted her. Jimmie pointed out its undulations; like a bosom, said -he, swelling with the first breaths of pure air on its release from -London. - -Most of all she loved to drive up to St. John's Wood after dinner and -burst upon him unexpectedly. The new Bohemian freedom of it all was a -part of the queer delicious life. She laughed in anticipation at his cry -of delighted welcome. When she heard it, her eyes grew soft. To lift -her veil and hang back her head to receive his kiss on her lips was -an ever-new sensation. The intimacy had a bewildering sweetness. To -complete it she threw aside gloves and jacket and unpinned her hat, a -battered gilt Empire mirror over the long table serving her to guide the -necessary touches to her hair. Although she did not repeat the little -comedy of the shirt which had been inspired by the exaltation of a rare -moment, yet she sat in Aline's chair, now called her own, and knitted at -a silk tie she was making for him. She had learned the art from her aunt -in Cornwall, and she brought the materials in a little black silk bag -slung to her wrist. The housewifely avocation fitted in with the fairy -tale. Jimmie smoked and talked, the most responsive and least tiring of -companions. His allusive speech, that of the imaginative and cultured -man, in itself brought her into a world different from the one she had -left. His simplicity, his ignorance of the ways of women, his delight -at the little discoveries she allowed him to make, gave it a touch -of Arcadia. In passionate moments there was the unfamiliar, poetic, -rhapsodic in his utterance which turned the world into a corner of -heaven. And so the magic hours passed. - -“I do believe I have found a soul,” she remarked on one of these -evenings, “and that's why I must be so immoderately happy. I'm like a -child with a new toy.” - -She was unconscious of the instinctive, pitiless analysis of herself; -and Jimmie, drunk with the wonder of her, did not heed the warning. - -Of their future life together they only spoke as happy lovers in the -rosy mist shed about them by the veil. They dwelt in the glamour of the -fairy tale, where the princess who marries the shepherd lives not -only happy ever afterwards, but also delicately dressed and daintily -environed, her chief occupation being to tie silk bows round the lambs' -necks, and to serve to her husband the whitest of bread and the whitest -of cheese with the whitest of hands. Their forecast of the future might -have been an Idyll of Theocritus. - -“You will be the inspiration of all my pictures, dear,” said Jimmie. - -“I will sit for you as a model, if I am good enough.” - -“Good enough!” Language crumbled into meaningless vocables before her -infinite perfection. “I have had a little talent. You will give me -genius.” - -“I will also give you your dinner.” She laughed adorably. “Do you know -Connie told me I must learn to cook. I had my first lesson this morning -in her kitchen--a most poetic way of doing sweetbreads. Do you like -sweetbreads?” - -“Now I come to think of it, I do. Enormously. I wonder why Aline never -has them.” - -“We'll have some--our first lunch--at home.” - -“And you will cook them?” cried the enraptured man. - -She nodded. “In a most becoming white apron. You'll see.” - -“You'll be like a goddess taking her turn preparing the daily ambrosia -for Olympus!” said Jimmie. - -On another occasion they spoke of summer holidays. They would take a -little cottage in the country. It would have honeysuckle over the porch, -and beds of mignonette under the windows, and an old-fashioned garden -full of stocks and hollyhocks and sunflowers. There would be doves and -bees. They would go out early and come home with the dew on their feet. -They would drink warm milk from the cow. They would go a hay-making. -Norma's idea of the pastoral pathetically resembled that of the Petit -Trianon. - -The magic of the present with its sincerity of passionate worship on the -part of the man, and its satisfaction of a soul's hunger on the part -of the woman, was in itself enough to blind their eyes to the possible -prose of the future. Another interest, one of the sweetest of outside -interests that can bind two lovers together, helped to fix their serious -thoughts to the immediate hour. Side by side with their romance grew up -another, vitally interwoven with it for a spell and now springing clear -into independent life. The two children Aline and Tony Merewether had -found each other again, and the fresh beauty of their young loves lit -the deeper passion of the older pair with the light of spring sunrise. -In precious little moments of confidence Aline opened to Norma her -heart's dewy happiness, and what Norma in delicate honour could divulge -she told to Jimmie, who in his turn had his little tale to bear. More -and more was existence like the last page of a fairy book. - -The reconciliation of the younger folk had been a very simple matter. It -was the doing of Connie Deering. The morning after Morland's confession -she summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. He arrived wondering. She -asked him point blank: - -“Are you still in love with Aline Marden or have you forgotten all about -her?” - -The young fellow declared his undying affection. - -“Are you aware that you have treated her shamefully?” she said severely. - -“I am the most miserable dog unhung,” exclaimed the youth. He certainly -looked miserable, thin, and worried. He gave his view of the position. -Connie's heart went out to him. - -“Suppose I told you that everything was cleared up and you could go to -Aline with a light conscience?” - -“I should go crazy with happiness!” he cried, springing to his feet. - -“Aline deserves a sane husband. She is one in a thousand.” - -“She is one in twenty thousand million!” - -“There she goes, hand in hand with Jimmie Padgate. It's to tell you that -I've asked you to come. I hope you'll let them both know you're aware of -it.” - -Satisfied that he was worthy of her confidence, she told him briefly -what had occurred. - -“And now what are you going to do?” she asked, smiling. - -“Do? I'll go on my knees. I'll grovel at his feet. I'll ask him to make -me a door-mat. I'll do any mortal thing Aline tells me.” - -“Well, go now and do your penance and be happy,” Connie said, holding -out her hand. - -“I don't know how I can thank you, Mrs. Deering,” he cried. “You are the -most gracious woman that ever lived!” - -A few moments later an impassioned youth was speeding in a hansom cab -to Friary Grove. But Connie, with the memory of his clear-cut, radiant -young face haunting her, sighed. Chance decreed that the very moment -should bring her a letter from Jimmie, written that morning, full of -his wonder and gratitude. She sighed again, pathetically, foolishly, -unreasonably feeling left out in the cold. - -“I wonder whether it would do me good to cry,” she said, half aloud. But -the footman entering with the announcement that the carriage which was -to take her to her dressmaker was at the door, settled the question. She -had to content herself with sighs. - -Tony Merewether did not go on his knees, as Aline had ordained; but he -made his apology in so frank and manly a way that Jimmie forgave him at -once. Besides, said he, what had he to forgive? - -“I feel like Didymus,” said Tony. - -Jimmie laughed as he clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him out of -the studio. - -“You had better cultivate the feeling. He became a saint eventually. -Aline will help to make you one.” - -If plain indication of another's infirmities can tend to qualify him for -canonisation, Aline certainly justified Jimmie's statement. She did not -confer her pardon so readily on the doubting disciple. His offence had -been too rank. It was not merely a question of his saying a _credo_ -and then taking her into his arms. She exacted much penance before she -permitted this blissful consummation. He had to woo and protest and -humble himself exceedingly. But when she had reduced him to a proper -state of penitence, she gave him plenary absolution and yielded to -his kiss, as she had been yearning to do since the beginning of the -interview. After that she settled down to her infinite delight. Nothing -was lacking in the new rapturous scheme of existence. The glory of -Jimmie was vindicated. Tony had come back to her. The bars to their -marriage had vanished. Not only was Tony a man of substance with the -legacy of eight thousand pounds that had been left him, and therefore -able to support as many wives as the Grand Turk, but Jimmie no longer -had to be provided for. The wonder of wonders had happened; she could -surrender her precious charge with a free conscience and a heart -bursting with gratitude. - -Thus the happiness of each pair of lovers caught a reflection from that -of the other, and its colour was rendered ever so little fictitious, -unreal. The light of spring sunrise, exquisite though it is, invests -things with a glamour which the light of noon dispels. The spectacle of -the young romance unfolding itself before the eyes of Jimmie and -Norma completed their delicious sense of the idyllic; but the illusive -atmosphere thus created caused them to view their own romance -in slightly false perspective. Essentially it was a drama of -conflict--themselves against the pettinesses and uglinesses of the -world; apparently it was a pastoral among spring flowers. - -Another cause that contributed to Norma's unconcern for the future was -her exaggerated sense of the man's loftiness of soul. Instead of viewing -him as a lovable creature capable of the chivalrous and the heroic -and afforded by a happy fate an opportunity of displaying these -qualities--for the opportunity makes the hero as much as it does the -thief--she grovelled whole-sexedly before an impossible idol imbued with -impossible divinity. While knitting silk ties and devising with him the -preparation of foodstuffs (which she did not realise he would not be -able to afford) she was conscious of a grace in the trifling, all the -more precious because of these little earthly things midway between the -empyrean and the abyss which they respectively inhabited. In the deeply -human love of each was a touch of the fantastic. To Jimmie she was the -Princess of Wonderland, the rare Lady of Dreams; to Norma he appeared -little less than a god. - -She was talking one evening with Connie Deering in a somewhat exalted -strain of her own unworthiness and Jimmie's condescension, when the -little lady broke into an unwonted expression of impatience. - -“My dear child, every foolish woman is a valet to her hero. You would -like to clean his boots, wouldn't you?” - -“My dear Connie,” cried Norma, alarmed, “whatever is the matter?” - -“I think you two had better get married as quickly as possible. It is -getting on one's nerves.” - -Norma stiffened. “I am sorry--” she began. - -Connie interrupted her. “Don't be silly. There's nothing for you to be -sorry about.” She brightened and laughed, realising the construction -Norma had put upon her words. “I am only advising you for your good. -I had half an hour's solitary imprisonment with Theodore Weever this -afternoon. He always takes it out of me. It's like having a bath with an -electric eel. He called this afternoon to get news of you.” - -“Of me?” asked Norma serenely, settling herself in the depths of her -chair. - -“He is like an eel,” Connie exclaimed with a shiver. “He's the -coldest-blooded thing I've ever come across. I told you about the dinner -at the Carlton, did n't I? It appears that he reckoned on my doing just -what I rushed off to do. It makes me so angry!” she cried with feminine -emphasis on the last word. “Of course he did n't tell me so brutally--he -has a horrid snake-like method of insinuation. He had counted on my -getting at the truth which he had guessed and so stopping the marriage. -'I'm a true prophet,' he said. 'I knew that marriage would never come -off.'” - -“So he told me,” said Norma. “Do you know, there must be some goodness -in him to have perceived the goodness in Jimmie.” - -“I believe he's a disembodied spirit without either goodness or -badness--a sort of non-moral monster.” Connie was given to hyperbole in -her likes and dislikes. She continued her tale. He had come to ask her -advice. Now that Miss Hardacre was free, did Mrs. Deering think he -might press his suit with advantage? His stay in Europe was drawing to -a close. He would like to take back with him to New York either Miss -Hardacre or a definite refusal. - -“'You certainly cannot take back Miss Hardacre,' I said, 'because she is -going to marry Jimmie Padgate.' I thought this would annihilate him. But -do you think he moved a muscle? Not he.” - -“What did he say?” asked Norma, lazily amused. - -“'This is getting somewhat monotonous,'” replied Connie. - -Norma laughed. “Nothing else?” - -“He began to talk about theatres. He has the most disconcerting way of -changing the conversation. But on leaving he sent his congratulations -to you, and said that you were always to remember that you were the wife -specially designed for him by Providence.” - -“You dear thing,” said Norma, “and did that get on your nerves?” - -“Would n't it get on yours?” - -Norma shook her head. “I have n't any nerves for things to get on. -People don't have nerves when they're happy.” - -“And are you happy, really, really happy?” - -“I am deliciously happy,” said Norma. - -She went to bed laughing at the discomfiture of Weever and the -remoteness of him and of the days last summer when she first met him -among the Monzies' disreputable crowd. He belonged to a former state -of existence. Jimmie's portrait, which had been put for two or three -reasons in her bedroom, caught her attention. She looked at it with -a dreamy smile for a long time, and then turned to the glass. Made -curiously happy by what she saw there, she kissed her fingers to the -portrait. - -“He is the better prophet,” she said. - -But Connie's advice as to the desirability of a speedy marriage remained -in her mind. Jimmie with characteristic diffidence had not yet suggested -definite arrangements. She was gifted with so much insight as to -apprehend the reasons for his lack of initiative. His very worship of -her, his overwhelming sense of goddess-conferred boon in her every smile -and condescension, precluded the asking of favours. So far it was she -who had arranged their daily life. It was she who had established the -custom of the studio visits, and she had taken off her hat and had -inaugurated the comedy of the domestic felicities of her own accord. She -treasured this worship in her heart as a priceless thing, all the -more exquisite because it lay by the side of the knowledge of her own -unworthiness. The sacrifice of maidenly modesty in proposing instead -of coyly yielding was at once a delicious penance for hypocritical -assumption of superiority, and a salve to her pride as a beautiful and -desirable woman. It was with a glorious sureness of relation, therefore, -that she asked him the next day if he had thought of a date for their -marriage. - -“There is no reason for a long engagement that I can see,” she added, -with a blush which she felt, and was tremulously happy at feeling. - -“I was waiting for you to say, dear,” he replied, his arm around her. “I -dared not ask.” - -She laughed the deep laugh of a woman's happiness. - -“I knew you would say that,” she murmured. “Let it be some time next -month.” - - - - -Chapter XXVI--EARTH AGAIN - -ONE day Norma received a polite intimation from her bankers that -her account was overdrawn. This had happened before but on previous -occasions she had obtained from her father an advance on her allowance -and the unpleasant void at the bank had been filled. Now she realised -with dismay that the allowance had been cut off, and that no money could -come into her possession until the payment of the half-yearly dividend -from the concern in which her small private fortune was invested. She -looked in her purse and found five shillings. On this she would have -to live for three weeks. Her money was in the hands of trustees, wisely -tied up by the worldly aunt from whom she had inherited it, so that she -could not touch the capital. While she was contemplating the absurdity -of the position, the maid brought up a parcel from a draper's on which -there was three and eleven pence halfpenny to pay. She surrendered four -of her shillings, and disconsolately regarded the miserable one that -remained. The position had grown even more preposterous. She actually -needed money. She had not even the amount of a cab-fare to Friary Grove. -She would not have it for three weeks. - -Preposterous or not, the fact was plain, and demanded serious -consideration. She would have to borrow. The repayment of the loan and -the overdraft would reduce the half-yearly dividend. A goodly part of -the remainder would be required to meet an outstanding milliners' bill, -not included in the bridal trousseau for which her father was to pay. -The sum in simple arithmetic frightened her. - -“I am poverty-stricken,” she said to Connie, to whom she confided her -difficulties. - -Connie blotted the cheque that was to provide for immediate wants, and -laughed sympathetically. - -“You'll have to learn to be economical, dear. I believe it's quite -easy.” - -“You mean I must go in omnibuses and things?” said Norma, vaguely. - -“And not order so many hats and gowns.” - -“I see,” said Norma, folding up the cheque. - -With money again in her pocket, she felt lighter of heart, but she knew -that she had stepped for a moment out of fairyland into the grey world -of reality. The first experience was unpleasant. It left a haunting -dread which made her cling closer to Jimmie in the embrace of their next -meeting. It was a relief to get back into the Garden of Enchantment and -leave sordid things outside. Wilfully she kept the conversation from -serious discussion of their marriage. - -When next she had occasion to go to the studio, she remembered the -necessity of economy, and took the St. John's Wood omnibus. As a general -rule the travellers between Baker Street station and the Swiss Cottage -are of a superior class, being mostly the well-to-do residents in -the neighbourhood and their visitors; but, by an unlucky chance, this -particular omnibus was crowded, and Norma found herself wedged between -a labouring man redolent of stale beer and bad tobacco, and a fat Jewish -lady highly flavoured with musk. A youth getting out awkwardly knocked -her hat awry with his elbow. It began to rain--a smart April shower. -The wet umbrella of a new arrival dripped on her dress while he stood -waiting for a place to be made for him opposite. The omnibus stopped at -a shelterless corner, the nearest point to Friary Grove. She descended -to pitiless rain and streaming pavements and a five minutes' walk, for -all of which her umbrella and shoes were inadequate. She vowed miserably -a life-long detestation of omnibuses. She would never enter one again. -Cabs were the only possible conveyances for people who could not afford -to keep their carriage. She fought down the dread that she might not -be able to afford cabs. The Almighty, who had obviously intended her to -drive in cabs, would certainly see that His intentions were carried out. - -She arrived at the studio, wet, bedraggled, and angry; but Jimmie's -exaggerated concern disarmed her. It could not have been less had she -wandered for miles and been drenched to the skin and chilled to the -bone. He sent Aline to fetch her daintiest slippers to replace the -damp shoes, established the storm-driven sufferer in the big leathern -armchair with cushions at her back and hassocks at her feet, made a -roaring fire and insisted on her swallowing cherry brandy, a bottle of -which he kept in the house in case of illness. In the unwonted luxury of -being loved and petted and foolishly fussed over, Norma again forgot -her troubles. Jimmie consoled the specific grievance by saying -magniloquently that omnibuses were the engines of the devil and vehicles -of the wrath to come. With a drugged economic conscience she went home -in a cab. But the conscience awoke later, somewhat suffering, and she -recognised that her exasperated vow had been vain. Jimmie was a poor -man. She recalled to mind his words on the night of their engagement, -and apprehended their significance. The trivial incident of the omnibus -was a key. The abandonment of cabs and carriages meant the surrender of -countless luxuries that went therewith. Her own two hundred a year would -not greatly raise the scale of living. She was to be a poor man's wife; -would have to wear cheap dresses, eat plain food, keep household books -in which pennies were accounted for; hers would be the humdrum existence -of the less prosperous middle class. The first pang of doubt frightened -her for a while and left her ashamed. Noble revolt followed. Had she not -renounced the pomps and vanities of a world which she scorned? Had not -this wonderful baptism of love brought New Birth? She had been reborn, -a braver, purer woman; she had been initiated into life's deeper -mysteries; her soul had been filled with joy. Of what count were -externals? - -The next evening Connie Deering gave a small dinner-party in honour -of the two engagements. Old Colonel Pawley, charged under pain of her -perpetual displeasure not to reveal the secret of Norma's whereabouts, -was invited to balance the sexes. He was delighted to hear of Norma's -romantic marriage. - -“I can still present the fan,” he said, rubbing his soft palms together; -“but I'm afraid I shall have to write a fresh set of verses.” - -“You had better give Norma a cookery-book,” laughed Connie. - -“I have a beautiful one of my own in manuscript which no publisher will -take up,” sighed Colonel Pawley. - -Norma, who had been wont to speak with drastic contempt of the amiable -old warrior, welcomed him so cordially that he was confused. He was not -accustomed to exuberant demonstrations of friendship from the beautiful -Miss Hardacre. At dinner, sitting next her, he enjoyed himself -enormously. Instead of freezing his geniality with sarcastic remarks, -she lured him on to the gossip in which his heart delighted. When Connie -rallied her, later, on her flirtation with the old man, she laughed. - -“Remember I've been a prisoner here. He's one of the familiar faces from -outside.” - -Although jestingly, she had spoken with her usual frankness, and her -confession was more deeply significant than she was aware at the time. -She had welcomed Colonel Pawley not for what he was, but for what he -represented. As soon as she was alone she realised the moral lapse, and -rebuked herself severely. She was sentimental enough to hang by a ribbon -around her neck the simple engagement ring which Jimmie had given her, -and to sleep with it as a talisman against evil thoughts. - -She spent the following evening at the studio, heroically enduring -the discomforts of the detested omnibus. When she descended she drew -a breath of relief, but felt the glow that comes from virtuous -achievement. Jimmie was informed of this practice in the art of economy. -He regarded her wistfully. There were times when he too fought with -doubts,--not of her loyalty, but of his own honesty in bringing her down -into his humble sphere. Even now, accustomed as he was to the adored -sight of her there, he could not but note the contrast between herself -and her surroundings. She brought with her in every detail of her -person, in every detail of her dress, in every detail of her manner, an -atmosphere of a dainty, luxurious life pathetically incongruous with -the shabby little house. He had not even the wherewithal to call in -decorators and upholsterers and make the little house less shabby. So -when she spoke of practising economy, he looked at her wistfully. - -“Your eyes are open, dear, are n't they?” he said. “You really do -realise what a sacrifice you are making in marrying me?” - -“By not marrying you,” she replied, “I should have gained the world and -lost my own soul. Now I am doing the reverse.”' - -He kissed her finger-tips lover-wise. “I am afraid I must be the devil's -advocate, and say that the loss and gain need not be so absolutely -differentiated. I want you to be happy. My God! I want you to be happy,” - he burst out with sudden passion, “and if you found that things were -infinitely worse than what you had expected, that you had married me in -awful ignorance--” - -She covered his lips with the palm of her hand. - -“Don't go on. You pain me. You make me despise myself. I have counted -the cost, such as it is. Did I not tell you from the first that I would -go with you in rags and barefoot through the world? Could woman say -more? Don't you believe me?” - -“Yes, I believe you,” he replied, bowing his head. “You are a -great-hearted woman.” - -She unfastened her hat, skewered it through with the pins, and gave it -him to put down. - -“I remember my Solomon,” she said, trying to laugh lightly, for there -had been a faint but disconcerting sense of effort in her protestation. -“'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and -hatred there with.' Besides, you forget another important matter. I am -now a homeless, penniless outcast. I am not sacrificing anything. It is -very kind of you to offer to take me in and shelter me.” - -“These are sophistries,” said Jimmie, with a laugh. “You gave up all on -my account.” - -“But I am really penniless,” she said, ignoring his argument. “_Anch' io -son pittore_. I too have felt the pinch of poverty.” - -“You?” - -She revealed her financial position--the overdraft at the bank, the -shilling between herself and starvation. Were it not for Connie, she -would have to sing in the streets. She alluded thoughtlessly, with her -class's notions as to the value of money, to her “miserable two hundred -a year.” - -“Two hundred a year!” cried Jimmie. “Why, that's a fortune!” - -His tone struck a sudden chill through her. He genuinely regarded the -paltry sum as untold riches. She struggled desperately down to his point -of view. - -“Perhaps it may come in useful for us,” she said lamely. - -“I should think it will! Why did n't you tell me before?” - -“Have you never thought I might have a little of my own?” she asked with -a touch of her old hardness. - -“No,” said Jimmie. “Of course not.” - -“I don't see any 'of course' in the matter. The ordinary man would have -speculated--it would have been natural--almost common-sense.” - -Jimmie threw up his hands deprecatingly. - -“I have been too much dazzled by the glorious gift of yourself to think -of anything else you might bring. I am an impossible creature, as you -will find out. I ought to have considered the practical side.” - -“Oh! I am very glad you did n't!” she exclaimed. “Heaven forbid you -should have the mercenary ideas of the average man. It is beautiful to -have thought of me only.” - -“I am afraid I was thinking of myself, my dear,” said he. “I must get -out of the way of it, and think of the two of us. Now let us be severely -business-like. You have taken a load off my mind. There are a thousand -things you can surround yourself with that I imagined you would lack.” - He took her two hands and swung them backwards and forwards. “Now I -shan't regard myself as such a criminal in asking you to marry me.” - -“Do you think two hundred a year a fortune, Jimmie?” she asked. - -“To the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts perhaps not--but everything is -relative.” - -“Everything?” - -Her heart spoke suddenly, demanding relief. Their eyes met. - -“No, dear,” he said. “One thing at least is absolute.” An interlude of -conviction succeeded doubt. She felt that she had never loved him so -much as at that moment. It was more with the quickly lit passion of the -awakened woman than with the ardour of a girl that she clasped her hands -round his head and drew it down to their kiss. She had an awful need of -the assurance of the absolute. - -It nerved her to face a discussion on ways and means with Aline, -whom Jimmie at her request summoned from demure sewing in her little -drawing-room. - -“You are right,” she had said, referring to his former remark. “We ought -to be severely business-like. I must begin to learn things. You don't -know how hopelessly ignorant I am.” - -Aline came down to give the first lesson in elementary housekeeping. She -brought with her a pile of little black books which she spread out -at the end of the long table. The two girls sat side by side. Jimmie -hovered about them for a while, but was soon dismissed by Aline to a -distant part of the studio, where, having nothing wherewith to occupy -himself, he proceeded to make a charcoal sketch of the two intent faces. - -Aline, proud at being able to display her housewifely knowledge before -appreciative eyes, opened her books, and expounded them with a charming -business air. These were the receipts for the last twelve months; these -the general disbursements. They were balanced to a halfpenny. - -“Of course anything I can't account for, I put down to the item -'Jimmie,'” she said naively. “He _will_ go to the money-drawer and help -himself without letting me know. Is n't it tiresome of him?” - -Norma smiled absently, wrinkling her brows over the unfamiliar figures. -She had no grasp of the relation the amounts of the various items bore -to one another, but they all seemed exceedingly small. - -“I suppose it's necessary to make up this annual balance?” she asked. - -“Of course. Otherwise you would n't know how much you could apportion to -each item. Jimmie says it's nonsense to keep books; but if you listen to -Jimmie, you 'll have the brokers in in a month.” - -“Brokers?” - -Aline laughed at her perplexed look. “Yes, to seize the furniture in -payment of debt.” - -The main financial facts having been stated, Aline came to detail. These -were the weekly books from the various tradesmen. She showed a typical -week's expenditure. - -“What about the fishmonger?” asked Norma, noting an obvious omission. - -“Fish is too expensive to have regularly,” Aline explained, “and so -I don't have an account. When I buy any, I pay for it at once, in the -shop.” - -“When _you_ buy it?” - -“Why, yes. You'll find it much better to go and choose things for -yourself than let them call for orders. Then you can get exactly what -you want, instead of what suits the tradesman's convenience. You see, -I go to the butcher and look round, and say 'I want a piece of that -joint,' and of course he does as he's told. It seems horrid to any one -not accustomed to it to go into a butcher's shop, I know; but really -it's not unpleasant, and it's quite amusing.” - -“But why should n't your housekeeper do the marketing?” - -“Oh, she does sometimes,” Aline admitted; “but Hannah is n't a good -buyer. She can't _judge_ meat and things, you know, and she is apt to be -wasteful over vegetables.” - -“You don't bring the--the meat and things--home with you in a basket, do -you?” asked Norma, with a nervous laugh. - -Jimmie, interested in his sketch, had not listened to the conversation, -which had been carried on in a low tone. The last words, however, -pitched higher, caught his ear. He jumped to his feet. - -“Norma carry home meat in a basket! Good God! What on earth has the -child been telling you?” - -“I never said anything of the kind, Jimmie,” cried Aline, indignantly. -“You needn't bring home anything unless you like; our tradesmen are most -obliging.” - -Norma pushed back her chair from the table and rose and again laughed -nervously. - -“I am afraid I can't learn all the science of domestic economy in -one lesson. I must do it by degrees.” She passed her hand across her -forehead. “I'm not used to figures, you see.” - -Jimmie looked reproachfully at Aline. “Those horrid little black books!” - he exclaimed. “They are enough to give any one a headache. For heaven's -sake, have nothing to do with them, dear.” - -“But the brokers will come in,” said Norma, with an uncertain catch in -her voice. - -“They are Aline's pet hobgoblins,” laughed Jimmie. “My dear child,” - pointing to the books, “please take those depressing records of wasted -hours away.” - -When they were alone, he said to Norma very tenderly, “I am afraid my -little girl has frightened you.” - -She started at the keenness of his perception and flushed. - -“No--not frightened.” - -“She is so proud of the way she runs her little kingdom here,” he said; -“so proud to show you how it is done. You must forgive her. She is only -a child, my dearest, and forgets that these household delights of hers -may come as shocks to you. I shall not allow you to have these worries -that she loves to concern her head about.” - -“Then who will have them?” she asked, with her hand on the lapel of his -jacket. “You? That would be absurd. If I am your wife, I must keep your -house.” - -“My dear,” said Jimmie, kissing her, “if we love each other, there will -be no possibility of worries. I believe in God in a sort of way, and He -has not given you to me to curse and wither your life.” - -“You could only bless and sanctify it,” she murmured. - -“Not I, dear; but our love.” - -Soothed, she raised a smiling face. - -“But still, I'll have to keep house. Do you think I would let you go to -the butcher's? What would Aline say if you made such a proposal?” - -“She would peremptorily forbid him to take my orders,” he replied, -laughing. - -“I am sure I should,” she said. - -It was growing late. She glanced at the wheezy tilted old Dutch clock -in the corner, and spoke of departure. She reflected for a moment on the -means of home-getting. To her lowered spirits the omnibus loomed like a -lumbering torture-chamber. The consolation of a cab seemed cowardice. An -inspiration occurred to her. She would walk; perhaps he would accompany -her to Bryanston Square. He was enraptured at the suggestion. But could -she manage the distance? - -“I should like to try. I am a good walker--and when we are outside,” she -added softly, “we can talk a little of other matters.” - -It was a mild spring night, and the quiet stars shone benignantly upon -them as they walked arm in arm, and talked of “other matters.” As she -had needed a little while before the assurance of the absolute, so now -she craved the spirituality of the man himself, the inner light of faith -in the world's beauty, the sweetness, the courage--all that indefinable -something in him which raised him, and could alone raise her, above the -terrifying things of earth. She clung to his arm in a pathos of yearning -for him to lead her upward and teach her the things of the spirit. Only -thus lay her salvation. - -He, clean, simple soul, lost in the splendour of their love, expounding, -as it chanced, his guileless philosophy of life and his somewhat -childishly pagan religious convictions, was far from suspecting -the battle into which he was being called to champion the side of -righteousness. He went to sleep that night the most blissfully happy of -men. Norma lay awake, a miserable woman. - - - - -Chapter XXVII--A DINNER OF HERBS - -SHE loved him. Of that there was no doubt. To her he was the man of -men. The half angel, half fool of her original conception had melted -into an heroic figure capable of infinite tendernesses. The lingering -barbaric woman in her thrilled at the memory of him contemptuously -facing death before the madman's revolver. Her higher nature was awed at -the perfect heroism of his sacrifice. She knelt at his feet, recognising -the loftier soul. Sex was stirred to the depths when his arms were -about her and his kiss was on her lips. In lighter relations he was the -perfect companion. For all her vacillation, let that be remembered: she -loved him. All of her that was worth the giving he had in its plenitude. - -The days which followed her initiation into domestic economy were days -of alternating fear and shame and scornful resolution. She lost grip of -herself. The proud beauty curving a contumelious lip at the puppet -show of life was a creature of the past. Set the proudest and most -self-sufficing of women naked in what assembly you please, and she -will crouch, helpless, paralysed, in the furthest corner. Some such -denudation of the moral woman had occurred in the case of Norma -Hardacre. The old garments were stripped from her. She was bewildered, -terrified, no longer endowed with personality. - -Sometimes despising herself and resolved to perform her manifest duty, -she sought other lessons from Aline. They ended invariably in dismay. -Once she learned that Jimmie had never had a banking account. The -money was kept in a drawer of which Jimmie and Aline had each a key. -On occasions the drawer had been empty. Another lesson taught her that -certain shops in the neighbourhood were to be avoided as being too -expensive; that cream was regarded as a luxury, and asparagus as -an impossible extravagance. Every new fact in the economy of a poor -household caused her to shiver with apprehension. All was so trivial, -so contemptibly unimportant, and yet it grew to be a sordid barrier -baffling her love. She loathed the base weakness of her nature. It was -degrading to feel such repulsion. - -One evening Connie Deering was going to a Foreign Office reception, and -came down an enchanting vision in a new gown from Paquin and exhibited -herself to Norma. - -“I think it's rather a success. Don't you?” - -Norma assented somewhat listlessly, but to please her friend inspected -the creation and listened to her chatter. She was feeling lonely and -dispirited. At Aline's entreaty she had persuaded Jimmie to go with Tony -Merewether to the Langham Sketch Club, thus showing himself, for the -first time since the scandal, among his old associates. For her altruism -she paid the penalty of a dull evening. Their visits to each other were -her sole occupation now, all that was left in life to interest her. In -moments of solitude she began to feel the appalling narrowness of the -circle in which she was caged. Reading tired instead of refreshing her. -She had been accustomed to men and women rather than to books, to -the sight of many faces, to the constant change of scene. When she -speculated on employment for future solitary hours, she thought ruefully -of recuffing shirts. - -Connie apologised for leaving her, hoped she would manage to amuse -herself. Norma, who had made strenuous efforts to hide the traces of -tumult, returned a smiling answer. Connie, quite deceived, put an arm -round her waist and said suddenly in her bright, teasing way: - -“Now don't you wish you were coming too?” - -Norma, staggered at the point-blank question, was mistress enough of -herself to observe the decencies of reply, but when Connie had gone, she -sat down on the sofa and stared in front of her. She did wish she were -going with Connie. She had been wishing vaguely, half-consciously all -the evening. Now the wish was the pain of craving. It came upon her like -the craving of the alcoholic subject for drink--this sudden longing for -the glitter, the excitement, the whirl of the life she had renounced. -Her indictment of it seemed unreal, the confused memory of a brain-sick -mood. It was her world. She had not cut herself free. All the fibres of -her body seemed to be rooted in it, and she was being drawn thither -by irresistible desire. The many, many people, the diamonds, the -brilliance, the flattery, the envy, the very atmosphere heavy with many -perfumes--she saw and felt it all; panted for it, yearned for it. That -never, never again would she take up her birthright was impossible. That -she should stand forevermore in the humble street outside the gates of -that dazzling, wonderful, kaleidoscopic world was unthinkable. - -She remembered her talk with Morland at the Duchess of Wiltshire's -reception at the end of the last season, her shiver at the idea of a -life of poverty; was it a premonition? She remembered the blessed sense -of security when she had looked round the splendid scene and felt that -she and it were indissoluble parts of the same scheme of things. A -crust and heel of cheese as Jimmie's wife had crossed her mind then as a -grotesque fantasy; the air of that brilliant gathering was the breath of -her being. - -But now the grotesque fancy was to be the reality; the other was to -become the shadow of a dream. No yearning or panting could restore it. -The impossible was the inevitable. The unthinkable was the commonplace. -She had made her choice deliberately, irrevocably. She had lost the -whole world to gain her own soul. In the despair of her mood she -questioned the worth of the sacrifice. The finality of the choice -oppressed her. If at this eleventh hour she could still have the -opportunity of the heroic--if still the gates of the world were open to -her, she would have had a stimulus to continued nobility. The world and -the passionate love for the perfect man--which would she choose? Her -exaltation would still have swept her to the greater choice. Of, this -she was desperately aware. But the gates were shut. She had already -chosen. The heroic moment had gone. The acceptance of conditions was now -mere uninspired duty. She gave way to unreason. - -“O God! Why cannot I have both--my own love and my own life?” - -The tears she shed calmed her. - -The next day she felt ill from the strain, paying the highly bred -woman's penalty of nervous break-down. Connie Deering noted the circles -beneath her eyes and the pinched nostrils. Norma casually mentioned a -night's neuralgia. It would pass off during the day. She refused to be -doctored. She would pay a visit to Jimmie before lunch. The fresh air -would do her good. - -“The fresh air and Jimmie,” laughed her friend. “You are the most -beautifully in love young woman I have ever met.” - -Norma started on her visit, walking fast. At Baker Street station it -began to rain. She took the penitential omnibus; but her thoughts were -too anxious to concern themselves with its discomforts. Besides, it was -almost empty. The night had brought counsel. She would go to Jimmie and -be her true self, frank and unsparing. With a touch of her old scorn she -had resolved to confess unreservedly all the meanness and cowardice -of which she had of late been guilty. She would bare to him the soon -spotted soul and crave his cleansing. He would understand, pardon, and -purify. Perhaps, when he knew all, he would be able to devise some new -scheme of existence. At any rate, she would no longer receive his kisses -with a lie in her heart. She loved him too ardently. He should know what -she was, what were her needs, her limitations. The meeting would be -a crisis in their lives. Out of it would come reconstruction on some -unshakable basis. Up to a certain point she reasoned; beyond it, the -pathetic unreason of a woman drifted rudderless. - -It had stopped raining when she left the omnibus and started on the -short walk from the corner to Friary Grove. At the familiar gate her -heart already seemed lighter; she opened it, mounted the front steps, -and rang. The middle-aged servant, minus cap and with thin untidy hair, -in a soiled print dress, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow exposing red -coarse arms, was the first shock to Norma when the door opened. - -“Both the Master and Miss Aline are out, Miss,” said Hannah, with a -good-natured smile. “He has gone into town on business, and Miss Aline, -went out a little while ago with her young man. But they'll be back for -lunch. Won't you come in and wait, Miss?” - -Norma, vaguely resenting the familiar address of the servant and her -slatternly appearance, hesitated for a moment before deciding to enter. -Hannah showed her into the drawing-room and retired. It was a small dark -room looking on to the back. Part of it had been cut off when the -house had been altered, so as to construct the studio staircase, which -contained one of the original windows. Norma felt strangely ill at -ease in the room. The prim, cheap furniture, the threadbare carpet, -the flimsy girlish contrivances at decoration, gave the place an air of -shabby gentility. The gilt mirror was starred with spots and had a crack -across the corner. Some of Jimmie's socks and underwear lay on the table -for mending. They were much darned, and fresh holes could not fail to -meet the eye that rested but momentarily on the pile. To mend these -would in the future be her duty. She took up an undervest shrinkingly -and shook it out; then folded it again and closed her eyes.... She could -not wait there: the gloom depressed her. The studio would be brighter -and more familiar. She went downstairs. Nothing in the room she knew so -well was changed, yet it seemed to wear a different aspect. The homely -charm had vanished. Here, too, shabbiness and poverty stared at her. The -morning light streaming through the great high window showed pitilessly -the cracks and stains and missing buttons of the old leathern suite, and -the ragged holes in the squares of old carpet laid upon the boards. It -was a mere bleak workshop, not a room for human habitation. The pictures -on the walls and easels ceased to possess decorative or even intimate -value. The large picture of the faun that had exercised so great an -influence upon her had been despatched to its purchaser, and in its -place was a hopeless gap. - -She sat down in her accustomed chair, and once more strove to realise -the future. There would be children who would need her care. On herself -would all the sordid burdens fall. She saw herself a soured woman, worn -with the struggle to make ends meet, working with her hands at menial -tasks. The joy of Life! She laughed mirthlessly. - -She rose, walked restlessly about the studio, longing for Jimmie to -come and exorcise the devils that possessed her. A little sharp cry of -distress escaped her lips. The place echoed like a vault, and she felt -awfully alone. In her nervous tension she could bear it no longer. She -went up the stairs again into the bare hall. On the pegs hung two or -three discoloured hats and an old coat. Scarce knowing whither she went, -she entered the dining-room. Luncheon had been laid. A freak of destiny -had reproduced the meal of which Morland had spoken at Wiltshire House -and of which last night had revived the memory: a scrag end of cold -boiled mutton, blackened and shapeless, with the hard suet round about -it; a dried-up heel of yellow American cheese; the half of a cottage -loaf. The table-cloth--it was Friday--was stained with a week's meals. -It was coarse in texture, old and thin and darned. The enamel on the -plates was cracked, the hundred tiny fissures showing up dark brown. -The plate on the forks had worn off in places, disclosing the yellowish -metal beneath. The tumblers were thick and common, of glass scarcely -transparent. She stared helplessly at the table. Never in her life had -she seen such preparations for a meal. To the woman always daintily fed, -daintily environed, it seemed squalor unspeakable. - -She shrank back into the hall, pressed her hands to her eyes, looked -round, as if to search for some refuge. The stairs met her eye. She -had never seen what lay above the ground floor--except once, on the -memorable evening when Aline had fainted. Suddenly madness seized -her--an insane craving to spy out the whole nakedness of the house. The -worn stair-carpet ended at the first landing. Then bare boards. The door -of the bathroom was wide open. She peeked in. The ceiling was blackened -with gas; the bath cracked and stained; the appointments as bare as -those in a workhouse. Her glance fell upon a battered tin dish holding -an uncompromising cube of yellow soap with hard sharp edges. She -withdrew her head and shut the door hurriedly. Another door stood ajar. -She pushed it open and entered. It was the front bedroom--inhabited by -Jimmie. The thought that it would be her own, which a fortnight before -might have clothed her in delicious confusion, chilled her to the -bone. Bare boards again; a strip of oil-cloth by the narrow cheap iron -bedstead; a painted deal table with a little mirror and the humblest of -toilette equipments laid upon it; a painted deal chest of drawers with -white handles; a painted deal wash-stand; a great triangular bit broken -out of the mouth of the ewer. - -It was poverty--grinding, sordid, squalid poverty. From the one -dishevelled, slatternly, middle-aged servant to the cheap paper -peeling off the wall in the bedrooms, all she had seen was poverty. The -gathering terror of it burst like a thunderstorm above her head. Her -courage failed her utterly. Like a creature distracted, she rushed -downstairs and fled from the house. She walked homewards with an -instinctive sense of direction. Afterwards she had little memory of the -portion of the road she traversed on foot. She moved in a shuddering -nightmare. All the love in the world could not shed a glamour over the -nakedness of the existence that had now been revealed to her in its -entire crudity. She could not face it. Other women of gentle birth had -forsaken all and followed the men they loved; they had loved peasants -and had led great-heartedly the peasant's life. They had qualities -of soul that she lacked. Hideously base, despicably cowardly she knew -herself to be. It was her nature. She could not alter. The world of -graceful living was her world. In the other she would die. He had warned -her. The gipsy faith in Providence had made him regard as a jest what -would be to her a sordid shift, an intolerable ugliness, stripping life -of its beauty. The passion-flower could not thrive in the hedge with the -dog-rose. It was true--mercilessly true. The craving of last night awoke -afresh, imperiously insistent. She walked blindly, tripped, and nearly -fell. A subconscious self hailed a passing hansom and gave the address. - -What would become of her she knew not. She thought wildly of suicide as -the only possible escape. From her own world she was outcast. Its gates -were barred with gold and opened but to golden keys. She was penniless. -In this other world she would die. Love could not prevent her starving -on its diet of herbs. She clung to life, to the stalled ox, and recked -little of the hatred; but at the banquet she no longer had a seat. She -had said she would follow him in rags and barefoot over the earth. She -had not fingered the rags when she had made the senseless vow; she had -not tried her tender feet on the stones. She could have shrieked with -terror at the prospect. There was no way out but death. - -The Garden of Enchantment faded from her mind like a forgotten dream. -The sweet Arcadian make-believe alone rose up in ironical mockery, a -scathing memory which seemed to flay the living heart of her. She sat -huddled together in a corner of the cab, tortured and desperate. -On either hand hung the doom of death. In the one case it would be -lingering: the soul would die first; the man she loved would be tied to -a living corpse; she would be a devastating curse to him instead of -a blessing. In the other she could leave him in the fulness of their -unsullied love. The years that the locust hath eaten would not stretch -an impassable waste between them. In his sorrow there would be the -imperishable sense of beauty. And for herself the quick end were better. - -She was aroused to consciousness of external things by a husky voice -addressing her from somewhere above her head. The cab had stopped at -Connie's house in Bryanston Square. She descended, handed to the man the -first coin in her purse that her fingers happened to grasp. He looked at -it, said that he was sorry he had not change for a sovereign. She -waved her hand vaguely, deaf to his words. The cabman, with a clear -conscience, whipped up his horse smartly and drove off. - -A figure on the doorstep raised his hat. - -“How delightful of you to arrive at the very moment, Miss Hardacre! I am -summoned back to America. I sail to-morrow. I was calling on the chance -of being able to bid you good-bye.” - -Norma collected her scattered wits and recognised Theodore Weever. She -looked at him full in the eyes. - -Her lips were parted; her breath came fast. He stretched out his hand -to press the electric button, so as to gain admittance to the house. She -touched his arm, restraining his action, and still stared at him. - -“Wait,” she said at last. “I have something to say to you.” - -“I am honoured,” he replied in his imperturbable way. - -“Have you found your decorative wife, Mr. Weever?” - -A sudden light shone lambently in his pale, expressionless blue eyes. - -“Am I to understand that I can find her on Mrs. Deering's doorstep?” - -“If you look hard enough,” said Norma. - -He took her hand and shook it with the air of a man concluding a -bargain. - -“I felt sure of it,” he said. “I intended from the first to marry you. -I shall ever be your most devoted servant.'” - -“I make one condition,” she said. - -“Name it.” - -“You don't enter this house, and I sail with you to-morrow.” - -“Certainly.” - -“What train shall I catch and from what station shall I start?” - -“The ten o'clock from Waterloo.” - -She rang the bell. - -“May I trouble you to book my passage?” - -“It will be my happiness.” - -“_Au revoir_,” she said, holding out her hand. - -He raised his hat and walked away briskly. The door opened, and Norma -entered the house. - - - - - -Chapter XXVIII--THE WORD OF ALINE - -WHAT she wrote to him is no great matter. - -Her letter, which he opened on coming down to breakfast the next -morning, filled many pages. It was a rhapsody of passionate love and -self-abasement, with frantic appeals for forgiveness. In its cowardice -there was something horribly piteous. Jimmie read it beneath the high -north window of the studio, his back turned towards Aline, who was -seated at the breakfast-table at the other end. For a long, long while -he stood there, quite still, holding the letter in his hand. Aline, in -wonder, stole up quietly and touched his arm. When he turned, she saw -that his face was ashen-grey, like a dead man's. - -The shock left its mark upon him. Physically it accomplished the work of -ten years, wiping the youth from his face and setting in its stead the -seal of middle age. It is common enough for grief or illness to lay its -hand on the face of a woman no longer young and shrivel up her beauty -like a leaf and set her free, old and withered. But with a man, who has -no such beauty to be marred, the case is rare. - -For a week he remained silent. The two women who loved him waited in -patience until the time should come for their comforting to be of use. -From the very first morning he let no change appear in his habits, -but set his palette as usual and went on with the new picture that was -nearing completion. In the afternoon he went for a walk. Aline, going -down to the studio, happened to look at his morning's work. For a moment -she was puzzled by what she saw, for she was familiar with his -methods. Gradually the solution dawned upon her. He had been painting -meaninglessly, incoherently, putting in splotches of colour that had -no relation to the tone of the picture, crudely accentuating outlines, -daubing here, there, and anywhere with an aimless brush. It was the work -of a child or a drunken man. Aline cast herself on the model-platform -and cried till she could cry no more. When he came back, he took a -turpentine rag and obliterated the whole picture. For days he worked -incessantly, trying in vain to repaint. Nothing would come right. The -elementary technique of his art seemed to have left him. Aline strove to -get him away. He resisted. He had to do his day's work, he said. - -“But you're not well, dear,” she urged. “You will kill yourself if you -go on like this.” - -“I've never heard of work killing a man,” he answered. Then after a -pause, “No. It's not work that kills.” - -At last the sleep that had failed him returned, and he awoke one morning -free from the daze in the brain against which he had been obstinately -struggling. He rose and faced the world again with clear eyes. When -Aline entered the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him painting -at the unhappy picture with his accustomed sureness of touch. He leaned -back and surveyed his handiwork. - -“It's going to be magnificent, is n't it? What a blessing I wiped out -the first attempt!” - -“Yes, this is ever so much better, Jimmie,” the girl replied, with tears -very near her eyes. But her heart swelled with happy relief. The aching -strain of the past week was over. She had dreaded break-down, illness, -and permanent paralysis of his faculties. The man she knew and loved had -seemed to be dead and his place taken by a vacant-eyed simulacrum. Now -he had come to life again, and his first words sounded the eternal chord -of hope and faith. - -From that day onwards he gave no sign of pain or preoccupation. Only the -stamp of middle age upon his face betrayed the suffering through which -he had passed. He concerned himself about Aline's marriage. Arrangements -had been made for it to take place on the same day as that of their -elders--a day, however, that Norma had never fixed. The recent -catastrophe had caused its indefinite postponement. Aline declared -herself to be in the same position as before, the responsibility of the -beloved's welfare being again thrust upon her shoulders. She pleaded -with her lover for delay, and young Merewether, disappointed though he -was, acquiesced with good grace. At last Jimmie called them before -him, and waving his old briar-root pipe, as he spoke, delivered his -ultimatum. - -“My dear children,” said he, standing up before them, as they sat -together on the rusty sofa, “you have the two greatest and most glorious -things in a great and glorious world, youth and love. Don't despise -the one and waste the other. Get all the beauty you can out of life and -you'll shed it on other people. You'll shed it on me. That's why I want -you to marry as soon as ever you are ready. You'll let me come and look -at you sometimes, and if you are happy together, as God grant you will -be, that will be my great happiness--the greatest I think that earth has -in store for me. I have stood between you long enough--all that is over. -I shall miss my little girl, Tony. I should be an inhuman monster if I -didn't. But I should be a monster never before imagined by a disordered -brain if I found any pleasure in having her here to look after me when -she ought to be living her life in fulness. And that's the very end of -the matter. I speak selfishly. I can't help it. I have a great longing -for joy around me once more. Go upstairs and settle everything finally -between you.” - -When they had gone, he sighed. “Yes,” he said to himself, “a great -longing for joy--and the sound of the steps of little children.” Then he -laughed, calling himself a fool, and went on with his painting. - -A day or two afterwards Connie Deering, who had been a frequent visitor -since Norma's flight, walked into the studio while Jimmie was working. - -“Don't let me disturb you. Please go on,” she cried in her bright, airy -way. “If you don't, I'll disappear. I've only come for a gossip.” - -Jimmie drew a chair near the easel and resumed his brush. She -congratulated him on the picture. It was shaping beautifully. She had -been talking about it last night to Lord Hyston, who had promised to -call at the studio to inspect it. Lord Hyston was a well-known buyer of -modern work. - -“He is stocking a castle in Wales, which he never goes near, with acres -of paint,” she said encouragingly. “So I don't see why you should n't -have a look in.” - -“Is there a family ghost in the castle?” - -“I believe there are two!” - -“That's a blessing,” said Jimmie. “Some one, at any rate, will look at -the pictures.” - -She watched him in silence for a minute or two. Then she came to the -important topic. - -“So the two children have made up their minds at last.” - -“Yes, they are to be married on the twenty-eighth of May.” - -“Poor young things,” said Connie. - -“Why poor?” - -“I don't know,” she said 'with a sigh. “The subject of marriage always -makes me sad nowadays. I am growing old and pessimistic.” - -“You are bewilderingly youthful,” replied Jimmie. - -“Do you know how old I am?” - -“I have forgotten how to do subtraction,” he said, thinking of his own -age. - -“Yes. Of course you know. It's awful. And Aline is--what--seventeen?” - -“Eighteen.” - -“You'll be dreadfully lonely without her.” - -“Lonely? Oh, no. I have my thoughts--and my memories.” - -She looked at him fleetingly. - -“I should have thought you would wish to escape from memories, Jimmie.” - -“Why should I?” - -“'The sorrow's crown of sorrows.'” - -“I don't believe in it,” he said, turning towards her. “What has been -has been. A joy that once has been is imperishable. Remembering happier -things is a sorrow's crown of consolation. Thank God! I have had them to -remember.” - -“Do you think she is finding consolation in memories?” She spoke with -sudden heat, for Norma's conduct had filled her heart with blazing -indignation. - -“I hope so,” said Jimmie dreamily, after a pause. “But she has not so -many as I. She loved me deeply. She had her hour--but I had my day.” - -“If I were you, I should want never to think of her again.” - -“Not if you were I, my dear Connie,” he said gently. “If either of us -was in the wrong, it was not she.” - -“Rubbish,” said Mrs. Deering. - -“No. It is the truth. She was made for kings' palaces and not for this -sort of thing. I knew it was impossible from the first--but the joy -and wonder of it all blinded my eyes. She gave me the immortal part of -herself. It is mine for all eternity. I wrote to her a day or two ago--I -was not able at first. I could not sleep, you know; something seemed to -have gone wrong with my head.” - -“You wrote to her?” - -“To tell her not to be unhappy for my sake.” - -“And you have forgiven her entirely?” - -“Since our love is unchanged, how could I do otherwise?” - -“But she has gone and thrown herself into the arms of another man--and -such a man!” said Connie, brusquely. A quiver of pain passed over his -face. - -“Those are things of the flesh that the discipline of life teaches a man -to subdue. I think I am man enough for that. The others are things of -the spirit. If ever woman loved a man, she loved me. I thank God,” he -added in a low voice, “that she realised the impossibility before we -were married.” - -“So do I; devoutly,” said Connie. - -“It would have made all the difference.” - -“Precisely,” said Connie. - -“She would have been chained hand and foot to an intolerable existence. -She would have fretted and pined. Her life would have been an infinite -burden. Heaven's mercy saved her.” - -“I was n't looking at it from her point of view at all,” exclaimed -Connie. - -“Hers is the only one from which one can look at it,” he answered -gravely. - -When she bade him good-bye some ten minutes later, she did not withdraw -the hand which he held. Her forget-me-not eyes grew pleading, and her -voice trembled a little. - -“I wish I could comfort you, Jimmie--not only now, but in the lonely -years to come. But remember, dear, there is nothing on earth I would n't -give you or do for you--nothing on earth.” - -It was not till long afterwards that he fully comprehended the -meaning of her words; and then she herself prettily vouchsafed the -interpretation. For immediate answer he kissed her on the cheek in the -brotherly fashion in which he had kissed her twice before. - -“What greater comfort,” said he, “can I have than to hear you say that? -I am a truly enviable man, Connie. Love and affection are showered upon -me in full measure. Life is very, very sweet.” - -The next two or three weeks brought pleasant surprises which -strengthened his conviction. One by one old friends sought him out, -and, some heartily, others shamefacedly, extended to him the hand of -brotherhood. His evening at the Langham Sketch Club had inaugurated the -new order of things. The Frewen-Smiths, whose New Year party had marked -the epoch between child and woman in Aline's life, invited the two -outcasts to dinner, and pointedly signified that they were the honoured -guests. Brother artists looked in casually on Sunday evenings. Their -wives called upon Aline, offering congratulations and wedding-gifts. A -lady whose portrait he had painted, and at whose house he had visited, -commissioned him to paint the portraits of her two children. The -ostracism had been removed. How this had been effected Jimmie could not -conjecture; and Tony Merewether and Connie Deering, who were the persons -primarily and independently responsible, did not enlighten him. By -Aline's wedding-day all the old circle had gathered round him, and a -whisper of the true story had been heard in Wiltshire House. - -Thus the world began to smile upon him, as if to make amends for the -anguish it could not remedy. He took the smile as a proof of the world's -essential goodness. The great glory that for a day had made his life a -blaze of splendour had faded; the sun in his heaven had been eternally -eclipsed. But the lesser glory of the moon and stars remained undimmed; -the tenderness of twilight lost no tone of its beauty. He stood unshaken -in his faith, unchanged in himself--the strong, wise man looking upon -the earth and the fulness thereof with the unclouded eyes of a child. - -The man whom he had most loved, the woman he had most worshipped, had -each failed him, had each brought upon him bitter and abiding sorrow. -They had passed like dead folks out of his daily life. Yet each retained -in his heart the once inhabited chambers. They were dear ghosts. His -incurable optimism in this wise brought about its consolation. For -optimism involves courage of a serene quality. Aline, with her swift -perception of him, had the opportunity of flashing this into an epigram. -There was a little gathering in the studio, and the talk ran on personal -bravery. Some one started the question: What would the perfectly brave -man do if attacked unarmed by a man-eating tiger? - -“I know what Jimmie would do,” she cried. “He would try to pat the beast -on the head.” - -There was laughter over the girl's unchallenged championship, but those -who had ears to hear found the saying true. - -The night before the wedding the two sat up very late, spending their -last hours together, and Aline sat like a child on Jimmie's knee -and sobbed on his breast. The lover seemed a far-away abstraction, a -malevolent force rather than a personality, that was tearing her away -from the soil in which her life was rooted. Jimmie stroked her hair -and spoke brave words. But he had not realised till then the wrench of -parting. Till then, perhaps, neither had realised the strength of the -bond between them. They were both fervent natures, who felt intensely, -and their mutual affection had been a vital part of their lives. If -bright and gallant youth had not flashed across the girl's path and, -after the human way, had not caught her wondering maidenhood in strong -young arms; if deeper and more tragic passion had not swept away the -mature man, it is probable that this rare, pure love of theirs might -have insensibly changed into the greater need one of the other, and the -morrow's bells might have rung for these two. But as it was, no such -impulse stirred their exquisite relationship. They were father and -daughter without the barrier of paternity; brother and sister without -the ties of consanguinity; lovers without the lovers' throb; intimate, -passionate friends with the sweet and subtle magic of the sex's -difference. - -“I can't bear leaving you,” she moaned. “I can't bear leaving the dear -beautiful life. I'll think of you every second of every minute of every -hour sitting here all alone, alone. I don't want to go. If you say the -word now, I'll remain and it shall be as it has been for ever and ever.” - -“I shall miss you--terribly, my dear,” said he. “But I'll be the gainer -in the end. You'll give me Tony as a sort of younger brother. I am -getting to be an old man, darling--and soon I shall find the need of -_les jeunes_ in my painting life. You can't understand that yet. Tony -will bring around me the younger generation with new enthusiasms and -fresh impulses. It is to my very great good, dear. And if God gives you -children, I'll be the only grandfather they'll ever have, poor things, -and I'd like to have a child about me again. I have experience. I have -washed your chubby face and hands, _moi qui vous parle_, and undressed -you and put you to bed, my young lady who is about to be married.” - -“Oh, Jimmie, I remember it--and I had to tell you how to do everything.” - -“It seems the day before yesterday,” said Jimmie. “_Eheu fugaces!_” - -The next day when she in her wedding-dress (a present from Connie -Deering) walked down the aisle on her husband's arm and stole a shy -glance at him, radiant, full of the promise and the pride of manhood, -and met the glad love in his eyes, she forgot all else in the throbbing -joy of her young life's completion. It was only afterwards when she was -changing her dress, with Connie Deering's assistance, in her own little -room, that she became again conscience-stricken. - -“You _will_ look after Jimmie while I am away, _won't_ you?” she asked -tragically--they were going to the Isle of Wight for their honeymoon. - -“I would look after him altogether if he would let me,” said Connie, in -an abrupt, emotional little outburst. - -Aline drew a quick breath. - -“What do you mean?” - -Connie threw the simple travelling-hat, whose feathers she was daintily -touching, upon the bed. - -“What do you think I mean?” she laughed nervously. “I'm not an old -woman. I'm as lonely as Jimmie will be--and--” - -“What?” - -“Oh!---only I've found out that I love Jimmie as much as a silly woman -can love anybody, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it--and -you may be quite sure I'll see that no harm comes to him during your -honeymoon, dear.” - -The ensuing conversation nearly caused the bride to miss her train. But -no bride ever left her girlhood's room more luminously happy. On the -threshold she turned and threw her arms round Connie Deering's neck. - -“I'll arrange it all when I come back,” she whispered. - -And Aline kept her word. - - - -THE END - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Love Is, by William J. 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Locke</title> - <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" /> - <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> - - body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} - P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .50em; margin-bottom: .50em; } - H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } - hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} - .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;} - blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} - .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} - .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} - .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} - .xx-small {font-size: 60%;} - .x-small {font-size: 75%;} - .small {font-size: 85%;} - .large {font-size: 115%;} - .x-large {font-size: 130%;} - .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;} - .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;} - .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;} - .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;} - .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;} - .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;} - div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } - div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } - .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} - .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} - .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em; - font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; - text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD; - border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;} - .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em; - border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center; - text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; - font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} - p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} - span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 } - pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} - -</style> - </head> - <body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Love Is, by William J. Locke - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Where Love Is - -Author: William J. Locke - -Release Date: January 18, 2017 [EBook #53996] -Last Updated: March 12, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE LOVE IS *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - WHERE LOVE IS - </h1> - <h2> - By William J. Locke - </h2> - <h4> - New York - </h4> - <h4> - Grosset & Dunlap Publishers - </h4> - <h3> - Copyright, 1903 By John Lane - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <h4> - “<i>Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and - hatred therewith</i>.” - </h4> - <h4> - <i>The Proverbe of Solomon</i> - </h4> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> WHERE LOVE IS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter I—THE FIRST GLIMPSE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter II—THE FOOL'S WISDOM </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter III—A MODERN BETROTHAL </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter IV—THE GREAT FROCK EPISODE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter V—A BROKEN BUTTERFLY </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter VI—THE LOVERS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0007"> Chapter VII—A MAD PROPHET </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0008"> Chapter VIII—HER SERENE HIGHNESS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0009"> Chapter IX—SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0010"> Chapter X—TWO IDYLLS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0011"> Chapter XI—DANGER </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0012"> Chapter XII—NORMA'S ENLIGHTENMENT </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0013"> Chapter XIII—THE OPTIMIST AT LARGE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0014"> Chapter XIV—THE BUBBLE REPUTATION </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0015"> Chapter XV—MRS. HARDACRE LAUGHS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0016"> Chapter XVI—IN THE WILDERNESS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0017"> Chapter XVII—THE INCURABLE MALADY </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0018"> Chapter XVIII—A RUDDERLESS SHIP </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0019"> Chapter XIX—ABANA AND PHARPAR </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0020"> Chapter XX—ALINE PREPARES FOR BATTLE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0021"> Chapter XXI—THE MOTH MEETS THE STAR </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0022"> Chapter XXII—CATASTROPHE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0023"> Chapter XXIII—NORMA'S HOUR </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0024"> Chapter XXIV—MRS. HARDACRE FORGETS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0025"> Chapter XXV—THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0026"> Chapter XXVI—EARTH AGAIN </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0027"> Chapter XXVII—A DINNER OF HERBS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2HCH0028"> Chapter XXVIII—THE WORD OF ALINE </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - WHERE LOVE IS - </h2> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter I—THE FIRST GLIMPSE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>AVE you dined at - Ranelagh lately?” asked Norma Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - “I have never been there in my life,” replied Jimmie Padgate. “In fact,” - he added simply, “I am not quite sure whether I know where it is.” - </p> - <p> - “Yours is the happier state. It is one of the dullest spots in a dull - world.” - </p> - <p> - “Then why on earth do people go there?” - </p> - <p> - The enquiry was so genuine that Miss Hardacre relaxed her expression of - handsome boredom and laughed. - </p> - <p> - “Because we are all like the muttons of Panurge,” she said. “Where one - goes, all go. Why are we here to-night?” - </p> - <p> - “To enjoy ourselves. How could one do otherwise in Mrs. Deering's house?” - </p> - <p> - “You have known her a long time, I believe,” remarked Norma, taking the - opportunity of directing the conversation to a non-contentious topic. - </p> - <p> - “Since she was in short frocks. She is a cousin of King's—that's the - man who took you down to dinner—” -</p> - <p> -She nodded. “I have known Mr. King - many weary ages.” - </p> - <p> - “And he has never told me about you!” - </p> - <p> - “Why should he?” - </p> - <p> - She looked him full in the face, with the stony calm of the fashionable - young woman accustomed to take excellent care of herself. Her companion - met her stare in whimsical confusion. Even so ingenuous a being as Jimmie - Padgate could not tell a girl he had met for the first time that she was - beautiful, adorable, and graced with divine qualities above all women, and - that intimate acquaintance with her must be the startling glory of a - lifetime. - </p> - <p> - “If I had known you for ages,” he replied prudently, “I should have - mentioned your name to Morland King.” - </p> - <p> - “Are you such friends then?” - </p> - <p> - “Fast friends: we were at school together, and as I was a lonely little - beggar I used to spend many of my holidays with his people. That is how I - knew Mrs. Deering in short frocks.” - </p> - <p> - “It's odd, then, that I have n't met you about before,” said the girl, - giving him a more scrutinising glance than she had hitherto troubled to - bestow upon him. A second afterwards she felt that her remark might have - been in the nature of an indiscretion, for her companion had not at all - the air of a man moving in the smart world to which she belonged. His - dress-suit was old and of lamentable cut; his shirt-cuffs were frayed; a - little bone stud, threatening every moment to slip the button-hole, - precariously secured his shirt-front. His thin, iron-grey hair was untidy; - his moustache was ragged, innocent of wax or tongs or any of the - adventitious aids to masculine adornment. His aspect gave the impression, - if not of poverty, at least of narrow means and humble ways of life. - Although he had sat next her at dinner, she had paid little attention to - him, finding easier entertainment in her conversation with King on topics - of common interest, than in possible argument with a strange man whom she - heard discussing the functions of art and other such head-splitting - matters with his right-hand neighbour. Indeed, her question about Ranelagh - when she found him by her side, later, in the drawing-room was practically - the first she had addressed to him with any show of interest. - </p> - <p> - She hastened to repair her maladroit observation by adding before he could - reply,— -</p> - <p> -“That is rather an imbecile thing to say considering the - millions of people in London. But one is apt to talk in an imbecile manner - after a twelve hours' day of hard racket in the season. Don't you think - so? One's stock of ideas gets used up, like the air at the end of a - dance.” - </p> - <p> - “Not if you keep your soul properly ventilated,” he answered. - </p> - <p> - The words were, perhaps, not so arresting as the manner in which they were - uttered. Norma Hardacre was startled. A little shutter in the back of her - mind seemed to have flashed open for an elusive second, and revealed a - prospect wide, generous, alive with free-blowing airs. Then all was dark - again before she could realise the vision. She was disconcerted, and in a - much more feminine way than was habitual with her she glanced at him - again. This time she lost sight of the poor, untidy garments, and found a - sudden interest in the man's kind, careworn face, and his eyes, - wonderfully blue and bright, set far apart in the head, that seemed to - look out on the world with a man's courage and a child's confidence. She - was uncomfortably conscious of being in contact with a personality widely - different from that of her usual masculine associates. This her training - and habit of mind caused her to resent; despising the faint spiritual - shock, she took refuge in flippancy. - </p> - <p> - “I fear our Tobin tubes get choked up in London,” she said with a little - laugh. “Even if they did n't they are wretched things, which create - draughts; so anyway our souls are free from chills. Look at that woman - over there talking to Captain Orton—every one knows he's - paymaster-general. A breath of fresh air in Mrs. Chance's soul would give - it rheumatic fever.” - </p> - <p> - The abominable slander falling cynically from young lips brought a look of - disapproval into Jimmie Padgate's eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Why do you say such things?” he asked. “You know you don't believe them.” - </p> - <p> - “I do believe them,” she replied defiantly. “Why shouldn't one believe the - bad things one hears of one's neighbours? It's a vastly more entertaining - faith than belief in their virtues. Virtue—being its own reward—is - deadly stale to one's friends and unprofitable to oneself.” - </p> - <p> - “Cynicism seems cheap to-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile that redeemed his - words from impertinence. “Won't you give me something of yourself a little - more worth having?” - </p> - <p> - Norma, who was leaning back in her chair fanning herself languidly, - suddenly bent forward, with curious animation in her cold face. - </p> - <p> - “I don't know who you are or what you are,” she exclaimed. “Why should you - want more than the ordinary futilities of after-dinner talk?” - </p> - <p> - “Because one has only to look at you,” he replied, “to see that it must be - very easy to get. You have beauty inside as well as outside, and everybody - owes what is beautiful and good in them to their fellow-creatures.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't see why. According to you, women ought to go about like mediaeval - saints.” - </p> - <p> - “Every woman is a saint in the depths of her heart,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “You are an astonishing person,” replied Norma. - </p> - <p> - The conversation ended there, for Morland King came up with Constance - Deering: he florid, good-looking, perfectly groomed and dressed, the type - of the commonplace, well-fed, affluent Briton; she a pretty, fragile - butterfly of a woman. Jimmie rose and was led off to another part of the - room by his hostess. King dropped into the chair Jimmie had vacated. - </p> - <p> - “I see you have been sampling my friend Jimmie Padgate. What do you make - of him?” - </p> - <p> - “I have just told him he was an astonishing person,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Dear old Jimmie! He's the best fellow in the world,” said King, laughing. - “A bit Bohemian and eccentric—artists generally are—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, he's an artist?” inquired Norma. - </p> - <p> - “He just manages to make a living by it, poor old chap! He has never come - off, somehow.” - </p> - <p> - “Another neglected genius?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't know about that,” replied Morland King in a matter-of-fact way, - not detecting the sneer in the girl's tone. “I don't think he's a great - swell—I'm no judge, you know. But he has had a bad time. Anyway, he - always comes up smiling. The more he gets knocked the more cheerful he - seems to grow. I never met any one like him. The most generous, - simple-minded beggar living.” - </p> - <p> - “He must be wonderful to make you enthusiastic,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Look at him now, talking to the Chance woman as if she were an angel of - light.” - </p> - <p> - Norma glanced across the room and smiled contemptuously. - </p> - <p> - “She seems to like it. She's preening herself as if the wings were already - grown. Connie,” she called to her hostess, who was passing by, “why have - you hidden Mr. Padgate from me all this time?” - </p> - <p> - The butterfly lady laughed. “He is too precious. I can only afford to give - my friends a peep at him now and then. I want to keep him all to myself.” - </p> - <p> - She fluttered away. Norma leaned back and hid a yawn with her fan; then, - rousing herself with an effort, made conversation with her companion. - Presently another man came up and King retired. - </p> - <p> - “How is it getting on?” whispered Mrs. Deering. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, steady,” he replied with his hands in his pockets. - </p> - <p> - “Lucky man!” - </p> - <p> - Morland King shrugged his shoulders. “The only thing against it is papa - and mamma—chiefly mamma. A Gorgon of a woman!” - </p> - <p> - “You'll never get a wife to do you more credit than Norma. With that face - I wonder she is n't a duchess by now. There <i>was</i> a duke once, but a - fair American eagle came and swooped him off under Norma's nose. You see, - she's not the sort of girl to give a man much encouragement.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I can't stand a woman who throws herself at your head,” said King, - emphatically. - </p> - <p> - “What a funny way men have nowadays of confessing to the tender passion!” - said Mrs. Deering, laughing. - </p> - <p> - “What would you have a fellow do?” he asked. - “Spout blank verse about the stars and things, like a Shakespearean hero?” - </p> - <p> - “It would be prettier, anyhow.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, if you will have it, I'm about as hard hit as a man ever was—there!” - </p> - <p> - “I 'm delighted to hear it,” said his cousin. - </p> - <p> - A short while afterwards the dinner-party broke up. - </p> - <p> - “I don't know whether you care to mix with utter worldlings like us, Mr. - Padgate,” said Norma, as she bade him good-bye, “but we are always in on - Tuesdays.” - </p> - <p> - “I'll tie him hand and foot and bring him,” said King. “Good-night, old - chap. I'm giving Miss Hardacre a lift home in the brougham.” - </p> - <p> - Before Jimmie could say yes or no, they were gone. He found himself the - last. - </p> - <p> - “You are certainly not going for another hour, Jimmie,” said Mrs. Deering, - as he came forward to take leave. “You will sit in that chair and smoke - and tell me all about yourself and make me feel good and pretty.” - </p> - <p> - “Very well,” he assented, laughing. “Turn me out when it's time for me to - go.” - </p> - <p> - It had been the customary formula between them for many years; for Jimmie - Padgate lacked the sense of time and kept eccentric hours, and although - Connie Deering delighted in her rare confidential chats with him, a woman - with a heavy morrow of engagements must go to bed at a reasonable period - of the night. She was a woman in the middle thirties, a childless widow - after a brief and almost forgotten married life, rich, pleasure-loving, in - the inner circle of London society, and possessing the gayest, kindest, - most charitable heart in the world. Her friendship with Norma Hardacre had - been a thing of recent date. - </p> - <p> - She had cultivated it first on account of her cousin Morland King; she had - ended in enthusiastic admiration. - </p> - <p> - “It is awfully good of you,” she said, when they were comfortably settled - down to talk, “to waste your time with my unintelligent conversation.” - </p> - <p> - “There's no such thing as unintelligent conversation,” he declared. - </p> - <p> - “For a man like you there must be.” - </p> - <p> - “I could hold an intelligent conversation with a rabbit,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Norma Hardacre, on arriving home, entered the drawing-room, where her - mother was reading a novel. - </p> - <p> - “Well?” said Mrs. Hardacre, looking up. - </p> - <p> - Norma threw her white silk cloak over the back of a chair. - </p> - <p> - “Connie sent her love to you.” - </p> - <p> - “Is that all you have to say?” asked her mother, sharply. She was a faded - woman who had once possessed beauty of a cold, severe type; but the years - had pinched and hardened her features, as they had pinched and hardened - her heart. Her eyes were of that steel grey which the light of laughter - seldom softens, and her smile was but a contraction of the muscles of the - lips. Even this perfunctory tribute to politeness which had greeted - Norma's entrance vanished at the second question. - </p> - <p> - “Morland King drove me home. What a difference there is between a private - brougham and the beastly things we get from the livery-stable!” - </p> - <p> - “He has said nothing?” - </p> - <p> - “Of course not. I should have told you if he had.” - </p> - <p> - “Whose fault is it?” - </p> - <p> - Norma made a gesture of impatience. “My fault, if you like. I don't lay - traps to catch him. I don't keep him dangling about me, and I don't - flatter his vanities or make appeal to his senses, I suppose. I can't do - it.” - </p> - <p> - “Don't behave like a fool, Norma,” said Mrs. Hardacre, rapping her book - with a paper-knife. “You have got to marry him. You know you have. Your - father and I are coming to the end of things. You ought to have married - years ago, and when one thinks of the chances you have missed, it makes - one mad. Here have we been pinching and scraping—” - </p> - <p> - “And borrowing and mortgaging,” Norma interjected. -</p> - <p> -“—to give you a - brilliant position,” Mrs. Hardacre continued, unheeding the interruption, - “and you cast all our efforts in our teeth. It's sheer ingratitude. Why - you threw over Lord Wyniard I could never make out.” - </p> - <p> - “You seem to forget that, after all, there is a physical side to - marriage,” said Norma, with a little shudder of disgust. - </p> - <p> - “I hate indelicacy in young girls,” said Mrs. Hardacre, freezingly. “One - would think you had been brought up in a public house.” - </p> - <p> - “Then let us avoid indelicate subjects,” retorted Norma, opening the first - book to her hand. “Where is papa?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, how should I know?” said Mrs. Hardacre, irritably. -</p> - <p> -There was silence. - Norma pretended to read, but her thoughts, away from the printed lines, - caused her face to harden and her lips to curl scornfully. She had been - used to such scenes with her mother ever since she had worn a long frock, - and that was seven years ago, when she came out as a young beauty of - eighteen. The story of financial embarrassment had lost its fine edge of - persuasion by overtelling. She had almost ceased to believe in it, and the - lingering grain of credence she put aside with the cynical feeling that it - was no great concern of hers, so long as her usual round of life went on. - She had two hundred a year of her own, all of which she spent in dress, so - that in that one particular at least, if she chose to be economical, she - was practically independent. Money for other wants was generally - procurable, with or without unpleasant dunning of her parents. She lived - very little in their home in Wiltshire, a beautiful and stately young - woman of fashion being a decorative adjunct to smart country-house - parties. In London, if she sighed for a more extensive establishment and a - more luxurious style of living, it was what she always had done. She had - hated the furnished house or flat and the livery-stable carriage ever - since her first season. In the same way she had always considered the - omission from her scheme of life of a yacht and a villa at Cannes and - diamonds at discretion as a culpable oversight on the part of the Creator. - But the sordid makeshift of existence to which she was condemned was not a - matter of yesterday. In spite of the financial embarrassments of the - maternal fable she had noticed no cutting down of customary expenditure. - Her father still played the fool on the stock exchange, her mother still - attired herself elaborately and disdained to eat otherwise than <i>à la - carte</i> at expensive restaurants, and she, Norma, went whithersoever the - smart set drifted her. She had nothing to do with the vulgarity of - financial embarrassments. - </p> - <p> - As to the question of marriage she was as fully determined as her mother - that she should make a brilliant match. She had had two or three - disappointments—the unwary duke, for instance. On the other hand she - had refused eligibles like Lord Wyniard out of sheer caprice. - </p> - <p> - The only man who had given her a moment's stir of the pulses, a moment's - thought of throwing her cap over the windmills, was a young soldier in the - Indian Staff Corps. But he belonged to her second season, before she had - really seen the world and grasped the inner meaning of life. Besides, her - mother had almost beaten her; and in an encounter between the dragon who - guarded the gold of her daughter's affections and the young Siegfried, it - was the hero that barely escaped destruction; he fled to India for his - life. Norma lost all sight and count of him for three years. Then she - heard that he had married a schoolfellow of hers and was a month-old - father. It was with feelings of peculiar satisfaction and sense of - deliverance that she sent her congratulations to him, her love to his - wife, and a set of baby shoes to the child. She had cultivated by this - time a helpful sardonic humour. - </p> - <p> - There was now Morland King, within reasonable distance of a proposal. Her - experience detected the signs, although little of sentimentality had - passed between them. He was young, as marrying men go—a year or two - under forty—of good family, fairly good-looking, very well off, with - a safe seat in Parliament being kept warm for him by a valetudinarian ever - on the point of retirement. Norma meant to accept him. She contemplated - the marriage as coldly and unemotionally as King contemplated the seat in - Parliament. But through the corrupted tissue of her being ran one pure and - virginal thread. She used no lures. She remained chastely aloof, the arts - of seduction being temperamentally repugnant to her. Knowledge she had of - good and evil (a euphemism, generally, for an exclusive acquaintance with - the latter), and she was cynical enough in her disregard of concealment of - her knowledge; but she revolted from using it to gain any advantage over a - man. At this period of her life she set great store by herself, and though - callously determined on marriage condescended with much disdain to be - wooed. Her mother, bred in a hard school, was not subtle enough to - perceive this antithesis. Hence the constant scenes of which Norma - bitterly resented the vulgarity. “We pride ourselves on being women of the - world, mother,” she said, “but that does n't prevent our remembering that - we are gentlefolk.” Whereat, on one occasion, Mr. Hardacre, in his - flustering, feeble way, had told Norma not to be rude to her mother, only - to draw upon himself the vials of his wife's anger. - </p> - <p> - He came in now, during the silence that had fallen on the two women—a - short, stout, red-faced man, with a bald head, and a weak chin, and a - drooping foxy moustache turning grey. He was bursting with an interminable - tale of scandal that he had picked up at his club—a respectable - institution with an inner coterie of vapid, middle-aged dullards whose - cackle was the terror of half London society. It is a superstition among - good women that man is too noble a creature to descend to gossip. Ten - minutes in the members' smoking-room of the Burlington Club would paralyse - the most scandal-mongering tabby of Bath, Cheltenham, or Tunbridge Wells. - </p> - <p> - “We were sure she was a wrong 'un from the first,” he explained in a - thick, jerky voice to his listless auditors. “And now it turns out that - she was in thick with poor Billy Withers, you know, and when Billy broke - his neck—that was through another blessed woman—I'll tell you - all about her by'm bye—when Billy broke his neck, his confounded - valet got hold of Mrs. Jack's letters, and how she paid for 'em's the - cream of the story—” - </p> - <p> - “We need not have that now, Benjamin,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a warning - indication that reverence was due to the young. - </p> - <p> - “Well, of course that's the end of it,” replied Mr. Hardacre, in some - confusion. - </p> - <p> - But Norma rose with a laugh of hard mockery. - </p> - <p> - “The valet entered the service of Lord Wyniard, and now there's a pretty - little divorce case in the air, with Jack Dugdale as petitioner and Lord - Wyniard as corespondent. Are n't you sorry, mother, I did n't marry - Wyniard and reform him, and save society this terrible scandal?” - </p> - <p> - Turning from her disconcerted parents, Norma pulled back the thick - curtains from the French window and opened one of the doors. - </p> - <p> - “What are you doing that for?” cried Mrs. Hardacre irritably, as the cold - air of a wet May night swept through the room. - </p> - <p> - “I'm going to try to ventilate my soul,” said Norma, stepping on to the - balcony. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter II—THE FOOL'S WISDOM - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>IKE the - inexplicable run on a particular number at the roulette-table, there often - seems to be a run on some particular phenomenon thrown up by the wheel of - daily life. Such a recurrent incident was the meeting of Norma and Jimmie - Padgate during the next few weeks. She met him at Mrs. Deering's, she ran - across him in the streets. Going to spend a weekend out of town, she found - him on the platform of Paddington Station. The series of sheer - coincidences established between them a certain familiarity. When next - they met, it was in the crush of an emptying theatre. They found - themselves blocked side by side, and they laughed as their eyes met. - </p> - <p> - “This seems to have got out of the domain of vulgar chance and become - Destiny,” she said lightly. - </p> - <p> - “I am indeed favoured by the gods,” he replied. - </p> - <p> - “You don't deserve their good will because you have never come to see me.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie replied that he was an old bear who loved to growl selfishly in his - den. Norma retorted with a reference to Constance Deering. In her house he - could growl altruistically. - </p> - <p> - “She pampers me with honey,” he explained. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid you'll get nothing so Arcadian with us,” she replied, “but I - can provide you with some excellent glucose.” - </p> - <p> - They were moved a few feet forward by the crowd, and then came to a halt - again. - </p> - <p> - “This is my ward, Miss Aline Marden,” he said, presenting a pretty slip of - a girl of seventeen, who had hung back shyly during the short dialogue, - and looked with open-eyed admiration at Jimmie's new friend. “That is how - she would be described in a court of law, but I don't mind telling you - that really she is my nurse and foster-mother.” - </p> - <p> - The girl blushed at the introduction, and gave him an imperceptible twitch - of the arm. Norma smiled at her graciously and asked her how she had liked - the play. - </p> - <p> - “It was heavenly,” she said with a little sigh. “Did n't you think so?” - </p> - <p> - Norma, who had characterised the piece as the most dismal performance - outside a little Bethel, was preparing a mendacious answer, when a sudden - thinning in the crush brought to her side Mrs. Hardacre, from whom she had - been separated. Mrs. Hardacre inquired querulously for Morland King, who - had gone in search of the carriage. Norma reassured her as to his ability - to find it, and introduced Jimmie and Aline. Mr. Padgate was Mr. King's - oldest friend. Mrs. Hardacre bowed disapprovingly, took in with a hard - glance the details of Aline's cheap, homemade evening frock, and the - ready-made cape over her shoulders, and turned her head away with a sniff. - She had been put out of temper the whole evening by Norma's glacial - treatment of King, and was not disposed to smile at the nobodies whom it - happened to please Norma to patronise. - </p> - <p> - At last King beckoned to them from the door, and they crushed through the - still waiting crowd to join him. By the time Jimmie Padgate and his ward - had reached the pavement they had driven off. - </p> - <p> - “Wonder if we can get a cab,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “Cab!” cried the girl, taking his arm affectionately. “One would think you - were a millionaire. You can go in a cab if you like, but I'm going home in - a 'bus. Come along. We'll get one at Piccadilly Circus.” - </p> - <p> - She hurried him on girlishly, talking of the play they had just seen. It - was heavenly, she repeated. She had never been in the stalls before. She - wished kind-hearted managers would send them seats every night. Then - suddenly: - </p> - <p> - “Why did n't you tell me how beautiful she was?” - </p> - <p> - “Who, dear?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, Miss Hardacre. I think she is the loveliest thing I have ever seen. - I could sit and look at her all day long. Why don't you paint her portrait—in - that wonderful ivory-satin dress she was wearing to-night? And the diamond - star in her hair that made her look like a queen—did you notice it? - Why, Jimmie, you are not paying the slightest attention!” - </p> - <p> - “My dear, I could repeat verbatim every word you have said,” he replied - soberly. “She is indeed one of the most beautiful of God's creatures.” - </p> - <p> - “Then you'll paint her portrait?” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps, deary,” said Jimmie, “perhaps.” - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile in the brougham King was giving Norma an account of Jimmie's - guardianship. She had asked him partly out of curiosity, partly to provide - him with a subject of conversation, and partly to annoy her mother, whose - disapproving sniff she had noted with some resentment. And this in brief - is the tale that King told. - </p> - <p> - Some ten years ago, John Marden, a brother artist of Jimmie Padgate's, - died penniless, leaving his little girl of seven with the alternative of - fighting her way alone through an unsympathetic world, or of depending on - the charity of his only sister, a drunken shrew of a woman, the wife of a - small apothecary, and the casual mother of a vague and unwashed family. - Common decency made the first alternative impossible. On their return to - the house after the funeral, the aunt announced her intention of caring - for the orphan as her own flesh and blood. Jimmie, who had taken upon - himself the functions of the intestate's temporary executor, acquiesced - dubiously. The lady, by no means sober, shed copious tears and a rich - perfume of whisky. She called Aline to her motherly bosom. The child, who - had held Jimmie's hand throughout the mournful proceedings, for he had - been her slave and playfellow for the whole of her little life, advanced - shyly. Her aunt took her in her arms. But the child, with instinctive - repugnance to the smell of spirits, shrank from her kisses. The shrew - arose in the woman; she shook her vindictively, and gave her three or four - resounding slaps on face and shoulders. Jimmie leaped from his chair, tore - the scared little girl from the vixen's clutches, and taking her bodily in - his arms, strode with her out of the house, leaving the apothecary and his - wife to settle matters between them. It was only when he had walked down - the street and hailed a cab that he began to consider the situation. - </p> - <p> - “What on earth am I to do with you?” he asked whimsically. - </p> - <p> - The small arms tightened round his neck. “Take me to live with you,” - sobbed the child. - </p> - <p> - “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings we learn wisdom. So be it,” said - Jimmie, and he drove home with his charge. - </p> - <p> - As neither aunt nor uncle nor any human being in the wide world claimed - the child, she became mistress of Jimmie's home from that hour. Her - father's pictures and household effects were sold off to pay his - creditors, and a little bundle of torn frocks and linen was Aline's sole - legacy. - </p> - <p> - “I happened to look in upon him the evening of her arrival,” said King, by - way of conclusion to his story. “In those days he managed with a charwoman - who came only in the mornings, so he was quite alone in the place with the - kid. What do you think I found him doing? Sitting cross-legged on the - model-platform with a great pair of scissors and needles and thread, - cutting down one of his own night garments so as to fit her, while the kid - in a surprising state of <i>déshabillé</i> was seated on a table, kicking - her bare legs and giving him directions. His explanation was that Miss - Marden's luggage had not yet arrived and she must be made comfortable for - the night! But you never saw anything so comic in your life.” - </p> - <p> - He leaned back and laughed at the reminiscence, not unkindly. Mrs. - Hardacre, bored by the unprofitable tale, stared at the dim streets out of - the brougham window. Norma, on friendlier terms with King, the little - human story having perhaps drawn them together, joined in the laugh. - </p> - <p> - “And now, I suppose, when she grows a bit older, Mr. Padgate will marry - her and she will be a dutiful little wife and they will live happy and - humdrum ever after.” - </p> - <p> - “I hope he will provide her with some decent rags to put on,” said Mrs. - Hardacre. “Those the child was wearing to-night were fit for a servant - maid.” - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie would give her his skin if she could wear it,” said Morland, - somewhat tartly. - </p> - <p> - This expression of feeling gave him, for the first time, a special place - in Norma's esteem. After all, a woman desires to like the man who in a few - months' time may be her husband, and hitherto Morland had presented a - negativity of character which had baffled and irritated her. The positive - trait of loyalty to a friend she welcomed instinctively, although if - charged with the emotion she would have repudiated the accusation. When - the carriage stopped at the awning and red strip of carpet before the - house in Eaton Square where a dance awaited her, and she took leave of - him, she returned his handshake with almost a warm pressure and sent him - away, a sanguine lover, to his club. - </p> - <p> - The next morning Constance Deering, taking her on a round of shopping, - enquired how the romance was proceeding. - </p> - <p> - “He has had me on probation,” replied Norma, “and has been examining all - my points. I rather think he finds me satisfactory, and is about to make - an offer.” - </p> - <p> - “What an idyllic pair you are!” laughed her friend. - </p> - <p> - Norma took the matter seriously. - </p> - <p> - “The man is perfectly right. He is on the lookout for a woman who can keep - up or perhaps add to his social prestige, who can conduct the affairs of a - large establishment when he enters political life, who can possibly give - him a son to inherit his estate, and who can wear his family diamonds with - distinction—and it does require a woman of presence to do justice to - family diamonds, you know. He looks round society and sees a girl that may - suit him. Naturally he takes his time and sizes her up. I have learned - patience and so I let him size to his heart's content. On the other hand, - what he can give me falls above the lower limit of my requirements, and - personally I don't dislike him.” - </p> - <p> - “Mercy on us!” cried Constance Deering, “the man is head over ears in love - with you!” - </p> - <p> - “Then I like him all the better for dissembling it so effectually,” said - Norma, “and I hope he'll go on dissembling to the end of the chapter. I - hate sentiment.” -</p> - <p> -They were walking slowly down Bond Street, and happened - to pause before a picture-dealer's window, where a print of a couple of - lovers bidding farewell caught Mrs. Deering's attention. - </p> - <p> - “I call that pretty,” she said. “Do you hate love too?” -</p> - <p> -Norma twirled her - parasol and moved away, waiting for the other. - </p> - <p> - “Love, my dear Connie, is an appetite of the lower middle classes.” - </p> - <p> - “My dear Norma!” the other exclaimed, “I do wish Jimmie Padgate could hear - you!” - </p> - <p> - Norma started at the name. “What has he got to do with the matter?” - </p> - <p> - “That's one of his pictures.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, is it?” said Norma, indifferently. But feminine curiosity compelled a - swift parting glance at the print. - </p> - <p> - “I imagine our guileless friend has a lot to learn,” she added. “A few - truths about the ways of this wicked world would do him good.” - </p> - <p> - “I promised to go and look round his studio to-morrow morning; will you - come and give him his first lesson?” asked Mrs. Deering, mischievously. - </p> - <p> - “Certainly not,” replied Norma. - </p> - <p> - But the destiny she had previously remarked upon seemed to be fulfilling - itself. A day or two afterwards his familiar figure burst upon her at a - Private View in a small picture-gallery. His eyes brightened as she - withdrew from her mother, who was accompanying her, and extended her hand. - </p> - <p> - “Dear me, who would have thought of seeing you here? Do you care for - pictures? Why have n't you told me? I am so glad.” - </p> - <p> - “Love of Art did n't bring me here, I assure you,” replied Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Then what did?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie in his guilelessness had an uncomfortable way of posing fundamental - questions. In that respect he was like a child. Norma smiled in silent - contemplation of the real object of their visit. At first her mother had - tossed the cards of invitation into the waste-paper basket. It was - advertising impudence on the part of the painter man, whom she had met but - once, to take her name in vain on the back of an envelope. Then hearing - accidentally that the painter man had painted the portraits of many - high-born ladies, including that of the Duchess of Wiltshire, and that the - Duchess of Wiltshire herself—their own duchess, who gave Mrs. - Hardacre the tip of her finger to shake and sometimes the tip of a rasping - tongue to meditate upon, whom Mrs. Hardacre had tried any time these ten - years to net for Heddon Court, their place in the country—had - graciously promised to attend the Private View, in her character of Lady - Patroness-in-Chief of the painter man, Mrs. Hardacre had hurried home and - had set the servants' hall agog in search of the cards. Eventually they - had been discovered in the dust-bin, and she had spent half an hour in - cleansing them with bread-crumbs, much to Norma's sardonic amusement. The - duchess not having yet arrived, Mrs. Hardacre had fallen back upon the - deaf Dowager Countess of Solway, who was discoursing to her in a loud - voice on her late husband's method of breeding prize pigs. Norma had - broken away from this exhilarating lecture to greet Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - He kept his eager eyes upon her, still waiting for an answer to his - question: - </p> - <p> - “What did?” - </p> - <p> - Norma, fairly quick-witted, indicated the walls with a little - comprehensive gesture. - </p> - <p> - “Do you call this simpering, uninspired stuff Art?” she said, begging the - question. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it's not that,” cried Jimmie, falling into the trap. “It's really - very good of its kind. Amazingly clever. Of course it's not highly - finished. It's impressionistic. Look at that sweeping line from the throat - all the way down to the hem of the skirt,” indicating the picture in front - of them and following the curve, painter fashion, with bent-back thumb; - “how many of your fellows in the Academy could get that so clean and - true?” - </p> - <p> - “I have just met Mr. Porteous, who said he could n't stay any longer - because such quackery made him sick,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie glanced round the walls. Porteous, the Royal Academician, was - right. The colour was thin, the modelling flat, the drawing tricky, the - invention poor. A dull soullessness ran through the range of full-length - portraits of women. He realised, with some distress, the clever - insincerity of the painting; but he had known Foljambe, the author of - these coloured crimes, as a fellow-student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and - having come to see his work for the first time, could not bear to judge - harshly. It was characteristic of him to expatiate on the only merit the - work possessed. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Porteous even said,” continued Norma, “that it was scandalous such a - man should be making thousands when men of genius were making hundreds. It - was taking the bread out of their mouths.” - </p> - <p> - “I am sorry he said that,” said Jimmie. “I think we ought rather to be - glad that a man of poor talent has been so successful. So many of them go - to the wall.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you always find the success of your inferior rivals so comforting?” - asked Norma. “I don't.” She thought of the depredatory American. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie pushed his hat to the back of his head—a discoloured Homburg - hat that had seen much wear—and rammed his hands in his pockets. - </p> - <p> - “It's horrible to regard oneself and one's fellow-creatures as so many - ghastly fishes tearing one another to pieces so as to get at the same - piece of offal. That's what it all comes to, does n't it?” - </p> - <p> - The picture of the rapt duke as garbage floating on the tide of London - Society brought with it a certain humourous consolation. That of her own - part in the metaphor did not appear so soothing. Jimmie's proposition - being, however, incontrovertible, she changed the subject and enquired - after Aline. Why had n't he brought her? - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid we should have argued about Foljambe's painting,” said - Jimmie, with innocent malice. - </p> - <p> - “And we should have agreed about it,” replied Norma. She talked about - Aline. Morland King had been tale-bearing. It was refreshing, she - confessed, once in a way to hear good of one's fellow-creatures: like - getting up at six in the morning in the country and drinking milk fresh - from the cow. It conferred a sense of unaccustomed virtue. The mention of - milk reminded her that she was dying for tea. Was it procurable? - </p> - <p> - “There's a roomful of it. Can I take you?” asked Jimmie, eagerly. - </p> - <p> - She assented. Jimmie piloted her through the chattering crowd. On the way - they passed by Mrs. Hardacre, still devoting the pearls of her attention - to the pigs. She acknowledged his bow distantly and summoned her daughter - to her side. - </p> - <p> - “What are you <i>affiché</i>-ing yourself with that nondescript man for?” - she asked in a cross whisper. - </p> - <p> - Norma moved away with a shrug, and went with Jimmie into the crowded - tea-room. There, while he was fighting for tea at the buffet, she fell - into a nest of acquaintances. Presently he emerged from the crush - victorious, and, as he poured out the cream for her, became the - unconscious target of sharp feminine glances. - </p> - <p> - “Who is your friend?” asked one lady, as Jimmie retired with the - cream-jug. - </p> - <p> - “I will introduce him if you like,” she replied. He reappeared and was - introduced vaguely. Then he stood silent, listening to a jargon he was at - a loss to comprehend. The women spoke in high, hard voices, with impure - vowel sounds and a clipping of final consonants. The conversation gave him - a confused impression of Ascot, a horse, a foreign prince, and a lady of - fashion who was characterised as a “rotter.” Allusion was also made to a - princely restaurant, which Jimmie, taken thither one evening by King, - regarded as a fairy-land of rare and exquisite flavours, and the opinion - was roundly expressed that you could not get anything fit to eat in the - place and that the wines were poison. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie listened wonderingly. No one seemed disposed to controvert the - statement, which was made by quite a young girl. Indeed one of her friends - murmured that she had had awful filth there a few nights before. A smartly - dressed woman of forty who had drawn away from the general conversation - asked Jimmie if he had been to Cynthia yet. He replied that he very seldom - went to theatres. The lady burst out laughing, and then seeing the genuine - enquiry on his face, checked herself. - </p> - <p> - “I thought you were trying to pull my leg,” she explained. “I mean - Cynthia, the psychic, the crystal gazer. Why, every one is going crazy - over her. Do you mean to say you have n't been?” - </p> - <p> - “Heaven forbid!” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “You may scoff, but she's wonderful. Do you know she actually gave me the - straight tip for the Derby? She did n't mean to, for she does n't lay - herself out for that sort of thing—but she said, after telling me a - lot of things about myself—things that had really happened—she - was getting tired, I must tell you—'I see something in your near - future—it is a horse with a white star on its forehead—it has - gone—I don't know what it means.' I went to the Derby. I had n't put - a cent on, as I had been cleaned out at Cairo during the winter and had to - retrench. The first horse that was led out had a white star on his - forehead. None of the others had. It was St. Damien—a thirty to one - chance. I backed him outright for £300. And now I have £9000 to play with. - Don't tell me there's nothing in Cynthia after that.” - </p> - <p> - The knot of ladies dissolved. Jimmie put Norma's teacup down and went - slowly back with her to the main room. He was feeling depressed, having - lost his bearings in this unfamiliar world. Suddenly he halted. - </p> - <p> - “I wish you could pinch me,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Why?” - </p> - <p> - “To test whether I am awake. Have I really heard a sane and educated lady - expressing her belief in the visions of a crystal-gazing adventuress?” - </p> - <p> - “You have. She believes firmly. So do heaps of women.” - </p> - <p> - “I hope to heaven you don't!” he cried with a sudden intensity. - </p> - <p> - “What concern can my faith be to you?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon. No concern at all,” he said apologetically. “But I - generally blurt out what is in my mind.” - </p> - <p> - “And what is in your mind? I am a person you can be quite frank with.” - </p> - <p> - “I could n't bear the poem of your life to be sullied by all these - vulgarities,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “As I remarked to you the first evening I met you, Mr. Padgate,” she said, - holding out her hand by way of dismissal, “you are an astonishing person!” - </p> - <p> - The poem of her life! The phrase worried her before she slept that night. - She shook the buzzing thing away from her impatiently. The poem of her - life! The man was a fool. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter III—A MODERN BETROTHAL - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> YOUNG woman bred - to a material view of the cosmos and self-trained to cynical expression of - her opinions may thoroughly persuade herself that marriage is a social - bargain in which it would be absurd for sentiment to have a place, and yet - when the hour comes for deciding on so trivial an engagement, may find - herself in an irritatingly unequable frame of mind. For Norma the hour had - all but arrived. Morland King had asked to see her alone in view of an - important conversation. She had made an appointment for ten o'clock, - throwing over her evening's engagements. Her parents were entertaining a - couple of friends in somebody else's box at the opera, and would return in - time to save the important conversation from over-tediousness. She - intended to amuse herself placidly with a novel until King's arrival. - </p> - <p> - This was a week or two after her encounter with Jimmie at the - picture-gallery, since which occasion she had neither seen nor heard of - him. He had faded from the surface of a consciousness kept on continued - strain by the thousand incidents and faces of a London season. To Jimmie - the series of meetings had been a phenomenon of infinite import. She had - come like a queen of romance into his homely garden, and her radiance - lingered, making the roses redder and the grass more green. But the - queenly apparition herself had other things to think about, and when she - had grown angry and called him a fool, had dismissed him definitely from - her mind. It was annoying therefore that on this particular evening the - fool phrase should buzz again in her ears. - </p> - <p> - She threw down her book and went on to the balcony, where, on this close - summer night, she could breathe a little cool air. A clock somewhere in - the house chimed the half-hour. Morland was to come at ten. She longed - for, yet dreaded, his coming; regretted that she had stayed away from the - opera, where, after all, she could have observed the everlasting human - comedy. She had dined early; the evening had been interminable; she felt - nervous, and raged at her weakness. She was tired, out of harmony with - herself, fretfully conscious too of the jarring notes in a room furnished - by uneducated people of sudden wealth. The Wolff-Salamons, out of the - kindness of their shrewd hearts, had offered the house for the season to - the Hardacres, who had accepted the free quarters with profuse - expressions of gratitude; which, however, did not prevent Mr. Hardacre - from railing at the distance of the house (which was in Holland Park) from - his club, or his wife from deprecating to her friends her temporary - residence in what she was pleased to term the Ghetto. Nor did the - Wolff-Salamons' generosity mitigate the effect of their furniture on - Norma's nerves. When Jimmie's phrase came into her head with the - suddenness of a mosquito, she could bear the room no longer. - </p> - <p> - She sat on the balcony and waited for Morland. There at least she was free - from the flaring gold and blue, and the full-length portrait of the lady - of the house, on which with delicate savagery the eminent painter had - catalogued all the shades of her ancestral vulgarity. Perhaps it was this - portrait that had brought back the irony of Jimmie's tribute. The poem of - her life! She sat with her chin on her palm, thinking bitterly of - circumstance. She had never been happy, had grown to disbelieve in so - absurd and animal a state. It had always been the same, as far back as she - could remember. Her childhood: nurses and governesses—a swift - succession of the latter till she began to regard them as remote from her - inner life as the shop girl or railway guard with whom she came into - casual contact. The life broken by visits abroad to fashionable watering - or gambling places where she wandered lonely and proud, neglected by her - parents, watching with keen eyes and imperturbable face the frivolities, - the vices, the sordidnesses, taking them all in, speculating upon them, - resolving some problems unaided and storing up others for future - elucidation. Her year at the expensive finishing school in Paris where the - smartest daughters of America babbled and chattered of money, money, till - the air seemed unfit for woman to breathe unless it were saturated with - gold dust. As hers was not, came discontent and overweening ambitions. Yet - the purity was not all killed. She remembered her first large - dinner-party. The same Lord Wyniard of the unclean scandal had taken her - down. He was thirty years older than she, and an unsavoury reputation had - reached even her young ears. The man regarded her with the leer of a - satyr. She realised with a shudder for the first time the meaning of a - phrase she had constantly met with in French novels—“<i>il la - dévêtit de ses yeux</i>.” His manner was courtly, his air of breeding - perfect; yet he managed to touch her fingers twice, and he sought to lead - her on to dubious topics of conversation. She was frightened. - </p> - <p> - In the drawing-room, seeing him approach, she lost her head, took shelter - with her mother, and trembling whispered to her, “Don't let that man come - and talk to me again, mother, he's a beast.” She was bidden not to be a - fool. The man had a title and twenty thousand a year, and she had - evidently made an impression. A week afterwards her mother invited a - bishop and his wife and Lord Wyniard to dinner, and Lord Wyniard took - Norma down again. And that was her start in the world. She had followed - the preordained course till now, with many adventures indeed by the way, - but none that could justify the haunting phrase—the poem of her - life! - </p> - <p> - Was the man such a fool, after all? Was it even ignorance on his part? Was - it not, rather, wisdom on a lofty plane immeasurably above the - commonplaces of ignorance and knowledge? The questions presented - themselves to her vaguely. She was filled with a strange unrest, a craving - for she knew not what. Yet she would shortly have in her grasp all—or - nearly all—that she had aimed at in life. She counted the tale of - her future possessions—houses, horses, diamonds, and the like. She - seemed to have owned them a thousand years. - </p> - <p> - The clock in the house chimed ten in a pretentious musical way, which - irritated her nerves. The silence after the last of the ten inexorable - tinkles fell gratefully. Then she realised that in a minute or two Morland - would arrive. Her heart began to beat, and she clasped her hands together - in a nervous suspense of which she had not dreamed herself capable. A cab - turned the corner of the street, approached with crescendo rattle, and - stopped at the house. She saw Morland alight and reach up to pay the - cabman. For a silly moment she had a wild impulse to cry to him over - the balcony to go away and leave her in peace. She waited - until she heard the footman open the front door and admit him, then - bracing herself, she entered the drawing-room, looked instinctively in a - mirror, and sat down. - </p> - <p> - She met him cordially enough, returned his glance somewhat defiantly. The - sight of him, florid, sleek, faultlessly attired, brought her back within - the every-day sphere of dulled sensation. He held her hand long enough for - him to say, after the first greeting: - </p> - <p> - “You can guess what I've come for, can't you?” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose I do,” she admitted in an off-hand way. “You will find - frankness one of my vices. Won't you sit down?” - </p> - <p> - She motioned him to a chair, and seating herself on a sofa, prepared to - listen. - </p> - <p> - “I've come to ask you to marry me,” said King. - </p> - <p> - “Well?” she asked, looking at him steadily. - </p> - <p> - “I want to know how it strikes you,” he continued after a brief pause. “I - think you know practically all that I can tell you about myself. I can - give you what you want up to about fifteen thousand a year—it will - be more when my mother dies. We're decent folk—old county family—I - can offer you whatever society you like. You and I have tastes in common, - care for the same things, same sort of people. I'm sound in wind and limb—never - had a day's illness in my life, so you would n't have to look after a - cripple. And I'd give the eyes out of my head to have you; you know that. - How does it strike you?” - </p> - <p> - Norma had averted her glance from him towards the end of his speech, and - leaning back was looking intently at her hands in her lap. For the moment - she felt it impossible to reply. The words that had formulated themselves - in her mind, “I think, Mr. King, the arrangement will be eminently - advantageous to both parties,” were too ludicrous in their adequacy to the - situation. So she merely sat silent and motionless, regarding her - manicured finger-nails, and awaiting another opening. King changed his - seat to the sofa, by her side, and leaned forward. - </p> - <p> - “If you had been a simpler, more unsophisticated girl, Norma, I should - have begun differently. I thought it would please you if I put sentiment - aside.” - </p> - <p> - Her head motioned acquiescence. - </p> - <p> - “But I'm not going to put it aside,” he went on. “It has got its place in - the world, even when a man makes a proposal of marriage. And when I say - I'm in love with you, that I have been in love with you since the first - time I saw you, it's honest truth.” - </p> - <p> - “Say you have a regard, a high regard, even,” said Norma, still not - looking at him, “and I'll believe you.” - </p> - <p> - “I'm hanged if I will,” said Morland. “I say I'm in love with you.” - </p> - <p> - Norma suddenly softened. The phrase tickled her ears again—this time - pleasantly. The previous half-hour's groping in the dark of herself seemed - to have resulted in discovery. She gave him a fleeting smile of mockery. - </p> - <p> - “Listen,” she said. “If you will be contented with regard, a high regard, - on my side, I will marry you. I really like you very much. Will that do?” - </p> - <p> - “It is all I ask now. The rest will come by and by.” - </p> - <p> - “I'm not so sure. We had better be perfectly frank with each other from - the start, for we shall respect each other far more. Anyhow, if you treat - me decently, as I am sure you will, you may be satisfied that I shall - carry out my part of the bargain. My bosom friends tell one another that I - am worldly and heartless and all that—but I've never lied seriously - or broken a promise in my life.” - </p> - <p> - “Very well. Let us leave it at that,” said Morland. “I suppose your people - will have no objection?” - </p> - <p> - “None whatever,” replied Norma, drily. - </p> - <p> - “When can I announce our engagement?” - </p> - <p> - “Whenever you like.” - </p> - <p> - He took two or three reflective steps about the room and reseated himself - on the sofa. - </p> - <p> - “Norma,” he said softly, bending towards her, “I believe on such occasions - there is a sort of privilege accorded to a fellow—may I?” - </p> - <p> - She glanced at him, hesitated, then proffered her cheek. He touched it - with his lips. - </p> - <p> - The ceremony over, there ensued a few minutes of anticlimax. Norma - breathed more freely. There had been no difficulties, no hypocrisies. The - mild approach to rapture on Morland's part was perhaps, after all, only a - matter of common decency, to be accepted by her as a convention of the <i>scène - à faire</i>. So was the kiss. She broke the spell of awkwardness by - rising, crossing the room, and turning off an electric pendant that - illuminated the full-length portrait on the wall. - </p> - <p> - “We can't stand Mrs. Wolff-Salamon's congratulations so soon,” she said - with a laugh. - </p> - <p> - Conversation again became possible. They discussed arrangements. King - suggested a marriage in the autumn. Norma, with a view to the prolongation - of what appealed to her as a novel and desirable phase of existence—maidenhood - relieved of the hateful duty of husband-hunting and unclouded by parental - disapprobation—pleaded for delay till Christmas. She argued that in - all human probability the Parliamentary vacancy at Cosford, the safe seat - on which Morland reckoned, would occur in the autumn, and he could not fix - the date of an election at his own good pleasure. He must, besides, devote - his entire energy to the business; time enough when it was over to think - of such secondary matters as weddings, bridal tours, and the setting up of - establishments. - </p> - <p> - “But you have to be considered, Norma,” he said, half convinced. - </p> - <p> - “My dear Morland,” she replied with a derisive lip, “I should never dream - of coming between you and your public career.” - </p> - <p> - He reflected a moment. “Why should we not get married at once?” - </p> - <p> - Norma laughed. “You are positively pastoral! No, my dear Morland, that's - what the passionate young lover always says to the coy maiden in the play, - but if you will remember, it does n't seem to work even there. Besides, - you must let me gratify my ambitions. When I was very young, I vowed I - would marry an emperor. Then I toned him down into a prince. Later, - becoming more practical, I dreamed of a peer. Finally I descended to a - Member of Parliament. I can't marry you before you are a Member.” - </p> - <p> - “You could have had dozens of 'em for the asking, I'm sure,” returned the - prospective legislator with a grin. “Take them all round, they're a shoddy - lot.” - </p> - <p> - He yielded eventually to Norma's proposal, alluding, however, with an air - of ruefulness, to the infinite months of waiting he would have to endure. - Tactfully she switched him off the line of sentiment to that of soberer - politics. She put forward the platitude that a Parliamentary life was one - of great interest. Morland did not rise even to this level of enthusiasm. - </p> - <p> - “'Pon my soul, I really don't know why I'm going in for it. I promised old - Potter years ago that I would come in when he gave up, and the people down - there more or less took it for granted, the duchess included, and so - without having thought much of it one way or the other, I find myself - caught in a net. It will be a horrible bore. The whole of the session will - be one dismal yawn. Never to be certain of sitting down to one's dinner in - peace and comfort. Never to know when one will have to rush off at a - moment's notice to take part in a confounded division. To have shoals of - correspondence on subjects one knows nothing of and cares less for. It - will be the life of a sweated tailor. And I, of all people, who like to - take things easy! I'm not quite sure whether I'm an idiot or a hero.” - </p> - <p> - He ended in a short laugh and leaned against the mantelpiece, his hands in - his pockets. - </p> - <p> - “It would be the sweet and pretty thing for me to say,” remarked Norma, - “that in my eyes you will always be heroic.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, 'pon my soul, I shall be. We 'll see precious little of one another.” - </p> - <p> - “We 'll have all the more chance of prolonging our illusions,” she replied. - </p> - <p> - On the whole, however, her conduct towards him was irreproachable. The - thaw from her usual iciness to this comparatively harmless raillery - flattered the lover's self-esteem. Woman-wise, as every man in the - profundity of his vain heart believes himself to be, he not only - attributed the change to his own powers of seduction, but interpreted as - significant of a yet greater transformation. A man of Morland's type is - seldom afflicted with a morbid subtlety of perception; and when he has - gained for his own personal use and adornment a woman of singular - distinction, he may be readily pardoned for a slight attack of fatuity. - </p> - <p> - The idyllic hour was brought to a close by the return of Norma's parents. - As Norma, shrinking from the vulgarity of the prearranged scene and - intolerable maternal coaching in her part, had not informed them of her - appointment with Morland, alleging as an excuse for not going to the opera - a disinclination to be bored to tears by <i>Aida</i>, they were mildly - surprised by his presence in the house at so late an hour. In a few words - he acquainted them with what had taken place. He formally asked their - consent. Mr. Hardacre wrung his hand fervently. Mrs. Hardacre's steel-grey - eyes glittered welcome into her family. She turned to her dear child and - expressed her heartfelt joy. Norma, submissive to conventional decencies, - suffered herself to be kissed. Mother and daughter had given up kissing as - a habit for some years past, though they practised it occasionally before - strangers. Mr. Hardacre put his arm around her in a diffident way and - patted her back, murmuring incoherent wishes for her happiness. Everything - to be said and done was effected in a perfectly well-bred manner. Norma - spoke very little, regarding the proceedings with an impersonal air of - satiric interest. At last Mr. Hardacre suggested to Morland a chat over - whisky and soda and a cigar in the library. In unsophisticated circles it - is not unusual at such a conjuncture for a girl's friends and relations to - afford the lovers some unblushing opportunity of bidding each other a - private farewell. Norma, anticipating any such possible though improbable - departure from sanity on the part of her parents, made good her escape - after shaking hands in an ordinary way with Morland. Mrs. Hardacre - followed her upstairs, eager to learn details, which were eventually given - with some acidity by her daughter, and the two men retired below. - </p> - <p> - “My boy,” said Mr. Hardacre, as they parted an hour afterwards, “you will - find that Norma has had the training that will make her a damned fine - woman.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter IV—THE GREAT FROCK EPISODE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">J</span>IMMIE PADGATE was - the son of a retired commander in the Navy, of irreproachable birth and - breeding, of a breezy impulsive disposition, and with a pretty talent as - an amateur actor. Finding idleness the root of all boredom, he took to the - stage, and during the first week of his first provincial tour fell in love - with the leading lady, a fragile waif of a woman of vague upbringing. That - so delicate a creature should have to face the miseries of a touring life—the - comfortless lodgings, the ill-cooked food, the damp death-traps of - dressing-rooms, the long circuitous Sunday train-journeys—roused him - to furious indignation. He married her right away, took her incontinently - from things theatrical, and found congenial occupation in adoring her. But - the hapless lady survived her marriage only long enough to see Jimmie safe - into short frocks, and then fell sick and died. The impulsive sailor - educated the boy in his own fashion for a dozen years or so, and then he, - in his turn, died, leaving his son a small inheritance to be administered - by his only brother, an easy-going bachelor in a Government office. This - inheritance sufficed to send Jimmie to Harrow, where he began his - life-long friendship with Morland King, and to the École des Beaux-Arts in - Paris, where he learned many useful things beside the method of painting - pictures. When he returned to London, his uncle handed him over the - hundred or two that remained, and, his duty being accomplished, fell over - a precipice in the Alps, and concerned himself no more about his nephew. - Then Jimmie set to work to earn his living. - </p> - <p> - When he snatched the child Aline from the embraces of her tipsy aunt and - carried her out into the street, wondering what in the world he should do - with her, he was just under thirty years of age. How he had earned a - livelihood till then and kept himself free from debt he scarcely knew. - When he obtained a fair price for a picture, he deposited a lump sum with - his landlord in respect of rent in advance, another sum with the keeper of - the little restaurant where he ate his meals, and frittered the rest away - among his necessitous friends. In the long intervals between sales, he - either went about penniless or provided himself with pocket money by black - and white or other odd work that comes in the young artist's way. His - residence at that time consisted in a studio and a bedroom in Camden Town. - His wants were few, his hopes were many. He loved his art, he loved the - world. His optimistic temperament brought him smiles from all those with - whom he came in contact—even from dealers, when he wasted their time - in expounding to them the commercial value of an unmarketable picture. He - was quite happy, quite irresponsible. When soberer friends reproached him - for his hand-to-mouth way of living, he argued that if he scraped to-day - he would probably spread the butter thick tomorrow, thus securing the - average, the golden mean, which was the ideal of their respectability. As - for success, that elusive will-o'-the-wisp, the man who did not enjoy the - humour of failure never deserved to succeed. - </p> - <p> - But when he had rescued Aline from the limbo over the small apothecary's - shop, as thoughtlessly and as gallantly as his father before him had - rescued the delicate lady from the trials of theatrical vagabondage, he - found himself face to face with a perplexing problem. That first night he - had risen from an amorphous bed he had arranged for himself on the studio - floor, and entered his own bedroom on tiptoe, and looked with pathetic - helplessness on the tiny child asleep beneath his bedclothes. If it had - been a boy, he would have had no particular puzzle. A boy could have been - stowed in a corner of the studio, where he could have learned manners and - the fear of God and the way of smiling at adversity. He would have - profited enormously, as Jimmie felt assured, by his education. But with a - girl it was vastly different. An endless vista of shadowy, dreamy, - delicate possibilities perplexed him. He conceived women as beings - ethereal, with a range of exquisite emotions denied to masculine - coarseness. Even the Rue Bonaparte had not destroyed his illusion, and he - still attributed to the fair Maenads of the Bal des Quatre-z' Arts the - lingering fragrance of the original Psyche. Of course Jimmie was a fool, - as ten years afterwards Norma had decided; but this view of himself not - occurring to him, he had to manage according to his lights. Here was this - mysterious embryo goddess entirely dependent on him. No corner of the - studio and rough-and-tumble discipline for her. She must sleep on down and - be covered with silk; the airs of heaven must not visit her cheek too - roughly; the clatter of the brazen world must not be allowed to deafen her - to her own sweet inner harmonies. Jimmie was sorely perplexed. - </p> - <p> - His charwoman next morning could throw no light on the riddle. She had - seven children of her own, four of them girls, and they had to get along - the best way they could. She was of opinion that if let alone and just - physicked when she had any complaint, Aline would grow up of her own - accord. Jimmie said that this possibility had not struck him, but - doubtless the lady was right. Could she tell him how many times a day a - little girl ought to be fed and what she was to eat? The charwoman's draft - upon her own family experiences enlightened Jimmie so far that he put a - sovereign into her hand to provide a dinner for her children. After that - he consulted her no more. It was an expensive process. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile it was obvious that a studio and one bedroom would not be - sufficient accommodation, and Jimmie, greatly daring, took a house. He - also engaged a resident housekeeper for himself and a respectable cat for - Aline, and when he had settled down, after having spent every penny he - could scrape together on furniture, began to wonder how he could pay the - rent. A month or two before he would have as soon thought of buying a - palace in Park Lane as renting a house in St. John's Wood—a cheap, - shabby little house, it is true; but still a house, with drawing-room, - dining-room, bedrooms, and a studio built over the space where once the - garden tried to smile. He wandered through it with a wonderment quite as - childish as that of Aline, who had helped him to buy the furniture. But - how was he ever going to pay the rent? - </p> - <p> - After a time he ceased asking the question. The ravens that fed Elijah - provided him with the twenty quarterly pieces of gold. Picture-dealers of - every hue and grade supplied him with the wherewithal to live. In those - early days he penetrated most of the murky byways of his art—alleys - he would have passed by with pinched nose a year before, when an empty - pocket and an empty stomach concerned himself alone. Now, when the money - for the last picture had gone, and no more was forthcoming by way of - advance on royalties on plates, and the black and white market was - congested, he did amazing things. He copied old Masters for a red-faced, - beery print-seller in Frith Street, who found some mysterious market for - them. The price can be gauged by the fact that years afterwards Jimmie - recognised one of his own copies in an auction room, and heard it knocked - down as a genuine Velasquez for eleven shillings and sixpence. He also - painted oil landscapes for a dealer who did an immense trade in this line, - selling them to drapers and fancy-warehousemen, who in their turn retailed - them to an art-loving public, framed in gold, at one and eleven pence - three farthings; and the artist's rate of payment was five shillings a - dozen—panels supplied, but not the paint. To see Jimmie attack these - was the child Aline's delight. In after years she wept in a foolish way - over the memory. He would do half a dozen at a time: first dash in the - foregrounds, either meadows or stretches of shore, then wash in bold, - stormy skies, then a bit of water, smooth or rugged according as it was - meant to represent pool or sea; then a few vigorous strokes would put in a - ship and a lighthouse on one panel, a tree and a cow on a second, a woman - and a cottage on a third. And all the time, as he worked at lightning - speed, he would laugh and joke with the child, who sat fascinated by the - magic with which each mysterious mass of daubs and smudges grew into a - living picture under his hand. When his invention was at a loss, he would - call upon her to suggest accessories; and if she cried out “windmill,” - suddenly there would spring from under the darting brush-point a mill with - flapping sails against the sky. Now and again in his hurry Jimmie would - make a mistake, and Aline would shriek with delight: - </p> - <p> - “Why, Jimmie, that's a cow!” - </p> - <p> - And sure enough, horned and uddered, and with casual tail, a cow was - wandering over the ocean, mildly speculating on the lighthouse. Then - Jimmie would roar with laughter, and he would tether the cow to a buoy and - put in a milkmaid in a boat coming to milk the cow, and at Aline's - breathless suggestion, a robber with a bow and arrow shooting the - unnatural animal from the lighthouse top. Thus he would waste an hour - elaborating the absurdity, finishing it off beautifully so that it should - be worthy of a place on Aline's bedroom wall. - </p> - <p> - The months and years passed, and Jimmie found himself, if not on the - highroad to fortune, at least relieved of the necessity of frequenting the - murky byways aforesaid. He even acquired a little reputation as a portrait - painter, much to his conscientious, but comical despair. “I am taking - people's money under false pretences,” he would say. “I am an imaginative - painter. I can't do portraits. Your real portrait painter can jerk the - very soul out of a man and splash it on to his face. I can't. Why do they - come to me to be photographed, when Brown, Jones, or Robinson would give - them a portrait? Why can't they buy my subject-pictures which are good? In - taking their money I am a mercenary, unscrupulous villain!” Indeed, if - Aline had not been there to keep him within the bounds of sanity, his - Quixotism might have led him to send his clients to Brown or Jones, where - they could get better value for their money. But Aline was there, rising - gradually from the little child into girlhood, and growing in grace day by - day. After all, the charwoman seemed to be right. The tender plant, left - to itself, thrived, shot up apparently of its own accord, much to Jimmie's - mystification. It never occurred to him that he was the all in all of her - training—her mother, father, nurse, teacher, counsellor, example. - Everything she was susceptible of being taught by a human being, he taught - her—from the common rudiments when she was a little child to the - deeper things of literature and history when she was a ripening maiden. - Her life was bound up with his. Her mind took the prevailing colour of his - mind as inevitably as the grasshopper takes the green of grass or the - locust the grey-brown of the sand. But Jimmie in his simple way regarded - the girl's sweet development as a miracle of spontaneous growth. - </p> - <p> - Yet Aline on her part instinctively appreciated the child in Jimmie, and - from very early years assumed a quaint attitude of protection in common - every-day matters. From the age of twelve she knew the exact state of his - financial affairs, and gravely deliberated with him over items of special - expenditure; and when she was fourteen she profited by a change in - housekeepers to take upon herself the charge of the household. Her - unlimited knowledge of domestic science was another thing that astounded - Jimmie, who to the end of his days would have cheerfully given two - shillings a pound for potatoes. And thus, while adoring Jimmie and - conscious that she owed him the quickening of the soul within her, she - became undisputed mistress of her small material domain, and regarded him - as a kind of godlike baby. - </p> - <p> - At last there came a memorable day. According to a custom five or six - years old, Jimmie and Aline were to spend New Year's Eve with some - friends, the Frewen-Smiths. - </p> - <p> - He was a rising architect who had lately won two or three important - competitions and had gradually been extending his scale of living. The New - Year's Eve party was to be a much more elaborate affair than usual. Aline - had received a beautifully printed card of invitation, with “Dancing” in - the corner. She looked through her slender wardrobe. Not a frock could she - find equal to such a festival. And as she gazed wistfully at the simple - child's finery laid out upon her bed, a desire that had dawned vaguely - some time before and had week by week broadened into craving, burst into - the full blaze of a necessity. She sat down on her bed and puckered her - young brows, considering the matter in all its aspects. Then, with her - sex's guilelessness, she went down to the studio, where Jimmie was - painting, and put her arms round his neck. Did he think she could get a - new frock for Mrs. Frewen-Smith's party? - </p> - <p> - “My dear child,” said Jimmie in astonishment, “what an idiotic question!” - </p> - <p> - “But I want really a nice one,” said Aline, coaxingly. - </p> - <p> - “Then get one, dear,” said Jimmie, swinging round on his stool, so as to - look at her. - </p> - <p> - “But I'd like you to give me this one as a present. I don't want it to be - like the others that I help myself to and you know nothing about—although - they all are presents, if it comes to that—I want you to give me - this one specially.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie laid down palette and mahl-stick and brush, and from a letter-case - in his pocket drew out three five-pound notes. - </p> - <p> - “Will this buy one?” - </p> - <p> - The girl's eyes filled with tears. “Oh, you are silly, Jimmie,” she cried. - “A quarter of it will do.” - </p> - <p> - She took one of the notes, kissed him, and ran out of the studio, leaving - Jimmie wondering why the female sex were so prone to weeping. The next day - he saw a strange woman established at the dining-room table. He learned - that it was a dressmaker. For the next week an air of mystery hung over - the place. The girl, in her neat short frock and with her soft brown hair - tied with a ribbon, went about her household duties as usual; but there - was a subdued light in her eyes that Jimmie noticed, but could not - understand. Occasionally he enquired about the new frock. It was - progressing famously, said Aline. It was going to be a most beautiful - frock. He would have seen nothing like it since he was born. - </p> - <p> - “Vanity, thy name is little girls,” he laughed, pinching her chin. - </p> - <p> - On the evening of the 31st of December Jimmie, in his well-worn evening - suit, came down to the dining-room, and for the first time in his life - waited for Aline. He sat down by the fire with a book. The cab that had - been ordered drew up outside. It was a remarkable thing for Aline to be - late. After a while the door opened, and a voice said, “I am ready.” - Jimmie rose, turned round, and for a moment stared stupidly at the sight - that met his eyes. It was Aline certainly, but a new Aline, quite a - different Aline from the little girl he had known hitherto. Her brown hair - was done up in a mysterious manner on the top of her head, and the tip of - a silver-mounted tortoise-shell comb (a present, she afterwards confessed, - from Constance Deering, who was in her secret) peeped coquettishly from - the coils. The fashionably-cut white evening dress showed her neck and - shoulders and pretty round arms, and displayed in a manner that was a - revelation the delicate curves of her young figure. A little gold locket - that Jimmie had given her rose and fell on her bosom. She met his stare in - laughing, blushing defiance, and whisked round so as to present a side - view of the costume. The astonishing thing had a train. - </p> - <p> - “God bless my soul!” cried Jimmie. “It never entered my head!” - </p> - <p> - “What?” - </p> - <p> - “That you're a young woman, that you're grown up, that we'll have all the - young men in the place falling in love with you, that you'll be getting - married, and that I'm becoming a decrepit old fogey. Well, God bless my - soul!” - </p> - <p> - She came up and put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. - </p> - <p> - “You think it becoming, don't you, Jimmie?” - </p> - <p> - “Becoming! Why, it's ravishing! It's irresistible! Do you mean to say that - you got all that, gloves and shoes and everything, out of a five-pound - note?” - </p> - <p> - She nodded. - </p> - <p> - “Good Lord!” said Jimmie in astonishment. - </p> - <p> - In this manner came realisation of the fact that the tiny child he had - undressed and put to sleep in his own bed ten years before had grown into - a woman. The shock brought back some of the old perplexities, and created - for a short while an odd shyness in his dealings with her. He treated her - deferentially, regarded apologetically the mean viands on which he forced - this fresh-winged goddess to dine, went out and wasted his money on - adornments befitting her rank, and behaved with such pathetic foolishness - that Aline, crying and laughing, threatened to run away and earn her - living as a nursery-maid if he did not amend his conduct. Whereupon there - was a very touching scene, and Jimmie's undertaking to revert to his - previous brutality put their relations once more on a sound basis; but all - the same there stole into Jimmie's environment a subtle grace which the - sensitive in him was quick to perceive. Its fragrance revived the tender - grace of a departed day, before he had taken Aline—a day that had - ended in a woeful flight to Paris, where he had arrived just in time to - follow through the streets a poor little funeral procession to a poor - little grave-side in the cemetery of Bagneux. Her name was Sidonie - Bourdain, and she was a good girl and had loved Jimmie with all her heart. - </p> - <p> - The tender grace was that of March violets. The essence of a maid's - springtide diffused itself through the house, and springtide began to bud - again in the man's breast. It was a strange hyperphysical transfusion of - quickening sap. His jesting pictured himself as of a sudden grown hoary, - the potential father of a full-blown woman, two or three years short of - grandfatherdom. But these were words thrown off from the very lightness of - a mood, and vanishing like bubbles in the air. Deep down worked the - craving of the man still young for love and romance and the sweet message - in a woman's eyes. It was a gentle madness—utterly unsuspected by - its victim—but a madness such as the god first inflicts upon him - whom he desires to drive to love's destruction. In the middle of it all, - while Aline and himself were finding a tentative footing on the newly - established basis of their relationship, the ironical deity took him by - the hand and led him into the cold and queenly presence of Norma Hardacre. - . - </p> - <p> - After that Jimmie fell back into his old ways with Aline, and the Great - Frock Episode was closed. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter V—A BROKEN BUTTERFLY - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>LINE sat in the - studio, the picture of housewifely concern, mending Jimmie's socks. It was - not the unoffending garments that brought the expression into her face, - but her glance at the old Dutch clock—so old and crotchety that - unless it were tilted to one side it would not consent to go—whose - hands had come with an asthmatic whir to the hour of eleven. And Jimmie - had not yet come down to breakfast. She had called him an hour ago. His - cheery response had been her sanction for putting the meal into - preparation, and now the bacon would be uneatable. She sighed. Taking care - of Jimmie was no light responsibility. Not that he would complain; far - from it. He would eat the bacon raw or calcined if she set it before him. - But that would not be for his good, and hence the responsibility. In - slipping from her grasp and doing the things he ought not to do, he was an - eel or a twelve-year-old schoolboy. Last night, for instance, instead of - finishing off some urgent work for an art periodical, he had assured her - in his superlative manner that it was of no consequence, and had wasted - his evening with her at the Earl's Court Exhibition. It had been warm and - lovely, and the band and the bright crowd had set her young pulses - throbbing, and they had sat at a little table, and Jimmie had given her - some celestial liquid which she had sucked through a straw, and - altogether, to use her own unsophisticated dialect, it had been perfectly - heavenly. But it was wrong of Jimmie to have sacrificed himself for her - pleasure, and to have deceived her into accepting it. For at three or four - o'clock she had heard him tiptoeing softly past her door on his way to - bed, and the finished work she had found on his table this morning - betrayed his occupation. Even the consolation of scolding him for - oversleep and a spoiled breakfast was thus denied. She spread out her hand - in the sock so as to gauge the extent of a hole, and, contemplating it, - sighed again. - </p> - <p> - The studio was a vast room distempered in bluish grey, and Aline, sitting - solitary at the far end, in the line of a broad quivering beam of light - that streamed through a lofty window running the whole width of the - north-east side, looked like a little brown saint in a bare conventual - hall. For an ascetic simplicity was the studio's key-note. No curtains, - draperies, screens, Japaneseries, no artistic scheme of decoration, no - rare toys of furniture filled the place with luxurious inspiration. Here - and there about the walls hung a sketch by a brother artist; of his own - unsold pictures and studies some were hung, others stacked together on the - floor. An old, rusty, leather drawing-room suite distributed about the - studio afforded sitting accommodation. There was the big easel bearing the - subject-picture on which he now was at work, with a smaller easel carrying - the study by its side. On the model-stand a draped lay figure sprawled - grotesquely. A long deal table was the untidy home of piles of papers, - books, colours, brushes, artistic properties. A smaller table at the end - where Aline sat was laid for breakfast. It was one of Jimmie's - eccentricities to breakfast in the studio. The dining-room for dinner—he - yielded to the convention; for lunch, perhaps; for breakfast, no. All his - intimate life had been passed in the studio; the prim little drawing-room - he scarcely entered half-a-dozen times in the year. - </p> - <p> - Aline was contemplating the hole in the sock when the door opened. She - sprang to her feet, advanced a step, and then halted with a little - exclamation. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it's you!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. Are you disappointed?” asked the smiling youth who had appeared - instead of the expected Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I can get over it. How are you, Tony?” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Anthony Merewether gave her the superfluous assurance that he was in - good health. He had the pleasant boyish face and clean-limbed figure of - the young Englishman upon whom cares sit lightly. Aline resumed her work - demurely. The young man seated himself near by. - </p> - <p> - “How is Jimmie?” - </p> - <p> - “Whom are you calling 'Jimmie'?” asked Aline. “Mr. Padgate, if you - please.” - </p> - <p> - “You call him Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “I've called him so ever since I could speak. I think it was one of the - first three words I learned. When you can say the same, you can call him - Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, how is Mr. Padgate?” the snubbed youth asked with due humility. - </p> - <p> - “You can never tell how a man is before breakfast. Why are n't you at - work?” - </p> - <p> - He bowed to her sagacity, and in answer to her question explained the - purport of his visit. He was going to spend the day sketching up the - river. Would she put on her hat and come with him? - </p> - <p> - “A fine lot of sketching you'd do, if I did,” said Aline. - </p> - <p> - The young man vowed with fervour that as soon as he had settled down to a - view he would work furiously and would not exchange a remark with her. - </p> - <p> - “Which would be very amusing for me,” retorted Aline. “No, I can't come. - I'm far too busy. I've got to hunt up a model for the new picture.” - </p> - <p> - Tony leant back in his chair, dispirited, and began to protest. She - laughed at his woeful face, and half yielding, questioned him about - trains. He overwhelmed her with a rush of figures, then paused to give her - time to recover. His eyes wandered to the breakfast-table, where lay - Jimmie's unopened correspondence. One letter lay apart from the others. - Tony took it up idly. - </p> - <p> - “Here's a letter come to the wrong house.” - </p> - <p> - “No; it is quite right,” said Aline. - </p> - <p> - “Who is David Rendell, Esquire?” - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Rendell is a friend of Jimmie's, I believe.” - </p> - <p> - “I have never heard of him. What's he like?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't know. Jimmie never speaks of him,” replied Aline. - </p> - <p> - “That's odd.” - </p> - <p> - The young man threw the letter on the table and returned to the subject of - the outing. She must accompany him. He felt a perfect watercolour working - itself up within him. One of those dreamy bits of backwater. He had a - title for it already, “The Heart of Summer.” The difference her presence - in the punt would make to the picture would be that between life and - deadness. - </p> - <p> - The girl fluttered a shy, pleased glance at him. But she loved to tease; - besides, had she not but lately awakened to the sweet novelty of her young - womanhood? - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps Jimmie won't let me go.” - </p> - <p> - Tony sprang to his feet. “Jimmie won't let you go!” he exclaimed in - indignant echo. “Did he ever deny you a pleasure since you were born?” - </p> - <p> - Her eyes sparkled at his tribute to the adored one's excellences. “That's - just where it is, you see, Tony. His very goodness to me won't let me do - things sometimes.” - </p> - <p> - The servant hurried in with the breakfast-tray and the news that the - master was coming down. Aline anxiously inspected the bacon. To her relief - it was freshly cooked. In a minute or two a voice humming an air was heard - outside, and Jimmie entered, smilingly content with existence. - </p> - <p> - “Hallo, Tony, what are you doing here, wasting the morning light? Have - some breakfast? Why haven't you laid a place for him?” - </p> - <p> - Tony declined the invitation, and explained his presence. Jimmie rubbed - his hands. - </p> - <p> - “A day on the river! The very thing for Aline. It will do her good.” - </p> - <p> - “I did n't say I was going, Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “Not going? Rubbish. Put on your things and be off at once.” - </p> - <p> - “How can I until I have given you your breakfast? And then there's the - model—you would never be able to engage her by yourself. And you - must have her to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “I know I'm helpless, dear, but I can engage a model.” - </p> - <p> - “And waste your time. Besides, you won't be able to find the address.” - </p> - <p> - “There are cab-horses, dear, with unerring instinct.” - </p> - <p> - “Your breakfast is getting cold, Jimmie,” said Aline, not condescending to - notice the outrage of her economic principles. - </p> - <p> - Eventually Jimmie had his way. Tony Merewether was summarily dismissed, - but bidden to return in an hour's time, when Aline would be graciously - pleased to be ready. She poured out Jimmie's coffee, and sat at the side - of the table, watching him eat. He turned to his letters, picked up the - one addressed to “David Rendell.” Aline noticed a shade of displeasure - cross his face. - </p> - <p> - “Who is Mr. Rendell, Jimmie?” asked Aline. - </p> - <p> - “A man I know, dear,” he replied, putting the envelope in his pocket. He - went on with his breakfast meditatively for a few moments, then opened his - other letters. He threw a couple of bills across the table. His face had - regained its serenity. - </p> - <p> - “See that these ill-mannered people are paid, Aline.” - </p> - <p> - “What with, dear?” - </p> - <p> - “Money, my child, money. What!” he exclaimed, noting a familiar expression - on her face. “Are we running short? Send them telegrams to say we'll pay - next week. Something is bound to come in by then.” - </p> - <p> - “Mrs. Bullingdon ought to send the cheque for her portrait,” said Aline. - </p> - <p> - “Of course she will. And there's something due from Hyam. What a thing it - is to have great expectations! Here's one from Renshaw,” he said, opening - another letter. “'Dear Padgate'—Dear Padgate!” He put his hands on - the table and looked across at Aline. “Now, what on earth can I have done - to offend him? I've been 'Dear Jimmie' for the last twelve years.” - </p> - <p> - Aline shook her young head pityingly. “Don't you know yet that it is - always 'Dear Padgate' when they want to borrow money of you?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie glanced at the letter and then across the table again. - </p> - <p> - “Dear me,” he said thoughtfully. “Your knowledge of the world at your - tender age is surprising. He does want money. Poor old chap! It is really - quite touching. 'For the love of God lend me four pounds ten to carry me - on to the end of the quarter.'” - </p> - <p> - “That's two months off. Mr. Renshaw will have to be more economical than - usual,” said Aline, drily. “I am afraid he drinks dreadfully, Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “Hush, dear!” he said, becoming grave. “A man's infirmities are his - infirmities, and we are not called upon to be his judges. How much have we - in the house altogether?” he asked with a sudden return to his bright - manner. - </p> - <p> - “Ten pounds three and sixpence.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, that's a fortune. Of course we can help Renshaw. Wire him his four - pounds ten when you go out.” - </p> - <p> - “But, Jimmie——” expostulated this royal person's minister of - finance. - </p> - <p> - “Do what I say, my dear,” said Jimmie, quietly. - </p> - <p> - That note in his voice always brought about instant submission, fetched - her down from heights of pitying protection to the prostrate humility of a - little girl saying “Yes, Jimmie,” as to a directing providence. She did - not know from which of the two positions, the height or the depth, she - loved him the more. As a matter of fact, the two ranges of emotion were - perfect complements one of the other, the sex in her finding satisfaction - of its two imperious cravings, to shelter and to worship. - </p> - <p> - The Renshaw incident was closed, locked up as it were in her heart by the - little snap of the “Yes, Jimmie.” One or two other letters were discussed - gaily. The last to be opened was a note from Mrs. Deering. “Come to lunch - on Sunday and bring Aline. I am asking your friend Norma Hardacre.” Aline - clapped her hands. She had been longing to see that beautiful Miss - Hardacre again. Of course Jimmie would go? He smiled. - </p> - <p> - “Another unconscious sitting for the portrait,” he said. His glance - wandered to a strainer that stood with its face to the wall, at a further - end of the room, and he became absent-minded. Lately he had been dreaming - a boy's shadowy dreams, too sweet as yet for him to seek to give them form - in his waking hours. A warm touch on his hand brought him back to diurnal - things. It was the coffee-pot held by Aline. - </p> - <p> - “I have asked you twice if you would have more coffee,” she laughed. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose I'm the happiest being in existence,” he said irrelevantly. - </p> - <p> - Aline poured out the coffee. “You have n't got much to make you happy, - poor dear!” she remarked, when the operation was concluded. - </p> - <p> - His retort was checked by a violent peal at the front door-bell and a - thundering knock. - </p> - <p> - “That's Morland,” cried Jimmie. “He is like the day of doom—always - heralds his approach by an earthquake.” - </p> - <p> - Morland it was, in riding tweeds, a whip in his hand. He pointed an - upbraiding finger at the half-eaten breakfast. The sloth of these - painters! Aline flew to the loved one's protection. Jimmie had not gone to - bed till four. The poor dear had to sleep. - </p> - <p> - “I did n't get to bed till four, either,” said Morland, with the healthy, - sport-loving man's contempt for people who require sleep, “but I was up at - eight and was riding in the Park at nine. Then I thought I'd come up here. - I've got some news for you.” - </p> - <p> - Aline escaped. Morland's air of health and prosperity overpowered her. She - did not dare whisper detraction of him to Jimmie, in whose eyes he was - incomparable, but to Tony Merewether she had made known her wish that he - did not look always so provokingly clean, so eternally satisfied with - himself. All the colour of his mind had gone into his face, was her - uncharitable epigram. Aline, it will be observed, saw no advantage in a - tongue perpetually tipped with honey. - </p> - <p> - “What is your news?” asked Jimmie, as soon as they were alone. - </p> - <p> - “I have done it at last,” said Morland. - </p> - <p> -“What?” - </p> - <p> - “Proposed. I'm engaged. I'm going to be married.” -</p> - <p> -Jimmie's honest face - beamed pleasure. He wrung Morland's hand. The best news he had heard for a - long time. When had he taken the plunge into the pool of happiness? - </p> - <p> - “Last night.” - </p> - <p> - “And you have come straight to tell me? It is like you. I am touched, it - is good to know you carry me in your heart like that.” - </p> - <p> - Morland laughed. “My dear old Jimmie—” - </p> - <p> - “I am so glad. I never suspected anything of the kind. Well, she's an - amazingly lucky young woman whoever she is. When can I have a timid peep - at the divinity?” - </p> - <p> - “Whenever you like—why, don't you know who it is?” - </p> - <p> - “Lord, no, man; how should I?” - </p> - <p> - “It's Norma Hardacre.” - </p> - <p> - “Norma Hardacre!” The echo came from Jimmie as from a hollow cave, and was - followed by a silence no less cavernous. The world was suddenly reduced to - an empty shell, black, meaningless. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Morland, with a short laugh. He carefully selected, cut, and - lit a cigar, then turned his back and examined the half-finished picture. - He felt the Briton's shamefacedness in the novelty of the position of - affianced lover. The echo that in Jimmie's ears had sounded so forlorn was - to him a mere exclamation of surprise. His solicitude as to the cigar and - his inspection of the picture saved him by lucky chance from seeing - Jimmie's face, which wore the blank, piteous look of a child that has had - its most cherished possession snatched out of its hand and thrown into the - fire. Such episodes in life cannot be measured by time as it is reckoned - in the physical universe. To Jimmie, standing amid the chaos of his - dreams, indefinite hours seemed to have passed since he had spoken. For - indefinite hours he seemed to grope towards reconstruction. He lived - intensely in the soul's realm, where time is not, was swept through - infinite phases of emotion; finally awoke to a consciousness of - renunciation, full and generous. Perhaps a minute and a half had elapsed. - He crossed swiftly to Morland and clapped him on the shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “The woman among all women I could have wished for you.” - </p> - <p> - His voice quavered a little; but Morland, turning round, saw nothing in - Jimmie's eyes but the honest gladness he had taken for granted he should - find there. The earnest scrutiny he missed. He laughed again. - </p> - <p> - “There are not many in London to touch her,” he said in his self-satisfied - way. - </p> - <p> - “Is there one?” - </p> - <p> - “You seem more royalist than—well, than Morland King,” said the - happy lover, chuckling at his joke. “I wish I had the artist's command of - superlatives as you have, Jimmie. It would come in deuced handy sometimes. - Now if, for instance, you wanted to describe the reddest thing that ever - was, you would find some hyperbolic image for it, whereas I could only say - it was damned red. See what I mean?” - </p> - <p> - “It does n't matter what you say, but what you feel,” said Jimmie. - “Perhaps we hyperbolic people fritter away emotions in the mere frenzy of - expressing them. The mute man often has deeper feelings.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I'm not going to set up as an unerupted volcano,” laughed Morland. - “I'm only the average man that has got the girl he has set his heart on—and - of course I think her in many ways a paragon, otherwise I should n't have - set my heart on her. There are plenty to pick from, God knows. And they - let you know it too, by Jove. You're lucky enough to live out of what is - called Society, so you can't realise how they shy themselves at you. - Sometimes one has to be simply a brute and dump 'em down hard. That's what - I liked about Norma Hardacre. She required no dumping.” - </p> - <p> - “I should think not,” said Jimmie. -</p> - <p> -“There's one thing that pleases me - immensely,” Morland remarked, “and that is the fancy she has taken for - you. It's genuine. I've never heard her talk of any one else as she does - of you. She is not given to gush, as you may have observed.” - </p> - <p> - “It's a very deep pleasure to me to hear it,” said Jimmie, looking bravely - in the eyes of the happy man. “My opinion of Miss Hardacre I have told you - already.” - </p> - <p> - Morland waved his cigar as a sign of acceptance of the tribute to the - lady. - </p> - <p> - “I was thinking of myself,” he said. “There are a good many men I shall - have to drop more or less when I'm married. Norma would n't have 'em in - the house. There are others that will have to be on probation. Now I - shouldn't have liked you to be on probation—to run the risk of my - wife not approving of you—caring to see you—you know what I - mean. But you're different from anybody else, Jimmie. I'm not given to - talking sentiment—but we've grown up together—and somehow, in - spite of our being thrown in different worlds, you have got to be a part - of my life. There!” he concluded with a sigh of relief, putting on his hat - and holding out his hand, “I've said it!” - </p> - <p> - The brightening of Jimmie's eyes gave token of a heart keenly touched. - Deeply rooted indeed must be the affection that could have impelled - Morland to so unusual a demonstration of feeling. His nature was as - responsive as a harp set in the wind. His counterpart in woman would have - felt the tears well into her eyes. A man is allowed but a breath, a - moisture, that makes the eyes bright. Morland had said the final word of - sentiment; equally, utterly true of himself. Morland was equally a part of - his life. It were folly to discuss the reasons. Loyal friendships between - men are often the divinest of paradoxes. - </p> - <p> - The touch upon Jimmie's heart was magnetic. It soothed pain. It set free a - flood of generous emotion, even thanksgiving that he was thus allowed - vicarious joy in infinite perfections. It was vouchsafed him to be happy - in the happiness of two dear to him. This much he said to Morland, with - what intensity of meaning the fortunate lover was a myriad leagues from - suspecting. - </p> - <p> - “I'll see you safely mounted,” said Jimmie, opening the studio door. Then - suddenly like a cold wind a memory buffeted him. He shut the door again. - </p> - <p> - “I forgot. I have a letter for you. It came this morning.” - </p> - <p> - Morland took the letter addressed to “David Rendell” which Jimmie drew - from his pocket, and uttered an angry exclamation. - </p> - <p> - “I thought this infernal business was over and done with.” - </p> - <p> - He tore open the envelope, read the contents, then tilted his hat to the - back of his head, and sitting down on one of the dilapidated - straight-backed chairs of the leather suite, looked at Jimmie in great - perplexity. In justice to the man it must be said that anger had vanished. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you know what these letters mean that you have been taking in - for me?” - </p> - <p> - “I have never permitted myself to speculate,” said Jimmie. “You asked me - to do you a very great service. It was a little one. You are not a man to - do anything dishonourable. I concluded you had your reasons, which it - would have been impertinent of me to inquire into.” - </p> - <p> - “It's the usual thing,” said Morland, with a self-incriminatory shrug. “A - girl.” - </p> - <p> - “A love affair was obvious.” - </p> - <p> - Morland spat out an exclamation of impatient disgust for himself and rose - to his feet. - </p> - <p> - “Heaven knows how it began—she was poor and lonely—almost a - lady—and she had beauty and manners and that sort of thing above her - class.” - </p> - <p> - “They always have,” said Jimmie, with a pained expression. “You need n't - tell me the story. It's about the miserablest on God's earth, is n't it - now?” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose so. Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie!” - </p> - <p> - The unwonted rarefied air of sentiment that he had been breathing for the - last twelve hours had, as it were, intoxicated him. Had the letter reached - him the day before, he would have left the story connected with it in the - cold-storage depository where men are wont to keep such things. No one - would have dreamed of its existence. But now he felt an exaggerated - remorse, a craving for confession, and yet he made the naked remorseful - human's instinctive clutch at palliatives. - </p> - <p> - “Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie. I swear I loved her at first. You - know what it is. You yourself loved a little girl in Paris—you told - me about it—did n't you?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie set his teeth, and said, “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - Morland went on. - </p> - <p> - “Some women have ways with them, you know. They turn you into one of those - toy thermometers—you hold the bulb, and the spirit in it rises and - bubbles. She got hold of me that way—I bubbled, I suppose—it - was n't her fault, she was sweet and innocent. It was her nature. You - artistic people call the damned thing a temperament, I believe. Anyhow I - was in earnest at the beginning. Then—one always does—I found - it was only a passing fancy.” - </p> - <p> - “And like a passing cab it has splashed you with mud. How does the matter - stand now?” - </p> - <p> - “Read this,” said Morland, handing him the letter. - </p> - <p> - “Dearest,” it ran, “the time is coming when you can be very good to me. - Jenny.” That was all. Jimmie, holding the paper in front of him, looked up - distressfully at Morland. - </p> - <p> - “'The time is coming when you can be very good to me.' How confoundedly - pathetic! Poor little girl! Oh, damn it, Morland, you are going to be good - to her, are n't you?” - </p> - <p> - “I'll do all I can. Of course I'll do all I can. I tell you I'm not a - beast. Heaps of other men would n't care a hang about it. They would tell - her to go to the devil. I'm not that sort.” - </p> - <p> - “I know you're not,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Morland lit another cigar with the air of a man whose virtues deserve some - reward. - </p> - <p> - “The letter can only have one interpretation. Have you known of it?” - </p> - <p> - “Never dreamed of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Was there any question of marriage?” - </p> - <p> - “None whatever. Difference of position and all the rest of it. She quite - understood. In fact, it was like your Quartier Latin affair.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie winced. “It was n't the Quartier Latin—and I was going to - marry her—only she died before—oh, don't mind me, Morland. - What's going to be done now?” Morland shrugged his shoulders again, having - palliated himself into a more normal condition. His conscience, to speak - by the book, was clothed and in its right mind. - </p> - <p> - “It's infernally hard lines it should come just at this time. You see, - I've heaps of things to think about. My position—Parliament—I'm - going to contest Cosford in the autumn. If the constituency gets hold of - any scandal, I'm ruined. You know the Alpine heights of morality of a - British constituency—and there's always some moral scavenger about. - And then there's Norma—” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, there's Norma,” said Jimmie, seriously. - </p> - <p> - “It's unpleasant, you see. If she should know—” - </p> - <p> - “It would break her heart,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Morland started and looked at Jimmie stupidly, his mental faculties for - the second paralysed, incapable of grappling with the idea. Was it - scathing sarcasm or sheer idiocy? Recovering his wits, he realised that - Jimmie was whole-heartedly, childishly sincere. With an effort he - controlled a rebellious risible muscle at the corner of his lip. - </p> - <p> - “It would give her great pain,” he said in grave acquiescence. - </p> - <p> - “It's a miserable business,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Morland paced the studio. Suddenly he stopped. - </p> - <p> - “Should there be any unpleasantness over this, can I rely on your help to - pull me through?” - </p> - <p> - “You know you can,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Morland looked relieved. - </p> - <p> - “May I write a note?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie pointed to a corner of the long deal table. - </p> - <p> - “You'll find over there all the materials for mending a broken butterfly,” - he said sadly. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter VI—THE LOVERS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>ROUD in the - make-believe that he was a fashionable groom, the loafer holding Morland's - horse touched his ragged hat smartly at his temporary master's approach. - </p> - <p> - “Give him something, Jimmie; I have n't any change,” cried Morland. He - mounted and rode away, debonair, with a wave of farewell. Jimmie drew from - his pocket the first coin to hand, a florin, and gave it to the loafer, - who came down forthwith from his dreams of high estate to commonplace - earth, and after the manner of his class adjured the Deity to love the - munificent gentleman. The two shillings would bring gladness into the - hearts of his sick wife and starving children. Subject to the attestation - of the Deity, he put forward as a truth the statement that they had not - eaten food for a week. He himself was a hard-working man, but the - profession of holding horses in the quiet roads of St. John's Wood was not - lucrative. - </p> - <p> - “You're telling me lies, I'm afraid,” said Jimmie, “but you look miserable - enough to say anything. Here!” He gave him two more shillings. The loafer - thanked him and made a bee-line for the nearest public-house, while - Jimmie, forgetting for the moment the pitiable aspect that poor humanity - sometimes wears in the persons of the lowly, watched Morland's well-set-up - figure disappear at the turn of the road. There was no sign of black care - sitting behind that rider. It perched instead on Jimmie's shoulders, and - there stayed for the rest of the day. In spite of his staunch trust in - Morland's honour and uprightness, he found it hard to condone the fault. - The parallel which Morland had not too ingenuously drawn with the far-away - passionate episode in his own life had not seemed just. He had winced, - wondered at the failure in tact, rebelled against the desecration of a - memory so exquisitely sad. The moment after he had forgiven the blundering - friend and opened his heart again to pity. He was no strict moralist, - turning his head sanctimoniously aside at the sight of unwedded lovers. - His heart was too big and generous. But between the romance of illicit - love and the commonplace of vulgar seduction stretched an immeasurable - distance. The words of the pathetic note, however, lingering in his mind, - brought with them a redeeming fragrance. They conjured up the picture of - sweet womanhood. They hinted no reproach; merely a trust which was - expected to be fulfilled. To her Morland was the honourable gentleman all - knew; he had promised nothing that he had not performed, that he would not - perform. All day long, as he sat before his easel, mechanically copying - folds of drapery from the lay figure on the platform, Jimmie strove to - exonerate his friend from the baser fault, and to raise the poor love - affair to a plane touched by diviner rays. But the black care still sat - upon his shoulders. - </p> - <p> - The next morning he rose earlier than usual, and sought Morland at his - house in Sussex Gardens. He found him eating an untroubled breakfast. - Silver dishes, tray, and service were before him. A great flower-stand - filled with Maréchal Niel roses stood in the centre of the table. Fine - pictures hung round the walls. Rare china, old oak chairs, and sideboard - bright with silver bowls—all the harmonious and soothing luxury of a - rich man's dining-room, gave the impression of ease, of a life apart from - petty cares, petty vices, petty ambitions. A thick carpet sheltered the - ears from the creaking footsteps of indiscretion. Awnings before the open - windows screened the too impertinent light of the morning sun. And the - face and bearing of the owner of the room were in harmony with its - atmosphere. Jimmie reproached himself for the doubts that had caused his - visit. Morland laughed at them. Had he not twice or thrice declared - himself not a beast? Surely Jimmie must trust his oldest friend to have - conducted himself honourably. There was never question of marriage. There - had been no seduction. Could n't he understand? They had parted amicably - some three months ago, each a little disillusioned. Morland was generous - enough to strip a man's vanity from himself and stand confessed as one of - whom a superior woman had grown tired. The new development of the affair - revealed yesterday had, he repeated, come upon him like an unexpected - lash. The irony of it, too, in the first flush of his engagement! - Naturally he was remorseful; naturally he would do all that a man of - honour could under the circumstances. - </p> - <p> - “More is not expected and not wanted. On my word of honour,” said Morland. - </p> - <p> - He had been upset, he continued smilingly. The consequences might be - serious—to himself, not so much to Jenny. There were complications - in the matter that might be tightened—not by Jenny—into a - devil of a tangle. Had he not pleaded special urgency when he had first - asked Jimmie to take in the letters under a false name? It might be a - devil of a tangle, he repeated. - </p> - <p> - “But till that happens—and please God it may never happen—we - may dismiss the whole thing from our minds,” said Morland, reassuringly. - “Jenny will want for nothing, and want nothing. Do you think if there were - any melodramatic villainy on my conscience I would go and engage myself to - marry Norma Hardacre?” - </p> - <p> - This was the final argument that sent the black care, desperately clinging - with the points of its claws, into infinite space. Jimmie smiled again. - Morland waved away the uncongenial topic and called for a small bottle of - champagne on ice. A glass apiece, he said, to toast the engagement. - Rightly, champagne was the wine of the morning. - </p> - <p> - “It is the morning sunshine itself distilled,” said Jimmie, lifting up his - glass. - </p> - <p> - He went home on the top of an omnibus greatly cheered, convinced that, - whatever had happened, Morland had done no grievous wrong. When Aline went - to the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him busy upon the sketch - portrait of Norma, and humming a tune—a habit of his when work was - proceeding happily under his fingers. She looked over his shoulder - critically. - </p> - <p> - “That's very good,” she condescended to remark. “Now that Miss Hardacre is - engaged to Mr. King, why don't you ask her to come and sit?” - </p> - <p> - “Do you think it's a good likeness?” he asked, leaning back and regarding - the picture. - </p> - <p> - “It is the best likeness you have ever got in a portrait,” replied Aline, - truthfully. - </p> - <p> - “Then, wisest of infants, what reason could I have for asking Miss - Hardacre to sit? Besides, I don't want her to know anything about it.” - </p> - <p> - Aline glowed with inspiration. Why should things the most distantly - connected with somebody else's marriage so exhilarate the female heart? - </p> - <p> - “Is it going to be a wedding present, Jimmie?” - </p> - <p> - “It is a study in indiscretion, my child,” he replied enigmatically. - </p> - <p> - “You are perfectly horrid.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose I am,” he admitted, looking at the portrait with some - wistfulness. “Ugly as sin, and with as much manners as a kangaroo =—does - your feminine wisdom think a woman could ever fall in love with me?” - </p> - <p> - She touched caressingly the top of his head where the hair was thinning, - and her feminine wisdom made this astounding answer: - </p> - <p> - “Why, you are too old, Jimmie dear.” - </p> - <p> - Too old! He turned and regarded her for a moment in rueful wonder. Absurd - though it was, the statement gave him a shock. He was barely forty, and - here was this full-grown, demure, smiling young woman telling him he was - too old for any of her sex to trouble their heads about him. His forlorn - aspect brought a rush of colour to the girl's cheeks. She put her arms - round his neck. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Jimmie, I have hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm a silly little goose. It's a - wonder that every woman on earth is n't in love with you.” - </p> - <p> - “That is the tone of exaggerated affection, but not of conviction,” he - said. “I am the masculine of what in a woman is termed <i>passée</i>. I - might gain the esteem of a person of the opposite sex elderly like myself, - but my gallant exterior can no longer inspire a romantic passion. My day - is over. No, you have not hurt me. The sword of truth pierces, but it does - not hurt.” - </p> - <p> - Then he broke into his good, sunny laughter, and rose and put his arm with - rough tenderness round her shoulder, as he had done ever since she could - walk. - </p> - <p> - “You are the youngest thing I have come across for a long time.” - </p> - <p> - Aline, as she nestled up against him on their way out of the studio, was - thus impressed with a salutary consciousness of her extreme youth. But - this in itself magnified Jimmie's age. She loved him with a pure - passionate tenderness; no one, she thought, could know him without loving - him; but her ideal of the hero of romance for whom fair ladies pined away - in despairing secret was far different. She was too young as yet, too - little versed in the signs by which the human heart can be read, to - suspect what his playful question implied of sadness, hopelessness, - renunciation. - </p> - <p> - On Sunday they lunched with Connie Deering. Morland and Norma and old - Colonel Pawley, an ancient acquaintance of every one, were the only other - guests. It was almost a family party, cried Connie, gaily; and it had been - an inspiration, seeing that the invitations had been sent out before the - engagement had taken place. Jimmie and Aline, being the first arrivals, - had their hostess to themselves for a few moments. - </p> - <p> - “They both think it bad form to show a sign of it, but they are awfully - gone upon each other,” Connie said. “So you must n't judge Norma by what - she says. All girls like to appear cynical nowadays. It's the fashion. But - they fall in love in the same silly way, just as they used to.” - </p> - <p> - “I am glad to hear they are fond of one another,” said Jimmie. “The deeper - their love the happier I shall be.” - </p> - <p> - The little lady looked at him for a second out of the corner of her eye. - </p> - <p> - “What an odd thing to say!” - </p> - <p> - “It ought to be a commonplace thing to feel.” - </p> - <p> - “In the happiness of others there is always something that is pleasing. By - giving him the lie like that you will make poor Rochefoucauld turn in his - grave.” - </p> - <p> - “He ought to be kept revolving like Ixion,” said Jimmie. “His maxims are - the Beatitudes of Hell.” - </p> - <p> - He laughed off the too trenchant edge of his epigram, qualifying it in his - kind way. After all, you must n't take your cynic too literally. No doubt - a kindly heart beats in the ducal bosom. - </p> - <p> - “I should like to know your real opinion of the devil,” laughed Mrs. - Deering. - </p> - <p> - The opportunity for so doing was lost for the moment. The lovers entered, - having driven together from the Park. At the sight of Norma, Aline - twitched Jimmie's arm with a little gasp of admiration and Jimmie's breath - came faster. He had not seen her hitherto quite so coldly, radiantly - beautiful. Perhaps it was the great white hat she wore, a mystery of - millinery, chiffon and roses and feathers melting one with the other into - an effect of broad simplicity, that formed an unsanctified but alluring - halo to a queenly head. Perhaps it was the elaborately simple cream dress, - open-worked at neck and arms, that moulded her ripe figure into especial - stateliness. Perhaps, thought poor Jimmie, it was the proud loveliness - into which love was wont to transfigure princesses. - </p> - <p> - She received Connie's kiss and outpouring of welcome with her usual - mocking smile. “If you offer me congratulations, I shall go away, Connie. - I have been smirking for the last hour and a half. We were so exhausted by - playing the sentimental idiots that we did n't exchange a word on our way - here; though I believe Morland likes it. We saw those dreadful - Fry-Robertsons bearing down upon us. He actually dragged me up to meet - them, as who should say 'Let us go up and get congratulated.'” - </p> - <p> - “I don't see why I should hide my luck under a bushel,” laughed Morland. - </p> - <p> - “Thank you for the compliment,” said Norma. “But if you won at Monte Carlo - you would n't pin the banknotes all over your coat and strut about the - street. By the way, Connie, we're late. Need we apologise?” - </p> - <p> - “You're not the last. Colonel Pawley is coming.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh dear! that old man radiates boredom. How can you stand him, Connie?” - </p> - <p> - “He's the sweetest thing on earth,” said her hostess. - </p> - <p> - Norma laughed a little contemptuously and came forward to greet Aline and - Jimmie. As she did so, her face softened. Jimmie, drawing her aside, - offered his best wishes. - </p> - <p> - “The happiness of a man whom I have loved like a brother all my life can't - be indifferent to me. On that account you must forgive my speaking warmly. - May you be very happy.” - </p> - <p> - “I shall be happy in having such a champion of my husband for a - brother-in-law,” said Norma, lightly. - </p> - <p> - “A loyal friend of your own, if you will,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - There was a short pause. Norma ran the tip of her gloved finger down the - leaf of a plant on a stand. They were by the window. A vibration in his - voice vaguely troubled her. - </p> - <p> - “What do you really mean by 'loyal'?” she said at last, without looking at - him. - </p> - <p> - “The word has but one meaning. If I tried to explain further, I should - only appear to be floundering in fatuity.” - </p> - <p> - “I believe you are the kind that would stick to a woman through thick and - thin, through good repute and ill repute. That's what you mean. Only you - don't like to hint that I might at any time become disreputable. I may. - All things are possible in this world.” - </p> - <p> - “Not that,” said Jimmie. “Perhaps I was unconsciously pleading for myself. - Say you are a queen in your palace. While humbly soliciting a position in - your household, I somewhat grandiloquently submit my qualifications.” - </p> - <p> - “What's all this about?” asked Morland, coming up, having overheard the - last sentence. - </p> - <p> - “I am pleading for a modest position in Her Majesty's Household,” said - Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “We'll fit him up with cap and bells,” laughed Morland, “and make him - chief jester, and give him a bladder to whack us over the head with. He's - fond of doing that when we misbehave ourselves. Then he can get us out of - our scrapes, like the fellow in Dumas—what's his name—Chicot, - was n't it?” - </p> - <p> - Pleased with his jest, he turned to acquaint Connie with Jimmie's new - dignity. Both the jest and the laugh that greeted it jarred upon Norma. - Jimmie said to her good-humouredly: - </p> - <p> - “I might be Chicot, the loyal friend, without the cap and bells. I am a - dull dog.” - </p> - <p> - She looked out of the window and laughed somewhat bitterly. - </p> - <p> - “I think you are a great deal too good to have anything to do with any of - us.” - </p> - <p> - “It pleases you to talk arrant nonsense,” said he. - </p> - <p> - Luncheon was announced. At table Jimmie and Norma were neighbours. Aline - sat between Morland, who was next to Norma, and old Colonel Pawley. As the - latter at first talked to Mrs. Deering, Aline and Morland carried on a - frigid conversation. They had never been friends. To Morland, naturally, - she was merely a little girl of no account, who had often been annoyingly - in the way when he wanted to converse with Jimmie; and Aline, with a - little girl's keen intuition, had divined more of his real character than - she was aware of, and disliked and distrusted him. Like a well-brought-up - young lady she answered “yes” and “no” politely to his remarks, but - started no fresh topic. At last, to her relief, Colonel Pawley rescued her - from embarrassed silence. To him she had extended her favour. He was a - short fat man, with soft hands and a curious soft purring voice, and the - air rather of a comfortable old lady than of a warrior who had retired on - well-merited laurels. He occupied his plentiful leisure by painting on - silk, which he made into fans for innumerable lady acquaintances. In his - coat-tail pocket invariably reposed a dainty volume bound in crushed - morocco—a copy of little poems of his own composition—and - this, when he was in company with a sympathetic feminine soul, he would - abstract with apoplectic wheezing and bashfully present. He also played - little tunes on the harp. Aline, with the irreverence of youth, treated - him as a kind of human toy. - </p> - <p> - His first word roused the girl's spontaneous gaiety. She bubbled over with - banter. The mild old warrior chuckled with her, threw himself unreservedly - into the childish play. Connie whispered to Jimmie: - </p> - <p> - “I should like to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck and turn him - loose in a meadow. I am sure he would frisk.” - </p> - <p> - Morland exchanged casual remarks with Norma. She answered absently. The - change in Aline from the unsmiling primness wherewith Morland's society - had cloaked her to sunny merriment with Colonel Pawley was too marked to - escape her attention. In spite of the ludicrousness of the comparison, she - could not help perceiving that the old man who radiated boredom had a - quality of charm unpossessed by Morland, and she felt absurdly - disappointed with her lover. During the last few days she had made up her - mind to like him. Sober forecast of a lifetime spent in the inevitable - intimacy of marriage had forced her to several conclusions. One, that it - was essential to daily comfort that a woman should find the personality of - a husband pleasing rather than antipathetic. With more ingenuousness than - the world would have put to her credit, she had set herself deliberately - to attain this essential ideal. The natural consequence was a sharply - critical attitude and a quickly developing sensitiveness, whereby, as in a - balance of great nicety, the minor evidences of his character were - continually being estimated. Thus, Morland's jest before luncheon had - jarred upon her. His careless air of patronage had betrayed a lack of - appreciation of something—the word “spiritual” was not in her - vocabulary, or she might have used it—of something, at all events, - in his friend which differentiated him from the casual artist and which - she herself had, not without discomfort, divined at their first meeting. - The remark had appeared to her in bad taste. Still ruffled, she became all - the more critical, and noted with displeasure his failure to have won a - child's esteem. And yet she felt a touch of resentment against Jimmie for - being the innocent cause of her discomposure. It gave rise to a little - feline impulse to scratch him and see whether he were not mortal like - every one else. - </p> - <p> - “Do you ever exhibit at the Royal Academy?” she asked suddenly. - </p> - <p> - “They won't have me,” said he. -</p> - <p> -“But you send in, don't you?” - </p> - <p> - “With heart-breaking regularity. They did have me once.” He sighed. “But - that was many years ago, when the Academy was young and foolish.” - </p> - <p> - “I have heard they are exceedingly conservative,” said Norma, with the - claws still unsheathed. “Perhaps you work on too original lines.” - </p> - <p> - But she could draw from him no expression of vanity. He smiled. “I suppose - they don't think my pictures good enough,” he said simply. - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie's work is far too good for that wretched Academy,” said Connie - Deering. “The pictures there always give you a headache. Jimmie's never - do.” - </p> - <p> - “I should like to kill the Academy,” Aline broke in sharply, on the brink - of tears. A little tragedy of murdered hopes lurked in her tone. Then, - seeing that she had caused a startled silence, she reddened and looked at - her plate. Jimmie laughed outright. - </p> - <p> - “Is n't she bloodthirsty? All the seventy of them weltering in their gore! - Only the other day she said she would like to slaughter the whole Chinese - Empire, because they ate puppies and birds'-nests!” - </p> - <p> - Connie chimed a frivolous remark in tune with Jimmie. Morland, as befitted - a coming statesman, took up the parable of the march westwards of the - yellow races. Colonel Pawley, who had been through the Taeping rebellion, - was appealed to as an authority on the development of the Chinaman. He - almost blushed, wriggled uncomfortably, and as soon as he could brought - the conversation to the milder topic of Chinese teacups. Successful, he - sighed with relief and told Aline the story of the willow pattern. The - Royal Academy was forgotten. But Norma felt guilty and ashamed. - </p> - <p> - Nor was she set more at ease with herself by a careless remark of - Morland's as Connie's front door closed behind them an hour or so later. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid you rather rubbed it into poor old Jimmie about the Academy. - The little girl looked as if she would like to fly at you. She is a - spoiled little cat.” - </p> - <p> - “I have noticed she does n't seem to like you,” answered Norma, sourly. - </p> - <p> - The drive as far as Grosvenor Place, where Norma proposed to pay a - solitary call, was not as pleasant as he had anticipated. He parted from - her somewhat resentful of an irritable mood, and walked back towards - Sussex Gardens through the Park, reviling the capriciousness of woman. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter VII—A MAD PROPHET - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> VIOLENT man, - pallid and perspiring, with crazy dark eyes and a voice hoarse from the - effort to make himself heard above the noise of a hymn-singing group a few - yards to the right and of a brazen-throated atheist on the left, was - delivering his soul of its message to mankind—a confused, - disconnected, oft-delivered message, so inconsequent as to suggest that it - had been worn into shreds and tatters of catch-phrases by process of - over-delivery, yet uttered with the passion of one inspired with a new and - amazing gospel. - </p> - <p> - “I am speaking to you, the working-men, the proletariat, the downtrodden - slaves of the plutocracy, the creators in darkness of the wealth that the - idlers enjoy in dazzling halls of brightness. I do not address the - bourgeoisie rotting in sloth and apathy. They are the parasites of the - rich. They sweat the workers in order to pander to the vices of the rich. - They despise the poor and grovel before the rich. They shrink from - touching the poor man's hand, but they offer their bodies slavishly to the - kick of the rich man's foot. It is not in their hands, but in yours, - brother toilers and brother sufferers, that lies the glorious work of the - great social revolution whose sun just rising is tipping the mountain-tops - with its radiant promise of an immortal day. It is against them and not - with them that you have to struggle. In that day of Armageddon you will - find all tailordom, all grocerdom, all apothecarydom, all attorneydom - arrayed in serried ranks around the accursed standards of plutocracy, of - aristocracy, of bureaucracy. Beware of them. Have naught to do with them - on peril of your salvation. The great social revolution will come not from - above, but from below, from the depths. <i>De profundis clamavi!</i> - “From the depths have I cried, O Lord!” - -</p> -<p> - -He paused, wiped his forehead, - cleared his throat, and went on in the same strain, indifferent to ribald - interjections and the Sunday apathy of his casual audience. The mere size - of the crowd he was addressing seemed to satisfy him. The number was above - the average. A few working-men in the inner ring drank in the wild - utterances with pathetic thirst. The majority listened, half amused, half - attracted by the personality of the speaker. A great many were captivated - by the sonority of the words, the unfaltering roll of the sentences, the - vague associations and impressions called up by the successive images. It - is astonishing what little account our sociological writers take of the - elementary nature of the minds of the masses; how easily they are amused; - how readily they are imposed upon; how little they are capable of - analytical thought; at the same time, how intellectually vain they are, - which is their undoing. The ineptitudes of the music hall which make the - judicious grieve—the satirical presentment, for instance, of the - modern fop, which does not contain one single salient characteristic of - the type, which is the blatant convention of fifty years back—are - greeted with roars of unintelligent laughter. Books are written, vulgar, - fallacious, with a specious semblance of philosophical profundity, and - sell by the hundred thousand. The masses read them without thought, - without even common intelligence. It is too great an intellectual effort - to grasp the ideas so disingenuously presented; but the readers can - understand just enough to perceive vaguely that they are in touch with the - deeper questions of philosophy, and through sheer vanity delude themselves - into the belief that they are vastly superior people in being able to find - pleasure in literature of such high quality. And the word Mesopotamia is - still blessed in their ears. Nothing but considerations such as these can - explain the popularity of some of the well-known Sunday orators in Hyde - Park. The conductors of the various properly organised mission services - belong naturally to a different category. It is the socialist, the - revivalist, the atheist, the man whose blood and breath seem to have - turned into inexhaustible verbiage, that present the problem. - </p> - <p> - Some such reflections forced themselves into the not uncharitable mind of - Jimmie as he stood on the outer fringe of the pallid man's audience and - listened wonderingly to the inspired nonsense. He had left a delighted - Aline to be taken by Colonel Pawley to the Zoological Gardens, and had - strolled down from Bryanston Square to the north side of the Park. To - lounge pleasantly on a Sunday afternoon from group to group had always - been a favourite Sunday pastime, and the pallid man was a familiar figure. - Jimmie had often thought of painting him as the central character of some - historical picture—an expectorated Jonah crying to Nineveh, or a - Flagellant in the time of the plague, with foaming mouth and bleeding - body, calling upon the stricken city to repent. His artist's vision could - see the hairy, haggard, muscular anatomy beneath the man's rusty black - garments. He could make a capital picture out of him. - </p> - <p> - The man paused only for a few seconds, and again took up his parable—the - battle of the poor and the rich. The flow of words poured forth, platitude - on platitude, in turbid flood, sound and fury signifying elusively, - sometimes the collectivist doctrine, at others the mere <i>sans-culotte</i> - hatred of the aristocrat. Jimmie, speculating on the impression made by - the oratory on the minds of the audience, moved slightly apart from the - crowd. His glance wandering away took in Morland on his way home, walking - sedately on the path towards the Marble Arch. He ran across the few yards - of intervening space and accosted his friend gaily. - </p> - <p> - “Come and have a lesson in public speaking, and at the same time hear the - other side of the political question.” - </p> - <p> - “What! go and stand among that rabble?” cried Morland, aghast. - </p> - <p> - “You'll have to stand among worse, so you had better get used to it. - Besides, the man is a delightful fellow, with a face like Habakkuk, - capable of everything. To hear him one would think he were erupting - red-hot lava, whereas really it is molten omelette. Come. Your purple and - fine linen will be a red rag to him.” - </p> - <p> - Laughing, he dragged the protesting Morland within earshot of the speaker. - Morland listened superciliously for a few moments. - </p> - <p> - “What possible amusement can you find in this drivel?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “It is so devilish pathetic,” said Jimmie, “so human—the infinite - aspiration and the futile accomplishment. Listen.” - </p> - <p> - The hymn next door had ceased, the atheist was hunting up a reference, and - the words of the pallid man's peroration resounded startlingly in the - temporary silence: - </p> - <p> - “In that day when the sovereign people's will is law, when the weakest and - the strongest shall share alike in the plenteous bounty of Providence, no - longer shall the poor be mangled beneath the Juggernaut car of wealth, no - longer shall your daughters be bound to the rich man's chariot-wheels and - whirled shrieking into an infamy worse than death, no longer shall the - poor man's soul burn with hell fire at the rich man's desecration of the - once pure woman that he loves, no more rottenness, foulness, stench, - iniquity, but the earth shall rest in purity, securely folded in the angel - wings of peace!” - </p> - <p> - He waved his arms in a gesture of dismissal, turned his back on the crowd, - and sat down exhausted on the little wooden bench that had been his - platform. The crowd gradually moved away, some laughing idly, others - reflectively chewing the cud of their Barmecide meal. Morland pointed a - gold-mounted cane at the late speaker. - </p> - <p> - “Who and what is this particular brand of damned fool?” - </p> - <p> -Jimmie checked - with a glance a working-man who had issued from the inner ring and was - passing by, and translated Morland's question into soberer English. - </p> - <p> - “Him?” replied the working-man. “That's Daniel Stone, sir. Some people say - he's cracked, but he always has something good to say and I like listening - to him.” - </p> - <p> - “What does he do when he is n't talking?” asked Jimmie. “Snatches a nap - and a mouthful of food, I should say, sir,” said the man, with a laugh. He - caught Jimmie's responsive smile, touched his cap, like the downtrodden - slave that he was, and went on his way. Jimmie glanced round for Morland - and saw him striding off rapidly. He ran after him. - </p> - <p> - “What is the hurry?” - </p> - <p> - “That damned man—” - </p> - <p> - “Which? The one I was talking to? You surely did n't object—?” - </p> - <p> - “Of course not. The other—Daniel Stone—” - </p> - <p> - “Well, what of him?” - </p> - <p> - “He's a dangerous lunatic. I have heard of him. Why the devil did you want - me to make an exhibition of myself among this scum?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie stared. Morland broke into a laugh and held out his hand. “Never - mind. The beast got on my nerves with his chariot wheels and his - desecration of maidens and the rest of it. I must be off. Good-bye.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie watched him disappear through the gate and turned back towards the - groups. The pallid man was still sitting on his bench; a few children hung - round and scanned him idly. Presently he rose and tucked his bench under - his arm, and walked slowly away from the scene of his oratory. His burning - eyes fixed themselves on Jimmie as he passed by. Jimmie accosted him. - </p> - <p> - “I have been greatly interested in your address.” - </p> - <p> - “I saw you with another of the enemies of mankind. You are a gentleman, I - suppose?” - </p> - <p> - “I hope so,” said Jimmie, smiling. - </p> - <p> - “Then I have nothing to do with you,” retorted the man, with an angry - gesture. “I hate you and all your class.” - </p> - <p> - “But what have we done to you?” - </p> - <p> - “You have turned my blood into gall and my soul into consuming fire.” - </p> - <p> - “Let us get out of the dust and sit down under a tree and talk it over. We - may get to understand each other.” - </p> - <p> - “I have no wish to understand you,” said the man, coldly. “Good-day to - you.” - </p> - <p> - “Good-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile. “I am sorry you will not let us be - better acquainted.” - </p> - <p> - He turned to the next group, who were listening to a disproof of God's - existence. But the atheist was a commonplace thunderer in a bowler hat, - whose utterances fell tame on Jimmie's ears after those of the - haggard-eyed prophet. He wandered away from the crowd, striking diagonally - across the Park, and when he found comparative shade and solitude, cast - himself on the grass beneath a tree. The personality of Daniel Stone - interested him. He began to speculate on his daily life, his history. Why - should he have vowed undying hatred against his social superiors? He - reminded Jimmie of a character in fiction, and after some groping the - association was recalled. It was the monk in Dumas, the son of Miladi. He - wove an idle romance about the man. Perhaps Stone was the disinherited of - noble blood, thirsting for a senseless vengeance. Gradually the drowsiness - of deep June fell upon him. He went fast asleep, and when he awoke half an - hour afterwards and began to walk homewards, he thought no more of Daniel - Stone. - </p> - <p> - But on following Sunday afternoons he frequently stood for a while to - listen to the man. It was always the same tale—sound and fury, - signifying nothing. On one occasion he caught Jimmie's eye, and denounced - him vehemently as an enemy of society. After that, Jimmie, who was of a - peaceful disposition, ceased attending his lectures. He sympathised with - Morland. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter VIII—HER SERENE HIGHNESS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> PRETTY quarrel - between a princess and a duchess gave rise to circumstances in which the - destiny of Jimmie was determined, or in which, to speak with modern - metaphor, the germ of his destiny found the necessary conditions for - development. Had it not been for this quarrel, Jimmie would not have - stayed at the Hardacres' house; and had he not been their guest, the events - hereafter to be recorded would not have happened. Such concatenation is - there in the scheme of human affairs. - </p> - <p> - The Duchess of Wiltshire was a mighty personage in the Hardacres' part of - the county. She made social laws and abrogated them. She gave and she took - away the brevet of county rank. She made and unmade marriages. To fall - under the ban of her displeasure was to be disgraced indeed. She held a - double sway in that the duke, her husband, had delegated to her his - authority in sublunary matters, he being a severe mathematician and a dry - astronomer, who looked at the world out of dull eyes, and regarded it with - indifference as a mass of indistinguishable atoms forming a nebula, a sort - of Milky Way, concerning which philosophic minds had from time to time - theorised. He lived icily remote from society; the duchess, on the - contrary, was warmly interested in its doings. In the county she reigned - absolute; but in London, recognising the fact that there were other - duchesses scattered about Mayfair and Belgravia, she was high-minded - enough to modify her claims to despotic government. She felt it, however, - her duty to decree that her last reception should mark the end of the - London season. - </p> - <p> - To this reception the Hardacres were always invited. - </p> - <p> - In previous years they had mounted the great staircase of Wiltshire House, - their names had been called out, the duchess had given them the tips of - her fingers, and the duke, tall, white-haired, ascetic, had let them touch - his hand with the air of a man absently watching ants crawl over him; they - had passed on, mixed with the crowd, and seen their host and hostess no - more. But this year, to Mrs. Hardacre's thrilling delight, the duchess - gave her quite a friendly squeeze, smiled her entire approbation of Mrs. - Hardacre's existence, and detained her for a moment in conversation. - </p> - <p> - “Don't forget to come and have a little talk with me later. I have n't - seen you since dear Norma's engagement.” - </p> - <p> - To dear Norma she was equally urbane, called her a lucky girl, and - presented her as a bride-elect to the duke, who murmured a vague formula - of congratulation which he had remembered from early terrestrial days. - </p> - <p> - “I can't tell you how proud I am of you, Norma!” said Mrs. Hardacre, with - a lump in her throat, as they passed on. “The dear duchess! I wonder if I - am sufficiently grateful to Providence.” - </p> - <p> - Norma, although in her heart pleased by the manifestation of ducal favour, - could not let the opportunity for a taunt pass by. - </p> - <p> - “You can refer to it in your prayers, mother: 'O God, I thank Thee for - shedding Her Grace upon me.' Won't that do, father.” - </p> - <p> - “Eh, what?” asked Mr. Hardacre, very red in the face, trailing half a pace - behind his wife and daughter. - </p> - <p> - Norma repeated her form of Thanksgiving. - </p> - <p> - “Ha! ha! Devilish good! Tell that in the club,” he said in high - good-humour. His wife's glance suddenly withered him. - </p> - <p> - “I don't approve of blasphemy,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Towards whom, mother dear?” asked Norma, suavely. “The Almighty or the - duchess?” - </p> - <p> - “Both,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a snap. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hardacre, seeing in the distance a man to whom he thought he could - sell a horse, escaped from the domestic wrangle. Mother and daughter - wandered through the crowd, greeted by friends, pausing here and there to - exchange a few words, until they came to the door of the music-room, - filled to overflowing, where an operatic singer held the assembly in - well-bred silence. At the door the crush was ten deep. On the outskirts - conversation hummed like an echo of the noise from the suite of rooms - behind. There they were joined by Morland. Mrs. Hardacre told him of the - duchess's graciousness. He grinned, taking the information with the air of - a man to whom the favour of duchesses bestowed upon his betrothed is a - tribute to his own excellence. He thought she would be pleased, he said. - They must get the old girl to come to the wedding. Mrs. Hardacre was - pained, but she granted young love indulgence for the profanity. If they - only could, she assented, the success of the ceremony would be assured. - Norma turned to Morland with a laugh. - </p> - <p> - “We shall be married with a vengeance, if it's sanctified by the duchess. - Do you think a parson is at all necessary?” - </p> - <p> - He joined in her mirth. She drew him aside. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what's the news?” - </p> - <p> - He accounted, loverwise, for his day.. At last he said: - </p> - <p> - “I looked in upon Jimmie Padgate this morning. I wanted him to go to - Christie's and buy a picture or two for me—for us, I ought to say,” - he added, with a little bow. “He knows more about 'em than I do. He's a - happy beggar, you know,” he exclaimed, after a short pause. - </p> - <p> - “What makes you say so?” - </p> - <p> - “His perfect conviction that everything is for the best in the best of all - possible worlds. There he was sitting at lunch over the black scrag end of - a boiled mutton bone and a rind of some astonishing-looking yellow cheese—absolutely - happy. And he waved his hand towards it as if it had been a feast of - Lucullus and asked me to share it.” - </p> - <p> - “Did you?” asked Norma. - </p> - <p> - “I had n't time,” said Morland. “I was fearfully busy to-day.” - </p> - <p> - Norma did not reply. She looked over the heads of the crowd in front of - her towards the music-room whence came the full notes of the singer. Then - she said to him with a little shiver: - </p> - <p> - “I am glad you are a rich man, Morland.” - </p> - <p> - “So am I. Otherwise I should not have got you.” - </p> - <p> - “That's true enough,” she said. “I pretend to scoff at all this, but I - could n't live without it.” - </p> - <p> - “It has its points,” he assented, turning and regarding the brilliant - scene. - </p> - <p> - Norma turned with him. She was glad it was her birthright and her - marriage-right. The vast state ballroom, lit as with full daylight by rows - of electric lamps cunningly hidden behind the cornices and the - ground-glass panels of the ceiling, stately with its Corinthian pilasters - and classic frieze, its walls adorned with priceless pictures, notably - four full-length cavaliers of Vandyck, smiling down in their high-bred way - upon this assembly of their descendants, its atmosphere glittering with - jewels, radiant with colour, contained all the magnificence, all the - aristocracy, all the ambitions, all the ideals that she had been trained - to worship, to set before her as the lodestars of her life's destiny. Here - and there from amid the indistinguishable mass of diamonds, the white - flesh of women's shoulders, the black and white chequer and brilliant - uniforms of men, flashed out the familiar features of some possessor of an - historic name, some woman of world-famed beauty, some great personage - whose name was on the lips of Europe. There, by the wall, lonely for the - moment, stood the Chinese Ambassador, in loose maroon silk, and horse-tail - plumed cap, his yellow, wizened face rendered more sardonic by the thin - drooping grey moustache and thin grey imperial, looking through horn - spectacles, expressionless, impassive, inhumanly indifferent, at one of - the most splendid scenes a despised civilisation could set before him. - There, in the centre of a group of envious and unembarrassed ladies, an - Indian potentate blazed in diamonds and emeralds, and rolled his dusky - eyes on charms which (most oddly to his Oriental conceptions) belonged to - other men. Here a Turk's red fez, a Knight of the Garter's broad blue - sash, an ambassador's sparkle of stars and orders; and there the sweet, - fresh rosebud beauty of a girl caught for a moment and lost in the moving - press. And there, at the end of the vast, living hall, a dimly seen - haggard woman, with a diamond tiara on her grey hair, surrounded by a - little court of the elect, sat Her Serene Highness, the Princess of - Herren-Rothbeck, sister to a reigning monarch, and bosom friend, despite - the pretty quarrel, of Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire. - </p> - <p> - The song in the music-room coming to an end, the audience for the most - part rose and pressed into the ballroom. The Hardacres and Morland were - driven forward. There was a long period of desultory conversation with - acquaintances. Morland, proud in the possession of Norma's beauty, - remained dutifully attendant, and received congratulations with almost - blushing gratification. Mrs. Hardacre, preoccupied by anticipation of her - promised talk with the duchess, kept casting distracted glances at the - door whereby the great lady would enter. The appearance from a group of - neighbouring people of a pleasant young fellow with a fair moustache and - very thin fair hair, who greeted her cordially, brought her back to the - affairs of the moment. This was the Honourable Charlie Sandys, a distant - relative of the duchess, and her Grand Vizier, Master of the Horse, Groom - of the Chambers, and general right-hand man. He was two and twenty, and - had all the amazing wisdom of that ingenuous age. Morland shook hands with - him, but being tapped on the arm by the fan of a friendly dowager, left - him to converse alone with Mrs. Hardacre and Norma. The youth indicated - Morland's retiring figure by a jerk of the head. - </p> - <p> - “Parliament—Cosford division.” - </p> - <p> - “We hope so,” said Mrs. Hardacre. -</p> - <p> -“Must get in. Radical for her - constituency would make duchess buy her coffin. The end of the world for - her. She has a great idea of King. Going to take him up <i>con amore</i>. - And when she does take anybody up—well—” - </p> - <p> - His wave of the hand signified the tremendous consequences. - </p> - <p> - “She does n't merely uproot <i>him</i>,” said Norma, whose mind now and - then worked with disconcerting swiftness, “but she takes up also the - half-acre where he is planted.” - </p> - <p> - “Just so,” replied the youth. “Not only him, but his manservant and - maidservant, his ox and his ass and everything that is his. Funny woman, - you know—one of the best, of course, but quaint. Thinks the Member - for Cosford is ordained by Providence to represent her in Parliament.” - </p> - <p> - He rattled on, highly pleased with himself. Norma cast a malicious glance - at her mother, who perceptibly winced. They were shining in the duchess's - eyes in a light borrowed from Morland. They were taken up with the ox and - the ass and the remainder of Morland's live-stock. That was the reason, - then, of the exceptional marks of favour bestowed on them by Her Grace. - Mrs. Hardacre kept the muscles of her lips at the smile, but her steely - eyes grew hard. Norma, on the contrary, was enjoying herself. Charlie - Sandys was unconscious of the little comedy. - </p> - <p> - “I am glad to see the princess here to-night,” said Mrs. Hardacre, by way - of turning the conversation. - </p> - <p> - The youth made practically the same reply as he had made at least a dozen - times to the same remark during the course of the evening. He was an - injudicious Groom of the Chambers, being vain of the privileges attached - to his post. - </p> - <p> - “There has been an awful row, you know,” he said confidentially, looking - round to see that he was not overheard. “They have scarcely made it up - yet.” - </p> - <p> - “Do tell us about it, Mr. Sandys,” said Norma, smiling upon him. - </p> - <p> - “It's rather a joke. Let us get out of the way and I'll tell you.” - </p> - <p> - He piloted them through the crush into a corridor, and found them a vacant - seat by some palms. - </p> - <p> - “It's all about pictures,” he resumed. “Princess wants to have her - portrait painted in London. Why she should n't have it made in Germany I - don't know. Anyhow she comes to duchess for advice. Duchess has taken up - Foljambe, you know—chap that has painted about twenty miles of women - full length—” - </p> - <p> - “We saw the dear duchess at his Private View,” Mrs. Hardacre interjected. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. She runs him for all she's worth. Told the princess there was only - one man possible for her portrait, and that was Foljambe. Princess—she's - as hard as nails, you know—inquires his price, knocks him down half. - He agrees. Everything is arranged. Princess to sit for the portrait when - she stays with duchess at Chiltern Towers in September—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, we are going to have the princess down with us?” Mrs. Hardacre grew - more alert. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. Couldn't find time to sit now—going next week to - Herren-Rothbeck—coming back in September. Well, it was all settled - nicely—you know the duchess's way. On Friday, however, she takes the - princess to see Foljambe's show—for the first time. Just like her. - The princess looks round, drops her lorgnon, cries out, 'Lieber Gott in - Himmel! The man baints as if he was bainting on de bavement!' and utterly - refuses to have anything to do with him. I tell you there were ructions!” - </p> - <p> - He embraced a knee and leant back, laughing boyishly at the memory of the - battle royal between the high-born dames. - </p> - <p> - “Then who is going to paint the portrait?” asked Norma. - </p> - <p> - “That's what I am supposed to find out,” replied the youth. “But I can't - get a man to do it cheap enough. One can't go to a swell R. A. and ask him - to paint a portrait of a princess for eighteen pence.” - </p> - <p> - Norma had an inspiration. - </p> - <p> - “Can I recommend a friend of mine?” - </p> - <p> - “Would he do it?”, - </p> - <p> - “I think so—if I asked him.” - </p> - <p> - “By Jove, who is he?” asked the youth, pulling down his shirtcuff for the - purpose of making memoranda. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. James Padgate, 10 Friary Grove, N. W. He is Mr. King's most intimate - friend.” - </p> - <p> - “He can paint all right, can't he?” asked the youth. - </p> - <p> - “Beautifully,” replied Norma. “Friary, not Priory,” she corrected, - watching him make the note. She felt the uncommon satisfaction of having - performed a virtuous act; one almost of penance for her cruelty to him on - Sunday week, the memory of which had teased a not over-sensitive - conscience. The scrag end of boiled mutton and the rind of cheese had also - affected her, stirred her pity for the poor optimist, although in a - revulsion of feeling she had shivered at his lot. She had closed her eyes - for a second, and some impish wizardry of the brain had conjured up a - picture of herself sitting down to such a meal, with Jimmie at the other - side of the table. It was horrible. She had turned to fill her soul with - the solid magnificence about her. The pity for Jimmie lingered, however, - as a soothing sensation, and she welcomed the opportunity of playing Lady - Bountiful. She glanced with some malice from the annotated cuff to her - mother's face, expecting to see the glitter of disapproval in her eyes. To - her astonishment, Mrs. Hardacre wore an expression of pleased - abstraction. - </p> - <p> - Charlie Sandys pocketed his gold pencil and retired. He was a young man - with the weight of many affairs on his shoulders. - </p> - <p> - “That's a capital idea of yours, Norma,” said Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - “I'm glad you think so,” replied Norma, wonderingly. - </p> - <p> - “I do. It was most happy. We'll do all we can to help Morland's friend. A - most interesting man. And if the princess gives him the commission, we can - ask him down to Heddon to stay with us while he is painting the picture.” - </p> - <p> - Norma was puzzled. Hitherto her mother had turned up the nose of distaste - against Mr. Padgate and all his works. Whence this sudden change? Not from - sweet charitableness, that was certain. Hardly from desire to please - Morland. Various solutions ran in her head. Did an overweening ambition - prompt her mother to start forth a rival to the duchess, as a snapper up - of unconsidered painters? Scarcely possible. Defiance of the duchess? That - way madness could only lie; and she was renowned for the subtle caution of - her social enterprises. The little problem of motive interested her - keenly. At last the light flashed upon her, and she looked at Mrs. - Hardacre almost with admiration. - </p> - <p> - “What a wonderful brain you have, mother!” she cried, half mockingly, half - in earnest. “Fancy your having schemed out all that in three minutes.” - </p> - <p> - Enjoyment of this display of worldcraft was still in her eyes when she - came across Morland a little later; but she only told him of her - recommendation of Jimmie to paint the princess's portrait. He professed - delight. How had she come to think of it? - </p> - <p> - “I think I must have caught the disease of altruism from Mr. Padgate,” she - said. Then following up an idle train of thought: - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you often put work—portraits and things—in his - way?” - </p> - <p> - “I can't say that I do.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not? You know hundreds of wealthy people.” - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie is not a man to be patronised,” said Morland, sententiously, “and - really, you know, I can't go about touting for commissions for him.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course not,” said Norma; “he is far too insignificant a person to - trouble one's head about.” - </p> - <p> - Morland looked pained. - </p> - <p> - “I don't like to hear you talk in that way about Jimmie,” he said - reproachfully. - </p> - <p> - The little scornful curl appeared on her lip. - </p> - <p> - “Don't you?” was all she vouchsafed to say. Unreasonably irritated, she - turned aside and caught a passing <i>attache</i> of the French Embassy. - Morland, dismissed, sauntered off, and Norma went down to supper with the - young Frenchman, who entertained her for half an hour with a technical - description of his motor-car. And the trouble, he said, to keep it in - order. It needed all the delicate cares of a baby. It was as variable as a - woman. - </p> - <p> - “I know,” said Norma, stifling a yawn. “<i>La donna e automobile</i>.” - </p> - <p> - On the drive home in the hired brougham, whose obvious hiredom caused - Norma such chafing of spirit, Mrs. Hardacre glowed with triumph, and while - her husband dozed dejectedly opposite, she narrated her good fortunes. She - had had her little chat with the duchess. They had spoken of Mr. Padgate, - Charlie Sandys having run to show her his cuff immediately. The duchess - looked favourably on the proposal. A friend of Mr. King's was a - recommendation in itself. But the princess, she asseverated with ducal - disregard of metaphor, had her own ideas of art and would not buy a pig in - a poke. They must inspect Mr. Padgate's work before there was any question - of commission. She would send Charlie Sandys to them to-morrow to talk - over the necessary arrangements. - </p> - <p> - “I told her,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “that Mr. Padgate was coming to pay us a - visit in any case in September, and suggested that he could drive over to - Chiltern Towers every morning while the princess was honouring him with - sittings, and paint the picture there. And she quite jumped at the idea.” - </p> - <p> - “No doubt,” said Norma, drily. - </p> - <p> - But her dryness had no withering effect on her mother's exuberance. The - hard woman saw the goal of a life's ambition within easy reach, and for - the exultant moment softened humanly. She chattered like a school-girl. - </p> - <p> - “And she took me up to the princess,” she said, “and presented me as her - nearest country neighbour. Was n't that nice of her? And the princess is - such a sweet woman.” - </p> - <p> - “Dear, dear!” said Norma. “How wicked people are! Every one says she is - the most vinegarish old cat in Christendom.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter IX—SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>AME and fortune - were coming at last. There was no doubt of it in Jimmie's optimistic mind. - For years they had lagged with desperately heavy feet, but now they were - in sight, slowly approaching, hand in hand. Jimmie made fantastic - preparations to welcome them, and wore his most radiant smile. In vain did - Aline, with her practical young woman's view of things, point to the - exiguity of the price fixed by Her Serene Highness. If that was the advent - of fortune, she came in very humble guise, the girl insinuated. Jimmie, - with a magnificent sweep of the hand, dismissed such contemptible - considerations as present pounds, shillings, and pence. He was going to - paint the portrait of the sister of a reigning monarch. Did not Aline see - that this might lead to his painting the portrait of the reigning monarch - himself? Would not the counterfeit presentment of one crowned head attract - the attention of other crowned heads to the successful artist? Did she not - see him then appointed painter in ordinary to all the emperors, kings, - queens, princes, and princesses of Europe? He would star the Continent, - make a royal progress from court to court, disputed for by potentates and - flattered by mighty sovereigns. He grew dithyrambic, a condition in which - Aline regarded him as hopelessly impervious to reason. His portraits, he - said, would adorn halls of state, and the dreams that he put on canvas, - hitherto disregarded by a blind world, would find places of honour in the - Treasure Houses of the Nations. It would be fame for him and fortune for - Aline. She should go attired in silk and shod with gold. She should have a - stall at the theatre whenever she wanted, and a carriage and pair to fetch - her home. She should eat vanilla ices every night. And then she might - marry a prince and live happy ever after. - </p> - <p> - “I don't want to marry a prince or any one else, dear,” Aline said once, - bringing visions down into the light of common day. “I just want to go on - staying with you.” - </p> - <p> - On another occasion she hinted at his possible espousal of a princess. - Again Jimmie dropped from the empyrean, and rubbed his head ruefully. - There was only one princess in the world for him, an enthroned personage - of radiant beauty who now and then took warm pity on him and admitted him - to her friendship, but of whom it were disloyalty worse than all folly to - think of. And yet he could not help his heart leaping at the sight of her, - or the thrill quivering through him when he saw the rare softness come - into her eyes which he and none other had evoked. What he had to give her - he could give to no other woman, no other princess. The gift was - unoffered: it remained in his own keeping, but consecrated to the - divinity. He enshrined it, as many another poor chivalrous wretch has - done, in an exquisite sanctuary, making it the symbol of a vague sweet - religion whose secret observances brought consolation. But of all this, - not a whisper, not a sign to Aline. When she spoke of marriageable - princesses, he explained the rueful rubbing of his head by reference to - his unattractive old fogeydom, and his unfitness for the life of high - society. - </p> - <p> - But Aline ought to have her prince. The coming fortune would help to give - the girl what was due to her. For himself he cared nothing. Cold mutton - and heel of cheese would satisfy him to the end of his days. And fame? In - quieter moments he shrugged his shoulders. An artist has a message to - deliver to his generation, and how can he deliver it if he cannot sell his - pictures? Let him give out to the world what was best in him, and he - would be content. Let him but be able to say, “I have delivered my - message,” and that would be fame enough. - </p> - <p> - These were things of the depths. The surface of his mood was exuberant, - almost childish, delight, tempered with whimsical diffidence in his power - of comporting himself correctly towards such high personages. For the - duchess, who never did things by halves, and was also determined, as she - had said, of not buying a pig in a poke, had conveyed to him the - intimation that Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck would - honour him with a visit to his studio on the following Thursday. Jimmie - and Aline held long counsel together. What was the proper way to receive a - Serene Highness? Jimmie had a vague idea of an awning outside the door and - a strip of red baize down the steps and across the pavement. Tony - Merewether, who was called into consultation, suggested, with the - flippancy of youth, a brass band and a chorus of maidens to strew flowers; - whereat Aline turned her back upon him, and Jimmie, adding pages in fancy - dress to hold up the serene train and a major-domo in a court suit with a - wand, encouraged the offender. Aline retired from so futile a discussion - and went on sewing in dignified silence. At last she condescended to throw - out a suggestion. - </p> - <p> - “If I were you, Jimmie, I should get the princess some portraits to look - at.” - </p> - <p> - “God bless my soul,” cried Jimmie, putting down his pipe, “I never thought - of it. Tony, my boy, that child with the innocence of the dove combines - the wisdom of the original serpent. My brain reels to think what I should - be without her. We'll telegraph to all the people that have sat to me and - ask them to send in their portraits by Thursday.” - </p> - <p> - He crossed the studio and began to rummage among the litter on the long - table. Aline asked him what he was looking for. - </p> - <p> - “Telegram forms. Why have n't we got any? Tony, run round the corner to - the post-office, like a good boy, and get some.” - </p> - <p> - But Aline checked the execution of this maniacal project. Three portraits - would be quite sufficient. Jimmie would have to pick out three ladies of - whom he could best ask such a favour, and write them polite little notes - and offer to send a van in the orthodox way to collect the pictures. - Jimmie bowed before such sagacity, and wrote the letters. - </p> - <p> - In the course of the week the portraits arrived, and the studio for a - whole day became the undisputed kingdom of Aline and a charwoman. The long - untidy table, so dear to Jimmie, was ruthlessly cleared and set in - dismaying order. The frame-maker was summoned, and the unsold pictures - that had long slumbered sadly on the ground with their faces to the wall, - were dusted and hung in advantageous lights. The square of Persian carpet, - which Jimmie during an unprotected walk through Regent Street had once - bought for Aline's bedroom, was brought down and spread on the bare boards - of the model-platform. A few cushions were scattered about the rusty - drawing-room suite, and various odds and ends of artists' properties, bits - of drapery, screens, old weapons, were brought to light and used for - purposes of decoration. So that when Jimmie, who had been banished the - house for the day, returned in the evening, he found a flushed and - exhausted damsel awaiting him in a transfigured studio. - </p> - <p> - “My dear little girl,” he said, touched, “my dear little girl, it's - beautiful, it's magical. But you have tired yourself to death. Why did n't - you let me do all this?” - </p> - <p> - “You would never have done it yourself, Jimmie. You know you wouldn't,” - said Aline. “You would have gone on talking nonsense about red baize - strips and flower-girls and pages—anything to make those about you - laugh and be happy—and you would never have thought of showing off - what you have to its full advantage.” - </p> - <p> - “I should never have dreamed of robbing your poor little room of its - carpet, dear,” he said. - </p> - <p> - They went upstairs for their simple evening meal, and returned as usual to - the beloved studio. Aline filled Jimmie's pipe. - </p> - <p> - “Do you think I dare smoke in all this magnificence?” - </p> - <p> - She laughed and struck a match. - </p> - <p> - “You did not realise what a lot of beautiful pictures you had, did you?” - </p> - <p> - “They make a brave show,” he said, looking round. “After all, I'm not - entirely sorry they have never been sold. I should not like to part with - them. No, I did not realise how many there were.” In spite of his - cheeriness the last words sounded a note of pathos that caught the girl's - sensitive ear. - </p> - <p> - “'Let us make a tour of inspection,” she said. They went the round, - pausing long before each picture. He said little, contrary to his habit, - for he was wont to descant on his work with playful magniloquence. He saw - the years unfold behind him and disclose the hopes of long ago yet - unfulfilled. What endless months of dreams and thrills and passionate toil - hung profitless upon these walls! Things there were, wrought from the - depths of his radiant faith in man, plucked from the heart of his - suffering, consecrated by the purest visions of his soul. Had Aline been - an older woman, a woman who had loved him, lived with him in a wife's - intimate communion, instead of being merely the tender-hearted child of - his adoption, she would have wept her heart out. For she, alone of - mortals, would have got behind such imperfections as there were, and would - have seen nothing but a crucifixion of the quivering things torn out of - the life of the beloved man. Only vaguely, elusively did the girl feel - this. But even her half-comprehending sympathy was of great comfort. She - thought no one in the world could paint like Jimmie, and held in angry - contempt a public that could pass him by. She was hotly his advocate, - furious at his rejection by hanging committees, miserably disappointed - when his pictures came back from exhibitions unsold, or when negotiations - with dealers for rights of reproduction fell through. But she was too - young to pierce to the heart of the tragedy; and Jimmie was too brave and - laughter-loving to show his pain. Other forces, too, had been at work in - her development. Recently her mind had been grappling with the problem of - her unpayable debt to him. This silent pilgrimage round the years brought - her thoughts instinctively to herself and the monstrous burden she had - been. - </p> - <p> - “I have been wondering lately, Jimmie dear,” she said at last, “whether - you would not have been more successful if you had not had all the worry - and expense and responsibility of me.” - </p> - <p> - “Good Lord!” he cried in simple amazement, “whatever are you talking of?” - </p> - <p> - She repeated her apologia, though in less coherent terms. She felt - foolish, as a girl does when a carefully prepared expression of feeling - falls upon ears which, though inexpressibly dear, are nevertheless not - quite comprehending. - </p> - <p> - “You have had to do pot-boilers,” she said, falling into miserable bathos, - “and I remember the five-shillings-a-dozen landscapes—and you would - have spent all that time on your real work—Oh, don't you see what I - mean, Jimmie?” - </p> - <p> - She looked up at him pathetically—she was a slight slip of a girl, - and he was above the medium height. He smiled and took her fresh young - face between his hands. - </p> - <p> - “My dear,” he said, “you're the only successful piece of work I've ever - turned out in my life. Please allow me to have some artistic satisfaction—and - you have been worth a gold-mine to me.” - </p> - <p> - Thus each was comforted. Jimmie settled down to his pipe and a book, Aline - sat over her sewing—the articles to which she devoted her perennial - industry were a never solved mystery to him—and they spent a - pleasant evening. The inevitable topic naturally arose in conversation. - They discussed the princess's visit, the great question—how was she - to be received? - </p> - <p> - “The best thing you can do,” said the practical Aline, “is to go to Mrs. - Deering to-morrow and get properly coached.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie looked at her in admiration. - </p> - <p> - “You are worth your weight in diamonds,” he said. “I will.” - </p> - <p> - He carried out his project, and not only did he have the pleasure of - finding Connie at home undisturbed by strange tea-drinking women, but - Norma Hardacre came in soon after his arrival. The two ladies formed - themselves into a committee of advice, and sent Jimmie home with most - definite notions regarding the correct method of receiving Serene - Highnesses. He also brought Aline the news that the committee would honour - him with a visit the following morning, accompanied by Mrs. Hardacre, who - had been pleased to express a desire to see his pictures. - </p> - <p> - The appointed hour came, and with it the ladies. Mrs. Hardacre's lips - smiled sweetly at the man who was to be taken up by a duchess and to paint - the portrait of a princess. She declared herself delighted with the studio - and professed admiration for the pictures. - </p> - <p> - “Are they all really your own, Mr. Padgate?” she asked, turning towards - him, her tortoise-shell lorgnon held sceptre-wise. - </p> - <p> - “I'm afraid so,” answered Jimmie, with a smile. “Sometimes I wish they - were not so much my own.” - </p> - <p> - “But I should feel quite proud of them, if I were you,” said the lady, - desirous to please. - </p> - <p> - Connie broke into a laugh, and explained that Jimmie had implied a regret - that they had found no purchasers. Mrs. Hardacre sniffed. She did not like - being laughed at, especially as she had gone out of her way to be urbane. - This was unfortunate for Jimmie; for though he strove hard to remove the - impression that he had consciously dug a pit of ridicule for her - entrapment, Mrs. Hardacre listened to his remarks with suspicion and - became painfully aware of the shabbiness of his coat. Presently she - regarded one of the portraits—that of a pretty, fluffy-haired woman. - </p> - <p> - “Dear me,” she remarked somewhat frigidly, “that is Mrs. Marmaduke - Hewson.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie, in the simplicity of his heart, was delighted. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. A most charming lady. Do you know her?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no; I don't know her, but I know of her.” - </p> - <p> - Her stress on the preposition signified even deeper and more far-reaching - things than the nod of Lord Burleigh in the play. - </p> - <p> - “What do you know of her?” asked Jimmie, bluntly. Mrs. Hardacre smiled - frostily, and her lean shoulders moved in an imperceptible shrug. - </p> - <p> - “Those matters belong to the realm of unhappy gossip, Mr. Padgate; but I'm - afraid the duchess won't find her portrait attractive.” - </p> - <p> - “It is really rather a good portrait,” said Jimmie, in puzzled modesty. - </p> - <p> - “That is the pity of it,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, sweetly. -</p> - <p> -The victim - smiled. “Surely the private character of the subject can have nothing to - do with a person's judgment of a portrait as a specimen of the painter's - art. And besides, Mrs. Hewson is as dear and sweet and true a little woman - as I have ever met.” - </p> - <p> - “You are not the first of your sex that has said so.” - </p> - <p> - “And I most sincerely hope I shall not be the last,” said Jimmie, with a - little flush and a little flash in his eyes and the politest of little - bows. Whereupon Mrs. Hardacre bit her lip and hated him. Norma, seizing - the opportunity of contributing to the final rout of her mother, - unwittingly did Jimmie some damage. - </p> - <p> - “We women ought not to have given up fancy work,” she said in her hardest - and most artificial tones. “As we don't embroider with our fingers, we - embroider with our tongues. You can have no idea what an elaborate tissue - of lies has been woven about that poor little Mrs. Hewson. I agree with - Mr. Padgate. I am sorry you believe them, mother.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie's grateful glance smote her undeserving heart. She had gained - credit under false pretences and felt hypocritical—an unpleasant - feeling, for the assumption of unpossessed virtues was not one of her - faults. She succeeded, however, in rendering her mother furious. In a very - short time Mrs. Hardacre remembered an engagement and went away in a - hansom-cab, refusing the seat in Connie's carriage, which was put at her - disposal on the condition of her waiting a few moments longer. She had - thanked Jimmie, however, for the pleasure afforded by his delightful - pictures with such politeness when he saw her into the cab, that he did - not for a moment suspect that the lady who had entered the house with - expressions of friendliness had driven away in a rage, with feelings - towards him ludicrously hostile. He returned to the studio at peace with - all womankind; not sorry that Mrs. Hardacre had departed, but only because - courtesy no longer demanded his relegating to the second sphere of his - attention the divine personage of whom he felt himself to be the slave. No - suspicion of Mrs. Hardacre's spiteful motive in deprecating the display of - his most striking piece of portraiture ever entered his head. He ran down - the studio stairs with the eagerness of a boy released from the flattering - but embarrassing society of his elders and free to enjoy the companionship - of his congeners. And he was childishly eager to show his pictures to - Norma, to hear her verdict, to secure her approval, so that he should - stand in her eyes as a person in some humble way worthy of the regard that - Morland said she bestowed on him. - </p> - <p> - He found his visitors not looking at pictures at all, but talking to - Aline, who rushed to him as soon as he entered the studio. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Jimmie—just fancy! Mrs. Deering is going to take me to - Horlingham on Saturday, and is coming upstairs with me to see what I can - do in the way of a frock. You don't mind, do you?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie looked down into the happy young face and laughed a happy laugh. - </p> - <p> - “Mrs. Deering is an angel from the most exclusive part of heaven,” he - said. And this was one of the rare occasions on which he was guilty of a - double meaning. Had not the angel thus contrived an unlooked-for joy—a - few minutes' undisturbed communion with his divinity? - </p> - <p> - The first words that Norma spoke when they were alone were an apology. - </p> - <p> - “You must not take what my mother said in ill part. She and I have been - bred, I'm afraid, in a hard school.” - </p> - <p> - “It was very kind of Mrs. Hardacre to warn me of the possibility of the - duchess being prejudiced against me by the exhibition of a particular - portrait. I can't conceive the possibility myself. But still Mrs. - Hardacre's intention was kindly.” - </p> - <p> - Norma turned her head away for a moment. She could not trust herself to - speak, for a stinging sarcasm with just a touch of the hysterical would - have been all she could utter, and she had not the heart to undeceive him. - She shot into the by-path of the gossip concerning Mrs. Hewson. - </p> - <p> - “Mother believes the stories about her. So do I in the loose sort of way - in which our faith in anything is composed—even in our - fellow-creatures' failings.” - </p> - <p> - “You defended her,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “You made me do so.” - </p> - <h3> - “I?” - </h3> - <p> - “Either you, because you carry about with you an uncomfortable Palace of - Truth sort of atmosphere, or else the desire to rub it into my mother.” - </p> - <p> - “Rub what in?” Jimmie was puzzled. - </p> - <p> - Norma laughed somewhat bitterly. She saw that he was incapable of - understanding the vulgar pettiness of the scheme of motives that had - prompted the utterances of her mother and herself. She could not explain. - </p> - <p> - “I think you are born out of your century,” she said. - </p> - <p> - It was lucky for Jimmie that he was unaware of the passionate tribute the - light words implied. She gave him no time to answer, but carried him - straight to the pictures. - </p> - <p> - “I had no idea you did such beautiful work,” she said, looking around her. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie followed her glance, and the melancholy of the artist laid its - touch for a moment upon him. He sighed. - </p> - <p> - “They might have been beautiful if I had done what I started out to do. It - is the eternal tragedy of the clipped wings.” - </p> - <p> - She was oddly responsive to a vibration in his voice, and gave out, like a - passive violin, the harmonic of the struck note. - </p> - <p> - “Better to have wings that are clipped than to have no wings at all.” - </p> - <p> - She had never uttered such a sentiment, never thought such a thought in - her life before. Her words sounded unreal in her own ears, and yet she had - a profound sense of their sincerity. - </p> - <p> - “There is no apteryx among human souls,” said Jimmie, released from the - melancholy fingers. They argued the point in a lighter vein, discussed - individual pictures. Charmed by her sympathy, he spoke freely of his work, - his motives, his past dreams. Had Norma not begun to know him, she might - have wondered at the lack of bitterness in his talk. To this man of many - struggles and many crushing disappointments the world was still young and - sweet, and his faith in the ultimate righteousness of things undimmed. The - simple courage of his attitude towards life moved her admiration. She felt - somewhat humbled in the presence of a spirit stronger, clearer than any - into which chance had hitherto afforded her a glimpse. And as he talked in - his bright, half-earnest, half-humourous way, it crossed her mind that - there was a fair world of thought and emotion in which she and her like - had not set their feet; not the world entirely of poetic and artistic - imaginings, but one where inner things mattered more than outer - circumstance, where it would not be ridiculous or affected to think of the - existence of a soul and its needs and their true fulfilment. - </p> - <p> - Hitherto meeting him as an alien in her world, she had regarded him with a - touch of patronising pity. From this she was now free. She saw him for the - first time in harmony with his environment, as the artist sensitive and - responsive, integral with the beautiful creations that hung around the - walls, and still homely and simple, bearing the rubs of time as bravely - and frankly as the old drawing-room suite that furnished the unpretentious - studio. Now it was she who felt herself somewhat disconcertingly out of - her element. The sensation, however, had a curious charm. - </p> - <p> - There was one picture that had attracted her from the first. She stood in - front of it moved by its pity and tenderness. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me about this one,” she said without looking at him. She divined - that it was very near his heart. - </p> - <p> - In the foreground amid laughing woodland crouched a faun with little furry - ears and stumps of horns, and he was staring in piteous terror at a - vision; and the vision was that of a shivering, outcast woman on a wet - pavement in a sordid street. - </p> - <p> - “It is the joyous, elemental creature's first conception of pain,” said - Jimmie, after a few moments' silence. “You see, life has been to him only - the sunshine, and the earth drenched with colour and music—as the - earth ought to be—and now he sees a world that is coming grey with - rain and misty with tears, and he has the horror of it in his eyes. I am - not given to such moralising in paint,” he added with a smile. “This is a - very early picture.” He looked at it for some time with eyes growing - wistful. “Yes,” he sighed, “I did it many years ago.” - </p> - <p> - “It has a history then?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he admitted; and he remembered how the outcast figure in the rain - had symbolised that little funeral procession in Paris and how terribly - grey the world had been. - </p> - <p> - Norma's chastened mood had not awed the spirit of mockery within her, but - had rendered it less bitter, and had softened her voice. She waved her - hand towards the crouching faun. - </p> - <p> - “And that is you?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie caught a kind raillery in her glance, and laughed. Yes, she had his - secret; was the only person who had ever guessed him beneath the travesty - of horns and goat's feet. - </p> - <p> - “I like you for laughing,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Why?” - </p> - <p> - “Other painters have shown me their pictures.” - </p> - <p> - “Which signifies—?” - </p> - <p> - “That this is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen,” she - replied. - </p> - <p> - “But why are you glad that I laughed?” asked Jimmie, in happy puzzledom. - </p> - <p> - “I have told you, Mr. Padgate, all that I am going to tell you.” - </p> - <p> - “I accept the inscrutable,” said he. - </p> - <p> - “Do you believe in the old pagan joy of life?” she asked after a pause. “I - mean, was there, is there such a thing? One has heard of it; in fact it is - a catch phrase that any portentous poseur has on the tip of his tongue. - When one comes to examine it, however, it generally means champagne and - oysters and an unpresentable lady, and it ends with liver and—and - all sorts of things, don't you know. But you are not a poseur—I - think you are the honestest man I have ever met—and yet you paint - this creature as if you utterly believe in what he typifies.” - </p> - <p> - “It would go hard with me if I did n't,” said Jimmie. “I can't talk to you - in philosophic terms and explain all my reasons, because I have read very - little philosophy. When I do try, my head gets addled. I knew a chap once - who used to devour Berkeley and Kant and all the rest, and used to write - about them, and I used to sit at his feet in a kind of awed wonder at the - tremendousness of his brain. A man called Smith. He was colossally - clever,” he added after a reflective pause. “But I can only grope after - the obvious. Don't you think the beauty of the world is obvious?” - </p> - <p> - “It all depends upon which world,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Which world? Why, God's world. It is sweet to draw the breath of life. I - love living; don't you?” - </p> - <p> - “I have never thought of it,” she answered. “I should n't like to die, it - is true, but I don't know why. Most people seem to spend two-thirds of - their existence in a state of boredom, and the rest in sleep.” - </p> - <p> - “That is because they reject my poor faun's inheritance.” - </p> - <p> - “I have been asking you what that is.” - </p> - <p> - “The joy and laughter of life. They put it from them.” - </p> - <p> - “How?” - </p> - <p> - “They draw the soul's curtains and light the gas, instead of letting God's - sunshine stream in.” - </p> - <p> - Norma turned away from the picture with a laugh. - </p> - <p> - “That reminds me of the first time I met you. You told me to go and - ventilate my soul. It gave me quite a shock, I assure you. But I have been - trying to follow your precept ever since. Don't you think I am a little - bit fresher?” - </p> - <p> - For the moment the girl still lingering in her five-and-twenty hard years - flashed to the surface, adorably warming the cold, finely sculptured face, - and bringing rare laughter into her eyes. Jimmie marvelled at the infinite - sweetness of her, and fed his poor hungry soul thereon. - </p> - <p> - “You look like a midsummer morning,” he said unsteadily. - </p> - <p> - The tone caught her, sobered her; but the colour deepened on her cheek. - </p> - <p> - “I'll treasure that as a pretty compliment,” she said. There was a little - space of silence—quite a perilous little space, with various unsaid - things lurking in ambush. Norma broke it first. - </p> - <p> - “Now I have seen everything, have n't I? No. There are some on the floor - against the wall.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie explained their lack of value, showed her two or three. They were - mostly the wasters from his picture factory, he said. She found in each a - subject for admiration, and Jimmie glowed with pleasure at her praise. - While he was replacing them she moved across the studio. - </p> - <p> - “And this one?” she asked, with her finger on the top of a strainer. He - looked round and followed swiftly to her side. It was her own portrait - with its face to the wall. - </p> - <p> - “I am not going to show you that,” he said hurriedly. - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” - </p> - <p> - “It's a crazy thing.” - </p> - <p> - “I should love to see it.” - </p> - <p> - “I tell you it's a crazy thing,” he repeated. “A mad artist's dream.” - </p> - <p> - Norma arched her eyebrows. “Aha! That is very like a confession!” - </p> - <p> - “Of what?” - </p> - <p> - “The ideal woman?” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “I thought everything was so positive in your scheme of life,” she - remarked teasingly. “Don't you know?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Jimmie, “I know.” - </p> - <p> - Again the vibration that Jimmie, poorest of actors, could not keep from - his voice, stirred her. She felt the indelicacy of having trodden upon - sanctified ground. She turned away and sat down. They talked of other - matters, somewhat self-consciously. Both welcomed the entrance of Connie - Deering and Aline. The former filled the studio at once with laughing - chatter. She hoped Norma had not turned Jimmie's hair white with the - dreadful things she must have said. - </p> - <p> - “I don't turn a hair, as I'm a mere worldling, but Jimmie is an - unsophisticated child of nature, and is n't accustomed to you, my dear - Norma.” - </p> - <p> - She went on to explain that she was Jimmie's natural protectress, and that - they who harmed him would have to reckon with her. Jimmie flew gaily to - Norma's defence. - </p> - <p> - “And this child's garments?” he asked, indicating Aline, whose face was - irradiated by a vision of splendid attire. - </p> - <p> - “Don't meddle with what does n't concern you,” replied Connie, while she - and the girl exchanged the glances of conspirators. - </p> - <p> - A short while afterwards the two visitors drove away. For some time Norma - responded somewhat absently to Mrs. Deering's light talk. - </p> - <p> - “I am so glad you have taken to Jimmie,” said the latter at last. “Is n't - he a dear?” - </p> - <p> - “I remember your saying that before. But is n't it rather an odd word to - use with reference to him?” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Odd—? But that's just what he is.” - </p> - <p> - Norma turned in some resentment on her friend. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Connie, how dare we talk patronisingly of a man like that? He's worth - a thousand of the empty-souled, bridge-playing people we live among.” - </p> - <p> - “But that's just why I call him a dear,” said Mrs. Deering, - uncomprehendingly. - </p> - <p> - Norma shrugged her shoulders, fell into a silence which she broke by - risking: - </p> - <p> - “Do you know whom he is in love with?” - </p> - <p> - “Good gracious, Norma,” cried the little lady, in alarm. “You don't say - that Jimmie is in love? Oh, it would spoil him. He can't be!” - </p> - <p> - “There was one picture—of a woman—which he would not let me - see,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Well?” - </p> - <p> - Norma paused for some seconds before she replied: - </p> - <p> - “He called it 'a mad artist's dream.' I have been wondering whether it was - not better than a sane politician's reality.” - </p> - <p> - “What is a sane politician's reality, dear?” Connie asked, mystified. - </p> - <p> - “I am,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - Then, woman-like, she turned the conversation to the turpitudes of her - dressmaker. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter X—TWO IDYLLS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">J</span>IMMIE was trudging - along the undulating highroad that leads from Dieppe to the little village - of Berneval, very hot, very dusty, very thirsty, and very contented. He - carried a stick and a little black bag. His content proceeded from a - variety of causes. In the first place it was a glorious August day, - drenched with sunshine and with deep blue ether; and the smiling plain of - Normandy rolled before him, a land of ripening orchards and lazy pastures. - He had been longing for the simple beauty of sun and sky and green trees, - and for the homely sights and sounds of country things, and now he had his - fill. Secondly, Aline was having a much needed holiday. She had been - growing a little pale and languid, he thought, in London, after a year's - confined administering to his selfish wants. She was enjoying herself, - too, and the few days she had already spent in the sea air had brought the - blood to her cheeks again. Thirdly, he was free for the moment from - everyday cares. A dealer had fallen from heaven into his studio and paid - money down for the copyright of two of his worst pictures. Fourthly, he - had definitely received the commission for the portrait of the Princess of - Herren-Rothbeck. Her Serene Highness and her tutelary duchess had paid - their visit, expressed themselves delighted with his work (the duchess - especially commending the portrait of the hapless Mrs. Marmaduke Hewson), - and had driven away in a most satisfactory condition of serenity and - graciousness. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie was happy. What could man want more? In addition to all these - blessings, Norma had written to him from Lord Monzie's place in Scotland a - letter <i>à propos</i> of nothing, merely expressive of good-will and - friendliness; and he had received it that morning. He had never seen her - handwriting before. Bold, incisive, distinguished, it seemed to complement - his conception of the radiant lady, and in a foolish way he tried to - harmonise the ink-marks with the curves of her proud lips, the setting of - her eyes, and the poise of her queenly head. The dreariness of a rainy - afternoon with all the men and half the women away on the grouse-moor had - been, she said, her excuse for writing. She sketched various members of - the house-party with light, satiric touches; notably one Theodore Weever, - an American, whose sister had married an impecunious and embarrassing - cousin of the Duchess of Wiltshire. He was building himself a palace in - Fifth Avenue, wrote Norma, and had been buying pictures in Europe to - decorate it with; now he was anxious to purchase a really decorative wife. - Morland was expected in a few days, and she would be glad when he appeared - upon the scene. She did not say why; but Jimmie naturally understood that - her heart was yearning for the presence of the man she loved. “I have very - little to say that can interest you,” she concluded, “but you can say many - things to interest me: this letter is purely selfish, a mere minnow, after - all, that I use as bait.” So Jimmie walked along the dusty road thinking - out an answer that could bring comfort to the Hero pining for her Leander; - thinking also of Aline, and revelling in the sunshine. - </p> - <p> - He delighted, like a child, in all he saw. He stopped before the red, - gold, and green paradise of an orchard and feasted upon its colour. He - lingered in talk with a tiny girl driving a great brown cow; asked her its - age, how many calves it had had, its name, and whether she were not afraid - it would mistake her for a blade of grass and bite her. The little girl - scoffed at the possibility. She could drive three cows, and, if it came to - that, a bull. “<i>Ça me connaît, les bêtes,</i>” she said. Whereupon he - put a couple of sous in her hand and went on his way. Presently he sat - down on the rough wooden bench in front of a wayside café and drank cider - from an earthenware bowl, and played with a mongrel puppy belonging to the - establishment. When the latter had darted off to bark amid the cloud of - dust and petroleum fumes left by a passing motor-car, Jimmie, sipping his - second bowl of sour cider in great content, re-read the precious letter, - filled his pipe, and reflected peacefully on the great harmony of things. - The hopelessness of his own love for Norma struck no discord. The Stephen - so closely connected with the life of Saint Catherine of Siena did not - love with less hope or more devotion. - </p> - <p> - He paid the few coppers for his reckoning, took up his stick and little - black bag, and trudged on refreshed, and as he neared Berneval the - expectation of Aline's welcome gladdened him. He had rented for the month - a cottage with a straggling piece of ground behind, from an artist friend - whose possession it was. The friend had fixed the figure absurdly low; the - modest living under Aline's experienced management was cheap, and the <i>bonne - à tout faire</i> cooked divinely for a few halfpence a day. By a curious - coincidence Mr. Anthony Merewether had also pitched upon Berneval as a - summer resting-place. He had come on business, he gave out, - and every morning saw him issue from the hotel by the beach, armed with - easel and camp-stool, and the rest of the landscape-painter's - paraphernalia, and every evening saw him smoking cigarettes on Jimmie's - veranda. Whether the hours of sunshine saw him consistently hard at work, - Jimmie was inclined to doubt. He certainly bathed a great deal and ran - about with Aline a great deal, and Jimmie read the pair moral lessons on - the evil effects of idleness. But Tony was a fresh-minded boy; his - ingenuous conversation provided Jimmie with much entertainment, and his - presence on their holiday gave him the satisfaction of feeling that Aline - had some one of her own age to play with. - </p> - <p> - The ramshackle vehicle, half diligence, half omnibus, that plies between - Berneval and Dieppe, passed him with great cracking of whip and straining - of rusty harness and loud <i>hue</i>'s from the driver, just as he entered - the village. It was late afternoon, and the trim white and green of the - place was bathed in mellow sunshine. The short cut home lay up a lane and - through the churchyard, a cluster of grey slabs around a little grey - church; and many of the slabs bore the story of the pitiless sea—how - Jean-Marie Dulac, many years ago, was drowned at the age of nineteen, and - how Jacques Lemerre perished in a storm; for it has been from time - immemorial a tiny village of fisher-folk and every family has given of its - own to the waves. The pathos of the simple legends on the stones always - touched him as he walked by; and now he paused to decipher some moss-grown - letters of fifty years ago. He stooped, made out the same sad tale, - moralised a little thereon, and rose with a sigh of relief to greet the - sunshine and the fair earth. But the sight that suddenly met his eyes - banished dead fishermen and hungry sea and sunny tree-tops from his mind. - It was a boy and a girl very close together, his arm about her waist, her - head upon his shoulder, walking by the little church. Their backs were - towards him. He stared open-mouthed. - </p> - <p> - “God bless my soul!” said he, in amazement. - </p> - <p> - Then he dropped his stick, which clattered upon a gravestone. - </p> - <p> - The foolish pair started at the sound, assumed a correct attitude with - remarkable swiftness, and turning, recognised Jimmie. Tony Merewether, who - was a fair youth, grew very red and looked sheepish; Aline awaited events - demurely, with downcast eyes. Jimmie pushed his old Homburg hat to the - back of his head, and in two or three strides confronted them. He tried to - look fiercely at Tony. The young man drew himself up. - </p> - <p> - “I have asked Aline to marry me, sir,” he said frankly. “I was going to - speak to you about it.” - </p> - <p> - “Good Lord!” said Jimmie, helplessly. - </p> - <p> - “We can't marry just yet,” said Tony, “but I hope you will give your - consent.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie looked from one to the other. - </p> - <p> - “Why did n't you let me know of this state of things before?” - </p> - <p> - “I have n't done anything underhand. I thought you guessed,” said Tony. - </p> - <p> - “And you, Aline?” - </p> - <p> - She stole a shy glance at him. - </p> - <p> - “I was n't quite sure of it until just now,” she replied. And then she - blushed furiously and ran to Jimmie's arms. “Oh, Jimmie dear, don't be - cross!” - </p> - <p> - “Cross, my child?” he said. - </p> - <p> - The world of tender reproach in his tone touched her. The ready tears - started. - </p> - <p> - “You are an angel, Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - The hand that was on her shoulder patted it comfortingly. - </p> - <p> - “No, dear, I am a blind elderly idiot. O Lord, Tony, I hope you feel - infernally ashamed of yourself.” - </p> - <p> - “As Tony says, we sha'n't be able to get married for a long, long time,” - said Aline, by way of consolation, “so for years and years we'll go on in - just the same way.” - </p> - <p> - “I only ask you to consent to our engagement, sir,” said Tony, - diplomatically. “I am quite willing to wait for Aline as long as you - like.” - </p> - <p> - The abandonment of Jimmie by Aline had been the subject of the last - half-hour's discussion between the lovers. The thought of Jimmie alone and - helpless appalled her. She was a horrid selfish wretch, she had informed - Tony, for listening to a word he said. How could Jimmie live by himself? - She shuddered at the dismal chaos of the studio, the gaping holes in his - socks, the impossible meals, the fleecing of him by every plausible beggar - in frock coat or rags, the empty treasury. He needed more care than a - baby. She would marry Tony, some day, because her head was full of him, - and because she had let him kiss her and had found a peculiar, dreamy - happiness during the process, and because she could not conceive the - possibility of marrying any one else. But she was more than content to - leave the date indefinite. Perhaps, in the stretch of aeons between now - and then, something would happen to release her from her responsibilities. - She had made the position luminously clear to Mr. Merewether before she - had consented to be foolish and walk about with her head on his shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “No, until Jimmie gets properly suited,” she said, quickly following - Tony's last remark. - </p> - <p> - “My dear foolish children,” said Jimmie, “you had better get married as - soon as ever you can keep the wolf from the door. What on earth is the - good of waiting till you are old? Get all the happiness you can out of - your youth, and God bless you.” - </p> - <p> - The young man bowed his head. - </p> - <p> - “I will give my life to her.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie touched him on the arm, waved his hand around, indicating the - little grey church, the quiet graves. - </p> - <p> - “This is not the place where a man should say such a thing lightly,” he - said. - </p> - <p> - “I am not the man to say such a thing lightly in any place,” retorted the - youth, with spirit. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie nodded approvingly. “My dear,” he said to Aline, “that is the way I - like to hear a man talk.” - </p> - <p> - He turned and collected the fallen stick and the black bag which he had - deposited by the side of the slab. He had gone into Dieppe that morning - partly for the sake of the walk and partly to purchase some odds and ends - for the house. Aline, not trusting to his memory, had given him a list of - items with directions attached as to the places where he was to procure - them, so that when he came to “pepper,” he should seek it at a grocery and - not at a milliner's establishment. Now, without saying a word, he opened - the bag and rummaged among its queer contents, which Aline regarded with - some twinges of a tender conscience. She ought to have gone into Dieppe - herself, and made her purchases like a notable housewife, instead of - sending Jimmie and passing the day in selfish lovemaking. The twinge grew - sharper when Jimmie at last fished out a little cardboard box and put it - in her hands. - </p> - <p> - “At any rate, I can give you an engagement present before Tony,” he said - with a laugh. - </p> - <p> - It was only an old filigree silver waist-buckle he had picked up at a - curio shop in the town, but it was a gem of infinite value to the girl, - for she knew that Jimmie's love went with it. She showed it to Tony - Merewether, who admired the workmanship. - </p> - <p> - “If you can give me anything I shall prize more, you will be a lucky - fellow,” she said in a low voice. - </p> - <p> - The three strolled quietly towards the cottage, and it was Jimmie's arm - that Aline clung to, and Mr. Merewether who carried the black bag. That - night, after she had dismissed the young man, she sat a long time with - Jimmie on the veranda, telling him in one shy breath of the wonder that - had suddenly come into her life, and in the next that she would never - leave him until he was rich and famous and able to live by himself. - Jimmie, unguileful in the nature of men and maidens and the ways of this - wicked world, kept on repeating like a refrain his formula of - astonishment: - </p> - <p> - “It never entered my head, dear, that you two children would fall in love - with one another.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't think I ought n't to have done it, do you, Jimmie?” she said at - last. - </p> - <p> - He broke into his happy laugh, and kissed her. “If you want to please me, - you'll go on doing it,” he said. - </p> - <p> - It was some time after he had gone to bed that sleep came. Yes; Nature, - the dear mother, had spoken, and who could gainsay her? A clean, bright, - healthy English lad, and a clean, bright, healthy English girl had read - truth in each other's eyes. It was one of the sweet things in the world, - for which we who live in the world should be thankful. The dimly seen - white curtains of his bed became gossamer veils that enveloped him with - beauty. Now, on either side, his inner life was touched by the magic of - romance: the fair dream of these two children, and the love of the other - betrothed pair. It was on happy eyelids that sleep settled at last. And - Aline, too, lay awake, her young cheeks burning at the delicious yet - frightening memory of a kiss in the little churchyard, and her heart - swelling at the thought of the infinite goodness of Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile, unconscious of these idyllic happenings and romantic - speculations, Norma was enjoying herself in her worldly way at Lord - Monzie's place in Scotland. Lord Monzie, a dissipated young man who had - lately come into the title, had married a well-to-do young woman in very - smart society. Consequently there was no lack of modern entertainment in - the house. So modern was everything that the host had got down Mr. Joseph - Ascherberg, the financier, to hold a roulette bank every night against all - comers; but he took care that he himself, or his own confidential man, - turned the wheel and spun the marble. Most of the people had unimaginative - nicknames, the extremes of the Submerged Tenth and the Upper Ten thus - curiously meeting. Lord Monzie was called “Muggins;” his bosom friend, - and, as some whispered, his <i>âme damnée</i>, Sir Calthrop Boyle, was - alluded to as “The Boiler;” and Ascherberg responded to the appellation of - “Freddy.” There were also modern conveniences for the gratification of - caprices or predilections that need not be insisted upon. In fact the - atmosphere was surcharged with modernity; so much so that Norma, who would - have walked about the Suburra of Imperial Rome with cynical indifference, - gasped a little when she entered it. One or two things actually shocked - her, at which she wondered greatly. She regarded Mr. Ascherberg with - extreme disfavour, and winced at the women's conversation when they were - cosily free from men. For the first day or two she held herself somewhat - apart, preferring solitude on sequestered bits of terrace, where she could - read a novel, or look at the grey hills that met the stretch of purple - moorland. But gradually the sweeter tone of mind which she had brought - with her lost its flavour, and having won sixty pounds from Ascherberg, - and having told the feminine coterie what she knew of the Wyniard affair, - she began to breathe the atmosphere without much difficulty. Yet - occasionally she had spasms of revolt. In a corner of the drawing-room - stood a marble copy of the little Laughing Faun in the Louvre, put there - by the late baron, and every time her eye fell upon it, the picture of - another faun arose before her, and with it the memory of a homely man with - bright kind eyes, and she seemed to draw a breath of purer air. But she - called the fancy foolishness and hardened her heart. - </p> - <p> - Still, had it not been for Theodore Weever, the American man of affairs, - she would probably have found some pretext for an abrupt departure. He - alone was a personality among the characterless, vicious men and women of - the house-party. Short, spare, alert, bald-headed, clean-shaven, - clear-featured, he was of a type apart. Norma, who had a keen - intelligence, divined in him from the first an adversary upon whom she - could sharpen her wit and a companion who would not bore her with dreary - tales of sport or the unprofitable details of his last night's play. And - from the first Theodore Weever was attracted towards Norma. Their lax - associates, in spite of her engagement to Morland being perfectly well - known and in spite of Morland's expected arrival, recognised their pairing - with embarrassing frankness, and said appalling things about them behind - their backs. For a few days therefore they found themselves inseparable. - At last their friendship reached the confidential stage. Mr. Theodore - Weever avowed the object of his present visit to England. He was in search - of a decorative wife. - </p> - <p> - “It ought to be as easy as turning over a book of wallpapers,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “And as difficult to choose,” said he. - </p> - <p> - “You must know what scheme of colouring and design you want.” - </p> - <p> - “Precisely. I don't find it in the books of stock patterns, either here or - in America. And I've ransacked America.” - </p> - <p> - “Is n't the line—I believe in commercial circles they call it a line—is - n't the line of specially selected duchesses for the English market good - enough for you?” she asked with a smile. - </p> - <p> - He was about to light a cigarette when she began her question. He lit it - and blew out the first few puffs of smoke before he replied. They were - sitting in Norma's favourite nook on the terrace, where he, solitary male - who had not gone forth with a gun that morning, had been gratuitously told - by an obliging hostess that he would find her. - </p> - <p> - “The American woman makes a good decorative duchess,” he said in his - incisive tone, “because she has to sweep herself clean of every tradition - she was born with and accept bodily the very much bigger and more dazzling - tradition of your old aristocracy. She can do it, because she is - infinitely sensitive and intelligent. But she is a changed creature. She - has to live up to her duke.” - </p> - <p> - He puffed for a moment or two at his cigarette. - </p> - <p> - “Do you see what I am coming to?” he continued. “I am not an English duke. - I am a plain American citizen. No woman in America would make it her ideal - in life to live up to me.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't mean to be rude,” interrupted Norma, with a laugh, “but do you - think any Englishwoman would?” - </p> - <p> - “I do,” he replied. “Not to this insignificant, baldheaded thing that is - I, but to what in the way of position and power I represent. An American - woman would bring her traditions along with her—her superior - culture, her natural right to be enthroned as queen, her expectation that - I would take a back seat in my own house. It is I that would become a sort - of grotesque decoration in the place. Now, I may be grotesque, but I will - not consent to be decorative. I fully intend to be master. I am not going - to be Mrs. Theodore Weever's husband. I want an Englishwoman to bring - along her traditions. She will be naturally <i>grande dame</i>; she will - come to my house, my social world, frankly the wife of Theodore Weever, - and ready to support the dignity, whatever it may be, of Theodore Weever, - just as she would have supported the dignity of Lord So and So, had she - been married to him in England.” - </p> - <p> - “You will find thousands of English girls who can do that,” said Norma. “I - don't see your difficulty.” - </p> - <p> - “She must be decorative,” said Weever. - </p> - <p> - “And that means?” - </p> - <p> - “She must be a queenly woman, but one content to be queen consort. Your - queenly woman—with brains—is not so easy to find. I have met - only one in my life who is beyond all my dreams of the ideal. Of course - the inherent malice of things screws her down like one blade of a pair of - scissors to another fellow.” - </p> - <p> - “Who is the paragon?” asked Norma. - </p> - <p> - “It wouldn't be fair on the other fellow to tell you,” said he. - </p> - <p> - “Is it sheer honesty, or the fear of being cut in half by the pair of - scissors that keeps you from coming between them?” - </p> - <p> - “I think it's honesty,” he replied. “If I can guess rightly, the scissors - have n't so fine an edge on them as to make them dangerous.” - </p> - <p> - “They may be desperately in love with one another, for all you know.” - </p> - <p> - “They are delightful worldlings of our own particular world, dear lady,” - said Weever, with a smile. - </p> - <p> - Thus was Norma given to understand that the post of decorative queen - consort in Mr. Theodore Weever's Fifth Avenue palace was at her disposal. - A year ago she might have considered the offer seriously; now that she - felt secure of a brilliant position as Morland's wife, she was amused by - its frank impudence. She held other laughing conversations with him on the - subject of his search, but too prudent to commit indiscretions, she gave - no hint that she had understood his personal allusion, and Weever was too - shrewd to proceed any further towards his own undoing. They remained - paired, however, to their mutual satisfaction, until Morland's arrival, - when Theodore Weever took his departure. In fact, the same carriage that - conveyed the American to the station remained for a necessary half-hour to - meet Morland's train, and Norma, who dutifully drove down to welcome her - affianced, shared the carriage with the departing guest. - </p> - <p> - She stood on the platform chatting with him as he leaned out of the - window. - </p> - <p> - “When shall we see each other again?” she said idly. - </p> - <p> - “Next month.” - </p> - <p> - “Where?” she asked, somewhat taken aback by his decided tone. - </p> - <p> - “I am putting in some time at Chiltern Towers. I had a letter this morning - from the duchess, asking me to come and meet the Princess of - Herren-Rothbeck.” - </p> - <p> - They looked at each other, and Norma laughed. - </p> - <p> - “Beware of Her Serene Highness.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I've had dealings with her before,” replied Weever. “I reckon I get - my money's worth. Don't you fret about me.” - </p> - <p> - The guard came up and touched his cap. - </p> - <p> - “We are off now, miss.” - </p> - <p> - She shook hands with Weever, saying with a laugh, “I hope you will find - that bit of decoration.” - </p> - <p> - “Don't you fret about that, either,” he said with a quick, hard glance. - “I'm in no hurry. I can wait.” - </p> - <p> - The train started, and was soon swallowed by a tunnel a few hundred yards - up the line. Norma patrolled the platform of the little wayside station - waiting for Morland. The place was very still. The only porter had - departed somewhither. The station-master had retired into his office. The - coachman outside the station sat like a well-bred image on his box, and - the occasional clink of the harness, as the horses threw up their heads, - sounded sharp and clear. Nothing around but mountain and moorland; a short - distance in front a ravine with a lazily trickling, half-dried-up mountain - stream. Here and there a clump of larch and fir, and a rough granite - boulder. An overcast sky threw dreariness on the silent waste. Norma - shivered, suddenly struck with a sense of isolation. She seemed to stand - in the same relation with her soul's horizon as with the physical - universe. The man that had gone had left her with a little feeling of fear - for the future, a little after-taste of bitterness. The man that was - coming would bring her no thrill of joy. As she stood between a drab sky - and a bleak earth, so stood she utterly alone in the still pause between a - past and a future equally unillumined. She longed for the sun to break out - of the heaven, for the sounds of joyous things to come from plain and - mountain; and she longed for light and song in her heart. - </p> - <p> - She had been watching for the past few days the proceedings of a - half-recognised, irregular union. The woman was the frivolous, heartless, - almost passionless wife of a casual husband at the other end of the earth; - the man an underbred fellow on the stock exchange. She ordered him about - and called him Tommy. He clothed her in extravagant finery, and openly - showed her his sovereign male's contempt. Norma had overheard him tell her - to go to the devil and leave him alone, when she hinted one night, in a - whisper that was meant for his ears alone, that he was drinking overmuch - whisky. It was all so sordid, so vulgar—the bond between them so - unsanctified by anything like tenderness, chivalry, devotion. Norma had - felt the revulsion of her sex. - </p> - <p> - What would be the future? By any chance like this woman's life? Would the - day come when she would sell herself for a gown and a bracelet, thrown at - her with a man's contemptuous word? Was marriage very widely different - from such a union? Was not she selling herself? Might not the man she was - waiting for go the way of so many others of his type, drink and coarsen - and tell her to go to the devil? - </p> - <p> - She longed for the sun, but not a gleam pierced the leaden sky; she sought - in her soul for a ray of light, but none came. - </p> - <p> - At last with a shriek and a billowing plume of smoke the down train - emerged from the tunnel. Norma set her face in its calm ironic mask and - waited for the train to draw up. Only two passengers alighted, Morland and - his man. Morland came to her with smiling looks and grasped her by the - hand. - </p> - <p> - “You are looking more beautiful than ever,” he whispered, bringing his - face close to hers. - </p> - <p> - She started back as if she had been struck. The fumes of brandy were in - his breath. Her hideous forebodings were in process of fulfilment. - </p> - <p> - “The whole station will hear you,” she said coldly, turning away. - </p> - <p> - The Imp of Mischance rubbed his hands gleefully at his contrivance. - Morland, a temperate man, had merely felt chilly after an all-night's - journey, and, more out of idleness than from a desire for alcohol, had - foolishly taken a sip out of his brandy flask a moment or two before, when - he was putting up his hand-bag. - </p> - <p> - Norma collected herself, summoned with bitter cynicism her common-sense to - her aid, and made smiling amends for her shrewish remark. She suffered him - to kiss her on the drive home, and strove not to despise herself. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XI—DANGER - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>EDDON COURT had - been purchased by a wealthy Hardacre at the beginning of the nineteenth - century, and was exhibited by his grandnephew, the present occupant, as a - gem of Georgian architecture. Mr. Hardacre had but a vague idea what the - definition meant, but it sounded very impressive. As a matter of fact, it - was a Palladian stone building, with pediments over the windows and severe - rustication on the lower courses. As none of the succeeding Hardacres had - any money to devote to extensions, the building had remained in its - original perfection of formality, and Mr. Hardacre did well to be proud of - it. The grounds had been laid out in the Italian style; but the tastes - and fashions of over a hundred years had caused the classic architect's - design to be practically indiscernible. A lawn with trim flower-beds, - bounded by an arc of elm-trees and bordered by a circular carriage drive - faced the south front. Along the east front ran a series of terraces. The - highest, a foot or two below the level of the drawing-room floor, ended on - the north in a porticoed temple, now used as an afternoon lounge, and - incongruously furnished with rugs and frivolous wickerwork chairs and - tables. The next terrace, some eight feet below, was devoted to a tennis - court. A thick hedge of clipped yew and a screen of wire netting hid the - lowest, the most charming of all, which, surrounded on all sides by a - sloping bank and flanked on three sides by tall trees, had been delicately - turfed for a bowling-green and was now used for croquet. - </p> - <p> - In this stately paradise, warmed by sunny September weather, Jimmie had - already spent two or three blissful days. His only regret was the absence - of Aline. She had been invited, but for reasons in which doubtless Tony - Merewether had a place, she had declined the invitation. She gave Jimmie - to understand that she had already had her holiday, that the house could - not possibly look after itself any longer, and that she had no clothes fit - to appear in among his grand friends. The last argument being - unanswerable, save by contentions at which the young woman tossed a - superior head, Jimmie had yielded and come down alone. His regret, - however, was tempered by the reflection that Aline was probably enjoying - herself after the manner of betrothed maidens, and it did not seriously - affect his happiness. Either chance or the lady's own sweet courtesy - towards a guest had caused him to see much of Norma. She had driven him - over to Chiltern Towers, where the sittings had begun. She had walked with - him to Cosford to show him the beautiful fourteenth-century church with - its decorated spire. She had strolled with him up and down the croquet - lawn. She had chatted with him in the morning-room yesterday for a whole - rainy hour after lunch. His head was full of her beauty and condescension. - It was not unnatural that they should be thrown much together. Morland's - day was taken up by partridges and electors. Mr. Hardacre, honestly afraid - of Jimmie, not knowing what on earth to talk to him about, and only half - comprehending his conversation, kept out of his way as much as his duties - as host would allow, and Mrs. Hardacre, who, though exceedingly civil, had - not forgotten her defeat in the studio, felt justified in leaving his - entertainment in the hands of others who professed to admire the creature. - These were Norma, Morland, and Connie Deering. - </p> - <p> - This afternoon they found themselves again alone together, at tea in the - classic temple at the end of the terrace. Mrs. Hardacre and Connie had - driven off to pay a call, and the men were shooting over ducal turnips. - Jimmie had received an invitation to join the shooting-party, but not - having handled a gun since boyish days (and even then Jimmie with firearms - was Morland's conception of the terror that walketh by day), and also - having an appointment with the princess for a second sitting, he had - declined, and Morland, when he heard of it, had clapped him on the back - and expressed his fervent gratitude. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie had been narrating his morning's adventures at Chiltern Towers, and - explaining the point of view from which he was painting the portrait. It - was to be that of the very great lady, with the blood of the earth's great - rulers in her veins. It was to be half full-length, just showing the - transparent, aristocratic hands set off by rich old lace at the wrists. A - certain acidity of temper betrayed by the pinched nostrils and thin lips - he would try to modify, as it would be out of keeping with his basic - conception. Norma listened, interested more in the speaker than in the - subject, her mind occasionally wandering, as it had been wont to do of - late, to a comparison of ideals. Since that half-hour's loneliness on the - platform of the little Highland station, she had passed through many hours - of unrest. To-day the mood had again come upon her. A talk with her mother - about the great garden-party they were giving in two days' time, to which - the princess and the duchess were coming, had aroused her scorn; a casual - phrase of Morland's in reference to the election had jarred upon her; a - sudden meeting in Cosford with Theodore Weever, and a laughing reference - to the decorative wife had brought back the little shiver of fear. The - only human being in the world who could settle her mood—and now she - felt it consciously—was this odd, sweet-natured man who seemed to - live in a beautiful world. - </p> - <p> - As he talked she listened, and her mind wandered from the subject. She - thought of his life, his surroundings, of the girl whose love affair he - had told her of so tenderly. She took advantage of a pause, occasioned by - the handing of a second cup of tea and the judicious choosing of cake, to - start the new topic. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose Aline is very happy.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie laughed. “What put my little girl into your head?” - </p> - <p> - “I have been thinking a good deal about her since you wrote of her - engagement. Is it really such an idyll?” - </p> - <p> - “The love of two sweet, clean young people is always idyllic. It is so - untainted—pure as a mountain spring; There is nothing quite like it - in the world.” - </p> - <p> - “When are they going to set up house together?” - </p> - <p> - “Soon, I hope.” - </p> - <p> - “You will miss her.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course,” said Jimmie, “enormously. But the thoughts of her happiness - will keep me pleasant company. I shall get on all right. Meanwhile it is - beautiful to see her. She does n't know that I watch, but I do. It is - sweet to see her eyes brighten and her cheeks flush and to hear her - laughter. It is like stepping for an enchanted moment into a fairy-tale.” - </p> - <p> - “I wish I could step into it—just for one enchanted moment,” said - Norma.. - </p> - <p> - “You?” asked Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I have never been in one in my life. I disbelieved in them till you came - like an apostle of fairyland and converted me. Now I want the consolations - of my faith.” - </p> - <p> - An earnest note in her voice surprised him. She did not meet his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “I don't understand you,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “I thought perhaps you would,” she answered. “You seem to understand most - things.” - </p> - <p> - “You have your own—happiness.” - </p> - <p> - He hesitated on the word. A quick glance assured her of his ingenuousness. - She longed to undeceive him, to shriek out her heartlessness, her contempt - for herself and for her life. But pride and loyalty to Morland restrained - her within bounds of sanity. She assented to his proposition with a - gesture of the shapely hand that lay on the tea-table absently tracing the - pattern of the cloth. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I have that. But it isn't the fairyland of those two children. You - yourself say there is nothing like it in the world. You don't know how I - pine for it sometimes—for the things that are sweet and clean and - untainted and pure as a mountain spring. They don't come my way. They - never will.” - </p> - <p> - “You are wrong,” said Jimmie. “Love will bring them all to you—that - and a perfect wedded life and little children.” - </p> - <p> - For a flash she raised her eyes and looked full into his, and for the - first time the love in the man's heart surged tumultuously. It rose of a - sudden, without warning, flooding his being, choking him. What it was of - yearning, despair, passion, horror that he saw in her eyes he knew not. He - did not read in them the craving of a starved soul for food. To him their - burning light was a mystery. All that ever reached his consciousness was - that it was a look such as he had never before beheld in a woman's face; - and against his will and against his reason it acted like some dark - talisman and unlocked floodgates. He clenched the arms of the wickerwork - chair, and bit his lip hard, and stared at the ground. - </p> - <p> - Norma broke into a hard laugh, and lay back in her chair. - </p> - <p> - “You must be thinking me a great fool,” she said, in her usual mocking - tones. “When a woman tries to swim in sentiment, she flounders, and either - drowns or has to be lugged ignominiously to shore. She can't swim like a - man. Thanks for the rescue, Mr. Padgate.” - </p> - <p> - He looked at her for a moment. - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean?” he said curtly. - </p> - <p> - “I'm back on dry land. Oh! it is safer for me. There I am protected by my - little bodyguard of three—the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I - can't get on without them.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie leaped from his chair and brought his clenched hands down to his - sides in a passionate gesture. - </p> - <p> - “Stop talking like that, I say!” he cried imperiously. - </p> - <p> - Then meeting her scared and indignant glance, he bowed somewhat wide of - her. - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon,” he said, in a tone of no great apology, and marched - out of the little temple and along the gravelled walk of the terrace. - Flight, or the loss of self-control, was his only alternative. What she - thought of him he did not care. The sense of increasing distance from her - alone brought security to his soul. - </p> - <p> - At the further end he met Mrs. Deering just back from her drive. - </p> - <p> - “Why, what is the matter, Jimmie?” she asked, twirling an idle sunshade - over her pretty head, for the terrace was in deep afternoon shadow. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing,” he replied, with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “I am going for - a walk before dinner.” - </p> - <p> - He left her standing, reached the highroad and pounded along it. What a - fool he had been! What a mad fool he had been! - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Deering, with a puzzled expression on her face, watched him - disappear. She turned and strolled down to Norma, who greeted her with a - satiric smile. - </p> - <p> - “What have you been doing to Jimmie?” asked Mr. Deering. - </p> - <p> - “I have been giving him lessons in worldly wisdom.” - </p> - <p> - “Poor dear! They seem to have disagreed with him.” - </p> - <p> - Norma shrugged her shoulders. “That's his affair, not mine.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't mean to say that you and Jimmie have quarrelled?” laughed - Connie. “How delightful! I've always wanted to quarrel with Jimmie just - for the pleasure of kissing and making friends. But it has been - impossible. Is it serious?” - </p> - <p> - “I hope not,” Norma answered; and then after a pause, “Oh, Connie, I'm - afraid I've been a positive brute.” - </p> - <p> - Which evidence of a salutary conviction of her own wrongdoing shows that - Jimmie's amazing shout of command had not aroused within her any furious - indignation. Indeed, after the first moment of breathless astonishment, - she had expressed an odd, almost amusing thrill of admiration for the man - who had dared address her in that fashion. It was only a small feminine - satisfaction in the knowledge that by going away he would punish himself - for his temerity that had restrained her from summoning him back. As soon - as he was out of call, she reproached herself for misconduct. She could - have strangled the wanton devil that had prompted her cynical speech. And - yet the same devil had saved an embarrassing situation. Wedded life and - little children! If she had spoken what was trembling on her lips, how - could she have looked the man in the face again? Her sex was revolting - against that very prospect, was clamouring wildly for she knew not what. - She dared not betray herself. - </p> - <p> - She greeted him smilingly in the drawing-room before dinner, as if nothing - had occurred, and chatted pleasantly with Morland over his day's fortunes. - Jimmie observed her with a sigh of relief. He had passed the last two - hours greatly agitated; he had trembled lest he had revealed to her his - soul's secret, and also lest his unmannerliness had given unpardonable - offence. In any case, now he saw himself forgiven, and breathed freely. - But he remained unusually silent during dinner, and spent most of the - evening in the billiard-room with Mr. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - That gentleman, joining the ladies later, fell into conversation with his - daughter. - </p> - <p> - “How long is Padgate going to stay?” he asked, mopping his forehead with - his handkerchief. - </p> - <p> - “Till the princess has completed her sittings, I suppose,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “I wish she'd be quick. I don't know what to do with the fellow. Does n't - shoot, can't play billiards worth a cent, and does n't seem to know - anybody. It's like talking to a chap that does n't understand your - language. I've just been at it. Happened to say I'd like to go to Rome - again. He fetches a sigh and says so should he. 'Some of the best - wild-duck shooting in the world,' I said. He stared at me for a moment as - if I were an escaped lunatic. Now, what on earth should a reasonable being - go to that beastly place for except to shoot wild-duck on the marshes?” - </p> - <p> - Norma laughed the little mocking laugh that always irritated her father. - </p> - <p> - “You need n't be afraid of not entertaining Mr. Padgate. He must have - enjoyed the conversation hugely.” - </p> - <p> - “Damme—if the fellow is laughing at me—” he began. - </p> - <p> - “He would not be the very fine gentleman that he is,” said Norma. “Where - is he now?” - </p> - <p> - “Morland relieved guard in the billiard-room, when the post came in,” - growled Mr. Hardacre, who shrank from crossing swords with his daughter, - and indeed with anybody. “He is happy enough with Morland.” - </p> - <p> - At that particular moment, however, there was not overmuch happiness in - the billiard-room. A letter from Aline had been accompanied by one for - “David Rendell, Esquire” which she had enclosed. Morland read it, and - crushed it angrily into the pocket of his dinner-jacket, and began to - knock the balls about in an aimless way. Jimmie watched him anxiously and, - as he did not speak, unfolded his own letter from Aline. Suddenly he rose - from the divan where he had been sitting and approached the table. - </p> - <p> - “There is something here that you ought to know, Morland. A man has been - enquiring for you at my house.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, why should n't he?” asked Morland, making a savage shot. - </p> - <p> - “He enquired for David Rendell.” - </p> - <p> - Morland threw down his cue. - </p> - <p> - “Well?” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid Aline, who is a miracle of sagacity as a general rule, has - made a mess of it. You mustn't be angry with my poor little girl. Her head - is full of sweeter things.” - </p> - <p> - “What has she done?” Morland asked impatiently. - </p> - <p> - “I'll read: 'I told him that Mr. Rendell was a friend of yours, and gave - him your present address. He muttered something about a false name and - went away without thanking me.'” - </p> - <p> - “Good God!” cried Morland, “what damned fools women are! Did she say what - kind of a man he was?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie looked through the letter, and finding the passage, read: “'An - odd-looking creature, like a mad Methodist parson!'” - </p> - <p> - Morland uttered an exclamation of anger and apprehension. His brow grew - black, and his florid comely features coarsened into ugliness. - </p> - <p> - “I thought so. It could n't have been any one else. He was the only person - who knew. She has given me away nicely. The devil only knows what will - happen.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie leant up against the table and folded his arms, and looked at - Morland moving restlessly to and fro and giving vent to his anger. - </p> - <p> - “Who is this man you seem to be so afraid of?” he asked quietly. - </p> - <p> - Morland stopped upon the unpleasant word, then shrugged his shoulders. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I suppose I am afraid of him. One can't reckon upon anything that he - might or might not do. He's like a mad cat. I've seen him. So have you.” - </p> - <h3> - “I?” - </h3> - <p> - “Yes—that socialist maniac you dragged me to hear one Sunday in Hyde - Park.” - </p> - <p> - “Whew!” said Jimmie. He remembered the look in the orator's eyes, his - crazy, meaningless words, his fierce refusal to enter into friendly talk; - also Morland's impatient exclamation and abrupt departure as soon as they - had learned the man's name. - </p> - <p> - “He's as mad as a hatter,” he said. “If he should take it into his head to - come down here and make a row, there will be the deuce to pay,” said - Morland. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie reflected for a moment. The man, with his wild talk of maidens - lashed to the chariot-wheels of the rich, must have been tortured by the - sense of some personal wrong. - </p> - <p> - “How does he come into the story?” he asked. “You had better tell me.” - </p> - <p> - “The usual way. Oh, I wish to God I had never got into this mess! A man of - position is an infernal fool to go rotting about after that sort of thing. - Oh, don't you see? He had a crazy passion for her, was engaged to her—he - was mad then. When I came along, he had to drop it, and he has been - persecuting her ever since—divided between the desire to marry her - in spite of everything, and to murder me. That's why I had the assumed - name and false address. I would n't have let you in for this bother, but I - could n't go and run the risk of being blackmailed at a confounded little - stationer's shop up a back street. He has been trying to get on my track - all the time—and now he's succeeded, thanks to Aline. Why the devil - could n't she hold her tongue?” - </p> - <p> - “Because she is an innocent child, who has never dreamed of evil,” said - Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Morland walked about the room, agitated, for a few moments, then halted. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, I know, Jimmie. She is n't to blame. Besides, the mischief is - done, so it's no use talking.” - </p> - <p> - “Were you thinking of any such possibility in the summer when you asked me - to help you?” said Jimmie. Morland cast a quick, hopeful glance at his - friend. - </p> - <p> - “Something of the sort. One never knows. You were the only man I could - rely on.” - </p> - <p> - “Does this man know you by sight?” - </p> - <p> - “Not to my knowledge.” - </p> - <p> - “Then what are you so afraid of? Look here, my dear old boy,” he said - cheerily, “you are being frighted by false fire. If it is only a question - of dealing with the man when he comes here—that is, supposing he - does come—which is very unlikely, I will tackle him as the only - person who knows anything about David Rendell. I'll tell him David Rendell - is in Scotland or Honolulu.” - </p> - <p> - “He is on the track of the false name,” said Morland, uneasily. “Aline - mentions that.” - </p> - <p> - “He is bound to come to me first,” said Jimmie. “I'll fix him. We'll get - on capitally together. There's a freemasonry between lunatics. Leave it - all to me.” - </p> - <p> - “Really?” cried Morland, in great eagerness. - </p> - <p> - “Of course,” said Jimmie. “Let us go upstairs.” - </p> - <p> - They passed out of the billiard-room in silence. On their way to the - drawing-room Morland murmured in a shamefaced way his apologia. He was - just at the beginning of his electoral campaign. It was his own county. He - was hand in glove with the duchess, sovereign lady of these parts, and she - never forgave a scandal. “Besides,” he added, “to quote your own words, it - would break Norma's heart.” Also, employing the limited vocabulary of his - class and type, he reiterated the old assurance that he had not been a - beast. He had done all that a man could to make amends. If Jimmie had not - loved him so loyally, he would have seen something very pitiful in these - excuses; but convinced that Morland had atoned as far as lay in his power - for his fault, he trembled for the happiness of only those dear to him. - </p> - <p> - Norma met them on the drawing-room landing. - </p> - <p> - “I was coming down to see what had become of you,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “I have been the culprit. I restore him to you,” laughed Jimmie. He - entered the room and closed the door. The betrothed pair stood for a - moment in an embarrassed silence. She laid a hesitating hand on his - sleeve. - </p> - <p> - “Morland—” she said diffidently. “I was really wanting to have a - little talk with you. Somehow we don't often see one another.” - </p> - <p> - Morland, surprised at the softness in her voice, led her back to the - billiard-room. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XII—NORMA'S ENLIGHTENMENT - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE development of - the germ of goodness in woman may be measured by her tendency towards - self-sacrifice. Even the most selfish of her sex, provided she has some - rudimentary virtues, hugs close to her bosom some pet little thorn which - she loves to dig into her shrinking flesh. She enjoys some odd little - mortification, some fantastic humiliation, that is known only to the inner - chamber of her soul. Your great-hearted woman practises Suttee daily, - greatly to the consternation of an observant yet unperceptive husband. - Doubtless this characteristic has a sexual basis, psychological perhaps - rather than directly physiological, being an instinctive assertion of the - fundamental principle of passivity, which in its turn is translated into - the need to be held down and subdued. Thus, if the man does not beat her, - she will beat herself; if he is a fool, she will often apply caustic to - her wisdom, so that she may reverence him; if he is a knave, she will - choke her honesty. Side by side with the assertion of this principle, and - indeed often inextricably confused with it, is the maternal impulse, which - by manifold divergences from its primary manifestation causes women to - find a joy, uncomprehended by men, in pangs of suffering. The higher the - type the stronger the impulse towards this sweet self-martyrdom. - </p> - <p> - Some such theory alone explains the softer tones in Norma's voice when she - spoke to Morland. She had passed through two periods of sharp development—the - half-hour in Scotland and the hours she had spent since her talk with - Jimmie that afternoon. She acted blindly, obeying an imperative voice. - </p> - <p> - They sat down together on the raised divan. She was dressed in black, with - a bunch of yellow roses at her bosom, and her neck and arms gleamed white - in the shadow cast by the green shades over the billiard-table. Her face - had softened. She was infinitely desirable. - </p> - <p> - “I have been thinking over our relations, Morland,” she said. “Perhaps I - have been wrong.” - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean?” he asked in some alarm. - </p> - <p> - “I told you when you asked me to marry you that it would be wise to put - sentiment aside. You agreed, against your will, and have observed the - convention very loyally. But I have not treated you well. In putting - sentiment aside I was, perhaps, wrong. That is what I wanted to say to - you.” - </p> - <p> - “Let me see that I understand you, Norma,” said Morland. “You wish that we - should be more like—like ordinary lovers?” - </p> - <p> - “We might try,” she whispered. - </p> - <p> - She waited. Heaven knows what she waited for; but it did not come. The Imp - of Mischance again scored his point. The man's mind was filled with the - thoughts of another woman in her agony and of a crazy avenger coming with - murder in his heart. He took her hand mechanically and raised it to his - lips. Her yielding to the caress told him that he could throw his arms - around her and treat her loverwise; her words told him that he ought to do - so. - </p> - <p> - Yet he did not. For the moment he was passionless; and to men of his type - is not given the power, possessed by men of imaginative temperament, of - simulating passion. He forced a laugh. - </p> - <p> - “How do you think we might begin?” - </p> - <p> - She went on bravely with her self-imposed task of submission. - </p> - <p> - “I have heard that the man generally takes the initiative.” - </p> - <p> - He kissed her on the cheek. To do less would have been outrageous. - </p> - <p> - “I am glad you realise that I am in love with you, at last,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Are you sure that you are in love with me?” she asked, the chill that had - fallen upon her after the lack of response to her first whisper growing - colder and colder. - </p> - <p> - “Of course I am.” - </p> - <p> - “That is all I wanted to hear. Good-night,” she said in an odd voice. She - rose and put out her hand. Morland opened the door for her to pass and - closed it behind her. - </p> - <p> - Norma went straight to her room, feeling as though she had been tied by - the heels to a cart-tail and dragged through the mud. Half undressed, she - dismissed her maid summarily. Every place on her body that the girl's - fingers touched seemed to be a bruise. She went to bed stupefied with - herself. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile Morland rang for whisky and soda, and cursed all that - appertained to him, knowing that he had missed an amazing opportunity. - After the way of feeble men, he thought of a hundred things he might have - said and done that would have brought her to his feet. Had he not been - watching patiently, ever since his engagement, for her to put off her - grand airs, and become a woman like the rest of them? He should have said - the many things he had often said to others. Or, if words were difficult, - why in the world had he not kissed her properly after the manner accepted - by women as the infallible argument? He conjured up the exceeding - pleasantness of such an act. He could feel the melting of her lips, the - yielding of her bosom; gradually he worked himself into a red-hot desire. - A sudden resolve took him upstairs. There he learned that Norma had - retired for the night, and returning to his whisky in the billiard-room, - he cursed himself more loudly than before. A hand thrust into the pocket - of his dinner-jacket met the poor girl's crumpled letter. Mechanically he - took it to the empty grate, and then cursed the fire for not being lit. - When Mr. Hardacre came down for a final game of billiards, he found his - future son-in-law in an irritable temper, and won an easy game. Rallied - upon his lack of form, Morland explained that the damned election was - getting on his nerves. - </p> - <p> - “Did n't get on them when you were shooting to-day,” said Mr. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - “I made believe that the birds were the beastly voters,” replied Morland. - </p> - <p> - Norma had not yet come down the next morning when he started for Cosford - on electioneering business. Nor did he meet her, as he hoped, in the town, - carrying on the work of canvassing which she had begun with great success. - A dry barrister having been sent down to contest the division in the - Liberal interest, was not making much headway in a constituency devoted to - the duchess and other members of the tyrannical classes, and thus the task - of Norma and her fellow-canvassers was an easy one. Today, however, she - did not appear. Morland consoled himself with the assurance that he would - put things right in the evening. After all, it was easy enough to kiss a - woman who had once shown a desire to be made love to. Every man has his - own philosophy of woman. This was Morland's. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie also started upon his morning's pursuits without seeing Norma. He - was somewhat relieved; for he had spent a restless night, dozing off only - to dream grotesque dreams of the mad orator and waking to fight with - beasts that gnawed his vitals. He came down unstrung, a haggard mockery of - himself, and he was glad not to meet her clear eyes. The three-mile walk - to Chiltern Towers refreshed him, his work on the portrait absorbed his - faculties, and his neighbours at the ducal luncheon-table, to which the - duchess in person had invited him, clear-witted women in the inner world - of politics and diplomacy, kept his attention at straining point. It was - only when he walked back to Heddon Court, although he made a manful - attempt to whistle cheerily, that he felt heavy upon his heart the burden - of the night. It was a languorous September afternoon, and the tired hush - of dying summer had fallen upon the world. The smell of harvest, the sense - of golden fulfilment of life hung on the air. Jimmie swung his stick - impatiently, and filled his lungs with a draught of the mellow warmth. - </p> - <p> - “The old earth is good. By God, it's good!” he cried aloud. - </p> - <p> - Brave words of a resolute optimism; but they did not lighten his burden. - </p> - <p> - He reached the house. Beneath an umbrella-tent on the front lawn sat - Norma, her hands listlessly holding a closed book on her lap. Jimmie would - have lifted his hat and passed her by, but with, a brightening face she - summoned him. They talked awhile of commonplace things. Then, after a - pause, she asked him, half mockingly, to account for his behaviour the day - before. Why had he rated her in that masterful way? - </p> - <p> - “I can't bear you to speak evilly of yourself,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Why, since I deserve it?” - </p> - <p> - “The <i>you</i> that you sometimes take a pleasure in assuming to be may - deserve it. The real you does n't. And it is the real you that I know—that - has given me friendship and is going to marry my dearest friend. The other - you is a phantom of a hollow world in which circumstances have placed - you.” - </p> - <p> - “I think the phantom is happier than the reality,” said Norma, with a - laugh. “'The dream is better than the drink.' The hollow world is the - safer place, after all.” - </p> - <p> - “Where imagination doth not corrupt and enthusiasms do not break in and - steal,” said Jimmie, with unusual bitterness. “I have seen very little of - it—but you have told me things,” he continued lamely, “and your - being in it and of it seems a profanation. When you wilfully identify - yourself with its ideals, you hurt me; and when I am hurt, I cry out.” - </p> - <p> - “But why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” she - asked in a tone half of genuine enquiry and half of expectancy, wholly - kind and soft.. - </p> - <p> - He dug the point of his stick into the turf and did not raise his eyes. He - knew now what a fool's game of peril he was playing, and kept himself in - check. Yet his voice trembled as he replied: - </p> - <p> - “Morland is very dear to me. You, his future wife, have grown dear to me - also. I suppose I have lived rather a simple sort of life and take my - emotions seriously.” - </p> - <p> - “I hope you thank God for it,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - The swift rattle of a carriage turning into the drive broke the talk, - which had grown too personal to be left voluntarily. Jimmie felt - infinitely grateful to the visitors, like a man suddenly saved from a - threatening precipice. Leaving Norma with a bow, he fled into the house - and selecting a book from the library, went onto the terrace. He needed - solitude. Something of which he was unaware was happening. Circumstances - were not the same as when he had first arrived. Then he had looked on - Norma with brave serenity. He was happy, loving her and receiving frank - friendship from her condescending hands. Now it was growing to be a pain - to watch her face, a dread to hear her voice. Sweet intercourse had become - a danger. And a few days had brought about the change. Why? Of the riot in - the woman's nature he knew nothing. In his blank ignorance, seeking the - cause within himself, he asked, Why? - </p> - <p> - He crossed the tennis lawn, went through the little opening at the end of - the hedge, and down to the seclusion of the croquet ground. Half-way along - the sloping bank beneath the upper terrace some one had left a rug. He - threw himself upon it, and tried like many another poor fool to reason - down his hunger. But all the sensitive nerves with which the imaginative - man, for his curse or his blessing, is endowed, were vibrating from head - to foot. Her words sang in his ears: “Why should you care so much about - what I am and what I am not?” The real answer burst passionately from his - heart. - </p> - <p> - He had lain there for about half an hour when a gay little laugh aroused - him. - </p> - <p> - “You idyllic creature!” - </p> - <p> - It was Connie Deering, bewitchingly apparelled, a dainty, smiling pale - yellow butterfly, holding as usual an absurd parasol over her head. - </p> - <p> - “I have been looking for you all over the place,” she remarked. “They told - me you were somewhere about the grounds. May I sit down?” - </p> - <p> - He made room for her on the rug, and taking the parasol from her hand, - closed it. She settled herself gracefully by his side. - </p> - <p> - “I repeat I have been looking for you,” she said. - </p> - <p> -“The overpowering sense - of honour done me has deprived me of speech,” replied Jimmie, with an - attempted return to his light-hearted manner. - </p> - <p> - “Norma is entertaining those dreadful Spencer-Temples,” said Mrs. Deering, - irrelevantly. - </p> - <p> - “I must have had a premonition of their terrors, for I fled from before - their path,” he said. “After all, poor people, what have they done to be - called names?” he added. - </p> - <p> - “They are ugly.” - </p> - <p> - “So am I, yet people don't run away from me.” - </p> - <p> - “I saw you run away from them,” she said with a significant nod. “I was at - my bedroom window. They spoiled a most interesting little conversation.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie was startled. He looked at her keenly, but only met laughing eyes. - </p> - <p> - “They interrupted me certainly. But I could n't have inflicted my society - on Miss Hardacre all the afternoon.” - </p> - <p> - “You would have liked to, wouldn't you? Jimmie dear,” she said with a - change of tone, “I want to have a talk with you. I'm the oldest woman - friend you have—” - </p> - <p> - “And by far the sweetest and kindest and prettiest and fascinatingest.” - </p> - <p> - She tapped his hand with her fingers. “Ssh! I'm serious, awfully serious. - I've never been so serious in my life before. I've got a duty. I don't - often have it, but when I do, it's a terrible matter.” - </p> - <p> - “You had better go and have it extracted at once, Connie,” he laughed, - determined to keep the talk in a frivolous channel. But the little lady - was determined also. - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie dear,” she said, holding up her forefinger, “I am afraid you are - running into danger. I want to warn you. An old friend can do that, can't - she?” - </p> - <p> - “You can say anything you like to me, Connie. But I don't know what you - mean.” - </p> - <p> - He suspected her meaning, however, only too shrewdly, and his heart beat - with apprehension. Had he been fool enough to betray his secret? - </p> - <p> - “Are n't you getting just a little too fond of Norma, Jimmie?” - </p> - <p> - “I could n't get too fond of her,” he said, “seeing that she is to be - Morland's wife.” - </p> - <p> - “That's just why you must n't. Come, Jimmie, have n't you fallen a bit in - love with her?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” he said with some heat. “Certainly not. How dare I?” - </p> - <p> - Kindness and teasing were in her eyes. - </p> - <p> - “My poor dear husband used to say I had the brain of a bird, but I may - have the sharp eyes of a bird as well. Come—not just one little bit - in love?” - </p> - <p> - She had sought him with the best intentions in the world. She had long - suspected; yesterday and to-day had given her certainty. She would put him - on his guard, talk to him like an elder sister, pour forth upon him her - vast wisdom in affairs of the heart, and finally persuade him-from his - folly to more sensible courses. - </p> - <p> - “He sha'n't come to grief over Norma if I can prevent it,” she had said to - herself. - </p> - <p> - And now, in spite of her altruistic resolve, she could not resist the - pleasure of teasing him. She had done so all her life. Her method became - less elder-sisterly than she had intended. But she was miles from - realising that she touched bare nerves, and that the man was less a man - than a living pain. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you I'm not in love with her, Connie,” he said. “How could I dream - of loving her? It would be damnable folly.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie,” she said, enjoying his confusion, “what a miserably - poor liar you make—and what a precious time you would have in the - witness-box if you were a co-respondent! You can't deceive for nuts. You - had better confess and have done with it.” Then seeing something of the - anguish on his face, she bethought her of the serious aspect of her - mission. “I could not bear you to break your heart over Norma, dear,” she - said quite softly. - </p> - <p> - “Don't madden me, Connie—you don't know what you are saying,” he - muttered below his breath. - </p> - <p> - Connie Deering had never heard a man speak in agony of spirit. Her lot had - fallen among pleasant places, where life was a smooth, shaven lawn and - emotions not more violent than the ripples on a piece of ornamental water. - His tone gave her a sudden fright. - </p> - <p> - “You do love her, then?” she whispered. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Jimmie, drawing himself up in a tight, awkward heap on the - slope. “My God, yes, I do love her. I love her with every fibre of brain - and body.” - </p> - <p> - The words were out. More came. He could not restrain them. He gave up the - attempt, surrendered himself to the drunkenness of his passion, poured out - a torrent of riotous speech. What he said he knew not. Such divine madness - comes to a man but few times in a life. The sweet-hearted, frivolous - woman, sitting there in the trim little paradise of green, with its velvet - turf and trim slopes, and tall mask of trees, all mellow in the shade of - the soft September afternoon, listened to him with wondering eyes and pale - cheeks. It was no longer Jimmie of the homely face that was talking; he - was transfigured. His very voice had changed its quality.... Did he love - her? The word was inept in its inadequacy. He worshipped her like a - Madonna. He adored her like a queen. He loved her as the man of hot blood - loves a woman. Soul and heart and body clamoured for her. Compared with - hers, every other woman's beauty was a glow-worm unto lightning. Her voice - haunted him like music heard in sleep. Her presence left a fragrance - behind that clouded his senses like incense. Her beauty twined itself into - every tendril of every woman's hair he painted, stole into the depths of - every woman's eyes. It was a divine obsession. - </p> - <p> - “You must fight against it,” Connie whispered tonelessly. - </p> - <p> - “Why should I? Who is harmed? Norma? Who will tell her? Not I. If I choose - to fill my life with her splendour, what is that to any one? The desire of - the moth for the star! Who heeds the moth?” - </p> - <p> - He went on reckless of speech until his passion had spent itself. Then he - could only repeat in a broken way: - </p> - <p> - “Love her? Heaven knows I love her. My soul is a footstool for her to rest - her feet upon.” - </p> - <p> - Connie Deering laid her hand on his. - </p> - <p> - “I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry, Jimmie. God bless you, dear.” - </p> - <p> - He raised the hand to his lips. Neither spoke. He plucked at the grass by - his side; at length he looked up. - </p> - <p> - “You won't give me away, will you?” he said with a smile, using her - dialect. - </p> - <p> - She went on her knees and clasped both his wrists. She said the first - thing that came, as something sacred, into her head. - </p> - <p> - “I could no more speak of this to any one than of some of my dead - husband's kisses.” - </p> - <p> - “I know you are a good true woman, Connie,” he said. - </p> - <p> - In the silence that followed, Norma, who had come to summon Connie to tea - (the Spencer-Temples having called on their drive past the gates merely to - deliver a message), and hearing the voice behind the hedge had been - compelled against her will to listen—Norma, deadly white, shaken to - the roots of her being, crept across the tennis lawn and fled in swaying - darkness to her room. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XIII—THE OPTIMIST AT LARGE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>ONNIE DEERING - walked back to the house with a silent and still tremulous Jimmie. She had - slid her hand through his arm, and now and then gave it an affectionate - pat. Within the limitations of her light, gay nature she was a sympathetic - and loyal woman, and she had loved Jimmie for many years with the - unquestioning fondness that one has for a beloved and satisfying domestic - animal. She had recovered from the fright his frantic demonstration had - caused her, and her easy temperament had shaken off the little chill of - solemnity that had accompanied her vow of secrecy. But she pitied him with - all her kind heart, and in herself felt agreeably sentimental. - </p> - <p> - They strolled slowly into the hall, and paused for a moment before - parting. - </p> - <p> - “When you come to think of it seriously, you won't consider I have made - too impossible a fool of myself?” he asked with an apologetic smile. - </p> - <p> - “I promise,” she said affectionately. Then she laughed. Not only was - Jimmie's smile contagious, but Connie Deering could not face the pleasant - world for more than an hour without laughter. - </p> - <p> - “I have always said you were a dear, Jimmie, and you are. I almost wish I - could kiss you.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie looked around. They were quite unperceived. - </p> - <p> - “I do quite,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek. - </p> - <p> - “Now we are really brother and sister,” she said with a flush. “You are - not going to be too unhappy, are you?” - </p> - <p> - “I? Oh no, not I,” he replied heartily. He repeated this asseveration to - himself while dressing for dinner. Why indeed should he be unhappy? Had he - not looked a few hours before at God's earth and found that it was good? - Besides, to add to the common stock of the world's unhappiness were a - crime. “Yes, a crime,” he said aloud, with a vigorous pull at his white - tie. Then he perceived that it was hopelessly mangled, and wished for - Aline, who usually conducted that part of the ceremony of his toilette. - </p> - <p> - “It will have to do,” he said cheerfully, as he turned away from the - glass. - </p> - <p> - Yet, for all his philosophising, he was surprised at the relief that his - wild confession to Connie had afforded him. The burden that had seemed too - heavy for him to bear had now grown magically light. He attributed the - phenomenon to Connie Deering, to the witchery of her sweet sympathy and - the comfort of her sisterly kiss. By the time he had finished dressing the - acute pain of the past two days had vanished, and as he went down the - stairs he accounted himself a happy man. In the drawing-room he met Norma, - and chatted to her almost light-heartedly. He did not notice the - constraint in her manner, her avoidance of his glance, the little pucker - of troubled brows; nor was he aware of her sigh of relief when the door - opened and the servant announced Mr. Theodore Weever, who with one or two - other people were dining at the house. Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre followed on - the American's heels, and soon the rest of the party had assembled. Jimmie - had no opportunity for further talk with Norma, who studiously kept apart - from him all the evening, and during dinner devoted herself to subacid - conversation with Morland and to a reckless interchange of cynical banter - with Weever. Jimmie, talking with picturesque fancy about his student days - in the Rue Bonaparte to his neighbour, a frank fox-hunting and - sport-loving young woman, never dreamed of the chaos of thoughts and - feelings that whirled behind the proud face on the opposite side of the - table; and Norma, when her mind now and then worked lucidly, wondered at - the strength and sweetness of the man who could subdue such passion and - laugh with a gaiety so honest and sincere. For herself, Theodore Weever, - with his icy humour that crystallised her own irony into almost deadly - wit, was her sole salvation during the interminable meal. Once Morland, - listening with admiration, whispered in her ear: - </p> - <p> - “I've never heard you in such good form.” - </p> - <p> - She had to choke down an hysterical impulse of laughter and swallow a - mouthful of champagne. Later, when the women guests had gone, she slipped - up to her room without saying good-night to Morland, and, dismissing her - maid, as she had done the night before, sat for a long time, holding her - head in her hands, vainly seeking to rid it of words that seemed to have - eaten into her brain. And when she thought of Morland, of last night, of - her humiliation, she flushed hot from hair to feet. She was only - five-and-twenty, and the world had not as yet completed its work of - hardening. It was a treacherous and deceitful world; she had prided - herself on being a finished product of petrifaction, and here she lay, - scorched and bewildered, like any soft and foolish girl who had been - suddenly brought too near the flame of life. Keenly she felt the - piteousness of her defeat. In what it exactly consisted she did not know. - She was only conscious of broken pride, the shattering of the little - hard-faced gods in her temple, the tearing up of the rails upon which she - had reckoned to travel to her journey's end. Hers was a confused soul - state, devoid of immediate purpose. A breach of her engagement with - Morland did not occur to her mind, and Jimmie was merely an impersonal - utterer of volcanic words. She slept but little. In the morning she found - habit by her bedside; she clothed herself therein and faced the day. - </p> - <p> - Much was expected of her. The great garden-party was to take place that - afternoon. Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck had - signified that she would do Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre the honour of being - present. Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire would accompany the princess. - The <i>ban</i> and <i>arriere-ban</i> of the county had been invited, and - the place would be filled with fair women agog to bask in the smiles of - royalty, and ill-tempered men dragged away from their partridges by - ambitious wives. A firm of London caterers had contracted for the - refreshments. A military band would play on the terrace. A clever French - showman whom Providence had sent to cheer the dying hours of the London - season, and had kept during the dead months at a variety theatre, was - coming down with an authentic Guignol. He had promised the choicest pieces - in his repertoire—<i>la vraie grivoiserie française</i>—and - men who had got wind of the proposed entertainment winked at one another - wickedly. The garden-party was to be an affair of splendour worthy of the - royal lady who had deigned to shed her serenity upon the county families - assembled; and Mr. Hardacre had raised a special sum of money to meet the - expenses. - </p> - <p> - “I shall have to go to the Jews, my dear,” he had said to his wife when - they were first discussing ways and means. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, go to the—Jews then,” said Mrs. Hardacre, almost betrayed, in - her irritation, into an unwifely retort. “What does it matter, what does - any sacrifice matter, when once we have royalty at the house? You are such - a fool, Benjamin.” - </p> - <p> - He had a singular faculty for arousing the waspishness of his wife; yet, - save on rare occasions, he was the meekest of men in her presence. - </p> - <p> - “Well, you know best, Eliza,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “I have n't been married to you for six-and-twenty years without being - perfectly certain of that,” she replied tartly. - </p> - <p> - So Mr. Hardacre went to the Jews, and the princess promised to come to - Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - Norma was not the only one that morning who was aroused to a sense of - responsibility. The footman entering Jimmie's bedroom brought with him a - flat cardboard box neatly addressed in Aline's handwriting. The box - contained a new shirt, two new collars, a new silk tie, and a pair of grey - suède gloves; also a letter from Aline instructing him as to the use of - these various articles of attire. - </p> - <p> - “Be sure to wear your frock-coat,” wrote the director of Jimmie's conduct. - “I wish you had one less than six years old; but I went over it with - benzine and ammonia before I packed it up, so perhaps it won't be so bad. - And wear your patent-leather evening shoes. They'll look quite smart if - you'll tie the laces up tight, and stick the ends in between the shoe and - the sock. Oh, I wish I could come and turn you out decently! and <i>please</i>, - Jimmie dear, don't cut yourself shaving and go about all day with a - ridiculous bit of cotton wool on your dear chin. Tony says you need n't - wear the frock-coat, but I know better. What acquaintance has he with - princesses and duchesses? And that reminds me to tell you that Tony—” - <i>et caetera, et caetera,</i> in a manner that brought the kindest smile - in the world into Jimmie's eyes. - </p> - <p> - He dressed with scrupulous regard to directions, but not in the - frock-coat. He had a morning sitting with the princess at Chiltern Towers - to get through before airing himself in the splendour of benzine and - ammonia. He put on his old tweed jacket and went downstairs. Morland was - the only person as yet in the breakfast-room. He held a morning paper - tight in his hand, and stared through the window, his back to the door. On - Jimmie's entrance he started round, and Jimmie saw by a harassed face that - something had happened. - </p> - <p> - “My dear fellow—” he began in alarm. - </p> - <p> - Morland smoothed out the paper with nervous fingers, and threw it somewhat - ostentatiously on a chair. Then he walked to the table and poured himself - out some tea. The handle of the silver teapot slid in his grasp, and - awkwardly trying to save the pouring flood of liquid, he dropped the - teapot among the cups and saucers. It was a disaster, but one that could - have been adequately greeted by a simpler series of expletives. He cursed - vehemently. - </p> - <p> - “What's the matter, man?” asked Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Morland turned violently upon him. - </p> - <p> - “The very devil's the matter. There never was such a mess since the world - began. What an infernal fool I have been! You do well to steer clear of - women.” - </p> - <p> - “Tell me what's wrong and I may be able to help you.” - </p> - <p> - Morland looked at him for a moment in gloomy doubt. Then he shook his - head. - </p> - <p> - “You can't help me. I thought you could, but you can't. It's a matter for - a lawyer. I must run up to town.” - </p> - <p> - “And cut the garden-party?” - </p> - <p> - “That's where I'm tied,” exclaimed Morland, impatiently. “I ought to start - now, but if I cut the garden-party the duchess would never forgive me—and - by Jove, I may need the duchess more than ever—and I've got a - meeting to attend in Cosford this morning to which a lot of people are - coming from a distance.” - </p> - <p> - “Can't I interview the lawyer for you?” - </p> - <p> - “No. I must do it myself.” - </p> - <p> - The butler entered and looked with grave displeasure at the wreckage on - the tea-tray. While he was repairing the disaster, Morland went back to - the window and Jimmie stood by his side. - </p> - <p> - “If you fight it through squarely, it will all come right in the end.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't mind my not telling you about it?” said Morland, in a low - voice. - </p> - <p> - “Why should I? In everything there is a time for silence and a time for - speech.” - </p> - <p> - “You're right,” said Morland, thrusting his hands into his trousers' - pockets; “but how I am to get through this accursed day in silence I don't - know.” - </p> - <p> - They sat down to breakfast. Morland rejected the offer of tea, and called - for a whisky and soda which he nearly drained at a gulp. Mr. Hardacre came - in, and eyed the long glass indulgently. - </p> - <p> - “Bucking yourself up, eh? Why did n't you ask for a pint of champagne?” - </p> - <p> - He opened the newspaper and ran through the pages. Morland watched him - with swift nervous glances, and uttered a little gasp of relief when he - threw it aside and attacked his grilled kidneys. His own meal was soon - over. Explaining that he had papers to work at in the library, he hurried - out of the room. - </p> - <p> - “Can't understand a man being so keen on these confounded politics,” his - host remarked to Jimmie across the table. A polite commonplace was all - that could be expected in reply. Politics were engrossing. - </p> - <p> - “That's the worst of it,” said Mr. Hardacre. “In the good old days a man - could take his politics like a gentleman; now he has got to go at them - like a damned blaspheming agitator on a tub.” - </p> - <p> - “Cosford was once a pretty little pocket borough, wasn't it?” said Jimmie. - “Now Trade's unfeeling train usurp the privileges of His Grace of - Wiltshire and threaten to dispossess his nominee. Instead of one simple - shepherd recording his pastoral vote we have an educated electorate daring - to exercise their discretion.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hardacre looked at Jimmie askance; he always regarded an allusive - style with suspicion, as if it necessarily harboured revolutionary - theories. - </p> - <p> - “I hope you're not one of those—” He checked himself as he was going - to say “low radical fellows.” Politeness forbade. “I hope you are not a - radical, Mr. Padgate?” - </p> - <p> - “I am sure I don't quite know,” replied Jimmie, cheerfully. - </p> - <p> - “Humph!” said Mr. Hardacre, “I believe you are.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie laughed; but Mr. Hardacre felt that he held the key to the - eccentric talk of his guest. Jimmie Padgate was a radical; a fearful - wildfowl of unutterable proclivities, to whom all things dreadful were - possible. - </p> - <p> - “I,” he continued, “am proud to be a Tory of the old school.” - </p> - <p> - The entrance of the ladies put a stop to the distressful conversation. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie, whose life during the past few days had been a curious compound of - sunshine and shadow, went about his morning's work with only Morland's - troubles weighing upon him. Of their specific nature he had no notion; he - knew they had to do with the unhappy love affair; but as Morland was going - to put matters into the hands of his lawyers, a satisfactory solution was - bound to be discovered. Like all simple-minded men, he had illimitable - faith in the powers of solicitors and physicians; it was their business to - get people out of difficulties, and if they were capable men they did - their business. Deriving much comfort from this fallacy, he thought as - little as might be about the matter. In fact he quite enjoyed his morning. - He sat before his easel at the end of a high historic gallery, the bright - morning light that streamed in through the windows tempered by judiciously - arranged white blinds; and down the vista were great paintings, and rare - onyx tables, and priceless chairs and statuary, all harmonising with the - stately windows and painted ceiling and polished floor. In front of him, - posed in befitting attitude, sat the royal lady, with her most urbane - expression upon her features, and, that which pleased him most, the - picture was just emerging from the blurred mass of paint, an excellent - though somewhat idealised portrait. So he worked unfalteringly with the - artist's joy in the consciousness of successful efforts, and his - good-humour infected even his harsh sitter, who now and then showed a - wintry gleam of gaiety, and uttered a guttural word of approbation. - </p> - <p> - “You shall come to Herren-Rothbeck and baint the bortrait of the brince my - brother,” she said graciously. “Would that blease you?” - </p> - <p> - “I should just think it would,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - The princess laughed—a creaking, rusty laugh, but thoroughly well - intentioned. Jimmie glanced at her enquiringly. - </p> - <p> - “I like you,” she responded. “You are so natural—what you English - call refreshing. A German would have made a ceremonious speech as long as - your mahl-stick.” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid I must learn ceremony before I come to court, Madam,” said - Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “If you do, you will have forgotten how to baint bor-traits,” said the - princess. - </p> - <p> - Thus, under the sun of princely favour, was Jimmie proceeding on the - highroad to fortune. Never had the future seemed so bright. His bombastic - jest about being appointed painter in ordinary to the crowned heads of - Europe was actually going to turn out a reality. He lost himself in - daydreams of inexhaustible coffers from which he could toss gold in - lapfuls to Aline. She should indeed walk in silk attire, and set up - housekeeping with Tony in a mansion in Park Lane. - </p> - <p> - On the front lawn at Heddon Court he met Connie and waved his hat in the - air. She went to him, and, peering into his smiling face, laid her hand - on his sleeve. - </p> - <p> - “Whatever has happened? Have you two stepped into each other's shoes?” - </p> - <p> - “What on earth do you mean? - </p> - <p> - “You know—Norma.” - </p> - <p> - “My dear Connie—” he began. - </p> - <p> - “Well, it seemed natural. Here are you as happy as an emperor; and there - is Morland come back from Cosford with the look of a hunted criminal.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XIV—THE BUBBLE REPUTATION - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE princess had - the affability to inform Mrs. Hardacre that it was a “charming barty,” and - Mrs. Hardacre felt that she had not lived in vain. - </p> - <p> - Henceforth she would be of the innermost circle of the elect of the - county. Exclusive front doors would open respectfully to her. She would be - consulted on matters appertaining to social polity. She would be a - personage. She would also make her neighbour, Lady FitzHubert, sick with - envy. A malignant greenness on that lady's face she noted with a thrill of - pure happiness, and she smilingly frustrated all her manoeuvres to get - presented to Her Serene Highness. She presented her rival, instead, to - Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “My dear Lady FitzHubert, let me introduce Mr. Padgate, who is painting - the dear princess's portrait. Mr. Padgate is staying with us.” - </p> - <p> - Whereby Mrs. Hardacre conveyed the impression that Heddon Court and - Chiltern Towers contained just one family party, the members of which ran - in and out of either house indiscriminately. It may be mentioned that - Jimmie did not get on particularly well with Lady FitzHubert. He even - confided afterwards to Connie Deering his suspicion that now and again - members of the aristocracy were lacking in true urbanity. - </p> - <p> - By declaring the garden-party to be charming the princess only did justice - to the combined efforts of the Hardacres and Providence. The warm golden - weather and the chance of meeting august personages had brought guests - from far and near. The lawns were bright with colour and resonant with - talk. A red-coated band played on the terrace. Between the items of music, - Guignol, housed in the Greek temple, with the portico for a proscenium, - performed his rogueries to the delight of hastily assembling audiences. - Immediately below, a long white-covered table gleamed with silver tea-urns - and china, and all the paraphernalia of refreshments. At the other end of - the lawn sat the august personages surrounded by the elect. - </p> - <p> - Among these was Morland. But for him neither blue September skies nor - amiable duchesses had any charm. To the man of easy living had come the - sudden shock of tragedy, and the music and the teacups and the flatteries - seemed parts of a ghastly farce. The paragraph he had read in the paper - that morning obsessed him. The hours had seemed one long shudder against - which he vainly braced his nerves. He had loved the poor girl in his - facile way. The news in itself was enough to bring him face to face with - elementals. But there was another terror added. The chance word of a - laughing woman had put him on the rack of anxiety. Getting out of the - train at Cosford, she had seen the queerest figure of a man step on to the - platform, with the face of Peter the Hermit and the costume of Mr. - Stiggins. Morland's first impulse had been to retreat precipitately from - Cosford, and take the next train to London, whither he ought to have gone - that morning. The tradition-bred Englishman's distaste for craven flight - kept him irresolutely hanging round the duchess. He thought of whispering - a private word to Jimmie; but Jimmie was far away, being introduced here - and there, apparently enjoying considerable popularity. Besides, the - whisper would involve the tale of the newspaper paragraph, and Morland - shrank from confiding such news to Jimmie. No one on earth must know it - save his legal adviser, an impersonal instrument of protection. He did - what he had done once during five horrible weeks at Oxford, when an - Abingdon barmaid threatened him with a breach of promise action. He did - nothing and trusted to luck. Happy chance brought to light the fact that - she was already married. Happy chance might save him again. - </p> - <p> - Beyond the mere commonplaces of civility he had exchanged no words that - day with Norma. Moved by an irritating feeling of shame coupled with a - certain repugnance of the flesh, he had deliberately avoided her; and his - preoccupation had not allowed him to perceive that the avoidance was - reciprocated. When they happened to meet in their movements among the - guests, they smiled at each other mechanically and went their respective - ways. Once, during the afternoon, Mr. Hardacre, red and fussy, took him - aside. - </p> - <p> - “I have just heard a couple of infernal old cats talking of Norma and that - fellow Weever. There they are together now. Will you give Norma a hint, or - shall I?” - </p> - <p> - Morland looked up and saw the pair on the terrace, midway between the band - and the Guignol audience. - </p> - <p> - “I'm glad she has got somebody to amuse her,” he said, turning away. He - was almost grateful to Weever for taking Norma off his hands. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile Jimmie was continuing to find life full of agreeable surprises. - Lady FitzHubert was not the only lady to whom he was presented as the Mr. - Padgate who was painting the princess's portrait. Mrs. Hardacre waived the - personal grudge, and flourished him tactfully in the face of the county; - and the county accepted him with unquestioning ingenuousness. He was - pointed out as a notability, became the well-known portrait-painter, the - celebrated artist, <i>the</i> James Padgate, and thus achieved the bubble - reputation. A guest who was surreptitiously reporting the garden-party for - the local paper took eager notes of the personal appearance of the eminent - man, and being a woman of the world, professed familiarity with his works. - For the first time in his life he found himself a person of importance. - The fact of his easy inclusion in the charmed circle cast a glamour over - the crudities of the gala costume designed and furbished up with so much - anxious thought by Aline, and people (who are kindly as a rule when their - attention is diverted from the trivial) looked only at his face and were - attracted to the man himself. Only Lady FitzHubert, who had private - reasons for frigidity, treated him in an unbecoming manner. Other fair - ladies smiled sweetly upon him, and spread abroad tales of his niceness, - and thus helped in the launching of him as a fashionable portrait-painter - upon the gay world. - </p> - <p> - He had a brief interlude of talk with Norma by the refreshment-table. - </p> - <p> - “I hope you are not being too much bored by all this,” she said in her - society manner. - </p> - <p> - “Bored!” he cried. “It's delightful.” - </p> - <p> - “What about the hollow world where imagination doth not corrupt and - enthusiasms do not break in and steal?” - </p> - <p> - “It's a phantom dust-heap for inept epigrams. I don't believe it exists.” - </p> - <p> - “You mustn't preach a gospel one day and give it the lie the next,” she - said, half seriously; “for then I won't know what to believe. You don't - seem to realise your responsibilities.” - </p> - <p> - He echoed the last word in some surprise. Norma broke into a little - nervous laugh. - </p> - <p> - “You don't suppose you can go about without affecting your - fellow-creatures? It is well that you don't know what a disturbing element - you are.” - </p> - <p> - She turned her head away and closed her eyes for a second or two, for the - words she had overheard there by the hedge, last evening, rang in her - ears. Perhaps it had been well for Jimmie if he had known. Before he had - time to reply, she recovered herself, and added quickly: - </p> - <p> - “I am glad you are enjoying yourself.” - </p> - <p> - “How can I help it when every one is so kind to me?” he said brightly. “I - came down here an obscure painter, a veritable <i>pictor ignotus</i>, and - all your friends are as charming to me as if I were the President of the - Royal Academy.” -</p> - <p> -Connie Deering came up with a message for Norma and - carried her off to the house. - </p> - <p> - “How does Jimmie like being lionised?” she asked on the way. - </p> - <p> - Norma repeated his last speech. - </p> - <p> - “He has n't any idea of the people's motives.” She added somewhat - hysterically: - </p> - <p> - “The man is half fool, half angel—” - </p> - <p> - “And altogether a <i>man</i>. Don't you make any mistake about that,” said - Connie, with a pretty air of finality. “You don't know as much about him - as I do.” - </p> - <p> - “I'm not so sure about that,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “I am,” said Connie. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie was wandering away from the refreshment-table when Theodore Weever - stopped him. - </p> - <p> - “That's a famous portrait of yours, Mr. Padgate. I saw it to-day after - lunch. I offer you my congratulations.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie thanked him, said modestly that he hoped it was a good likeness. - </p> - <p> - “Too good by a long chalk,” laughed the American. “Her Serene Skinflint - does n't deserve it. I bet you she beat you down like a market-woman - haggling for fish.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie stuck his hands on his hips and laughed. - </p> - <p> - “You don't deny it. You should n't have let her. She is rolling in money.” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid one does n't bother much with the commercial side of things,” - said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “That's where you make the mistake. Money is money, and it is better in - one's own pockets than in anybody else's. But that's not what I wanted to - speak to you about. I wonder if you would let me have the pleasure of - calling at your studio some day? I'm collecting a few pictures, and I - should regard it as a privilege to be allowed to look round yours.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie, having no visiting cards, scribbled his address on the back of an - envelope. He would be delighted to see Mr. Weever any time he was passing - through London. Weever bowed, and turned to greet a passing acquaintance, - leaving a happy artist. A miracle had happened; the star of his fortunes - had arisen. A week ago it was below the horizon, shedding a faint, hopeful - glimmer in the sky. Now it shone bright overhead. The days of struggle and - disappointment were over. He had come into his kingdom of recognition. All - had happened to-day: the princess's promise of another and more - illustrious royal portrait; the sudden leap into fame; the patronage of - the American financier. One has to be the poor artist, with his youth—one record of desperate endeavour—behind him, to know what these - things mean. The delicate flattery of strange women, however commonplace - or contemptible it may be to the successful, was a new, rare thing to - Jimmie and appeased an unknown hunger. The prospect of good work done and - delivered to the world, without sordid, heart-breaking bargainings, - shimmered before him like a paradise. Old habit made him long for Aline. - How pleased the child would be when she heard the glad news! He saw the - joy on her bright face and heard her clap her hands together, and he - smiled. He would return to her a conqueror, having won the prizes she had - so often wept for—name and fame and fortune. The band was playing - the “Wedding March” from “Lohengrin.” By chance, as he was no musician, he - recognised it. - </p> - <p> - “Aline shall have a wedding dress from Paris,” he said half aloud, and he - smiled again. The world had never been so beautiful. - </p> - <p> - He embraced all of it that was visible in a happy, sweeping glance. Then - with the swiftness of lightning the smile on his face changed into - consternation. - </p> - <p> - For a moment he stood stock still, staring at the sudden figure of a man. - It was Stone, the mad orator of Hyde Park. There was no possibility of - mistaking him at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards. He wore the same - rusty black frock-coat and trousers, the same dirty collar and narrow - black tie, the same shapeless clerical hat. His long neck above the collar - looked raw and scabious like a vulture's. In his hand he carried a folded - newspaper. He had suddenly emerged upon the end of the terrace from the - front entrance, and was descending the steps that led down to the tennis - lawn. If he walked straight on, he would come to the group surrounding the - princess and the Duchess of Wiltshire. Two or three people were already - eyeing him curiously. - </p> - <p> - Morland's strange dread of the man flashed upon Jimmie. He hurried forward - to meet him. Of what he was about to do he had no definite idea. Perhaps - he could head Stone off, take him away from the grounds on the pretext of - listening to his grievances. At any rate, a scandal must be avoided. As he - drew near, he observed Morland, who had been bending down in conversation - with the duchess, rise and unexpectedly recognise Stone. - </p> - <p> - A manservant bearing a small tray with some teacups ran up to the - extraordinary intruder, who waved him away impatiently. The servant put - down his tray and caught him by the arm. - </p> - <p> - “You have no business here.” - </p> - <p> - Stone shook himself free. - </p> - <p> - “I have. Where is Mr. Rendell? Tell him I have to speak with him.” - </p> - <p> - “There is no such person here,” said the servant. “Be off!” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie reached the spot, as a few of the nearer guests were beginning to - take a surprised interest in the altercation. Morland came forward from - behind the duchess's chair and cast a swift glance at Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “If you don't go, I shall make you,” said the servant, preparing to - execute his threat. The man looked dangerous. - </p> - <p> - “I must see Mr. David Rendell,” he cried, beginning to struggle. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie drew the servant away. - </p> - <p> - “I know this gentleman,” he said quietly. “Mr. Stone, Mr. Rendell is not - here, but if you will come with me, I will listen to you, and tell him - anything you have to say.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hardacre, who had seen the scuffle from a distance, came up in a - fluster. - </p> - <p> - “What's all this? What's all this? Who is this creature? Please go away.” - He began to hustle the man. - </p> - <p> - “Stop! He's an acquaintance of Padgate's,” said Morland, huskily. - </p> - <p> - There was a short pause. Stone stared around at the well-dressed men and - women, at the seated figures of the princess and the duchess, at the - servant who had picked up the tray, at the band who were still playing the - “Wedding March” from “Lohengrin,” at the red-faced, little, blustering - man, at the beautiful cool setting of green, and the look in his eyes was - that of one who saw none of these things. Morland edged to Jimmie's side. - </p> - <p> - “For God's sake, get him away,” he said in a low voice. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie nodded and touched the man's arm. - </p> - <p> - “Come,” said he. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, please take him off! What the dickens does he want?” said Mr. - Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - Stone turned his burning eyes upon him. - </p> - <p> - “I have come to find an infamous seducer,” he replied, with a melodramatic - intensity that would have been ludicrous had his face not been so ghastly. - “His name is Rendell.” - </p> - <p> - There was a shiver of interest in the crowd. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Was sagt er?</i>” the princess whispered to her neighbour. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie again tried to lead Stone away, but the distraught creature seemed - lost in thought and looked at him fixedly. - </p> - <p> - “I have seen you before,” he said at last. - </p> - <p> - “Of course you have,” said Jimmie. “In Hyde Park. Don't you remember?” - </p> - <p> - Suddenly, with a wrench of his hands he tore an unmounted photograph from - the folded newspaper and threw it on the ground. His eyes blazed. - </p> - <p> - “I thought I should find him. One of you is David Rendell. It is not your - real name. That I know. Which of you is it?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie had sprung upon the photograph. Instinct rather than the evidence - of sight told him that it was an amateur portrait of himself and Morland - taken one idle afternoon in the studio by young Tony Merewether. It had - hardly lain the fraction of a second on the ground but to Jimmie it seemed - as if the two figures had flashed clear upon the sight of all the - bystanders. He glanced quickly at Morland, who stood quite still now with - stony face and averted eyes. He too had recognised the photograph, and he - cursed himself for a fool for having given it to the girl. He had had it - loose in his pocket; she had pleaded for it; she had no likeness of him at - all. He was paying now for his imprudent folly. Like Jimmie, he feared - lest others should have recognised the photograph. But he trusted again to - chance. Jimmie had undertaken the unpleasant business and his wit would - possibly save the situation. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie did not hesitate. A man is as God made him, heart and brain. To his - impulsive imagination the photograph would be proof positive for the world - that one of the two was the infamous seducer. It did not occur to him to - brazen the man out, to send him about his business; wherein lies the - pathos of simple-mindedness. The decisive moment had come. To Morland - exposure would mean loss of career, and, as he conceived it, loss of - Norma; and to the beloved woman it would mean misery and heartbreak. So he - committed an heroic folly. - </p> - <p> - “Well, I <i>am</i> Rendell,” he said in a loud voice. “What then?” - </p> - <p> - Heedless of shocked whisperings and confused voices, among which rose a - virtuously indignant “Great heavens!” from Mrs. Hardacre, he moved away - quickly towards the slope, motioning Stone to follow. But Stone remained - where he stood, and pointed at Jimmie with lean, outstretched finger, and - lifted up his voice in crazy rhetoric, which was heard above the “Wedding - March.” No one tried to stop him. It was too odd, too interesting, too - dramatic. - </p> - <p> - “The world shall know the tale of your lust, and the sun shall not go down - upon your iniquity. Under false promises you betrayed the sweetest flower - in God's garden. Basely you taunted her in her hour of need. Murder and - suicide are on your head. There is the record for all who wish to read it. - Read it,” he cried, flinging the newspaper at Mrs. Hardacre's feet. “Read - how she killed her newborn babe, the child of this devil, and then hanged - herself.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie came two or three steps forward. - </p> - <p> - “Stop this mad foolery,” he cried. - </p> - <p> - Stone glared at him for a fraction of a second, thrust his hand into the - breast-pocket of his frock-coat, drew out a revolver, and shot him. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie staggered as a streak of fire passed through him, and swung round. - The women shrieked and rushed together behind the princess and the - duchess, who remained calmly seated. The men with one impulse sprang - forward to seize the madman; but as he leaped aside and threatened his - assailants with his revolver, they hung back. The band stopped short in - the middle of a bar. - </p> - <p> - Norma and Connie Deering and one or two others who had been in the house, - unaware of the commotion of the last few minutes, ran out on the terrace - as they heard the shot and the sudden cessation of the band. They saw the - crowd of frightened, nervous people below, and the grotesque figure in his - rusty black pointing the pistol. And they saw Jimmie march up to him, and - in a dead silence they heard him say: - </p> - <p> - “Give me that revolver. What is a silly fool like you doing with - fire-arms? You could n't hit a haystack at a yard's distance. Give it to - me, I say.” - </p> - <p> - The man's arm was outstretched, and the pistol was aimed point-blank at - Jimmie. Connie Deering gripped Norma's arm, and Norma, feeling faint, grew - white to the lips. - </p> - <p> - “Give it to me,” said Jimmie again. - </p> - <p> - The man wavered, his arm drooped slightly; with the action of one who - takes a dangerous thing from a child, Jimmie quietly wrenched the revolver - from his grasp. - </p> - <p> - Norma gave a gasp of relief and began to laugh foolishly. Connie clapped - her hands in excitement. - </p> - <p> - “Did n't I tell you he was a man? By heavens, the only one in the lot!” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie pointed towards the terrace steps. - </p> - <p> - “Go!” he said. - </p> - <p> - But there was a rush now to seize the disarmed Stone, the red coats of the - bandsmen mingling with the black of the guests. Jimmie, with a curious - flame through his shoulder and a swimming in his head, swerved aside. - Morland ran up, with a white face. - </p> - <p> - “My God! He has hit you. I thought he had missed.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Jimmie, smiling at the reeling scene. “I'm all right. Keep the - photograph. It was silly to give one's photograph away. I always was a - fool.” - </p> - <p> - Morland pocketed the unmounted print. He tried to utter a word of thanks, - but the eyes of the scared and scandalised crowd a few steps away were - upon them, and many were listening. For a moment during the madman's crazy - indictment of Jimmie—for the horrible facts were only too true—he - had had the generous impulse to come forward and at all costs save his - friend; but he had hesitated. The shot had been fired. The dramatic little - scene had followed. To proclaim Jimmie's innocence and his own guilt now - would be an anticlimax. It was too late. He would take another opportunity - of exonerating Jimmie. So he stood helpless before him, and Jimmie, - feeling fainter and fainter, protested that he was not hurt. - </p> - <p> - They stood a bit apart from the rest. By this time men and women had - flocked from all quarters, and practically the whole party had assembled - on the tennis lawn. Norma still stood with Connie on the terrace, her hand - on her heart. A small group clustered round a man who had picked up the - newspaper and was reading aloud the ghastly paragraph marked by Stone in - blue pencil. The Hardacres were wringing their hands before a stony-faced - princess and an indignant duchess, who announced their intention of - immediate departure. Every one told every one else the facts he or she had - managed to gather. Human nature and the morbidly stimulated imagination of - naturally unimaginative people invented atrocious details. Jimmie's - new-born fame as a painter was quickly merged into hideous notoriety. His - star must have been Lucifer, so swift was its fall. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hardacre left his wife's side, and dragged Morland a step or two away, - and whispered excitedly: - </p> - <p> - “What a scandal! What a hell of a scandal! Before royalty, too. It will be - the death of us. The damned fellow must go. You must clear him out of the - house!” - </p> - <p> - “He's hit. Look at him,” exclaimed Morland. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie heard his host's whisper in a dream. It seemed a hoarse voice very, - very far off. He laughed in an idiotic way, waved his hand to the gyrating - crowd, and stumbled a few yards towards the slope. The world swam into - darkness and he fell heavily on his face. - </p> - <p> - Then, to the amazement of the county, Norma with a ringing cry rushed down - the slope, and threw herself beside Jimmie's body and put his head on her - lap. And there she stayed until they dragged her away, uttering the queer - whimpering exclamations of a woman suddenly stricken with great terror. - She thought Jimmie was dead. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XV—MRS. HARDACRE LAUGHS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HEY took Jimmie - into the house, and Norma, looking neither to right nor left, walked by - the side of those carrying him, the front of her embroidered dress smeared - with blood. Every time her hands came in contact with the delicate fabric, - they left a fresh smear. Of this she was unconscious. She was unconscious - too, save in a dull way, of the staring crowd; but she held her head high, - and when Morland spoke to her by the drawing-room window through which - they passed, she listened to what he had to say, bowed slightly, and went - on. - </p> - <p> - “It is only a flesh wound. If it had been the lung, he would have spat - blood. I don't think it is serious.” - </p> - <p> - He spoke in a curiously apologetic tone, as if anxious to exculpate - himself from complicity in the attempted murder.. He was horribly - frightened. Two deaths laid in one day at a man's door are enough. The - possibility of a third was intolerable. The sense of the unheroic part he - had just played was beginning to creep over him like a chilling mist. The - consequences of confession, the only means whereby Jimmie could be - rehabilitated, loomed in front of him more and more disastrous. It would - be presenting himself to the world as a coward as well as a knave. That - prospect, too, frightened him. Lastly, there was Norma, white, - terror-stricken, metamorphosed in a second into a creature of primitive - emotions. Like the other shocks of that unhallowed day, her revelation of - unsuspected passions brought him face to face with the unfamiliar; and to - the average sensual man the unfamiliar brings with it an atmosphere of the - uncanny, the influence to be feared. His attitude, therefore, when he - addressed her was ludicrously humble. - </p> - <p> - She bowed and passed on. By this time she knew that Jimmie was not dead. - Morland's words even reassured her. Her breath came hard through her - delicate nostrils, and her bosom heaved up and down beneath the open-work - bodice with painful quickness. Only a few were allowed to stay in the - dining-room, Morland, Mr. Hardacre, Theodore Weever on behalf of the - duchess, and one or two others, while the Cosford doctor, who had been - invited to the garden-party, made his examination. Norma went through into - the hall. At the bottom of the stairs she met Connie in piteous distress. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my poor dear, my poor dear, we did n't know! I have just heard all - about it. It is terrible!” - </p> - <p> - Norma put up her hand beseechingly. - </p> - <p> - “Don't, Connie dear; don't talk of it. I can't bear it. I must be alone. - Send me up word what the doctor says.” - </p> - <p> -She went to her room, sat there and - waited. Presently her maid entered with the message from Mrs. Deering. The - doctor's report was favourable—the wound not in any way dangerous, - the bullet easily extractable. They had carried the patient to his - bedroom, and Mrs. Deering had wired for Miss Marden to come down by the - first train. Norma dismissed the maid, and tried, in a miserable wonder, - to realise all that had happened. - </p> - <p> - A woman accustomed to many emotions can almost always hold herself in - check, if she be of strong will. Experience has taught her the meaning and - the danger of those swift rushes of the blood that lead to unreasoning - outburst. She is forewarned, forearmed, and can resist or not as occasion - demands. But even she is sometimes taken unawares. How much the more - likely to give way is the woman who has never felt passionate emotion in - her life before. The premonitory symptoms fail to convey the sense of - danger to her inexperienced mind. Before the will has time to act she is - swept on by a new force, bewildering, irresistible. It becomes an ecstatic - madness of joy or grief, and to the otherwise rational being her actions - are of no account. This curse of quick responsiveness afflicts men to a - less degree. If the first chapters of Genesis could be brought up to date, - woman would be endowed, not with an extra rib, but with an extra nerve. - </p> - <p> - Now that she knew the shooting of Jimmie to be an affair of no great - seriousness, her heart sickened at the thought of her wild exhibition of - feeling. She heard the sniggering and ridicule in every carriage-load of - homeward-bound guests. From the wife of the scrubby curate to the Princess - of Herren-Rothbeck, her name was rolled like a delicate morsel on the - tongue of every woman in the county. And the inference they could not fail - to draw from her action was true—miserably true. But she had only - become poignantly aware of things at the moment when she saw the lean - haggard man in rusty black covering Jimmie with the revolver. Then all the - unrest of soul which she had striven to allay with her mockery, all the - disquieting visions of sweet places to which she had scornfully blinded - her eyes, all the burning words of passion whose clear echoing had wrapped - her body in hateful fever the night before, converged like electric - currents into one steady light radiant with significance. Two minutes - afterwards, when Jimmie fell, civilisation slipped from her like a loose - garment, and primitive woman threw herself by his side. But now, - reclothed, she shivered at the memory. - </p> - <p> - The door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Hardacre entered. There was battle in - every line of the hard face and in every movement of the thin, stiff - figure. Norma rose from the window where she had been sitting and faced - her mother defiantly. - </p> - <p> - “I know what you are going to say to me. Don't you think you might wait a - little? It will keep.” - </p> - <p> - “It won't. Sit down,” said Mrs. Hardacre between her teeth. - </p> - <p> - “I prefer to stand for the moment,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre lost her self-control. - </p> - <p> - “Are we to send you to a madhouse? What do you mean by your blazing folly? - Before the whole county—before the duchess—before the - princess! Do you know what I have had to go through the last half-hour? Do - you know that we may never set foot in Chiltern Towers again? Do you know - we are the scandal and the laughing-stock of the county? As if one thing - was n't sufficient—for you to crown it by behaving like a hysterical - school-girl! Do you know what interpretation every scandal-mongering tabby - in the place is putting on your insane conduct?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes,” said Norma, looking at her mother stonily; “and for once in - their spiteful lives they are quite right.” - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean?” gasped Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - “I think my meaning is obvious.” - </p> - <p> - “That man—that painter man dressed like a secondhand clothes-dealer—that—that - beast?” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre could scarcely trust her senses. The true solution of her - daughter's extraordinary behaviour had never crossed her most desperate - imaginings. But then she had not had much time for quiet speculatien. The - speeding of her hurriedly departing guests had usurped all the wits of the - poor lady. - </p> - <p> - “You have indeed given us a dramatic entertainment, dear Mrs. Hardacre,” - Lady FitzHubert had said with a sympathetic smile. “And poor Norma has - supplied the curtain. I hope she won't take it too much to heart.” - </p> - <p> - And Mrs. Hardacre, livid with rage, had had no weapon wherewith to strike - her adversary who thus took triumphant vengeance. It had been a half-hour - of grievous humiliation. The fount and origin thereof was lying - unconscious with a bullet through his shoulder. The subsidiary stream, so - to speak, was in her room safe and sound. Human nature, for which she is - not deserving of over-blame, had driven Mrs. Hardacre thither. At least - she could vent some of her pent-up fury upon her outrageous daughter, who, - from Mrs. Hardacre's point of view, indeed owed an explanation of her - action and deserved maternal censure. This she was more than prepared to - administer. But when she heard Norma calmly say that Lady FitzHubert and - the other delighted wreakers of private revenges were entirely in the - right, she gasped with amazement. - </p> - <p> - “That beast!” she repeated with a rising intonation. Norma gave her - habitual shrug of the shoulders. With her proud, erect bearing, it was a - gesture not ungraceful. - </p> - <p> - “Considering what I have just admitted, mother, perhaps it would be in - better taste not to use such language.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't understand your admitting it. I don't know what on earth you - mean,” said Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - There was a short pause, during which she scanned her daughter's face - anxiously as if waiting to see a gleam of reason dawn on it. Norma - reflected for a moment. Should she speak or not? She decided to speak. - Brutal frankness had ever been her best weapon against her mother. It - would probably prevent future wrangling. - </p> - <p> - “I am sorry I have n't made my meaning clear,” she said, resuming her seat - by the window; “and I don't know whether I can make it much clearer. - Anyhow, I'll try, mother. I used to think that love was either a - school-girl sentimentality, a fiction of the poets, or else the sort of - thing that lands married women who don't know how to take care of - themselves in the divorce court. I find it is n't. That's all.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre ran up to the window and faced Norma. “And Morland?” - </p> - <p> - “It won't break his heart.” - </p> - <p> - “What won't?” - </p> - <p> - “The breaking off of our engagement.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre looked at her daughter in a paralysis of bewilderment. - </p> - <p> - “The madhouse is the only place for you.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it is. Anyway I can't marry a man when I care for his intimate - friend—and when the intimate friend cares for me. Somehow it's not - quite decent. Even you, mother, can see that.” - </p> - <p> - “So you and the intimate friend have arranged it all between you?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no. He does n't know that I care, and he does n't know that I know - that he cares. I'll say that over again if you like. It is quite - accurately expressed. And you know I'm not in the habit of lying.” - </p> - <p> - “And you propose to marry——” - </p> - <p> - “I don't propose to do anything,” interrupted Norma, quickly. “I at least - can wait till he asks me. And now, mother, I've had rather a bad time—don't - you think we might stop?” - </p> - <p> - “It seems to me, my dear Norma, we are only just beginning,” said Mrs. - Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - Norma rose with nervous impatience. - </p> - <p> - “O heavens, mother,” she said, in the full deep notes of her voice, which - were only sounded at rare moments of feeling, “can't you see that I'm in - earnest? This man is like no one else I have ever met. I have grown to - need him. Do you know what that means? With him I am a changed woman—as - God made me, I suppose; natural, fresh, real—” Mrs. Hardacre sat in - Norma's vacated chair by the window and stared at her, as she moved about - the room. “I somehow feel that I am a woman, after all. I have got - something higher than myself that I can fall at the feet of, and that's - what every woman craves when she's decent. As for marrying him—I'm - not fit to marry him. There is n't any one living who is. That's an end of - it, mother. I can't say anything more.” - </p> - <p> - “And do you propose to go on seeing this person when he recovers?” asked - Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” - </p> - <p> - “I really can't argue with you,” said her mother, mystified. “If you had - told me this rubbish yesterday, I should have thought you touched in your - wits. To-day it is midsummer madness.” - </p> - <p> - “Why to-day?” asked Norma. - </p> - <p> - “The man has shown himself to be such a horrible beast. Of course, if you - think confessing to having seduced a girl under infamous circumstances and - driven her by his brutality to child-murder and suicide, and blazoning the - whole thing out at a fashionable garden-party and getting himself shot for - his pains, are idyllic virtues, nothing more can be said. It's a case, as - I remarked, for a madhouse.” Norma came and stood before her mother, her - brows knitted in perplexity. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps I am going crazy—I really don't understand what you are - talking about.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre leant forward in her chair and drew a long breath. A gleam - of intelligence came into her eyes as she looked at Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean to say you don't know what the row was about before the man - fired the shot?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Norma, blankly. - </p> - <p> - Her mother fell back in her chair and laughed. It was the first moment of - enjoyment she had experienced since Stone's black figure had appeared on - the terrace. Reaction from strain caused the laughter to ring somewhat - sharply. Norma regarded her with an anxious frown. - </p> - <p> - “Please tell me exactly what you mean.” - </p> - <p> - “My dear child—it's too funny. I thought you would have been too - clever to be taken in by a man like this. I see, you've been imagining him - a Galahad—a sort of spotless prophet—though what use you can - have for such persons I can't make out. Well, this is what happened.” - Embellishing the story here and there with little spiteful adornments, she - described with fair accuracy, however, the scene that had occurred. Norma - listened stonily. - </p> - <p> - “This is true?” she asked when her mother had finished. - </p> - <p> - “Ask any one who was there—your father—Morland.” - </p> - <p> - “I can't believe it. He is not that sort of man.” - </p> - <p> - “Is n't he? I knew he was the first time I set eyes on him. Perhaps - another time you'll allow me to have some sense—of course, if it is - immaterial to you whether a man is a brute—What are you ringing the - bell for?” - </p> - <p> - “I am going to ask Morland to come up here.” - </p> - <p> - The maid appeared, received Norma's message, and retired. Norma sat by her - little writing-table, with her head turned away from her mother, and there - was silence between them till the maid returned. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. King has just driven off to catch the train, miss. He left a note for - you.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre listened with contracted brow. When the maid retired, she - bent forward anxiously. - </p> - <p> - “What does he say?” - </p> - <p> - “You can read it, mother,” replied Norma, wearily. She held out the note. - Mrs. Hardacre came forward and took it from her hand and sat down again. - </p> - <p> - It ran: - </p> - <p> - <i>“Dear Norma,—I think it best to run up to town on this - afternoon's business. I have only just time to catch the train at Cosford, - so you will forgive my not saying good-bye to you more ceremoniously. Take - care of poor Jimmie.</i> - </p> - <p> - <i>“Yours affectionately,</i> - </p> - <p> - <i>“Morland.”</i> - </p> - <p> - “Poor Jimmie, indeed!” said Mrs. Hardacre, somewhat relieved at finding - the note contained no reference to the part played by Norma. “It's very - good of Morland, but I wish he would not mix himself up in this scandal.” - </p> - <p> - “I can't see what less he could do than look after his friend's - interests,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “I wish the man had been shot or hanged before he came down here,” said - Mrs. Hardacre, vindictively. “That's the worst of associating with such - riff-raff. One never knows what they will do. It will teach you not to - pick people out of the gutter and set them in a drawing-room.” Mrs. - Hardacre rose. She did not often have the opportunity of triumphing over - her daughter. She crossed the room and paused for a moment by Norma, who - sat motionless with her chin in her hand, apparently too dismayed to - retort. - </p> - <p> - “I am glad to see symptoms of sanity,” she remarked. - </p> - <p> - Norma brought down her hand hard upon the table and leaped to her feet and - faced her mother. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you, it's impossible! Impossible! He is not that kind of man. It - is some horrible mistake. I will ask him myself. I will get the truth from - his own lips.” - </p> - <p> - “You shall certainly do nothing of the kind,” cried her mother; and in - order to have the last word she went out and slammed the door behind her. - </p> - <p> - Norma sat by the window again. The red September sun was setting, and - bathed downs and trees in warm light, and glinted on the spire of a little - village church a mile away. Everything it touched was at peace, save the - bowed head of the girl, clasped with white fingers which still retained - the dull brown marks of blood. Could she believe the revolting story? A - woman so driven to desperation must have been cruelly handled. Her sex - rose up against the destroyer. Her social training had caused her to - regard with cynical indifference ordinary breaches of what is popularly - termed the moral law. In the fast, idle set which she generally frequented - it was as ordinary for a man to neigh after his neighbour's wife as to try - to win his friend's money; as unsurprising for him to keep a mistress as a - stud of race-horses; the crime was to marry her. But it was not customary, - even in smart society, to drive women to murder their new-born babes and - kill themselves. A callous brutality suggested itself, and the - contemplation of it touched humanity, sex, essential things. Could she - believe the story? She shuddered. - </p> - <p> - The dressing-gong sounded through the house. Her maid entered, drew the - curtains, and lit the gas; then was dismissed. Norma would not go down to - dinner. A little food and drink in her own room would be all that she - could swallow. - </p> - <p> - Later, Connie Deering, who had changed her dress, tapped at the door and - was bidden to enter. A quantity of powder vainly strove to hide the traces - of recent tears on her pretty face. She was a swollen-featured, piteous - little butterfly. - </p> - <p> - “How is he?” asked Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Better, much better. They have taken out the bullet. There is no danger, - and he has recovered consciousness. I almost wish he hadn't. Oh, Norma - dear—” - </p> - <p> - She broke down and sat on the bed and sobbed. Norma came up and laid her - hand on her shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Surely you don't believe this ghastly story?” - </p> - <p> - The fair head nodded above the handkerchief. A voice came from-below it. - </p> - <p> - “I must—it's horrible—Jimmie, of all men! I thought his life - was so sweet and clean—almost like a good woman's—I can't - understand it. If he is as bad as this, what must other men be like? I - feel as if I shall never be able to look a man in the face again.” - </p> - <p> - “But why should you take it for granted that he has done this?” asked - Norma, tonelessly. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Deering raised her face and looked at her friend in blue-eyed dismay. - </p> - <p> - “I did n't take it for granted. He told me so himself. Otherwise do you - think I should have believed it?” - </p> - <p> - “He told you so himself! When?” - </p> - <p> - “A short while ago. I went into his room. I could n't help it—I felt - as if I should have gone mad if I didn't know the truth. Parsons was there - with him. She said I could come in. He smiled at me in his old way, and - that smile is enough to make any woman fall in love with him. 'You've been - crying, Connie,' he said. 'That's very foolish of you.' So I began to cry - more. You would have cried if you had heard him. I asked him how he was - feeling. He said he had never felt so well in his life. Then I blurted it - out. I know I was a beast, but it was more than I could stand. 'Tell me - that this madman's story was all lies.' He looked at me queerly, waited - for a second or two, and then moved his head. 'It's all true,' he said, - 'all true.' 'But you must have some explanation!' I cried. He shut his - eyes as if he were tired and said I must take the facts as they were. Then - Parsons came up and said I mustn't excite him, and sent me out of the - room. But I did n't want to hear any more. I had heard enough, had n't I?” - </p> - <p> - Norma, as she listened to the little lady's tale, felt her heart grow cold - and heavy. Doubt was no longer possible. The man himself had spoken. He - had not even pleaded extenuating circumstances; had merely admitted the - plain, brutal facts. He had gone under a feigned name, seduced an honest - girl, abandoned her, driven her to tragedy. It was all too simple to need - explanation. - </p> - <p> - “But what are we to do, dear?” cried Connie, as Norma made no remark, but - stood motionless and silent. - </p> - <p> - “I think we had better drop his acquaintance,” she replied with bitter - irony. - </p> - <p> - Connie flinched at the tone, being a tender-natured woman. She retorted - with some spirit: - </p> - <p> - “I don't believe you have any heart at all, Norma. And I thought you cared - for him.” - </p> - <p> - “You thought I cared for him?” Norma repeated slowly and cuttingly while - her eyes hardened. “What right had you to form such an opinion?” - </p> - <p> - “People can form any opinions they like, my dear,” said Connie. “That was - mine. And on the terrace this afternoon you know you cared. If ever a - woman gave herself away over a man, it was Norma Hardacre.” - </p> - <p> - “It was n't Norma Hardacre, I assure you. It was a despicable fool whom I - will ask you to forget. My mother was for putting it into a madhouse. She - was quite right. Anyhow it has ceased to exist and I am the real Norma - Hardacre again. Humanity is afflicted, it seems, periodically with a - peculiar disease. It turns men into beasts and women into idiots. I have - quite recovered, my dear Connie, and if you'll kindly go down and ask them - to keep dinner back for five minutes, I'll dress and come down.” - </p> - <p> - She rang the bell for her maid. Connie rose from the bed. She longed to - make some appeal to the other's softer nature for her own sake, as she had - held Jimmie very dear and felt the need of sympathy in her trouble and - disillusion. - </p> - <p> - But knowing that from the rock of that cynical mood no water would gush - forth for any one's magic, she recognised the inefficacy of her own - guileless arts, and forbore to exercise them. She sighed for answer. By - chance her glance fell upon Norma's skirt. Human instinct, not altogether - feminine, seized upon the trivial. - </p> - <p> - “Why, whatever have you been doing to your dress?” - </p> - <p> - Norma looked down, and for the first time noticed the disfiguring smears - of blood. - </p> - <p> - “I must have spilt something,” she said, turning away quickly, and - beginning to unfasten the hooks and eyes of her neckband. - </p> - <p> - “I hope it will come out,” said Connie. “It's such a pretty frock.” - </p> - <p> - As soon as she was alone, Norma looked at the stains with unutterable - repulsion. She tore off the dress feverishly and threw it into a corner. - When her maid entered in response to her summons, she pointed to the - shapeless heap of crêpe and embroidery. - </p> - <p> - “Take that away and burn it,” she said. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XVI—IN THE WILDERNESS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ORMA went down to - dinner resolved to present a scornful front to public opinion. She found - the effort taxed her strength. During the night her courage deserted her. - The cold glitter of triumph in her mother's eyes had been intolerable. Her - father, generally regarded with contemptuous indifference, had goaded her - beyond endurance with his futile upbraiding. Aline had arrived, - white-faced and questioning, and had established herself by Jimmie's - bedside. Norma shrank from the ordeal of the daily meeting with her and - the explanation that would inevitably come. She dreaded the return of - Morland, uncertain of her own intentions. As she tossed about on her - pillow, she loathed the idea of the marriage. Innermost sex had spoken for - one passionate moment, and its message still vibrated. She knew that time - might dull the memory; she knew that her will might one day triumph over - such things as sex and sentiment; but she must have a breathing space, a - period of struggle, of reflection, above all, of disassociation from - present surroundings. If she sold herself, it must be in the accustomed - cold atmosphere of brain and heart. Not now, when her head burned and - flaming swords were piercing her through and through. And last, and chief - of all her dreads, was the wounded man now sleeping beneath that roof. - Father, mother, Aline, Morland—these, torture though it were, she - could still steel her nerves to meet; but him, never. He had done what no - other man in the wide world had done. He had awakened the sleeping, - sacredest inmost of her, and he had dealt it a deadly wound. If she could - have consumed him and all the memories surrounding him with fire, as she - had consumed the garment stained with his blood, she would have done so in - these hours of misery. And fierce among the bewildering conflict of - emotions that raged through the long night was one that filled her with - overwhelming disgust—a horrible, almost grotesque jealousy of the - dead girl. - </p> - <p> - In the morning, exhausted, she resolved on immediate flight. In the little - village of Penwyrn on the Cornish coast, her aunt Janet Hardacre led a - remote, Quakerish existence. The reply to a telegram before she left her - room assured Norma of a welcome. By eleven o'clock she had left Heddon - Court and was speeding westwards without a word to Jimmie or Aline. - </p> - <p> - Morland returned in the afternoon, and after a whisky and soda to brace - his nerves, at once sought Jimmie, who roused himself with an effort to - greet his visitor. - </p> - <p> - “Getting on famously, I hear,” said Morland, with forced airiness. “So - glad. We'll have you on your feet in a day or two.” - </p> - <p> - “I hope to be able to travel back to London to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “To-morrow?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Jimmie, with a curious smile. “I fear I have outstayed my - welcome.” - </p> - <p> - “Not a bit of it,” said Morland, seating himself at the foot of the bed. - “We'll put all that right. But you will give one a little time, won't you? - You mustn't think you've been altogether left. I ran up to town at once to - see my solicitors—not my usual people, you know, but some others, - devilish smart fellows at this sort of thing. They'll see that nothing - gets into the beastly papers.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't see that it matters much,” said Jimmie. “ - </p> - <p> -Why, of course it does. - I'm not going to let you take the whole blame. I could n't come forward - yesterday, it was all so sudden. The scandal would have rotted my election - altogether. But you shall be cleared—at any rate in the eyes of this - household. I came down with the intention of telling Norma, but she has - bolted to Cornwall. Upset, I suppose. However, as soon as she comes back—” - </p> - <p> - “Let things be as they are,” interrupted Jimmie, closing his eyes for a - moment wearily, for he had been suffering much bodily pain. “When I said I - was David Rendell, I meant it. I can go on acting the part. It's pretty - easy.” - </p> - <p> - “Impossible, my dear old chap,” said Morland, with an air of heartiness. - “You went into the affair with your eyes shut. You didn't know it was such - a horrible mess.” - </p> - <p> - “All the more reason for Norma to remain ignorant. It was for her sake as - well as yours.” - </p> - <p> - A peculiar tenderness in Jimmie's tone caused Morland, not usually - perceptive, to look at him sharply. - </p> - <p> - “You are very keen upon Norma,” he remarked. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie closed his eyes again, and smiled. He was very weak and tired. The - pain of his wound and a certain mental agitation had kept him awake all - night, and just before Morland entered he had been dropping off to sleep - for the first time. An unconquerable drowsiness induced irresponsibility - of speech. - </p> - <p> - “'The desire of the moth for the star,'” he murmured. - </p> - <p> - Morland slid from the bed to his feet, and with his hands in his pockets - gazed in astonishment at his friend. - </p> - <p> - An entirely novel state of affairs dawned upon him which required a few - moments to bring into focus. The ghastly tragedy for which he was - responsible, presenting itself luridly at every instant of the night and - day, had hidden from his reminiscent vision Norma's rush down the slope. - and her scared tending of the unconscious man. Jimmie's words brought back - the scene with unpleasant vividness and provided the interpretation. When - he saw this clearly, he was the most amazed man in the three kingdoms. - That Jimmie should have conceived and nourished a silly, romantic passion - for Norma, although he had never interested himself sufficiently in - Jimmie's private affairs to suspect it, was humorously comprehensible. - Ludicrously incomprehensible, however, was a reciprocation of the - sentiment on the part of Norma. In spite of remorse, in spite of anxiety, - in spite of the struggle between cowardice and manhood, his uppermost - sensation at that moment was one of lacerated vanity. He had been - hoodwinked, befooled, deceived. His own familiar friend had betrayed him; - the woman he was about to honour with his name had set him at naught. He - tingled with anger and sense of wrong. - </p> - <p> - The sick man opened his eyes drowsily, and seeing Morland's gaze full - upon him, started into wakefulness. He motioned him to come nearer. - </p> - <p> - “If you marry Norma—” he began. - </p> - <p> - “If I marry her!” cried Morland. “Of course I'm going to marry her. I'll - see any other man damned before he marries her! She's the only woman in - the world I've ever set my mind on, and no matter what happens, I'm going - to marry her. There are no damned if's about it.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, there are,” Jimmie retorted weakly. “I was going to preach, but I'm - too tired. You'll have to be especially good to her—to make up.” - </p> - <p> - “For what?” - </p> - <p> - “For the wrong done to the other.” - </p> - <p> - Morland was silent. He went up to the window and stared out across the - lawns and tugged at his moustache. The reproach stung him, and he felt - that Jimmie was ungenerous. After all, he had only done what thousands of - other men had done with impunity. The consequences had been enough to - drive him mad, but they had been the hideous accident of a temperament for - which he had not been responsible. - </p> - <p> - “You surely don't believe all that mad fool said yesterday?” he muttered - without turning round. - </p> - <p> - “The promise of marriage?” - </p> - <p> - “It's a crazy invention. There never was any question of marriage. I told - you so months ago. I did everything in my power.” - </p> - <p> - “I'm glad,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Morland made no reply, but continued to stare out of the window and - meditate upon the many injuries that fate had done him. He arraigned - himself before the bar of his wounded vanity. He had broken the moral law - and deserved a certain penalty. The magnanimous verdict received the - applause of an admiring self. He was willing to undergo an adequate - punishment—the imposition of a fine and the hard labour of setting - devious things straight. But the alternative sentence to which he saw - himself condemned—on the one hand, the ruin of his political career, - his social position, and his marriage with Norma, to all of which he clung - with a newly found passion, and on the other, ignoble shelter behind an - innocent man who had done him a great wrong—he rebelled against with - all his average, sensual Briton's sense of justice. It was grossly unfair. - If there had been a spiritual “Times,” he would have written to it. - </p> - <p> - The opening of the door caused him to turn round with a start. It was - Aline, anxious and pale from an all-night sitting by Jimmie's bedside, but - holding her slim body erect, and wearing the uncompromising air of a - mother who has found her child evilly entreated at the hands of strangers. - She glanced at the bed and at Morland; then she put her finger to her lip, - and pointed at Jimmie, who lay fast asleep. Morland nodded and went on - tiptoe out of the room. Aline looked round, and being a sensitive young - person, shivered. She threw open the window wide, as if to rid the place - of his influence. Jimmie stirred slightly. She bent down and kissed his - hair. - </p> - <p> - During the dark and troubled time that followed, Morland fell away from - Jimmie like the bosom friend of a mediaeval artist stricken with the Black - Death. At first, common decency impelled him to send the tainted one - affectionate messages, invitations to trust him awhile longer, and - enlarged, with the crudity of his mental habit, on the noble aspects of - Jimmie's sacrifice. But after Jimmie left the Hardacres' house, which - happened as soon as he could bear the journey, Morland shrank from meeting - him face to face; and when public exposure came, the messages and the - invitations and the protestations ceased, and Jimmie was left in - loneliness upon a pinnacle of infamy. Morland, in the futile hope of the - weak-willed man that he could, by some astonishing chance, sail a middle - course, did indeed give himself peculiar pains to keep the story out of - the newspapers, and his ill-success was due to other causes than his own - lack of effort. It was a tale too picturesque to be wasted in these days - of sensation-hunger. The fact of the dénouement of the tragedy having - taken place in the presence of royalty lent it a theatrical glamour. A - sardonic press filled an Athenian public with what it lusted after. - Indeed, who shall say with authority that the actual dramas re-enacted - before our courts and reported in our newspapers have not their value in - splashing with sudden colour the drab lives of thousands? May it not be - better for the dulled soul to be occasionally arrested by the - contemplation of furious passions than to feed contentedly like a pig - beside the slaughtered body of its fellow? - </p> - <p> - Be that as it may. The press paid no heed to Morland or the smart fellows - of solicitors whom he employed. It published as many details as it could - discover or invent. For the tragical business did not end with the scene - on the Hardacres' lawn. There was an inquest on the dead girl. There was - the trial of Daniel Stone for attempted murder. The full glare of - publicity shed itself upon the sordid history. In the one case the jury - gave a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity; in the other the - prisoner was found to be insane and was sent to an asylum. These were - matters of no great public interest. But letters to the dead girl in a - disguised handwriting were discovered, and Stone gave his crazy evidence, - and a story of heartless seduction under solemn promise of marriage and of - abandonment with cynical offer of money was established, and the - fashionable portrait-painter, who was supposed to be the hero of the tale, - awoke one morning and found himself infamous. The thing, instead of - remaining a mere police-court commonplace, became a society scandal. - Exaggeration was inevitable, not only of facts but of the reprobation a - virtuous community pronounces on the specially pilloried wrongdoer. The - scapegoat in its essential significance is by no means a thing of - legendary history. It exists still, and owes its existence to an - ineradicable instinct in human nature. The reprobation aforesaid is due - not entirely to hypocrisy, as the social satirist would have it, but in a - great measure to an unreasoning impulse towards expiation of offences by - horrified condemnation of some notorious other. Thus it came to pass that - upon Jimmie's head were put all the iniquities of the people and all their - transgressions in all their sins, and he was led away into the social - wilderness. After that, the world forgot him. He had been obscure enough - before he burst for a day into the blaze of royal patronage; but now - blackest darkness swallowed him up. Only Aline remained by his side. - </p> - <p> - Morland wrote to Jimmie once after the exposure. As he had been the cause, - said he, of the probable ruin of Jimmie's professional prospects, it was - only right that he should endeavour to make some compensation. It was, - besides, a privilege of their life-long friendship. He enclosed a cheque - for two thousand pounds. Jimmie returned it. - </p> - <p> - “My dear Morland,” he wrote in answer, “loyalty can only be repaid by - loyalty, love by love. If I accepted money, it would dishonour both - yourself and me. It is true that I took upon me a greater burden than I - was aware of. The world, if it knew the facts, would, as you say, call me - a quixotic fool. But if I took your money it would have the right to call - me a mercenary knave. I have always suffered fools gladly, myself the - greatest. I can go on doing so. Meanwhile you can make full compensation - in the only way possible. Devote your life and energies to the happiness - of the woman you are about to marry.” This was a stern letter for Jimmie - to write. After he had posted it he reproached himself for not having put - in a kind word. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XVII—THE INCURABLE MALADY - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> 'll never let you - inside the house again until you go down on your knees and beg Jimmie's - pardon,” cried Aline. - </p> - <p> - She stood, a slim incarnation of outraged womanhood, with her hand on the - knob of the open door. A scared but stubborn youth hesitated on the - threshold. Few men, least of all lovers, like being turned out. - </p> - <p> - “I don't believe you care a hang for me!” he said. - </p> - <p> - “I don't,” she retorted bravely, but with tremulous lip. “Not a hang, as - you call it. I dislike you exceedingly and I don't want to see you any - more. I'll never speak to anybody who believes such things of Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “But, my good child,” expostulated Tony Merewether, “they are facts; he - never has denied them.” - </p> - <p> - “He could if he liked.” - </p> - <p> - “How do you know?” - </p> - <p> - “How do I know?” Aline repeated scornfully. “That just shows how far we - are apart. There's not the slightest reason for talking any more. You have - insulted Jimmie and you are going on insulting him. I can't stand by this - door forever. I want you to go.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, very well, I'll go,” said the young fellow. “But you've behaved - damnably to me, Aline—simply damnably.” He strode down the passage - and slammed the front door behind him. Aline turned back into the prim - little drawing-room where the interview had taken place, and after an - attempt to remain composed and dignified, suddenly broke into tears. She - could struggle no more against the cruelty of man and the hopelessness of - life. It had been a stormy interview. Tony Merewether had come, as her - natural protector, to insist upon immediate marriage. A small legacy - recently bequeathed to him would enable them to marry with reasonable - prudence. Why should they wait? Aline pleaded for time. How could she - leave her beloved Jimmie in his blackest hour? - </p> - <p> - “It's just because I don't think it quite right for you to live here any - longer, that I want you to come away at once,” Tony had said. - </p> - <p> - “Not right to live here? What on earth do you mean?” The luckless lover - tried to explain. Aline regarded him icily, and in his confusion and - discomfiture he lost the careful wrappings which he had prepared for his - words. - </p> - <p> - “You think that Jimmie is not a fit person for me to associate with?” she - had asked in a dangerous tone. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, since you choose to put it that way,” he had replied, nettled. He - believed that women liked a man of spirit and generally yielded to a show - of masterfulness. He was very young. Taking up his parable with greater - confidence, he showed her the social and moral necessity of immediate - recourse to his respectable protection. Naturally he admired her loyalty, - he signified, with a magnanimous wave of the hand; but there were certain - things girls did not quite comprehend; a man's judgment had to be trusted. - He invited her to surrender entirely to his wisdom. The end of it all was - his ignominious dismissal. She would not see him until he had begged - Jimmie's pardon on his knees. - </p> - <p> - But now she buried her face in the sofa-cushions and sobbed. It was her - first poignant disillusion. Tony, whom she loved with all her heart, was - just like everybody else, incapable of pure faith, ready to believe the - worst. He was cruel, uncharitable. She would never speak to him again. And - the sweet shy dream of her young life was over. It was very tragical. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie's step coming up the studio stairs caused her to spring from the - sofa and frantically dry her eyes before the mirror. The steps advanced - along the passage, and soon Jimmie's head appeared at the door. - </p> - <p> - “Where have you hidden the little watercolour box?” he asked cheerily. - </p> - <p> - “In the cupboard. On the second shelf,” she replied, without turning - round. - </p> - <p> - He caught sight of the reflection of a tear-stained face, and came and - stood by her side. - </p> - <p> - “Why, you've been crying!” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose I have,” she admitted with affectionate defiance, looking up - into his face. “Why should n't I, if I like? It's not a crime.” - </p> - <p> - “It's worse—it's a blunder,” he quoted with a smile. “It can't do - any one any good, and it makes your pretty nose red. That will spoil your - good looks.” - </p> - <p> - “I wish it would. My looks will never matter to anybody,” she said - desperately. - </p> - <p> - He put his arm round her shoulders, just as he had done since she could - remember. - </p> - <p> - “What has happened to distress you—more than usual?” he added. - </p> - <p> - She was silent for a moment, and hung her head. - </p> - <p> - “I've broken off with Tony,” she said in a low voice. - </p> - <p> - “You'll mend it up with Tony at once, my dear.” - </p> - <p> - “I'll never marry him,” declared Aline. - </p> - <p> - “You'll write and tell him that you'll marry him at the very first - opportunity. There are reasons why you should, Aline, grave reasons.” - </p> - <p> - “You wouldn't have me marry any one I dislike intensely?” she flashed. - </p> - <p> - “Wouldn't you do it to please me, even though you hated him violently? I - have been going to speak to you about this. It's high time you were - married, dear, and I particularly wish it. So make friends with Tony as - soon as ever you can.” - </p> - <p> - “I never want to see Tony again—until he has gone on his bended - knees to you,” said Aline, with a quivering lip. “I don't want to breathe - the same air with any one who does n't think of you as I do.” - </p> - <p> - This was the first allusion that the girl had made to unhappy things, - since they had become common knowledge a month ago. She had conveyed to - him by increased tenderness and devotion that she loved him all the more - for his suffering, and it had been easy for him to perceive that the main - facts of the story were not unknown to her. But hitherto there had been - absolute silence on the part of each. He had been greatly puzzled as to - the proper course he should take. An interview with Tony Merewether that - morning had decided him. It had been short, coldly courteous on the young - fellow's side, who merely asked and obtained consent to marry Aline - forthwith, and wistfully dignified on Jimmie's. - </p> - <p> - He sat down on the arm of a chair and took her hand, deeply moved by her - passionate faith in him. - </p> - <p> - “Listen, dear. I am a dishonoured man and it is n't right that you should - live with me any longer. Tony, dear good fellow, is no more to blame for - what he thinks of me than the crazy wronged man who shot me. But the only - way for you to make him think better is to marry him. No, don't interrupt. - Stand quietly and let me talk to you. I've been making plans and I should - be tremendously upset if there was any difficulty. I'm going to give up - the house and studio.” - </p> - <p> - Aline regarded him in frightened amazement, and then looked round as if - the familiar walls and furniture were in danger of incontinent - disappearance. - </p> - <p> - “What?” she gasped. - </p> - <p> - “I shall give it up and wander about painting abroad, so it's absolutely - necessary that you should marry Tony. Otherwise I don't know what on earth - I should do with you.” - </p> - <p> - He swung her hand and looked smilingly into her eyes. - </p> - <p> - “You see I really am in a hurry to get rid of you,” he added. - </p> - <p> - Aline gazed at him for a long time, gradually recovering from her - stupefaction. Then she withdrew her hand from his clasp and laughed. - </p> - <p> - “You are talking unadulterated rubbish, Jimmie,” she said. - </p> - <p> - Upon this declaration she took her stand, and no protest or argument could - move her. She withstood triumphantly a siege of several days. Jimmie tried - to exert his quasiparental authority. But the submissive little girl, who - had always yielded when Jimmie claimed obedience, had given place to a - calmly inflexible woman. Jimmie swore that he would not commit the crime - of spoiling her life's happiness. She replied, with a toss of her head and - a pang of her heart, that her life's happiness had nothing to do with Tony - Merewether, and that if it did, the crime would lie at his door and not at - Jimmie's. - </p> - <p> - “As for leaving you alone in the wide world, I would just as soon think of - deserting a new-born baby in the street,” she said. “You are not fit to be - by yourself. And whether you like it or not, Jimmie, I must stay and look - after you.” - </p> - <p> - At last, by the underhand methods which women often employ for the greater - comfort of men, she cajoled him into an admission. The plan of giving up - the house had, as its sole object, the forcing of her hand. Victorious, - she allowed herself to shed tears over his goodness. Just for her - miserable sake he had proposed to turn himself into a homeless wanderer - over the face of Europe. - </p> - <p> - “Do tell me, Jimmie,” she said, “how it feels to be an angel!” - </p> - <p> - He laughed in his old bright way. - </p> - <p> - “Very uncomfortable when a tyrannical young woman cuts your wings off.” - </p> - <p> - “But I do it for your good, Jimmie,” she retorted. “If I did n't, you - would be flying about helplessly.” - </p> - <p> - Thus the clouds that lay around them were lit with tender jesting. During - this passage through the darkness he never faltered, serene in his faith, - having found triumphant vindication thereof in the devotion of Aline. That - he had made a sacrifice greater than any human being had a right to demand - of another, he knew full well; he had been driven on to more perilous - reefs than he had contemplated; the man whom he had imagined Morland to be - would have thrown all planks of safety to the waves in order to rescue - him. He felt acutely the pain of his shipwreck; but he did not glorify - himself as a martyr: he was satisfied that it was for the worshipped - woman's happiness, and that in itself was a reward. His catholic sympathy - even found extenuating circumstances in Morland's conduct. Once when Aline - inveighed against his desertion, he said in the grave manner in which he - delivered himself of his moral maxims: - </p> - <p> - “We ought never to judge a human being's actions until we know his - motives.” - </p> - <p> - Aline thought the actions were quite sufficient for a working philosophy, - but she did not say so. Jimmie half guessed the motives and judged - leniently. Though he had lost much that made life sweet to him, his heart - remained unchanged, his laugh rang true through the house; and were it not - for the loneliness and the dismal blight in her own little soul, Aline - would not have realised that any calamitous event had happened. - </p> - <p> - One other of Jimmie's friends maintained relations with him. This was - Connie Deering. She had gone abroad soon after the disaster, and moved by - various feelings for which she rather forbade her impulsive self to - account, had written one or two oddly expressed letters. In the first one - she had touched lightly upon the difficult subject. She would not have - believed a word of it, if she had not heard it from his own lips. If he - would write to her and say that it was all a lie, she would accept his - word implicitly. He was either a god or a devil—a remark that filled - Jimmie with considerable alarm. A shrewd brain was inside the pretty - butterfly head. In his reply he ignored the question, an example which - Connie followed in her second letter. This consisted mainly in a rambling - account of the beauty of Stresa and the comforts and excellent cuisine of - the hotel by the lake; but a postscript informed him that Norma was - travelling about with her for an indefinite period, and that she had heard - nothing of Morland, who having easily won his election was now probably - busy with the beginning of the autumn session. Jimmie, unversed in the - postscriptal ways of women, accepted the information as merely the literal - statement of facts. A wiser man would have grasped the delicate - implication that the relations between the affianced pair were so strained - that an interval of separation had seemed desirable. - </p> - <p> - The unshaken faith of the man in the ultimate righteousness of things kept - him serene; but the young girl who had no special faith, save in the - perfect righteousness of Jimmie and the dastardly unrighteousness of the - world in general and of Mr. Anthony Merewether in particular, found it - difficult to live in these high altitudes of philosophy. Indeed she was a - very miserable little girl when Jimmie was not by, and pined, and cried - her heart out, and grew thin and pale and sharp-tempered, and filled her - guardian with much concern. At last Jimmie took heroic measures. Without - Aline's knowledge he summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. The young - man came. Jimmie received him in the studio, begged him to take a seat, - and rang the bell. The middle-aged housekeeper ran down in some - perturbation at the unusual summons, for it was Jimmie's habit to shout up - the stairs, generally to Aline, for anything he wanted. She received his - instructions. Miss Aline would oblige him by coming down at once. During - the interval of waiting he talked to Mr. Merewether of indifferent things, - flattering himself on a sudden development of the diplomatic faculty. - Aline ran into the room, and stopped short at the sight of the young man, - uttering a little cry of indignant surprise. Jimmie cleared his throat, - but the oration that he had prepared was never delivered. Aline marched - straight up to the offending lover. - </p> - <p> - “I don't see you on your knees,” she said. - </p> - <p> - Tony, who was entirely unexpectant of this uncompromising attitude, having - taken it for granted that by some means or other the way had been made - smooth for him, retorted somewhat sharply: - </p> - <p> - “You're not likely to.” - </p> - <p> - “Then I wonder,” said Aline, “at your audacity in coming to this house.” - She turned and marched back to the door, her little figure very erect and - her dark eyes blazing. Jimmie intercepted her. - </p> - <p> - “Tony came at my request, my child.” - </p> - <p> - For the first and only time in her life she cast a look of anger upon - Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “Let me pass, please,” she said, like an outraged princess; and waving - Jimmie aside, she made the exit of offended majesty. - </p> - <p> - The two men looked stupidly at each other. Their position was ignominious. - </p> - <p> - “I did it for the best, my boy,” said Jimmie, taking up a pipe which he - began to fill mechanically. He was just the kind creature of happier days. - The young fellow's heart was touched. After a minute's silence he - committed a passionate indiscretion. - </p> - <p> - “I wish to God you would tell me there is something hidden beneath this - ghastly story, and that it's quite different from what it appears to be!” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie drew himself up and looked the young man between the eyes. - </p> - <p> - “That's a question I discuss with no human being,” said he. - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon,” said Tony Merewether, in sincere apology. “I would - not have taken such a liberty if it had n't been a matter of life and - death for me. Perhaps you think I ought to do more or less as Aline asks - me; but she is too precious to purchase with an infernal lie. I'm hanged - if I'll do it, and I don't think you're the man to misunderstand my - frankness.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie had lit his pipe during the foregoing speech. He drew two or three - meditative puffs. - </p> - <p> - “Have as little to do with lies, my boy, as ever you can,” said he. “And - cheer up, all is sure to come right in the end.” - </p> - <p> - He was sunk in reflection for a long time after the young man had gone, - and again for a long time after Aline had done remorseful penance for her - loss of temper. Then he went out for a walk and brought back something in - his pocket. At dinner-time he was unusually preoccupied. When the meal was - over, he fished up a black bottle from beneath the table, and going to the - sideboard, came back with a couple of wineglasses. Aline watched him as - though he were performing some rite in black magic. - </p> - <p> - “This is rich fruity port,” said he, filling the glasses. “Evans, the - grocer, told me I should get nothing like it at the price in London. You - are to drink it. It will do you good.” - </p> - <p> - Aline, still penitent, obeyed meekly. - </p> - <p> - “How could you be so extravagant, Jimmie?” she said in mild protest. “It - must have cost quite three shillings.” - </p> - <p> - “And sixpence,” said Jimmie, unabashed. He lifted up his glass. “Now - here's to our <i>Wanderjahr</i>, or as much of it as we can run to.” - </p> - <p> - “Whatever do you mean, Jimmie?” - </p> - <p> - “I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a - tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and beg - our way through southern Europe.” - </p> - <p> - He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations, in his - laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating expensive fog - in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would be cheaper. They - would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on lagoons, and whisper - with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling palaces. They would go - over hills on donkeys. They would steep their souls in Perugino, Del - Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt Italian flea to respect - British Keating's powder. They would fraternise with the beautiful maidens - of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's Campanile. They would do all kinds - of impossible things. Afford it? Of course they could. Had he not received - his just dues from the princess and sold two pictures a week or two ago? - At this point he fell thinking for a couple of dreamy minutes. - </p> - <p> - “I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology. - “I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.” - </p> - <p> - “A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I could - walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out just for - my sake?” - </p> - <p> - “Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light. - “I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have - no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.” - </p> - <p> - Aline laughed a joyous laugh which did Jimmie good to hear, and came - behind his chair and put her arms about his neck, behaving foolishly as a - young girl penetrated with the sense of the loved one's goodness is - privileged to do. What she said is of infinitesimal importance, but it - lifted care from Jimmie's heart and made him as happy as a child. Like two - children, they discussed the project; and Aline fetching from the top - shelf of the bookcase in Jimmie's bedroom a forlorn, dusty, yellow-paged - Continental Bradshaw, twenty years old, they looked up phantom trains that - had long ceased running, speculated on the merits of dead-and-gone hotels, - and plunged into the fairyland of anachronistic information. - </p> - <p> - A few days were enough for Jimmie's simple arrangements; and then began - the pilgrimage of these two, each bearing a burden, a heart-ache, a pain - from which there was no escaping, but each bearing it with a certain - splendour of courage that made life beautiful to the other. For the girl - suffered keenly, as Jimmie knew. She had given a passionate heart for good - and all to the handsome young fellow who had refused to bow the knee to - the man whom he had every reason to consider a blackguard. They had come - together, youth to youth, as naturally as two young birds in the first - mating-season; but, fortunately or unfortunately for Aline, she was not a - bird, but a human being of unalterable affections and indomitable - character. She had the glorious faith, <i>quia incredibile</i>, in Jimmie, - and rather than swerve aside from it she would have walked on knife edges - all the rest of her days. So she scorned the pain, and scorned herself for - feeling it when she saw the serenity with which he bore his cross. Dimly - she felt that if the truth were known he would stand forth heroically, not - infamously. She had revered him as a child does its father; but in that - sweet and pure relationship of theirs, she had also watched him with the - minute, jealous solicitude that a mother devotes to an only child who is - incapable of looking after itself. Nothing in his character had escaped - her. She knew both his strength and his enchanting weaknesses. To her - trained eyes, he was all but transparent; and of late her quickened vision - had read in letters of fire across his heart, “The desire of the moth for - the star.” - </p> - <p> - So they travelled through the world, hand in hand, as it were, and drank - together of its beauty. They were memorable journeyings. Sleeping-cars and - palatial hotels and the luxuries of modern travel were not for them. - Aline, who knew that Jimmie, as far as he himself was concerned, would - have slept upon wood quite as cheerfully as upon feathers, but for her - sake would have royally commanded down, held the purse-strings and - dictated the expenditure. They had long, wonderful third-class journeys, - stopping at every wayside station, at each having some picturesque change - of company in the ever-crowded, evil-smelling, wooden-seated compartment. - She laughed at Jimmie's fears as to her discomfort; protested with - energetic sincerity that this was the only way in the world to travel with - enjoyment. It was a never-failing interest to see Jimmie disarm the - suspicion of peasants by his sympathetic knowledge of their interests, to - listen to his arguments with the chance-met curé, perspiring and polite, - or the mild young soldier in a brass helmet a size too big for him. In - France she understood what they were saying, and maintained a proper - protectorate over Jimmie by means of a rough and ready acquaintance with - the vernacular. But in Italy she was dumb, could only regard Jimmie in - open-mouthed astonishment and admiration. He spoke Italian. She had known - him all her life and never suspected this accomplishment. It required some - tact to keep him in his proper position as interpreter and restrain him - from acting on his own initiative. In the towns they put up at little - humble hostelries in by-streets and in country-places at rough inns, - eating rude fare and drinking sour wine with great content. The more they - economised the longer would the idyllic vagabondage last. - </p> - <p> - Through southern France and northern Italy they wandered without fixed - plans, going from place to place as humour seized them, seeking the - sunshine. At last it seemed to be their normal existence. London with its - pain and its passion grew remote like the remembered anguish of a dream. - Few communications reached them. The local newspaper gave them all the - tidings they needed of the great world. It was a life free from vexation. - The decaying splendour of the larger cities with their treasure-houses of - painting and sculpture and their majestic palaces profoundly stirred the - young girl's imagination and widened her conceptions and sympathies. But - she loved best to arrive by a crazy, old-world diligence at some little - townlet built on a sunny hillside, whose crumbling walls were the haunts - of lizards and birds and strange wild-flowers; and having rested and eaten - at the dark little <i>albergo</i>, smelling of wine and garlic and all - Italian smells, to saunter out with Jimmie through the narrow, ill-paved, - clattering streets alive with brown children and dark-eyed mothers, and - men sitting on doorsteps violently gesticulating and screaming over the - game of <i>morra</i>, and to explore the impossible place from end to end. - A step or two when they desired it would bring them to the sudden peace of - the mediaeval church, with its memories of Romanesque tradition and faint - stirrings of Gothic curiously reflecting the faith of its builders; the - rough, weather-beaten casket of one flawless gem of art, a Virgin smiling - over the child on her lap at many generations of worshippers, superbly - eternal and yet quaintly woman. And then they would pass out of the chilly - streets and down the declivitous pathways below the town and sit together - on the hillside, in a sun-baked spot sheltered from the wind. This Aline, - vaguely conscious of the Infinite, called “hanging on the edge of - Nowhere.” - </p> - <p> - One day, on such a hillside Jimmie had been painting three brown-faced - children whom he had cajoled into posing for him, while Aline looked on - dreamily. The urchins, dismissed with a few halfpennies, bowed polite - thanks, the two boys taking off their caps with the air of ragged princes, - and scampered away like rabbits out of sight. - </p> - <p> - “There!” cried Jimmie, throwing down his brush and holding out the little - panel at arm's length. “I have never done anything so good in all my life! - Have n't I got it? Is n't it better than ten cathedralfuls of sermons? Is - n't it the quintessence of happiness, the perfect trust in the sweet earth - to yield them its goodness? Could any one after seeing that dare say the - world was only a dank and dismal prison where men do nothing but sit and - hear each other groan? Look at it, Aline. What do you think of it?” - </p> - <p> - “It's just lovely, Jimmie,” said Aline. - </p> - <p> - “If I painted a pink hippopotamus standing on its head, you would say it - was lovely. Why did n't you tell me that arm was out of drawing?” - </p> - <p> - He took up his brush and made the necessary correction. Aline laughed. - </p> - <p> - “Do you know one of the few things I can remember my father saying was - about you?” - </p> - <p> - “God bless my soul,” said Jimmie. “I had almost forgotten you ever had a - father—dear old chap! What did he say?” - </p> - <p> - “I remember him telling you that one day you would die of incurable - optimism. For years I used to think it was some horrible disease, and I - used to whisper in my prayers, 'O God, please cure Jimmie of optimism,' - and sometimes lie awake at nights thinking of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, do you think your prayer has been answered?” asked Jimmie, amused. - </p> - <p> - She shifted herself a little nearer him and put her hand on his knee. - </p> - <p> - “Thank goodness, no. You've got it as bad as ever—and I believe I've - caught it.” Then, between a sob and a laugh, she added: - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Jimmie dear, your stupid old head could never tell you what you have - done for me since we have been abroad. If I had stayed at home I think I - should have died of—of—of malignant pessimism. You will never, - never, never understand.” - </p> - <p> - “And will you ever understand what you have done for me, my child?” said - Jimmie, gravely. “We won't talk about these things. They are best in our - hearts.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XVIII—A RUDDERLESS SHIP - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT autumn pressed - heavily upon Mrs. Hardacre. Norma's engagement, without being broken off, - was indefinitely suspended, and Norma, by going abroad with Mrs. Deering - immediately on her return from Cornwall, had placed herself beyond reach - of maternal influence. It is true that Mrs. Hardacre wrote many letters; - but as Norma's replies mainly consisted of a line or two on a picture - post-card, it is to be doubted whether she ever read them. Mrs. Hardacre - began to feel helpless. Morland could give her little assistance. He - shrugged his shoulders at her appeals. He was perfectly determined to - marry Norma, but trusted to time to restore her common-sense and lead her - into the path of reason. Nothing that he could do would be of any avail. - Mrs. Hardacre urged him to join the ladies on the Continent and bring - matters to a crisis. He replied that an election was crisis enough for one - man in a year, and furthermore the autumn session necessitated his - attendance in the House. He was quite satisfied, he told her stolidly, - with things as they were, and in the meantime was actually finding an - interest in his new political life. But Mrs. Hardacre shared neither his - satisfaction nor his interest, a mother's point of view being so different - from that of a lover. - </p> - <p> - As if the loss of ducal favour and filial obedience were not enough for - the distraught lady, her husband one morning threw a business letter upon - the table, and with petulant curses on the heads of outside brokers, - incoherently explained that he was ruined. They were liars and knaves and - thieves, he sputtered. He would drag them all into the police court, he - would write to the “Times,” he would go and horsewhip the blackguards. - Damme if he would n't! - </p> - <p> - “I wish the blackguards could horsewhip you,” remarked his wife, grimly. - “Have you sufficient brains to realise what an unutterable fool you have - been?” - </p> - <p> - If he did not realise it by the end of the week, it was not Mrs. - Hardacre's fault. She reduced the unhappy man to craven submission and - surreptitious nipping of old brandy in order to keep up the feeble spirit - that remained in him, and took the direction of affairs into her own - hands. They were not ruined, but a considerable sum of money had been lost - through semi-idiotic speculation, and for a time strict economy was - necessary. By Christmas the establishment in the country was broken up, a - tenant luckily found for Heddon Court, and a small furnished house taken - in Devonshire Place. These arrangements gave Mrs. Hardacre much - occupation, but they did not tend to soften her character. When Norma came - home, sympathetically inclined and honestly desirous to smooth down - asperities—for she appreciated the aggravating folly of her father—she - found her advances coldly repulsed. - </p> - <p> - “What is the good of saying you are sorry for me,” Mrs. Hardacre asked - snappishly, “when you refuse to do the one thing that can mend matters?” - </p> - <p> - Then followed the old, old story which Norma had heard so often in days - past, but now barbed with a new moral and adorned with new realism. Norma - listened wearily, surprised at her own lack of retort. When the familiar - homily came to an end, her reply was almost meek: - </p> - <p> - “Give me a little longer time to think over it.” - </p> - <p> - “You had better cut it as short as possible,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “or you - may find yourself too late. As it is, you are going off. What have you - been doing to yourself? You look thirty.” - </p> - <p> - “I feel fifty,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “You had better go and have your face massaged, or you'll soon not be fit - to be seen.” - </p> - <p> - “I think I want a course of soul massage,” answered Norma, with a hard - little laugh. - </p> - <p> - But when she was alone in her own room, she looked anxiously at her face - in the glass. Her mother had confirmed certain dismal imaginings. She had - grown thinner, older looking; tiny lines were just perceptible at the - corners of eyes and lips and across the forehead. The fresh bloom of youth - was fading from her skin. She was certainly going off. She had not been a - happy woman since her precipitate flight to Cornwall. The present - discovery added anxiety to depression. - </p> - <p> - A day or two afterwards Mrs. Hardacre returned to the unedifying attack. - Had Norma written to Morland to inform him of her arrival? Norma replied - that she had no inordinate longing to see Morland. Mrs. Hardacre used - language that only hardened and soured women of fashion who are beginning - to feel the pinch of poverty dare use nowadays. It is far more virulent - than a fishwife's, for every phrase touches a jangling nerve and every - gibe tears a delicate fibre, whereas Billingsgate merely shocks and - belabours. Norma bore it in silence for some time, and then went away - quivering from head to foot. A new and what seemed a horrible gift had - been bestowed upon her—the power to feel. Once a sarcastic smile, a - scornful glance, a withering retort would have carried her in triumph from - her mother's presence. Secure in her own callous serenity, she would have - given scarcely a further thought to the quarrel. Now things had - inexplicably changed. Her mother's stabs hurt. Some curious living growth - within her was wrung with pain. She could only grope humbled and broken to - her room and stare at nothing, wishing she could cry like other women. - </p> - <p> - No wonder she looked old, when the spirit had left her and taken with it - the cold, proud setting of the features that had given her beauty its - peculiar stamp. Dimly she realised the disintegration. When a nature which - has taken a colossal vanity for strength and has relied thereon - unquestioningly for protection against a perilous world, once loses grip - of that sublime mainstay, it is impossible for it to take firm hold again. - It must content itself with lesser planks or flounder helplessly, fearful - of imminent shipwreck. Norma, during those autumn months, had found her - strength vanity. The fact in rude, symbolic form was brought home to her a - short time after her return. - </p> - <p> - It was a bright Sunday afternoon, when, on her way to pay a call in - Kensington, she had dismissed her cab at Lancaster Gate and was walking - through Kensington Gardens. Half-way a familiar figure met her eye. It was - her own maid sitting on a bench with a man by her side. The girl was - wearing a cheap long jacket over an elaborate dress, absurdly light for - the time of year. It caught Norma's attention, and then suddenly it - flashed upon her that it was the dress she had given to be burned months - ago. She walked on, aching with a sense of the futility of grandiose - determinations. She had consigned the garment stained with Jimmie's blood - contemptuously to the flames. It was incongruously whole in Kensington - Gardens. She had cast her love for Jimmie out of her heart in the same - spirit of comedic tragedy. Forlorn and bedraggled it was still there, - mockingly refusing to be reduced to its proper dust and ashes. Her - strength had not availed her to cast it out. Her strength was a vain - thing. Yet being forlorn and bedraggled the love was as hateful as the - unconsumed garment. It haunted her like an unpurged offence. The newspaper - details had made it reek disgustfully. At times Connie Deering's half - faith filled her with an extravagant hope that these sordid horrors which - had sullied the one pure and beautiful thing that had come into her life - were nothing but a ghastly mistake; that it was, as Connie suggested, a - dark mystery from which if Jimmie chose he could emerge clean. But then - her judgment, trained from childhood to look below the surface of even - smiling things and find them foul, rebelled. The man had proclaimed - himself, written himself down a villain. It was in black and white. And - not only a villain—that might be excusable—but a hypocritical - canting villain, which was the unforgivable sin. Every woman has a Holy - Ghost of sorts within her. - </p> - <p> - Norma did not write to Morland. She dreaded renewal of relations, and yet - she had not the courage to cut him finally adrift. The thought of withered - spinsterhood beneath her father's roof was a dismaying vision. Marriage - was as essential as ever to the scheme of her future. Why not with - Morland? Her mother's words, though spoken as with the tongues of asps, - were those of wisdom. - </p> - <p> - All that she could bring to a husband was her beauty, her superb presence, - her air of royalty. These gone, her chances were as illusory as those of - the pinched and faded gentlewomen who tittle-tattled at Cosford - tea-parties. Another year, and at the present rate of decay her beauty - would have vanished into the limbo of last year's snows. She exaggerated; - but what young woman of six-and-twenty placed as she has not looked - tremulously in her mirror and seen feet of crows and heaven knows what - imaginary fowls that prey upon female charms? At six-and-thirty she smiles - with wistful, longing regret at the remembered image. Yet youth, happily, - is not cognisant of youth's absurdities. It takes itself tragically. Thus - did Norma. Her dowry of beauty was dwindling. She must marry within the - year. Sometimes she wished that Theodore Weever, who had not yet - discovered his decorative wife and had managed to find himself at various - places which she had visited abroad, would come like a Paladin and deliver - her from her distress and carry her off to his castle in Fifth Avenue. He - would at least interest her as a human being, which Morland, with all his - solid British qualities, had never succeeded in doing. But Theodore Weever - had not spoken. He retained the imperturbability of the bald marble bust - of himself that he had taken her to see in a Parisian sculptor's studio. - There only remained Morland. But for some reason, for which she could not - account, he seemed the last man on earth she desired to marry. When she - had written to him, soon after her flight to Cornwall, to beg for a - postponement of the wedding, giving him the very vaguest reasons for her - request, he had assented with a cheerfulness ill befitting an impatient - lover. It would be impertinence, he wrote, for him to enquire further into - her reasons. She was too much a woman of the world to act without due - consideration, and provided that he could look forward to the very great - happiness of one day calling her his wife, he was perfectly satisfied with - whatever she chose to arrange. The absence of becoming fervour, in spite - of her desire to postpone the dreaded day, produced a feeling of irritated - disappointment. None of us, least of all women, invariably like to be - taken at our word. If Morland lay so little value upon her as that, he - might just as well give her up altogether. She replied impulsively, - suggesting a rupture of the engagement. Morland, longing for time to raise - him from the abasement in which he grovelled, had welcomed the proposal to - defer the marriage; but as he smarted at the same time under a sense of - wrong—had he not been betrayed by his own familiar friend and the - woman he loved?—he now unequivocally refused to accept her - suggestion. He had made up his mind to marry her. He had made all his - arrangements for marrying her. The check he had experienced had stimulated - a desire which only through unhappy circumstances had languished for a - brief season. He persuaded himself that he was more in love with her than - ever. At all costs, in his stupid, dogged way, he determined to marry her. - He told her so bluntly. He merely awaited her good pleasure. Norma - accepted the situation and thought, by going abroad, to leave it at home - to take care of itself. It might die of inanition. Something miraculous - might happen to transform it entirely. She returned and found it alive and - quite undeveloped. It grinned at her with a leer which she loathed from - the depths of her soul; and the more Mrs. Hardacre pointed at it the more - it leered, and the greater became the loathing. - </p> - <p> - At last Mrs. Hardacre took matters into her own hands and summoned Morland - to London. “Norma is in a green, depressed state,” she wrote, “and I think - your proper place is by her side. I imagine she regrets her foolishness in - postponing the marriage and is ashamed to confess it. A few words with you - face to face would bring her back to her old self. Women have these - idiotic ways, my dear Morland, and men being so much stronger and saner - must make generous allowances. I confidently expect you.” - </p> - <p> - Morland's vanity, spurred by this letter, brought him in a couple of days - to London. - </p> - <p> - “My dear Morland, this is a surprise,” cried Mrs. Hardacre dissemblingly, - as he entered the drawing-room, “we were only just talking of you. I'll - ring for another cup.” - </p> - <p> - She moved to the bell by the side of the fireplace, and Norma and Morland - shook hands with the conventional words of greeting. - </p> - <p> - “I hope you've had a good time abroad?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes. The usual thing, the usual places, the usual people, the usual - food. In fact, a highly successful pursuit of the usual. I've invented a - verb—'to usualise.' I suppose you've been usualising too?” - </p> - <p> - The sudden sight of him had braced her, and instinctively she had adopted - her old, cool manner as defensive armour. Her reply pleased him. There was - something pungent in her speech, irreconcilable in her attitude, which - other women did not possess. He was not physiognomist or even perceptive - enough to notice the subtle change in her expression. He noted, as he - remarked to her later, that she was “a bit off colour,” but he attributed - it to the muggy weather, and never dreamed of regarding her otherwise than - as radically the same woman who had engaged herself to many him in the - summer. To him she was still the beautiful shrew whose taming appealed to - masculine instincts. The brown hair sweeping up in a wave from the - forehead, the finely chiselled sensitive features, the clear brown eyes, - the mocking lips, the superb poise of the head, the stately figure - perfectly set off in the dark blue tailor-made dress, all combined to - impress him with a realisation of the queenliness of the presence that had - grown somewhat shadowy of late to his unimaginative mental vision. - </p> - <p> - “And how do you like Parliament?” she asked casually, when the teacup had - been brought and handed to him filled. - </p> - <p> - “I find it remarkably interesting,” he replied sententiously. “It is dull - at times, of course, but no man can sit on those green benches and not - feel he is helping to shape the destinies of a colossal Empire.” - </p> - <p> - “Is that what you really feel—or is it what you say when you are - responding for the House of Commons at a public dinner?” asked Norma. - </p> - <p> - Morland hesitated for a moment between huffiness and indulgence. In spite - of his former gibes at the stale unprofitableness of parliamentary life, - he had always had the stolid Briton's reverence for our Institutions, and - now that he was actually a legislator, his traditions led him to take - himself seriously. - </p> - <p> - “I have become a very keen politician, I assure you,” he answered. “If you - saw the amount of work that falls on me, you would be astonished. If it - were n't for Manisty—that's my secretary, you know—I don't see - how I could get through it.” - </p> - <p> - “I always wonder,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “how members manage to find time - for anything. They work like galley-slaves for nothing at all. I regard - them as simply sacrificing themselves for the public good.” - </p> - <p> - “A member of Parliament is the noblest work of God. Don't, mother. Please - leave us our illusions.” - </p> - <p> - “What are they?” asked Morland. -</p> - <p> -“One is that there are a few decently - selfish people left in an age of altruists,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - She talked for the sake of talking, careless of the stupid poverty of her - epigram. Morland, as the healthy country gentleman alternating with the - commonplace man about town, was a passable type enough, though failing to - excite exuberant admiration. But Morland, with his narrow range of - sympathies and pathetic ignorance of the thought of the day, posing - solemnly as a trustee of the British Empire, aroused a scorn which she - dare not express in words. - </p> - <p> - “I don't know that we are all altruists,” replied Morland, - good-temperedly. “If we are good little members of Parliament, we may be - rewarded with baronetcies and things. But one has to play the game - thoroughly. It's worth it, is n't it, even from your point of view, - Norma?” - </p> - <p> - “You're just the class of man the government does best in rewarding,” - remarked Mrs. Hardacre, with her wintry smile that was meant to be - conciliatory. “A man of birth and position upholds the dignity of a title - and is a credit to his party.” - </p> - <p> - Morland laughingly observed that it was early in the day to be thinking of - parliamentary honours. He had not even made his maiden speech. As Norma - remained silent, the conversation languished. Presently Mrs. Hardacre - rose. - </p> - <p> - “I have no doubt you two want to have a talk together. Won't you stay and - dine with us, Morland?” - </p> - <p> - He glanced at Norma, but failing to read an endorsement of the invitation - in her face, made an excuse for declining. - </p> - <p> - “Then I will say good-bye and leave you. I would n't stand any nonsense if - I were you,” she added in a whisper through the door which he held open - for her. - </p> - <p> - He sauntered up to the fireplace and stood on the hearth-rug, his hands in - his pockets. Norma, looking at him from her easy-chair, wondered at a - certain ignobility that she detected for the first time beneath his bluff, - prosperous air. In spite of birth and breeding he looked common. - </p> - <p> - “Well?” he said. “We had better have it out at once. What is it to be? I - must have an answer sooner or later.” - </p> - <p> - “Can't it be later?” - </p> - <p> - “If you insist upon it. I'm not going to hold a pistol to your head, my - dear girl. Only you must admit that I've treated you with every - consideration. I have n't worried you. You took it into your head to put - off our marriage. I felt you had your reasons and I raised no objection. - But we can't go on like this forever, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” asked Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Human nature. I am in love with you, and want to marry you.” - </p> - <p> - “But supposing I am not in love with you, Morland. I've never pretended to - be, have I?” - </p> - <p> - “We need n't go over old ground. I accepted all that at the beginning. The - present state of affairs is that we are engaged; when are we going to be - married?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I don't know,” said Norma, desperately. “I have n't thought of it - seriously. I know I have behaved like a beast to you—you must - forgive me. At times it has seemed as though I was not the right sort to - marry and bring children into the world. I should loathe it!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I don't think so,” said Morland, in a tone he meant to be soothing. - “Besides—” - </p> - <p> - “I know what you are going to say—or at any rate what you would like - to say. It's scarcely decent to talk of such things. But I have n't been - brought up in a nunnery. I wish to God I had been. At all events, I am - frank. I would loathe it—all that side of it. Could n't we suppress - that side? Oh, yes, I am going to speak of it—it has been on my mind - for months,” she burst out, as Morland made a quick step towards her. - </p> - <p> - He did not allow her to continue. With his hand on the arm of her chair, - he bent down over her. - </p> - <p> - “You are talking wild nonsense,” he said; and she flushed red and did not - meet his eyes. “When a man marries, he marries in the proper sense of the - term, unless he is an outrageous imbecile. There is to be no question of - that sort of thing. I thought you knew your world better. I want you—you - yourself. Don't you understand that?” - </p> - <p> -Norma put out her hand to push him - away. He seized it in his. She snatched it from him. - </p> - <p> - “Let me get up,” she said, waving him off. She brushed past him, as she - rose. - </p> - <p> - “We can't go on talking. What I've said has made it impossible. Let us - change the subject. How long are you going to stay in town?” - </p> - <p> - “I'm not going to change the subject,” said Morland, rather brutally. “I'm - far too much interested in it. Hang it all, Norma, you do owe me - something.” - </p> - <p> - “What do I owe you? What?” she asked with a sudden flash in her eyes. - </p> - <p> - “You are a woman of common-sense. I leave you to guess. You admit you have - n't treated me properly. You have nothing to complain of as far as I am - concerned. Now, have you?” - </p> - <p> - “How do I know? No. I suppose not, as things go. Once I did try to—to - feel more like other women—and to make some amends. I told you that - perhaps we were making a mistake in excluding sentiment. If you had - chosen, you could have—I don't know—made me care for you, - perhaps. But you didn't choose. You treated me as if I were a fool. Very - likely I was.” - </p> - <p> - “When was that?” asked Morland, with a touch of sarcasm. “I certainly - don't remember.” - </p> - <p> - “It was the last night we had any talk together—in the - billiard-room. The night before—before the garden-party.” He turned - away with an involuntary exclamation of anger. He remembered now, tragic - events having put the incident out of his mind. He was caught in a trap. - </p> - <p> - “I did n't think you meant it,” he said, hurrying to the base excuse. - “Women sometimes consider it their duty to say such things—to act a - little comedy, out of kindness. Some fellows expect it. I thought it would - be more decent to let you see that I did n't.” - </p> - <p> - There was a short silence. Norma stood in the centre of the room, biting - her lip, her head moving slightly from side to side; she was seeking to - formulate her thoughts in conventional terms. Her cheek grew a shade - paler. - </p> - <p> - “Listen,” she said at length. “I am anything bad you like to call me. But - I'm not a woman who cajoles men. And I'm not a liar. I'm far too cynical - to lie. Truth is much more deadly. I hate lying. That's the main reason - why I broke with a man I cared for more than for any other man I have ever - met—because he lied. You know whom I mean.” - </p> - <p> - He faced her with a conscious effort. Even at this moment of strain and - anger, Norma was struck again with the lurking air of ignobility on his - face; but she only remembered it afterwards. He brazened it out. - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie Padgate, I suppose.” - </p> - <p> - “I can't forgive him for lying.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't see how he lied. He faced the music, at any rate, like a man,” - said Morland, compelled by a remnant of common decency to defend Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “All his pose beforehand was a lie—unless the disclosures afterwards - were lies—” - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean?” asked Morland, sharply. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, never mind. We have not met to discuss the matter. I don't know why I - referred to it.” - </p> - <p> - She paused for a moment. She had begun her tirade at a white heat. - Suddenly she had cooled down, and felt lassitude in mind and limbs. An - effort brought her to a lame conclusion. - </p> - <p> - “You accused me of acting a comedy. I was n't acting. I was perfectly - sincere. I have been absolutely frank with you from the hour you proposed - to me.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I'm sorry for having misunderstood you. I beg your pardon,” said - Morland. They took up the conversation from the starting-point, but - listlessly, dispiritedly. The reference to Jimmie had awakened the - ever-living remorse in Morland's not entirely callous soul. The man did - suffer, at times acutely. And now to act the conscious comedy in the face - of Norma's expressed abhorrence was a difficult and tiring task. - Unwittingly he grew gentler; and Norma, her anger spent, weakly yielded to - the change of tone. - </p> - <p> - “We have settled nothing, after all our talk,” he said at last, looking at - his watch. “Don't you think we had better fix it up now? Society expects - us to get married. What will people say? Come—what about Easter?” - </p> - <p> - Norma passed her hand wearily over her eyes. - </p> - <p> - “I oughtn't to marry you at all. I should loathe it, as I said. I should - never get to care for you in that way. You see I am honest. Let us break - off the engagement.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, look here,” said Morland, not unkindly, “let us compromise. I'll - come back in three days' time. You'll either say it's off altogether or - we'll be married at Easter. Will that do?” - </p> - <p> - “Very well,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - When Mrs. Hardacre came for news of the interview, Norma told her of the - arrangement. - </p> - <p> - “Which is it going to be?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - Norma set her teeth. “I can't marry him,” she said. - </p> - <p> - But the proud spirit of Norma Hardacre was broken. The three days' Inferno - that Mrs. Hardacre created in the house drove the girl to desperation. Her - father came to her one day with the tears running down his puffy cheeks. - Unknown to her mother he had borrowed money from Morland, which he had - lost on the Stock Exchange. Norma looked in her mirror, and found herself - old, ugly, hag-ridden. Anything was preferable to the torture and - degradation of her home. The next time that Morland called he stayed to - dinner, and the wedding was definitely fixed for Easter. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XIX—ABANA AND PHARPAR - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>o you know, Miss - Hardacre, that I once had a wife?” said Theodore Weever, suddenly. - </p> - <p> - It was after dinner at the Wolff-Salamons', who, it may be remembered, had - lent their house to the Hardacres in the summer. - </p> - <p> - “I was not aware of it,” said Norma, wondering at the irrelevance of the - remark, for they had just been discussing the great painter's merciless - portrait of their hostess, which simpered vulgarly at them from the wall. - They were sitting on a sofa in a corner of the room. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Weever. “She died young. She came from a New England village, - and played old-fashioned tunes on the piano, and believed in God.” - </p> - <p> - Not a flicker passed over his smooth waxen face or a gleam of sentiment - appeared in his pale steady eyes. Norma glanced round at the little - assembly, mainly composed of fleshy company promoters, who, as far as - decency allowed, continued among themselves the conversation that had - circulated over the wine downstairs, and their women-kind, who adopted the - slangy manners of smart society and talked “bridge” to such men as would - listen to them. Then she glanced back at Weever. - </p> - <p> - “I don't want any more wives of that sort,” he went on. “I've outgrown - them. I have no use for them. They would wilt like a snow anemone in this - kind of atmosphere.” - </p> - <p> - “Is it your favourite atmosphere, then?” Norma asked, by way of saying - something. - </p> - <p> - “More or less. Perhaps I like it not quite so mephitic—You are - racking your brains to know why I'm telling you about my wife. I'll - explain. In a little churchyard in Connecticut is a coffin, and in that - coffin is what a man who is going to ask a woman to marry him ought to - give her. I could never give a quiet-eyed New England girl anything again. - At my age she would bore me to death. But I could give the woman who is - accustomed to hot-houses a perfectly regulated temperature.” - </p> - <p> - Norma looked at the imperturbable face, half touched by his unsuspected - humanity, half angered by his assurance. - </p> - <p> - “Are you by any chance making me a formal demand in marriage?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “I am.” - </p> - <p> - “And at last you have found some one who would meet your requirements for - the decorative wife?” - </p> - <p> - “I found her last summer in Scotland,” replied Weever, with a little bow. - “My countrymen have a habit of finding quickly what they want. They - generally get it. I could n't in this particular instance, as you were - engaged to another man.” - </p> - <p> - “I am still engaged,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon. I heard the engagement was broken off.” - </p> - <p> - “Not at all. In fact only yesterday was it settled that we should be - married at Easter.” - </p> - <p> - “Having gone so far on a false assumption,” remarked Weever, placidly, - “may I go without rudeness a step farther? I do not dream of asking you to - throw over King—if my heart were not in Connecticut, I might—but - I'll say this, if you will allow me, Miss Hardacre: I don't believe you - will ever marry Morland King. I have a presentiment that you're going to - marry me—chiefly because I've planned it, and my plans mostly come - out straight. Anyway you are the only woman in the world I should ever - marry, and if at any time there should be a chance for me, a word, a hint, - a message through the telephone to buy you a pug dog—or anything—would - bring me devotedly to your feet. Don't forget it.” - </p> - <p> - It was impossible to be angry with a bloodless thing that spoke like a - machine. It was also unnecessary to use the conventional terms of - regretful gratitude in which maidens in their mercy wrap refusals. - </p> - <p> - “I'll remember it with pleasure, if you like,” she said with a half-smile. - “But tell me why you don't think I shall marry Mr. King. I don't believe - in your presentiments.” - </p> - <p> - She caught his eye, and they remained for some seconds looking hard at - each other. She saw that he had his well-defined reasons. - </p> - <p> - “You can tell me exactly what is in your mind,” she said slowly; “you and - I seem to understand each other.” - </p> - <p> - “If you understand me, what is the use of compromising speech, my dear - lady?” - </p> - <p> - “You don't believe in Morland?” - </p> - <p> - “As a statesman I can't say that I do,” replied Weever, with the puckering - of the faint lines round his eyes that passed for a smile. “That is what - astonishes me in your English political life—the little one need - talk and the little one need do. In America the politician is the orator. - He must move in an atmosphere of words half a mile thick. Wherever he goes - he must scream himself hoarse. But here—” - </p> - <p> - Norma touched his arm with her fan. - </p> - <p> - “We were not discussing American and English institutions,” she - interrupted, “but matters which interest me a little more. You don't - believe in Morland as a man? I want to know, as they are supposed to say - in your country. I disregard your hint, as you may perceive. I am also - indelicate in pressing you to speak unfavourably of the man I'm engaged - to. Of course, having made me an offer, you would regard it as caddish to - say anything against him. But supposing I absolve you from anything of the - kind by putting you on a peculiar plane of friendship?” - </p> - <p> - “Then I should say I was honoured above all mortals,” replied Weever, - inscrutably, “and ask you to tell me as a friend what has become of the - artist—the man who got shot—Padgate.” - </p> - <p> - The unexpected allusion was a shock. It brought back a hateful scene. It - awoke a multitude of feelings. Its relevance was a startling puzzle. She - strove by hardening her eyes not to betray herself. - </p> - <p> - “I've quite lost sight of him,” she answered in a matter of-fact tone. - “His little adventure was n't a pleasant one.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't believe he had any little adventure at all,” said Weever, coolly. - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean?” Norma started, and the colour came into her face. - </p> - <p> - “That of all the idiots let loose in a cynical, unimaginative world, - Padgate is the greatest I have yet struck. If I were a hundredth part such - an idiot, I should be a better and a happier man. It's getting late. I'm - afraid I must be moving.” - </p> - <p> - He rose, and Norma rose with him. - </p> - <p> - “I wish you would n't speak in riddles. Can't you tell me plainly what you - mean?” - </p> - <p> - “No, I can't,” he said abruptly. “I have said quite enough. Good-night. - And remember,” he added, shaking hands with her, “remember what I told you - about myself.” - </p> - <p> - Only after he had gone did it flash upon her that she had not put to him - the vital question—what had Padgate to do with his disbelief in - Morland? As is the way with people pondering over conundrums, the - ridiculously simple solution did not occur to her. She spent many days in - profitless speculation. Weever prophesied that the marriage would not take - place. When pressed for a reason, he brought in the name of Jimmie - Padgate. Obviously the latter was to stand between Morland and herself. - But in what capacity? As a lover? Had Weever rightly interpreted her - insane act on the day of the garden-party, and assumed that she was still - in love with the detested creature? The thought made her grow hot and cold - from head to foot. Why was he an idiot? Because he did not take advantage - of her public confession? or was it because he stood in Weever's eyes as - a wronged and heroic man? This in the depths of her heart she had been - yearning for months to believe. Connie Deering almost believed it. About - the facts once so brutally plain, so vulgarly devoid of mystery, a - mysterious cloud had gathered and was thickening with time. Reflection - brought assurance that Theodore Weever regarded Jimmie as innocent; and if - ever a man viewed human affairs in the dry, relentless light of reason, it - was the inscrutable, bloodless American. - </p> - <p> - His offer of marriage she put aside from her thoughts. Morland was the - irrevocably accepted. It was February. Easter falling early, the wedding - would take place in a little over a month. In a cold, dispassionate way, - she interested herself in the usual preparations. Peace reigned in - Devonshire Place. And yet Norma despised herself, feeling the degradation - of the woman who sells her body. - </p> - <p> - During the session she saw little of Morland. For this she thanked God, - the duchess, and the electors of Cosford. The sense of freedom caused her - to repent of her contemptuous attitude towards his political aspirations. - To encourage and foster them would be to her very great advantage. She - adopted this policy, much to the edification of Morland, who felt the - strengthening of a common bond of interest. He regularly balloted for - seats in the Ladies' Gallery, and condemned her to sit for hours behind - the grating and listen to uninspiring debates. He came to her with the - gossip of the lobbies. He made plans for their future life together. They - would make politics a feature of their house. It would be a rallying-place - for the new Tory wing, in which Morland after a dinner at the Carlton Club - when his health was proposed in flattering terms, had found himself - enlisted. Norma was to bring back the glories of the <i>salon</i>. - </p> - <p> - “When it gets too thick,” he said once laughingly, ashamed of these - wanderings into the ideal, “we can go off into the country and shoot and - have some decent people down and amuse ourselves rationally.” - </p> - <p> - Yet, in spite of absorbing political toys, his complete subjugation of - Norma, and the smiling aspect of life, a sense of utter wretchedness - weighed upon the soul of this half-developed man. He could not shake it - off. It haunted him as he sat stolid and stupefied in his place below the - gangway. It dulled all sensation of pleasure when he kissed the lips which - Norma, resigned now to everything, surrendered to him at his pleasure. It - took the sparkle out of his champagne, the joy out of his life. Now that - he had asserted himself as the victorious male who had won the female that - he coveted, the sense of wrong inflicted on him grew less and the - consciousness of his own shame grew greater. In his shallow way he had - loved Jimmie dearly. He also had the well-bred Englishman's conventional - sense of honour. Accusing conscience wrote him down an unutterable knave. - </p> - <p> - One day in March, as he was proceeding citywards to see his solicitors on - some question relating to marriage settlements, his carriage was blocked - for some minutes in Oxford Street. Looking idly out of the near side - window, he saw a familiar figure emerge from a doorway in a narrow passage - come down to the pavement, and stand for a few moments in anxious thought, - jostled by the passers-by. He looked thin and ill and worried. The lines - by the sides of his drooping moustache had deepened. Jimmie, never spruce - in his attire, now seemed outrageously shabby. Certain men who dress well - are quick, like women, to notice these things. Morland's keen glance took - in the discoloured brown boots and the frayed hem of trousers, the weather - stains on the old tweed suit, the greasiness of the red tie, the irregular - mark of perspiration on the band of the old Homburg hat. An impulse to - spring out of the carriage and greet him was struggling with sheer shame, - when Jimmie suddenly threw up his head—an old trick of his whose - familiarity brought a pang to the man watching him—and crossed the - road, disappearing among the traffic behind the brougham. Morland gazed - meditatively at the little passage. Suddenly he was aware of the three - brass balls and the name of Attenborough. In a moment he was on the - pavement and, after a hurried word to his coachman, in pursuit of Jimmie. - But the traffic had swallowed Jimmie up. It was impossible to track him. - Morland returned to his brougham and drove on. - </p> - <p> - There was only one explanation of what he had seen. Jimmie was reduced to - poverty, to pawning his belongings in order to live. The scandal had - killed the sale of his pictures. No more ladies would sit to him for their - portraits. No more dealers would purchase works on the strength of his - name. Jimmie was ill, poor, down at heel, and it was all his, Morland's, - fault, his very grievous fault. In a dim, futile way he wished he were a - Roman Catholic, so that he could go to a priest, confess, and receive - absolution. The idea of confession obsessed him in this chastened mood. By - lunch-time he had resolved to tell Norma everything and abide by her - verdict. At any rate, if he married her, he would not do so under false - pretences. He would feel happier with the load of lies off his mind. At - half-past four he left the House of Commons to transact its business - without him as best it could, and drove to Devonshire Place. As he neared - the door, his courage began to fail. He remembered Norma's passionate - outburst against lying, and shrank from the withering words that she might - speak. The situation, however, had to be faced. - </p> - <p> - The maid who opened the front door informed him that Norma was out, but - that Mrs. Hardacre was at home. He was shown upstairs into the empty - drawing-room, and while he waited there, a solution of his difficulty - occurred to him. He caught at it eagerly, as he had caught at compromises - and palliatives all his life. For he was a man of half-sins, half-virtues, - half-loves, and half-repentances. His spiritual attitude was that of - Naaman. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre greeted him with smiles of welcome, and regrets at Norma's - absence. If only he had sent a message, Norma would have given up her - unimportant engagement. She would be greatly disappointed. The House took - up so much of his time, and Norma prized the brief snatches she could - obtain of his company. All of which, though obviously insincere, none the - less flattered Morland's vanity. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it is as well that Norma is away,” said he, “for I want to have a - little talk with you. Can you give me five minutes?” - </p> - <p> - “Fifty, my dear Morland,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, graciously. “Will you - have some tea?” - </p> - <p> - He declined. It was too serious a matter for the accompaniment of - clattering teaspoons. Mrs. Hardacre sat in an armchair with her back to - the light—the curtains had not yet been drawn—and Morland sat - near her, looking at the fire. - </p> - <p> - “I have something on my mind,” he began. “You, as Norma's mother, ought to - know. It's about my friend Jimmie Padgate.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre put out a lean hand. - </p> - <p> - “I would rather not hear it. I'm not uncharitable, but I wish none of us - had ever set eyes on the man. He came near ruining us all.” - </p> - <p> - “He seems to have ruined himself. He's ill, poor, in dreadful low water. I - caught a sight of him this morning. The poor old chap was almost in rags.” - </p> - <p> - “It's very unpleasant for Mr. Padgate, but it fails to strike me as - pathetic. He has only got his deserts.” - </p> - <p> - “That's where the point lies,” said Morland. “He does n't deserve it. I - do. I am the only person to blame in the whole infernal business.” - </p> - <p> - “You?” cried Mrs. Hardacre, her grey eyes glittering with sudden interest. - “What had you to do with it?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, everything. Jimmie never set eyes on the girl in his life. He took - all the blame to shield me. If he had n't done so, there would have been - the devil to pay. That's how it stands.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre gave a little gasp. - </p> - <p> - “My dear Morland, you amaze me. You positively shock me. Really, don't you - think in mentioning the matter to me there is some—indelicacy?” - </p> - <p> - “You are a woman of the world,” said Morland, bluntly, “and you know that - men don't lead the lives of monks just because they happen to be - unmarried.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course I know it,” said Mrs. Hardacre, composing herself to sweetness. - “One knows many things of which it is hardly necessary or desirable to - talk. Of course I think it shocking and disreputable of you. But it's all - over and done with. If that was on your mind, wipe it off and let us say - no more about it.” - </p> - <p> - “I'm afraid you don't understand,” said Morland, rising and leaning - against the mantel-piece. “What is done is done. Meanwhile another man is - suffering for it, while I go about prospering.” - </p> - <p> - “But surely that is a matter between Mr. Padgate and yourself. How can it - possibly concern us?” - </p> - <p> - As Morland had not looked at the case from that point of view, he silently - inspected it with a puzzled brow. - </p> - <p> - “I can't help feeling a bit of a brute, you know,” he said at length. “I - meant at first to let him off—to make a clean breast of it—but - it wasn't feasible. You know how difficult these things are when they get - put off. Then, of course, I thought I could make it up to Jimmie in other - ways.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, so you can,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with the elaborate pretence of a - little yawn, as if the subject had ceased to interest her. “You could - afford it.” - </p> - <p> - “Money is no good. He won't touch a penny. I have offered.” - </p> - <p> - “Then, my dear Morland, you have done your best. If a man is idiot enough - to saddle himself with other people's responsibilities and refuses to be - helped when he breaks down under them, you must let him go his own way. - Really I haven't got any sympathy for him.” - </p> - <p> - Morland, having warmed himself sufficiently and feeling curiously - comforted by Mrs. Hardacre's wise words, sat down again near her and leant - forward with his arms on his knees. - </p> - <p> - “Do you think Norma would take the same view?” he asked. After all, in - spite of certain eccentricities inseparable from an unbalanced sex, she - had as much fundamental common-sense as her mother. The latter looked at - him sharply. - </p> - <p> - “What has Norma got to do with it?” - </p> - <p> - “I was wondering whether I ought to tell her,” said he. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre started bolt upright in her chair. This time her interest - was genuine. Nothing but her long training in a world of petty strife kept - the sudden fright out of her eyes and voice. - </p> - <p> - “Tell Norma? Whatever for?” - </p> - <p> - “I thought it would be more decent,” said Morland, rather feebly. - </p> - <p> - “It would be sheer lunacy!” cried the lady, appalled at the certain - catastrophe that such a proceeding would cause. Did not the demented - creature see that the whole affair was in unstable equilibrium? A touch, - let alone a shock like this, would bring it toppling down, never to be set - up again by any prayers, remonstrances, ravings, curses, thumbscrews, or - racks the ingenuity of an outraged mother could devise. - </p> - <p> - “It would be utter imbecility,” she continued. “My dear man, don't you - think one mad Don Quixote in a romance is enough? What on earth would you, - Norma, or any one else gain by telling her? She is as happy as possible - now, buying her trousseau and making all the wedding arrangements. Why - spoil her happiness? I think it exceedingly inconsiderate of you—not - to say selfish—I do really.” - </p> - <p> - “Hardly that. It was an idea of doing penance,” said Morland. - </p> - <p> - “If that is all,” said Mrs. Hardacre, relaxing into a bantering tone, as - she joyfully noted the lack of conviction in his manner, “I'll make you a - hair shirt, and I'll promise it shall be scratchy—untanned pigskin - with the bristles on, if you like. Be as uncomfortable, my dear Morland, - as ever you choose—wear a frock-coat with a bowler hat or dine <i>tête-à-tête</i> - with Mr. Hardacre, but do leave other folks to pass their lives in peace - and quiet.” - </p> - <p> - Morland threw himself back and laughed, and Mrs. Hardacre knew she had won - what she paradoxically called a moral victory. They discussed the question - for a few moments longer, and then Morland rose to take his leave. - </p> - <p> - “It's awfully good of you to look at things in this broadminded way,” he - said, with the air of a man whom an indulgent lady has pardoned for a - small peccadillo. “Awfully good of you.” - </p> - <p> - “There is no other sane way of looking at them,” replied Mrs. Hardacre. - “Won't you wait and see Norma?” - </p> - <p> - “I must get back to the House,” replied Morland, consulting his watch. - “There may be a division before the dinner-hour.” - </p> - <p> - He smoked a great cigar on his way to Westminster, and enjoyed it - thoroughly. Mrs. Hardacre was quite right. He had done his best. If Jimmie - was too high and mighty to accept the only compensation possible, he was - not to blame. The matter was over and done with. It would be idiotic to - tell Norma. - </p> - <p> - Meanwhile, having made confession and received absolution, he felt - spiritually refreshed. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XX—ALINE PREPARES FOR BATTLE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE look of illness - that Morland had noticed upon Jimmie's face was due to the fact that he - had been ill. Italian townlets nestling on hillsides are picturesque, but - they are not always healthy. A touch of fever had laid him on his back for - a week, and caused the local doctor to order him to England. He had - arrived in a limp condition, much to the anxiety of Aline, who had - expected to see the roses return to his cheek as soon as their slender - baggage had passed the custom-house. He was shabbily dressed because he - had fallen on evil times, and had no money to waste on personal vanities. - The four guineas which Aline had put aside out of their limited resources - to buy him a new suit he had meanly abstracted from the housekeeping - drawer, and had devoted, with the surreptitious help of the servant, to - purchasing necessary articles of attire for Aline. He was looking worried - because he had forgotten in which of the cheap Oxford Street restaurants - he had promised to meet that young lady. When he remembered, the cloud - passed from his face and he darted across the road behind Morland's - brougham. He found Aline seated primly at a little marble table on which - were a glass of milk and a lump of amorphous pastry for herself, and a - plate of cold beef and a small bottle of Bass for Jimmie. It was too early - for the regular crowd of lunchers—only half-past twelve—and - the slim, erect little figure looked oddly alone in the almost empty - restaurant. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie nodded in a general, kindly way at the idle waitresses about the - buffet, and marched down the room with a quick step, his eyes beaming. He - sat down with some clatter opposite Aline, and took two cheques, a - bank-note and a handful of gold and silver from his pocket, and dumped - them noisily on the table. - </p> - <p> - “There, my child. Seven pounds ten. Twenty-five guineas. Five pounds. And - eight pounds three-and-six-pence. Exit wolf at the door, howling, with his - tail between his legs.” - </p> - <p> - Aline looked at the wealth with knitted brow. - </p> - <p> - “Can I take this?” she asked, lifting up the five-pound note. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie pushed the pile towards her. “Take it all, my dear. What on earth - should I do with it? Besides, it's all your doing.” - </p> - <p> - “Because I made you go and dun those horrid dealers? And even now Hyam has - only given you half. It was fifty guineas—Oh, Jimmie! Do you mean to - say you forgot? Now, what did you tell him? Did you produce the - agreement?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie looked at her ruefully. - </p> - <p> - “I'm afraid I forgot the wretched agreement. I went in and twirled my - moustache fiercely, and said 'Mr. Hyam, I want my money.'” - </p> - <p> - Aline laughed. “And you took him by the throat. I know. Oh, you foolish - person!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, he asked me if twenty-five would be enough—and it's a lot of - money, you know, dear—and I thought if I did n't say 'yes,' he would - n't give me anything. In business affairs one has to be diplomatic.” - </p> - <p> - “I'll have to take Hyam in hand myself,” said Aline, decisively. “Well, - he'll have to pay up some day. Then there's Blathwayt & Co.,—and - Tilney—that's quite right—but where did you get all that gold - from, Jimmie?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, that was somebody else,” he said vaguely. Then turning to the - waitress, who had sauntered up to open the bottle of Bass, he pointed at - Aline's lunch. - </p> - <p> - “Do you mind taking away that eccentric pie-thing and bringing the most - nutritious dish you have in the establishment?” - </p> - <p> - “But, Jimmie, this is a Bath bun. It's delicious,” protested Aline. - </p> - <p> - “My dear child, growing girls cannot be fed like bears on buns. Ah, here,” - he said to the waitress who showed him the little wooden-handled frame - containing the tariff, “bring this young lady some galantine of chicken.” - </p> - <p> - Aline, who in her secret heart loved the “eccentric pie-thing” beyond all - other dainties, and trembled at the stupendous charge, possibly ninepence - or a shilling, that would be made for the galantine, yielded, after the - manner of women, because she knew it would please Jimmie. But accustomed - to his diplomatic methods, she felt that a red herring—or a - galantine—had been drawn across the track. - </p> - <p> - “Who was the somebody else?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - He nodded and drank a draught of beer and wiped the froth from his - moustache. Something unusual in his personal appearance suddenly caught - her attention. His watch-chain was dangling loose from the buttonhole of - his waistcoat. - </p> - <p> - “Your watch!” she gasped. - </p> - <p> - Dissimulation being vain, Jimmie confessed. - </p> - <p> - “You told me this morning, my dear, that if we didn't get fifty pounds - to-day we were ruined. You spoke alarmingly of the workhouse. My debt - collecting amounted to thirty-eight pounds fifteen. I tried hard to work - the obdurate bosom up to eleven pounds five, but he would only give me - eight.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't mean to say you have sold your beautiful gold watch for eight - pounds?” cried the girl, turning as pale as the milk in front of her. - </p> - <p> - It had been a present from a wealthy stockbroker who had been delighted - with his portrait painted by Jimmie a couple of years ago, and it was - thick and heavy and the pride of Aline's existence. It invested Jimmie - with an air of solidity, worldly substantiality; and it was the only - timekeeper they had ever had in the house which properly executed its - functions. Now he had sold it! Was there ever so exasperating a man? He - was worse than Moses with his green spectacles. But Jimmie reassured her. - He had only pawned the watch at Attenborough's over the way. - </p> - <p> - “Then give me the ticket, do, or you'll lose it, Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - He meekly obeyed. Aline began her galantine with a sigh of relief, and - condescended to laugh at Jimmie's account of his exploits. But when the - meal was ended, she insisted on redeeming the precious watch, and much - happier in knowing it safe in his pocket, she carried him off to a - ready-made tailor's, where she ordered him a beautiful thin overcoat for - thirty shillings, a neat blue serge suit for three pounds ten, handing - over in payment the five-pound note she had abstracted from his gleanings, - and a new hat, for which she paid from a mysterious private store of her - own. These matters having been arranged to her satisfaction, she made up - for her hectoring ways by nestling against him on top of the - homeward-bound omnibus and telling him what a delightful, lovely morning - they had spent. - </p> - <p> - Thus it will be seen that Jimmie, aided by Aline's stout little heart, was - battling more than usual against adversity. Aline had many schemes. Why - should she not obtain some lucrative employment? Jimmie made a wry face at - the phrase and protested vehemently against the suggestion. A hulking - varlet like him to let her wear her fingers to the bone by addressing - envelopes at twopence a million? He would sooner return to the - five-shillings-a-dozen oil paintings; he would go round the streets at - dawn and play “ghost” to pavement artists; he would take in washing! The - idea of the street-pictures caught his fancy. He expatiated upon its - advantages. Five pitches, say at two shillings a pitch, that would be ten - shillings a day—three pounds a week. A most business-like plan, to - say nothing of the education in art it would be to the public! He had his - own fantastical way of dealing with the petty cares of life. As for Aline - working, he would not hear of it. Though they lived now from hand to - mouth, they were always fed. He had faith in the ravens. - </p> - <p> - But all the fantasy and the faith could not subdue Aline's passionate - rebellion against Jimmie's ostracism. She was very young, very feminine; - she had not his wide outlook, his generous sympathies, his disdain of - trivial, ignoble things, his independence of soul. The world was arrayed - against Jimmie. Society was persecuting him with monstrous injustice. She - hated his oppressors, longed fiercely for an opportunity of vindicating - his honour. It was sometimes more than she could bear—to think of - his straitened means, the absence of sitters, the lowered prices he - obtained, the hours of unremitting toil he spent at his easel and - drawing-table. During their travels she had not realised what the scandal - would mean to him professionally. Now her heart rose in hot revolt and - thirsted for battle in Jimmie's cause. - </p> - <p> - Her heart had never been hotter than one morning when, the gem of his - finished Italian studies having been rejected by the committee of a minor - exhibition, she went down to the studio to give vent to her indignation. - At breakfast Jimmie had laughed and kissed her and told her not to drop - tears into his coffee. He would send the picture to the Academy, where it - would be hung on the line and make him famous. He refused to be - downhearted and talked buoyantly of other things. But Aline felt that it - was only for her sake that he hid his bitter disappointment, and an hour - later she could bear the strain of silence no longer. - </p> - <p> - The door of the studio was open. The girl's footstep was soft, and, not - hearing it, he did not turn as she entered. For a few seconds she stood - watching him; feeling shy, embarrassed, an intruder upon unexpected sacred - things. Jimmie's mind was far away from minor exhibitions. He was sitting - on his painting-stool, chin in hand, looking at a picture on the easel. On - his face was unutterable pain, in his eyes an agony of longing. Aline - caught her breath, frightened at the revelation. The eyes of the painted - Norma smiled steadfastly into his. The horrible irony of it smote the - girl. Another catch at the breath became a choking sob. Jimmie started, - and as if a magic hand had passed across his features, the pain vanished, - and Aline saw the homely face again with its look of wistful kindness. - Overwrought, she broke into a passion of weeping. Jimmie put his arms - about her and soothed her. What did the rejection of a picture matter? It - was part of the game of painting. She must be his own brave little girl - and smile at the rubs of fortune. But Aline shook the head buried on his - shoulder, and stretched out a hand blindly towards the portrait. “It's - that. I can't bear it.” - </p> - <p> - An impossible thought shot through him. He drew away from her and caught - her wrists somewhat roughly, and tried to look at her; but she bowed her - head. - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean, my child?” he asked curtly, with bent brows. - </p> - <p> - Women are lightning-witted in their interpretation of such questions. The - blood flooded her face, and her tears dried suddenly and she met his - glance straight. - </p> - <p> - “Do you think I'm jealous? Do you suppose I have n't known? I can't bear - you to suffer. I can't bear her not to believe in you. I can't bear her - not to love you.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie let go her wrists and stood before her full of grateful tenderness, - quite at a loss for words. He looked whimsically at the flushed, defiant - little face; he shook her by the shoulder and turned away. - </p> - <p> - “My valiant tin soldier,” he said. - </p> - <p> - It was an old name for her, dating from nursery days, when they thought - and talked according to the gospel of Hans Christian Andersen. - </p> - <p> - No more passed between them. But thenceforward - Jimmie put the finishing touches to the portrait openly, Instead of - painting at it when he knew he should be undisturbed. The wedding was - drawing near. The date had been announced in the papers, and Jimmie had - put a cross against it in his diary. If only Norma would accept the - portrait as a wedding-present, he would feel happier. But how to approach - her he did not know. In her pure eyes, he was well aware, he must appear - the basest of men, and things proceeding from him would bear a taint of - the unspeakable. Yet he hungered for her acceptance. It was the most - perfect picture he had painted or could ever paint. The divinest part of - him had gone to the making of it. It held in its passionate simplicity the - man's soul, as the Monna Lisa in its mysterious complexity holds - Leonardo's. Of material symbols of things spiritual he could not give her - more. But how to give? - </p> - <p> - Connie Deering settled the question by coming to the studio one morning, a - bewildering vision of millinery and smiles and kindness. - </p> - <p> - “You have persistently refused, you wicked bear, to come and see me since - my return to London, so I have no choice but to walk into your den. If it - had n't been for Aline, beyond an occasional 'Dear Connie, I am very well. - The weather is unusually warm for the time of year. Yours sincerely, J. - P.', I should n't know whether you were alive or dead. I hope you're - ashamed of yourself.” - </p> - <p> - This was the little lady's exordium, to which she tactfully gave Jimmie no - time to reply. She stayed for an hour. The disastrous topic was avoided. - But Jimmie felt that she forbore to judge him for his supposed offence, - and learned to his great happiness that Norma had asked after his welfare, - and would without doubt deign in her divine graciousness to accept the - portrait. She looked thoughtfully at the picture for some time, and then - laid a light touch on his arm. - </p> - <p> - “How you must love her, Jimmie!” she said in a low voice. “I have n't - forgotten.” - </p> - <p> - “I wish you would,” he answered gravely. “I oughtn't to have said what I - did. I don't remember what I did say. I lost my head and raved. Every man - has his hour of madness, and that was mine—all through your - witchery. And yet somehow it seemed as if I were pouring it all out to - her.” - </p> - <p> - Connie Deering perceptibly winced. Plucking up courage, she began: - </p> - <p> - “I wish a man would—” - </p> - <p> - “My dear Connie,” Jimmie interrupted kindly, “there are hundreds of men in - London who are sighing themselves hoarse for you. But you are such a - hard-hearted butterfly.” - </p> - <p> - Her lips twitched. “Not so hard-hearted as you think, my good Jimmie,” she - retorted. - </p> - <p> - A moment later she was all inconsequence and jest. On parting he took both - her white-gloved little hands. - </p> - <p> - “You can't realise the joy it has been to me to see you, Connie,” he said. - “It has been like a ray of sunlight through prison bars.” - </p> - <p> - After a private talk with Aline she drove straight to Devonshire Place, - and on the way dabbed her eyes with the inconsiderable bit of chiffon - called a handkerchief which she carried in her gold chain purse. She saw - Norma alone for a moment before lunch, and told her of her visit. - </p> - <p> - “I don't care what he has done,” she declared desperately. “I am not going - to let it make a difference any longer. He's the same dear creature I have - known all my life, and I don't believe he has done anything at all. If - there's a sinner in that horrible business, it is n't Jimmie!” - </p> - <p> - Norma looked out of the window at the bleak March day. - </p> - <p> - “That is what Theodore Weever said,” she answered tonelessly. - </p> - <p> - “Then why don't you give Jimmie the benefit of the doubt?” - </p> - <p> - “It is better that I should n't.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, dear?” - </p> - <p> - “You are a sweet little soul, Connie,” said Norma, her eyes still fixed on - the grey sky. “But you may do more harm than good. I am better as I am. I - have benumbed myself into a decent state of insensibility and I don't want - to feel anything ever again as long as I live.” - </p> - <p> - The door opened, and Mrs. Hardacre appeared on the threshold. Connie bent - forward and whispered quickly into Norma's ear: - </p> - <p> - “One would think you were afraid to believe in Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - She swung round, flushed, femininely excited at having seized the unfair - moment for dealing a stab. - </p> - <p> - “I hope I <i>have</i> made her feel,” she thought, as she fluttered - forward to greet Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - She succeeded perhaps beyond her hope. A sharp glance showed her Norma - still staring out of window, but staring now with an odd look of fear and - pain. Her kind heart repented. - </p> - <p> - “Forgive me if I hurt you,” she said on their way downstairs to lunch. - </p> - <p> - “What does it matter?” Norma answered by way of pardon. - </p> - <p> - But the shrewd thrust mattered exceedingly. After Connie had gone, the - wound ached, and Norma found that her boast of having benumbed herself was - a vain word. In the night she lay awake, frightened at the reaction that - was taking place. Theodore Weever had shaken her more than she had - realised. Connie Deering proclaimed the same faith. She felt that she too - would have to accept it—against argument, against reason, against - fact. She would have to accept it wholly, implicitly; and she dreaded the - act of faith. Her marriage with Morland was fixed for that day week, and - she was agonisingly aware that she loved another man with all her heart. - </p> - <p> - The next day she received a hurried note from Connie Deering: - </p> - <p> - <i>“Do come in for half an hour for tea on Sunday. I have a beautiful - wedding-present to show you which I hope you'll like, as great pains have - been spent over it. And I want to have a last little chat with you.”</i> - </p> - <p> - She promised unreflectingly, seeing no snare. But as she walked to - Bryanston Square on Sunday afternoon, more of a presentiment, a foreboding - of evil, than a suspicion fixed itself upon her mind, and she wished she - had not agreed to come. She was shown into the drawing-room, and there, - beside a gilt-framed picture over which a cloth was thrown, with her great - brown eyes meeting her defiantly, stood Aline. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXI—THE MOTH MEETS THE STAR - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HUS had Aline, her - heart hot for battle in Jimmie's cause, contrived with Connie Deering as - subsidiary conspirator. She had lain awake most of the night, thinking of - the approaching interview, composing speeches, elaborating arguments, - defining her attitude. Her plan of campaign was based on the assumption of - immediate hostilities. She had pictured a scornful lady moved to sudden - anger at seeing herself trapped, and haughtily refusing to discuss - overtures of peace. It was to be war from the first, until she had brought - her adversary low; and when the door-handle rattled and the door opened to - admit Norma, every nerve in her young body grew tense, and her heart beat - like the clapper of a bell. - </p> - <p> - Norma entered, looked for a moment in smiling surprise at Aline, came - quickly forward, and moved by a sudden impulse, a yearning for love, - sweetness, freshness, peace—she knew not what—she put her arms - round the girl and kissed her. - </p> - <p> - “My dear Aline, how sweet it is to see you again!” -</p> - <p> -The poor little girl - stood helpless. The bottom was knocked out of her half-childish plan of - campaign. There was no scornful lady, no haughty words, no hostilities. - She fell to crying. What else could she do? - </p> - <p> - “There, there! Don't cry, dear,” said Norma soothingly, almost as - helpless. Seating herself on a low chair and drawing Aline to her side, - she looked up at the piteous face. - </p> - <p> - “Why should you cry, dear?” - </p> - <p> - “I did n't know you would be so good to me,” answered Aline, wiping her - eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Why should n't I be good to you? What reason could I have for not being - glad to see you?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't know,” said the girl, with a touch of bitterness. “Things are so - different now.” - </p> - <p> - Norma sighed for answer and thought of her premonition. She was aware that - Connie had deliberately planned this interview, but could find no - resentment in her heart. The reproach implied in Aline's words she - accepted humbly. She was at once too spiritless for anger, and too much - excited by the girl's presence for regret at having come. Her eye fell - upon the picture leaning against the chair-back, and a conjecture swiftly - passed through her mind. - </p> - <p> - “Mrs. Deering asked me to come and look at a wedding-present,” she said - with a smile. - </p> - <p> - “Did she tell you from whom?” asked Aline, thrusting her handkerchief into - her pocket. She had found her nerve again. - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “It's from Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “Is it that over there?” - </p> - <p> - Aline caught and misinterpreted an unsteadiness of voice. She threw - herself on her knees by Norma's side. - </p> - <p> - “You won't refuse it, Miss Hardacre. Oh, say you won't refuse it. Jimmie - began it ever so long ago. He put everything into it. It would break his - heart if you refused it—the heart of the best and beautifullest and - tenderest and most wonderful man God ever made.” - </p> - <p> - Norma touched with her gloved fingers a wisp of hair straying over the - girl's forehead. - </p> - <p> - “How do you know he is all that?” - </p> - <p> - “How do I know? How do I know the sun shines and the rain falls? It's just - so.” - </p> - <p> - “You have faith, my child,” said Norma, oddly. - </p> - <p> - “It isn't faith. It's knowledge. You all believe Jimmie has done something - horrible. He has n't. I know he hasn't. He couldn't. He couldn't harm a - living creature by word or deed. I know he never did it. If I had thought - so for one moment, I should have loathed myself so that I would have gone - out and killed myself. I know very little about it. I did n't read the - newspapers—it's hideous—it's horrible—Jimmie would as - soon think of torturing a child. It's not in his nature. He is all love - and sweetness and chivalry. If you say he has taken the blame on himself - for some great generous purpose—yes. That's Jimmie. That's Jimmie - all over. It's cruel—it's monstrous for any one who knows him to - think otherwise.” - </p> - <p> - She had risen from her knees half-way through her passionate speech, and - moved about in front of Norma, wringing her hands. She ended in a sob and - turned away. Norma lay back in her chair, pale and agitated. The cynical - worldling with his piercing vision into men and the pure, ignorant child - had arrived at the same conclusion, not after months of thought, but - instantly, intuitively. She could make the girl no answer. Aline began - again. - </p> - <p> - “He could n't. You know he could n't. It's something glorious and - beautiful he has done and not anything shameful.” - </p> - <p> - She went on, with little pauses, hurling her short, breathless sentences - across the space that separated her from Norma, forgetful of everything - save the wrong done to Jimmie. At last Norma rose and went to her. - </p> - <p> - “Hush, dear!” she said. “There are some things I mustn't talk about. I - daren't. You are too young to understand. Mr. Padgate has sent me a - wedding-present. Tell him how gladly I accept it and how I shall value it. - Let me see the picture.” - </p> - <p> - Aline, her slight bosom still heaving with the after-storm of emotion, - said nothing, but drew the cloth from the canvas. Norma started back - in-surprise. She had not anticipated seeing her own portrait. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, but it is beautiful!” she cried involuntarily. - </p> - <p> - “Yes—more than beautiful,” said Aline, and mechanically she moved - the chair into the full light of the window. - </p> - <p> - Norma looked at the picture for a long time, stepped back and looked at - herself in the mirror of the overmantel, and returned to the picture. And - as she looked the soul behind the picture spoke to her. The message - delivered, she glanced at Aline. - </p> - <p> - “It is not I, that woman. I wish to God it were.” She put her hands up to - her face, and took a step or two across the room, and repeated a little - wildly, “I wish to God it were!” - </p> - <p> - “It is very, very like you,” said Aline softly, recovering her girl's - worship of the other's stately beauty. - </p> - <p> - Norma caught her by the arm and pointed at the portrait. - </p> - <p> - “Can't you see the difference?” - </p> - <p> - But the soul behind the picture had not spoken to Aline. There was love - hovering around the pictured woman's lips; happy tenderness and trust and - promise mingled in her eyes; in so far as the shadow of a flower-like - woman's passion could strain her features, so were her features strained. - Yet she looked out of the canvas a proud, queenly woman, capable of - heroisms and lofty sacrifice. She was one who loved deeply and demanded - love in return. She was warm of the flesh, infinitely pure of the spirit. - The face was the face of Norma, but the soul was that of the dream-woman - who had come and sat in the sitter's chair and communed with Jimmie as he - painted her. And Norma heard her voice. It was an indictment of her life, - a judgment and a sentence. - </p> - <p> - “I am glad you can't, dear,” she said to Aline, regaining her balance. - “Tell him I shall prize it above all my wedding-gifts.” - </p> - <p> - They talked quietly, for a while about Jimmie's affairs, the pilgrimage - through southern France and northern Italy, his illness, his work. His - poverty Aline was too proud to mention. - </p> - <p> - “And you, my dear?” asked Norma, kindly. - </p> - <h3> - “I?” - </h3> - <p> - “What about yourself? You are not looking as happy as you were. My dear - child,” she said, bending forward earnestly, “do you know that no one has - ever come to me with their troubles in all my life—not once. I'm - beginning to feel I should be happier if some one did. You have had yours—-I - have heard just a little. You see we all have them and we might help each - other.” - </p> - <p> - “You have no troubles, Miss Hardacre,” said Aline, touched. “You are going - to be married in a week's time.” - </p> - <p> - “And you?” - </p> - <p> - “Never,” said Aline. “Never.” - </p> - <p> - Suddenly she poured her disastrous little love-story into Norma's ears. It - was a wonderful new comfort to the child, this tender magic of the womanly - sympathy. Oh! she loved him, of course she loved him, and he loved her; - that was the piteous part of it. If Miss Hardacre only knew what it was to - have the heart-ache! It was dreadful. And there was no hope. - </p> - <p> - “And is that all?” asked Norma, when she had lowered the curtain on her - tragedy. “You are eating out your heart for him and won't see him just - because he won't believe in Jimmie? Listen. I feel sure that he will soon - believe in Jimmie. He must. And then you'll be entirely happy.” - </p> - <p> - When the girl's grateful arms suddenly flung themselves about her, Norma - was further on the road to happiness than she had ever travelled before. - She yielded herself to the moment's exquisite charm. Behind her whirled a - tumult of longing, shame, struggling faith, nameless suspicion. Before her - loomed a shivering dread. The actual moment was an isle of enchanted - peace. - </p> - <p> - The clock on a table at the far end of the room chiming six brought her - back to the workaday world. She must go home. Morland was coming to - dinner; also one or two Cosford people, who had already arrived in town in - view of the wedding. She would have to dress with some elaborateness. Her - heart grew heavy and cold at the prospect of the dreary party. She rose, - looked again at the picture in the fading light. Moved by the - irresistible, she turned to Aline. - </p> - <p> - “I should like to see him—to thank him—before—-before - Wednesday. Do you think he would come?” - </p> - <p> - Aline blushed guiltily. “Jimmie is in the house now,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Downstairs?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - For a moment irresolute, she looked vacantly into the girl's pleading - eyes. An odd darkness encompassed her and she saw nothing. The - announcement was a shock of crisis. Dimly she knew that she trod the brink - of folly and peril. But she had been caught unawares, and she longed - stupidly, achingly, for the sight of his face. The words of Aline, eager - in defence of her beloved, seemed far away. - </p> - <p> - “Of course he does n't know you are here. He was to call for me at a - quarter to six, and I heard the front door open a little while ago. I - brought the picture in a cab, and he is under the impression that Mrs. - Deering will ask you to—will do what I have done. Jimmie is - perfectly innocent, Miss Hardacre. He had not the remotest idea I was to - meet you—not the remotest.” - </p> - <p> - Norma recovered herself sufficiently to say with a faint smile: - </p> - <p> - “So this has been a conspiracy between you and Connie Deering?” - </p> - <p> - Aline caught consent in the tone, and ignored the question. - </p> - <p> - “Shall I send him up to you?” she asked breathlessly. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - There was a girl's glad cry, a girl's impulsive kiss, and Norma was left - alone in the room. She had yielded. In a few moments he would be with her—the - man who had said, “Her voice haunts me like music heard in sleep... I - worship her like a Madonna... I love her as the man of hot blood loves a - woman... My soul is a footstool for her to rest her feet upon,” and other - flaming words of unforgettable passion; the man for whom one instant of - her life had been elemental sex; the man whose love had transfigured her - on canvas into the wonder among women that she might have been; the man - standing in a slough of infamy, whose rising vapours wreathed themselves - into a halo about his head. She clenched her hands and set her teeth, - wrestling with herself. - </p> - <p> - “My God! What kind of a fool am I becoming?” she breathed. - </p> - <p> - Training, the habit of the mask, came to her aid. Jimmie, entering, saw - only the royal lady who had looked kindly upon him in the golden September - days. She came to meet him frankly, as one meets an old friend. A new - vision revealed to her the heart that leapt into his eyes, as they rested - upon her. Mistress of herself, she hardened her own, but smiled and spoke - softly. - </p> - <p> - “It is great good fortune you have come, so that I can thank you,” she - said. “But how can I ever thank you—for that?” - </p> - <p> - “It is a small gift enough,” said Jimmie. “Your acceptance is more than - thanks.” - </p> - <p> - “I shall prize it dearly. It is like nothing that can be bought. It is - something out of yourself you are giving me.” - </p> - <p> - “If you look at it in that light,” said he, “I am happy indeed.” - </p> - <p> - With a common instinct they went up to the portrait and regarded it side - by side. Conventional words passed. He enquired after Morland. - </p> - <p> - “You have n't seen him for a long time?” she asked hesitatingly. - </p> - <p> - “Not for a long time.” - </p> - <p> - “You must have been very lonely.” - </p> - <p> - “I have had Aline—and Connie Deering—and my work.” - </p> - <p> - “Are they sufficient for you?” - </p> - <p> - “Any human love a man gets he can make fill his life. It's like the grain - of mustard-seed.” - </p> - <p> - Norma felt a thrill of admiration. Not a tone in his voice betrayed - complaint, reproach, or bitterness. Instead, he sounded the note of - thanksgiving for the love bestowed upon him, of faith in the perfect - ordering of the world. She glanced at him, and felt that she had wronged - him. No matter what was the solution of the mystery, she knew him to be a - sweet-souled man, wonderfully steadfast. - </p> - <p> - “Your old way,” she replied with a smile, sitting down and motioning him - to a chair beside her. “Do you remember that we first met in this very - room? You have not changed. Have I?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” he said gravely, “you were always beautiful, without and within. I - told you that then, if you remember. Perhaps, now, you are a little truer - to yourself.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you think so?” she asked, somewhat bitterly. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it is the approach of your great happiness,” blundered Jimmie, in - perfect conviction. She was silent. “It has been more to me than I can - say,” he went on, “to see you once again—as you are, before your - marriage. I wish you many blessings—all that love can bring you.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you think love is necessary for married happiness?” - </p> - <p> - “Without it marriage must be a horror,” said Jimmie. For a moment she was - on the brink of harsh laughter. Did he sincerely believe she was in love - with Morland? She could have hurled the question at him. Will checked the - rising hysteria and turned it into other channels. - </p> - <p> - “Why have you never married? You must have loved somebody once.” - </p> - <p> - It was a relief to hurt him. The dusk was gathering in the room, and she - could scarcely see his face. A Sunday stillness filled the quiet square - outside. The hour had its dangers. - </p> - <p> - “My having loved a woman does not necessarily imply that I could have - married her,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - The evasion irritated her mood, awoke a longing to make him speak. She - drew her chair nearer, bent forward, so that the brim of her great hat - almost brushed his forehead and the fragrance of her overspread him. - </p> - <p> - “Do you remember a picture you would n't show me in your studio? You - called it a mad painter's dream. You said it was the Ideal Woman.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>You</i> said so,” replied Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I should like to see it.” - </p> - <p> - “It is mine no longer to show you,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I think you must have loved that woman very deeply.” She was tempting him - as she had tempted no man before, feeling a cruel, senseless joy in it. - His voice vibrated. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. I loved her infinitely.” - </p> - <p> - “What was she like?” - </p> - <p> - “Like all the splendid flowers of the earth melted into one rose,” said - Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I wish some one had ever said that about me,” she whispered. - </p> - <p> - “Many must have thought it.” - </p> - <p> - “She must be a happy woman to be loved by you.” - </p> - <p> - “By me? Who am I that I could bring happiness to a woman? I have never - told her.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not?” she whispered. “Do you suppose you can love a woman without her - knowing it?” - </p> - <p> - “In what way can the star be cognisant of the moth's desire?” said Jimmie, - going back to the refrain of his love. - </p> - <p> - “You a moth and she a star! You are a man and she is but a trumpery bit of - female flesh that on a word would throw herself into your arms.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Jimmie, hoarsely. “No, you don't know what you are saying.” - </p> - <p> - The temptation to goad him was irresistible. - </p> - <p> - “We are all of us alike, all of us. Tell her.” - </p> - <p> - “I dare n't.” - </p> - <p> - “Tell me who she is.” - </p> - <p> - She looked at him full, with meaning in her eyes, which glowed like deep - moons in the dusk. He brought all his courage into his glance. He was the - master. She turned away her head in confusion, reading his love, his - strength, his loyalty. A lesser man loving her would have thrown honour to - the winds. A curious reverence of him filled her. She felt a small thing - beside him. All doubts vanished forever. Her faith in him was as crystal - clear as Aline's. - </p> - <p> - “I have no right to mention her name,” he said after a pause. - </p> - <p> - Norma leaned back in her chair and passed her handkerchief across her - lips. - </p> - <p> - “Would you do anything in the world she asked you?” she murmured. - </p> - <p> - “I would go through hell for her,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - There was another span of silence, tense and painful. Jimmie broke it by - saying: - </p> - <p> - “Why should you concern yourself about my fantastic affairs? They merely - belong to dreamland—to the twilight and the stillness. They have no - existence in the living world.” - </p> - <p> - “If I thought so, should I be sitting in the twilight and the stillness - listening to you?” she asked. “Or even if I did, may I not enter into - dreamland too for a few little minutes before the gates are closed to me - forever? Why should you want to shut me out of it? Do you think much love - has come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Morland loves you,” said Jimmie, tremulously. - </p> - <p> - The door opened. The electric light was switched on, showing two pale, - passion-drawn faces, and Connie Deering brought her sweet gaiety into the - room. - </p> - <p> - “If I had known you two were sitting in the dark like this, I should have - come up earlier. Is n't it nice, Norma, to have Jimmie back again?” - </p> - <p> - The spell was broken. Norma gave an anxious look at the clock and fled, - after hurried farewells. - </p> - <p> - The mistress of the house arched her pretty eyebrows as she returned to - Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Eh bien?</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Connie—” He cleared his throat. “You have kept my secret?” - </p> - <p> - “Loyally,” she said. “Have you?” - </p> - <p> - “I have done my best. God knows I have done my best.” - </p> - <p> - He sat down, took up a book and began to turn the leaves idly. Connie - knelt down before the fire and put on a fresh log. This done, she came to - his side. He took her hand and looked up into her face. - </p> - <p> - “I have n't thanked you, Connie. I do with all my heart.” - </p> - <p> - She smiled at him with an odd wistfulness. - </p> - <p> - “You once thanked me in a very pretty manner,” she said. “I think I - deserve it again.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXII—CATASTROPHE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>ONNIE DEERING was - dining that Sunday evening with some friends at the Carlton, an engagement - which had caused her to decline an invitation to the Hardacres'. The - prospect, however, for once did not appeal to her pleasure-loving soul. - She sighed as she stepped into her brougham, and wished as she drove along - that she were sitting at home in the tea-gown and tranquillity harmonious - with a subdued frame of mind. Problems worried her. What had passed - between Norma and Jimmie? Ordinary delicacy had forbidden her questioning, - and Jimmie had admitted her no further into his confidence. In that she - was disappointed. When a sentimental woman asks for a kiss, she expects - something more. She was also half ashamed of herself for asking him to - kiss her. A waspish little voice within proclaimed that it was not so much - for Jimmie's sake as for her own; that her lifelong fondness for Jimmie - had unconsciously slid on to the rails that lead to absurdity. She drew - her satin cloak tightly around her as if to suffocate the imp, and - returned to her speculation. Something had happened—of that there - was no doubt—something serious, agitating. It could be read on both - their faces. Had she, who alone knew the hearts of each, done right in - bringing them together? What had been her object? Even if a marriage - between them had not been too ludicrous for contemplation, it would not - have been fair towards her cousin Morland to encourage this intrigue. She - vowed she had been a little fool to meddle with such gunpowdery matters. - And yet she had acted in all innocence for Jimmie's sake. It was right for - Norma to be friends with him again. It was monstrous he should suffer. If - he could not marry the woman he loved, at least he could have the - happiness of knowing himself no longer a blackened wretch in her eyes. But - then, Norma had taken it into her head to love him too. Had she done - right? Her thoughts flew round in a vicious circle of irritatingly small - circumference, occasionally flying off on the tangent of the solicited - kiss. - </p> - <p> - The first person she met in the vestibule of the Carlton was Theodore - Weever. They exchanged greetings, discovered they belonged to the same - party. She had come across him frequently of late in the houses that Norma - and herself had as common ground. In a general way she liked him; since - Norma had told her of his view of the scandal, he had risen high in her - estimation; but to-night he seemed to be a link in the drama that - perplexed her, and she shrank from him, as from something uncanny. He sat - next her at table. His first words were of Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I was buying pictures yesterday from a friend of yours—Padgate.” - </p> - <p> - In her pleasure Connie forgot her nervousness. - </p> - <p> - “Why, he never told me.” - </p> - <p> - “He could scarcely have had time unless he telephoned or telegraphed.” - </p> - <p> - “He was at my house this afternoon,” she explained. - </p> - <p> - He carefully peppered his oysters, then turned his imperturbable face - towards her. - </p> - <p> - “So was Miss Hardacre.” - </p> - <p> - “How do you know that?” she cried, startled. - </p> - <p> - “I was calling in Devonshire Place. Her mother told me. I am not - necromantic.” - </p> - <p> - His swift uniting of the two names perturbed her. She swallowed her - oysters unreflectingly, thus missing one of her little pleasures in life, - for she adored oysters. - </p> - <p> - “Which pictures did you buy?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “The one I coveted was not for sale. It was a portrait of Miss Hardacre. I - don't think he meant me to see it, but I came upon him unawares. Have you - seen it?” They discussed the portrait for a while. Connie repeated her - former question. Weever replied that he had bought the picture of the faun - looking at the vision of things to come, and the rejected Italian study. - Connie expressed her gladness. They contained Jimmie's best work. - </p> - <p> - “Very fine,” Weever admitted, “but just failing in finish. Nothing like - the portrait.” - </p> - <p> - There was an interval. Connie exchanged remarks with old Colonel Pawley, - her right-hand neighbour, who expatiated on the impossibility of consuming - Bortsch soup with satisfaction outside Russia. The soup removed, Weever - resumed the conversation. - </p> - <p> - “Have you read your Lamartine thoroughly? I have. I was sentimental once. - He says somewhere, <i>Aimer pour être aimé, c'est de l'homme; mais aimer - pour aimer, c'est presque de l'ange</i>. I remember where it comes from. It - was said of Cecco in 'Graziella.' Our friend Padgate reminds me of Cecco. - Do you care much about your cousin Morland King, Mrs. Deering?” - </p> - <p> - Connie, entirely disconcerted by his manner, looked at him beseechingly. - </p> - <p> - “Why do you ask me that?” - </p> - <p> - “Because he is one of the <i>dramatis persona</i> in a pretty little - comedy on which the curtain is not yet rung down.” - </p> - <p> - She greatly dared. “Are you too in the caste?” - </p> - <p> - Theodore Weever deliberately helped himself to fish before replying. Then - with equal deliberation he stared into her flushed and puzzled face. - </p> - <p> - “I hope so. A leading part, perhaps, if you are the clever and - conscientious woman I take you to be.” - </p> - <p> - “What part has my cousin Morland played?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “I must leave you the very simple task of guessing,” said Weever; and he - took advantage of her consternation to converse with his left-hand - neighbour. - </p> - <p> - “I have painted a peculiarly successful fan, dear Mrs. Deering,” said - Colonel Pawley, in his purring voice. “A wedding-present for our dear Miss - Hardacre. I have never been so much pleased with anything before. I should - like you to see it. When may I come and show it you?” - </p> - <p> - “The wedding is fixed for two o'clock on Wednesday,” said Connie, - answering like a woman in a dream. The bright room, the crowd of diners, - the music, the voice of the old man by her side, all faded from her - senses, eclipsed by the ghastly light that dawned upon her. Only one - meaning could be attached to Weever's insinuations. A touch on the arm - brought her back to her surroundings with a start. It was Colonel Pawley. - </p> - <p> - “I hope there is nothing—” he began, in a tone of great concern. - </p> - <p> - “No, nothing. Really nothing. Do forgive me,” she interrupted in - confusion. “You were telling me something. Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry.” - </p> - <p> - “It was about the fan,” said Colonel Pawley, sadly. - </p> - <p> - “A fan?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, for dear Miss Hardacre—a wedding-present.” - </p> - <p> - She listened to a repetition of the previous remarks and to a description - of the painting, and this time replied coherently. She would be delighted - to see both the fan and himself to-morrow morning. The kind old man - launched into a prothalamion. The happy couple were a splendidly matched - pair—Norma the perfect type of aristocratic English beauty; Morland - a representative specimen of the British gentleman, the safeguard of the - empire, a man, a thorough good fellow, incapable of dishonour, a landed - proprietor. He had sketched out a little wedding-song which he would like - to present with the fan. Might he show that, too, to Mrs. Deering? - </p> - <p> - It was a dreadful dinner. On each side the distressing topic hemmed her - in. In vain she tried to make her old friend talk of travel or gastronomy - or the comforts of his club; perverse fate brought him always back to - Norma's wedding. She was forced to listen, for to Weever she dared not - address a remark. She longed for escape, for solitude wherein to envisage - her dismay. No suspicion of Morland's complicity in the scandal had - crossed her mind. Even now it seemed preposterous for a man of honour to - have so acted towards his dearest and most loyal friend, to say nothing of - the unhappy things that had gone before. Suddenly, towards the end of - dinner, she revolted. She turned to Weever. - </p> - <p> - “I don't believe a word of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Of what, dear lady?” - </p> - <p> - “Of what you have told me about Morland and Jimmie Padgate.” - </p> - <p> - “I have told you nothing—absolutely nothing,” he replied in his - expressionless way. “Please remember that. I don't go about libelling my - acquaintances.” - </p> - <p> - “I shall go and ask Morland straight,” she said with spirit. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Au succès</i>,” said Weever. - </p> - <p> - Dinner over, the little party went into the lounge. The screened light - fell pleasantly on palms and pretty dresses, and made the place reposeful - after the glare of the dining-room, whose red and white and gold still - gleamed through the door above the steps. The red-coated band played a - seductive, almost digestive air. A circle of comfortable chairs reserved - by the host, invited the contented diner to languorous ease and restful - gossip. It was the part of a Carlton dinner that Connie usually enjoyed - the most. She still took her pleasures whole-heartedly, wherein lay much - of her charm. The world, as Jimmie once told her, had not rubbed the dust - off her wings. But to-night the sweet after-dinner hour was filled with - fears and agitations, and while the party was settling down, she begged - release from her host on the score of headache, and made her escape. - </p> - <p> - She would carry out her threat to Weever. She would see Morland before she - slept, and ask him to free her from this intolerable suspicion. She was a - loyal, simple woman, for all her inconsequent ways and close experience of - the insincerities of life; devoted to her friends, a champion of their - causes; loving to believe the best, disturbed beyond due measure at being - forced to believe the worst. Jimmie had most of her heart, more of it than - she dared confess. But there were places in it both for Norma and for - Morland. The latter was her cousin. She had known him all her life. To - believe him to have played this sorry part in what it pleased Theodore - Weever to call a pretty comedy was very real pain to the little lady. Her - headache was no pretence. No spirit of curiosity or interference drove her - to the Hardacres', where she knew she would find Morland; rather a desire - to rid herself of a nightmare. Granted the possibility of baseness on - Morland's part, all the dark places in the lamentable business became - light. That was the maddening part of Weever's solution. And would it - apply to the puzzle of the afternoon? Had Norma known? Had Jimmie told - her? The pair had been agitated enough for anything to have happened. - Theodore Weever, too, had calmly avowed himself an actor in the comedy. - What part was he playing? She shivered at the conjecture. He looked like a - pale mummy, she thought confusedly, holding in his dull eyes the - inscrutable wisdom of the Sphinx. Meanwhile the horses were proceeding at - a funereal pace. She pulled the checkstring and bade the coachman drive - faster. - </p> - <p> - The scene that met her eyes when the servant showed her into the - Hardacres' drawing-room was unexpected. Instead of the ordinary - after-dinner gathering, only Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre and Morland were in the - room. The master of the house, very red, very puffy, sat in an armchair - before the fire, tugging at his mean little red moustache. Mrs. Hardacre, - her face haggard with anxiety, stood apart with Morland, whose heavy - features wore an expression of worry, apology, and indignation curiously - blended. On a clear space of carpet a couple of yards from the door lay - some strings of large pearls. Connie looked from one to the other of the - three people who had evidently been interrupted in the midst of an anxious - discussion. Here, again, something had happened. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre shook hands with her mechanically. Mr. Hardacre apologised - for not rising. That infernal gout again, he explained, pointing to the - slashed slipper of a foot resting on a hassock. Norma had made it worse. - He had been infernally upset. - </p> - <p> - “Norma?” Connie turned and looked inquiringly at the other two. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, an awful scene,” said Morland, gloomily. “I wish to heaven you had - been here. You might have done something.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps you might bring her to her senses now, though I doubt it. I think - she has gone crazy,” said Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - “But what has occurred?” - </p> - <p> - “She declares she won't marry me, that's all. There's my wedding-present - on the floor. Tore it from her neck as she made her exit. I don't know - what's going to happen!” - </p> - <p> - “Where is she now?” - </p> - <p> - “Up in her room smashing the rest of her wedding-presents, I suppose,” - said Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - “Eh, what? Can't do that. All locked up downstairs in the library,” came - from the chair by the fire. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, don't make idiotic remarks, Benjamin,” snapped his wife, viciously. - </p> - <p> - The air was electric with irritation. Connie, a peacemaker at heart, - forgot her mission in the face of the new development of affairs, and - spoke soothingly. Norma could not break off the engagement three days - before the wedding. Such things were not done. She would come round. It - was merely an attack of nerves. They refused to be comforted. - </p> - <p> - “God knows what it is,” said Morland. “I thought things were perfectly - square between us. She was n't cordial before dinner, I'll admit; but she - let me put those beads round her neck. I asked her to wear them all the - evening, as there were only the four of us.” - </p> - <p> - “The Spencer-Temples sent an excuse this afternoon,” Mrs. Hardacre - explained. - </p> - <p> - “She agreed,” Morland continued. “She wore them through dinner. Then - everything any one of us said seemed to get on her nerves. I talked about - the House. She withered me up with sarcasm. We talked about the wedding. - She begged us, for God's sake, to talk of something else. We tried, so as - to pacify her. But of course it was hardly possible. I said I had met Lord - Monzie yesterday—told me he and his wife were coming on Wednesday. - She asked whether Ascherberg and the rest of Monzie's crew of - money-lenders, harlots, and fools were coming too. I defended Monzie. He's - a friend of mine and a very decent sort. She shrugged her shoulders. You - know her way. Mrs. Hardacre changed the subject. After dinner I saw her - alone for a bit in the drawing-room. She asked me to take back the pearls. - Said they were throttling her. Had n't we better reconsider the whole - matter? There was still time. That was the beginning of it. Mr. and Mrs. - Hardacre came up. We did all we knew. Used every argument. People invited. - Bishop to perform ceremony. Duchess actually coming. Society expected us. - The scandal. Her infernally bad treatment of myself. No good. Whatever we - said only made her worse. Ended up with a diatribe against society. She - was sick of its lies and its rottenness. She was going to have no more of - it. She would breathe fresh pure air. - </p> - <p> - “The Lord knows what she did n't say. All of us came in for it. Said - shocking things about her mother. Said I did n't love her, had never loved - her. A loveless marriage was horrible. Of course I am in love with her. - You all know that. I said so. She would n't listen. Went on with her - harangue. We could n't stop her. She would n't marry me for all the - bishops and duchesses in the world. At last I lost my temper and said it - was my intention to marry her, and marry me she should. Don't you think I - was quite right? She lost hers, I suppose, tore off the pearls, made a - sort of peroration, declaring she would sooner die than commit the infamy - of marrying me—and that's the end of it.” - </p> - <p> - He threw out his hands in desperation and turned away. His account of - events from his point of view was accurate. To him, as to Norma's parents, - her final revolt appeared the arbitrary act of unreason. They still - smarted resentfully under her lashes, incapable of realising the sins for - which they were flagellated. - </p> - <p> - If she had remained at home that afternoon and continued to practise - insensibility, she would probably have followed the line of least - resistance during the evening. Or, on the other hand, if she could have - been alone, a night's fevered sleeplessness would have caused dull - reaction in the morning. The cold contempt for things outside her, which - had served for strength, was now gone, leaving a helpless woman to be - swayed by passion or led spiritless by convention. The heroic in her - needed the double spur. Passion shook her; miserable bondage, claiming - her, drove her to rebellion. She rose to sublime heights, undreamed of in - her earth-bound philosophy. - </p> - <p> - She had gone into the street after her interview with Jimmie, white, - palpitating, torn. Though the man had spoken tremulous words, it was the - unspoken, the wave of longing and all unspeakable things in whose heaving - bosom they had been caught, that mattered. The Garden of Enchantment had - thrown wide its gates; she had been admitted within its infinitely - reaching vistas, and flowers of the spirit had bared their hearts before - her eyes. Dressing, she strove to kill the memory, to deafen her ears to - the haunting music, to clear her brain of the intoxication. A thing hardly - a woman, hardly a coherent entity, but half marble, half-consuming fire, - stood before Morland, as he clasped the pearl necklace around her throat. - The touch of it against her skin caused a shudder. Up to then sensation - had blotted out thought. But now the brain worked with startling lucidity. - There was yet time to escape from the thraldom. The Idea gathered strength - from every word and incident during the meal. The commonness, sordidness, - emptiness of the life behind and around and before her were revealed in - the unpitying searchlight of an awakened soul. - </p> - <p> - She pleaded with Morland for release. The necklace choked her. She - unclasped it. He refused to take it back. She was his. He loved her. Her - conduct was an outrage on his affections. She dared him to an expression - of passionate feeling. He failed miserably, and her anger grew. Unhappily - he spoke of an outrage upon Society. She fastened on the phrase. His - affection and Society! One was worth the other. Society—the Mumbo - Jumbo—the grotesque false god to which women were offered up in - senseless sacrifice! Her mother instanced the bishop and the duchess as - avatars of the divinity. Norma poured scorn on the hierarchy. Mrs. - Hardacre implored her daughter by her love for her not to humiliate her - thus in the world's eyes. She struck the falsest of notes. Norma turned on - her, superb, dramatic, holding the three in speechless dismay. Love! what - love had been given her that she should return? She had grown honest. The - gods of that house were no longer her gods. They were paltry and - dishonoured, shams and hypocrisies. Once she worshipped them. To that she - had been trained from her cradle. Her nurses dangled the shams before her - eyes. The women who taught her bent fawning knees before the shrines of - the false gods. A mother's love? what had she learned from her mother? To - simper and harden her heart. That the envy of other simpering hardened - women was the ultimate good. That the dazzling end of a young girl's - career was to capture some man of rank and fortune—that when she was - married her lofty duty was to wear smarter clothes, give smarter parties, - and to inveigle to her house by any base and despicable means smarter - people than her friends. What had she learned from her mother? To let men - of infamous lives leer at her because they had title or fortune. To pay - court to shameless women in the hope of getting to know still more - shameless men who might dishonour her with their name. She had never been - young—never, never, with a young girl's freshness of heart. She - spoke venom and was praised for wit. She was the finished product of a - vapid world. Her whole existence had been an intricate elaboration of - shams—miserable, empty, despicable futilities. How dared her mother - stand before her and talk of love? - </p> - <p> - Then a quick angry scene, a crisp thud of the pearls on the floor, a - stormy exit—and that, as Morland said, was the end of it. The three - were left staring at each other in angry bewilderment. - </p> - <p> - In the face of this disaster Connie could not find it in her heart to - reproach Morland, still less to hint at Theodore Weever's insinuation. - Rather did she reproach herself for being the cause of the catastrophe, - and she was smitten with a sense of guilt when Mrs. Hardacre turned upon - her accusingly. - </p> - <p> - “She had tea with you, did n't she? Did you notice anything wrong?” - </p> - <p> - “She didn't seem quite herself—was nervous and strange,” said - Connie, diplomatically. “I think I had better go up and talk to her,” she - added after an anxious pause. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, do, for God's sake, Connie,” said Morland. - </p> - <p> - She nodded, smiled the ghost of her bright smile, and, glad of escape, - went upstairs. The three sat in gloomy silence, broken only by Mr. - Hardacre's maledictions on his gout. It was a bitter hour for them. - </p> - <p> - In a few moments Connie burst into the room, with a letter in her hand. - She looked scared. - </p> - <p> - “We can't find her. She's not in the house.” - </p> - <p> - “Not in the house!” shrieked Mrs. Hardacre. - </p> - <p> - Morland brought his hand down heavily on the piano. - </p> - <p> - “I heard the front door slam half an hour ago!” - </p> - <p> - “This is addressed to you, Mrs. Hardacre. It was stuck in her - looking-glass.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre opened the note with shaky fingers. It ran: - </p> - <p> - <i>“I mean what I say. I had better leave you all, at least till after - Wednesday. My stopping here would be more than you or I could stand.”</i> - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hardacre staggered with a gasp of pain to his feet, and his weak eyes - glared savagely out of his puffy red face. - </p> - <p> - “Damme, she must come back! If she does n't sleep here to-night, I'll cut - her off. I won't have anything more to do with her. She has got to come - back.” - </p> - <p> - “All right. Go and tell her, then,” retorted his wife. “Where do you - suppose you are going to find her?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, she is sure to have gone to my house,” said Connie. “But suppose she - has n't,” said Morland, anxiously. “She was in such a state that anything - is possible.” - </p> - <p> - “Come with me if you like. The brougham is here.” - </p> - <p> - “And you go too, Eliza, and bring her home with you, d' ye hear?” cried - Mr. Hardacre. “If you don't, she'll never set foot in my house again. I'm - damned if she shall!” - </p> - <p> - His wife looked at him queerly for a moment; then she meekly answered: - </p> - <p> - “Very well, Benjamin.” - </p> - <p> - Once only during their long married life had she flouted him when he had - spoken to her like that. Then in ungovernable fury he had thrown a boot at - her head. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hardacre glared at Morland and Connie, and scrambled cursing into his - chair. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXIII—NORMA'S HOUR - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>OMETHING had - happened—something mysterious, quickening; a pulsation of the inmost - harmonies of life. Its tremendous significance Jimmie dared not - conjecture. It was to be interpreted by the wisdom of the simplest, yet - that interpretation he put aside. It staggered reason. It was enough for - them to have met together in an unimagined intimacy of emotion, to have - shared the throb of this spiritual happening. - </p> - <p> - She was to be married in three days. He set the fact as a block to further - investigation of the mystery. On this side his loyalty suffered no taint; - their relations had but received, in some sense, sanctification. Beyond - the barrier lay shame and dishonour. The two were to be married; therefore - they loved. He disciplined a disordered mind with a logic of his own - invention. It was a logic that entirely begged the question. Remembered - words of Norma, “Do you think much love has come my way? Yours are the - only lips I have ever heard speak of it,” fell outside his premises. They - clamoured for explanation. So did the rich tremor of her voice. So did the - lamentable lack of conviction in his reply. To these things he closed his - intelligence. They belonged to the interpretation that staggered reason, - that threatened to turn his fundamental conceptions into chaos. And past - incidents came before him. During those last days in Wiltshire he had seen - that her life lacked completion. That memory, too, disturbed his - discipline. Fanatically he practised it, proving to himself that ice was - hot and that the sun shone at midnight. She was happy in her love for - Morland. She was happy in Morland's love for her. She had not identified - with herself the imaginary woman of his adoration. She had not drunk in - the outpouring of his passion. Her breath had not fallen warm upon his - cheek. And the quickening of a wonderful birth had no reference to - emotions and cravings quite different, intangible, inexpressible, existent - in a far-away spirit land. - </p> - <p> - He was strangely silent during their homeward journey in the omnibus and - the simple evening meal, and Aline, sensitive to his mood, choked down the - eager questions that rose to her lips. It was only after supper in the - studio, when she lit the spill for Jimmie's pipe—her economical soul - deprecating waste in matches—that she ventured to say softly: - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid you'll miss the picture, Jimmie dear.” - </p> - <p> - He waited until the pipe was alight, and breathed out a puff of smoke with - a sigh. - </p> - <p> - “Our happiness is made up of the things we miss,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “That's a paradox, and I don't believe it,” said Aline. - </p> - <p> - “Everything in life is a paradox,” he remarked, thinking of his logic. He - relapsed into his perplexed silence. Aline settled herself in her usual - chair with her workbasket and her eternal sewing. This evening she was - recuffing his shirts. Presently she held up a cuff. - </p> - <p> - “See. I'm determined to make you smart and fashionable. I don't care what - you say. These are square.” - </p> - <p> - “Are n't you putting a round man into a square cuff, my dear?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - She laughed. “Why should you be round? You are smart and rectangular. When - you're tidied up—don't you know you are exceedingly good-looking, - almost military?” -</p> - <p> -She was delighted to get him back to foolish talk. His - preoccupation had disturbed her. Like Connie Deering, she was femininely - conscious that something out of the ordinary had passed between Norma and - Jimmie, and apprehension as to her dear one's peace of mind had filled her - with many imaginings. He returned a smiling answer. She bestirred herself - to amuse. Had he remarked the man in the omnibus? His nose cut it into two - compartments. What would he do if he had such a nose? Jimmie felt that he - had been selfish and fell into the child's humour. He said that he would - blow it. They discussed the subject of noses. He quoted Tristram Shandy. - Did she remember him reading to her “Slawkenbergius's Tale”? - </p> - <p> - “The silliest story I ever heard in my life!” cried Aline. “It had neither - head nor tail.” - </p> - <p> - “That is the beauty of it,” said Jimmie. “It is all nose.” - </p> - <p> - “No. The only story about a nose that is worth anything,” Aline declared - with conviction of her age and sex, “is 'Cyrano de Bergerac.'” She paused - as a thought passed swiftly through her mind. “Do you know, if you had a - nose like that, you would remind me of Cyrano?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, I don't go about blustering and carving my fellow-citizens into - mincemeat.” - </p> - <p> - “No. But you—” She began unreflectingly, then she stopped short in - confusion. Cyrano, Roxana, Christian; Jimmie, Norma, Morland—the - parallel was of an embarrassing nicety. She lost her head, reddened, saw - that Jimmie had filled the gap. - </p> - <p> - “I don't care,” she cried. “You <i>are</i> like him. It's splendid, but - it's senseless. You are worth a million of the other man, and she knows it - as well as I do.” - </p> - <p> - She vindictively stitched at the cuff. Jimmie made no reply, but lay back - smoking his pipe. Aline recovered and grew remorseful. She had destroyed - with an idiotic word the little atmosphere of gaiety she had succeeded in - creating. She pricked her finger several times At last she rose and knelt - by his side. - </p> - <p> - “I'm sorry, Jimmie. Don't be vexed with me.” - </p> - <p> - He looked at her, wrinkling his forehead half humorously, half sadly, and - patted her cheek. - </p> - <p> - “No, dear,” he said. “But I think Slawkenbergius's the better tale. Shall - I read it you again?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, Jimmie,” cried the girl, half crying, half laughing. “Please - don't, for heaven's sake. I've not been as naughty as that!” - </p> - <p> - She resumed her sewing. They talked of daily things. Theodore Weever's - purchases. The faun—he was sorry to lose it after its companionship - for all these years. He would paint a replica—but it would not be - the same thing. Other times, other feelings. Gradually the conversation - grew spasmodic, dwindled. Jimmie brooded over his mystery, and Aline - stitched in silence. - </p> - <p> - The whirr of the front door-bell aroused them. Aline put down her work. - </p> - <p> - “It's Renshaw,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - Renshaw, a broken-down, out-at-heels, drunken black-and-white artist, once - of amazing talent, was almost the only member of a large Bohemian coterie - who continued to regard Jimmie as at home to his friends on Sunday - evenings. Jimmie bore with the decayed man, and helped him on his way, and - was pained when Aline insisted upon opening the windows after his - departure. Renshaw had been a subject of contention between them for - years. - </p> - <p> - “He has only come to drink whisky and borrow money. Luckily we have n't - any whisky in the house,” said Aline. - </p> - <p> - “We can give him beer, my child. And if the man is in need of half a - crown, God forbid we should deny it him. Has Hannah come home yet?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't think so. It is n't ten o'clock.” - </p> - <p> - “Then let him in, dear,” said Jimmie, finally. - </p> - <p> - Aline went upstairs with some unwillingness. She disapproved entirely of - Renshaw. She devoutly hoped the man was sober. As she opened the front - door, the sharp sound of a turning cab met her ears, and the cloaked tall - figure of a woman met her astonished eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Hardacre!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, dear. Won't you let me in?” - </p> - <p> - The girl drew aside quickly, and Norma passed into the hall. - </p> - <p> - “You?” cried Aline. “I don't understand.” - </p> - <p> - “Never mind. Is Mr.—is Jimmie at home?” - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie!” The girl's heart leaped at the name. She stared wide-eyed at - Norma, whose features she could scarcely discern by the pin-point of gas - in the hall-lamp. “Yes. He is in the studio.” - </p> - <p> - “Can I see him? Alone? Do you mind?” - </p> - <p> - In dumb astonishment Aline took the visitor to the head of the stairs, - half lit by the streak of light from the open studio door. - Norma paused, bent forward, and kissed her on the cheek. - </p> - <p> - “I know my way,” she whispered. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie heard the rustle of skirts that were not Aline's, and springing to - his feet, hurried towards the door. But before he could reach it Norma - entered and stood before him. Her long dark silk evening cloak was open at - the throat, showing glimpses of white bare neck. Its high standing collar - set off the stately poise of her head. She wore the diamond star in her - hair. To the wondering man who gazed at her she was a vision of radiant - beauty. They held each other's eyes for a second or two; and the first - dazzling glory in which she seemed to stand having faded, Jimmie read in - her face that desperate things had come to pass. He caught her hands as - she came swiftly forward. “Why are you here? My God, why are you here?” - </p> - <p> - “I could stand it no longer,” she said breathlessly. “I am not going to - marry Morland. I have cut myself adrift. They all know it. I told them so - this evening. The horror of it was unbearable. I have done with it forever - and ever.” - </p> - <p> - “The horror of it?” echoed Jimmie. - -</p> -<p> - -“Don't you think it a horror for two - people to marry who have never even pretended to love each other? You said - so this afternoon.” - </p> - <p> - He released her hands and turned aside. Even the deep exulting sense of - what her presence there must mean could not mitigate a terrible dismay. - The interpretation that staggered reason was the true and only one. He had - been living in a dream, among shadow-shapes which he himself had cast upon - the wall. Even now he could not grasp completely the extent of his - heroical self-deception. - </p> - <p> - “There has never been any love between you and Morland? It has been a - cold-blooded question of a marriage of convenience? I thought so - differently.” - </p> - <p> - “Since when?” she asked. “Since this afternoon?” - </p> - <p> - “No—not since this afternoon.” - </p> - <p> - “If it had n't been for you, I should have married him. You made it - impossible. You taught me things. You made me hate myself and my mean - ambitions. That was why I hesitated—put it off till Easter. If I had - n't seen you this afternoon I should have gone through with it on - Wednesday. When I got home I could n't face it. He put some pearls—a - wedding-present—round my neck. They seemed like dead fingers choking - out my soul. At last it grew horrible. I said things I don't remember now. - I could n't stay in the house. It suffocated me. It would have sent me - mad. I think a cab whirled me through the streets. I don't know. I have - burnt my ships.” - </p> - <p> - She stopped, panting, with her hands on her bosom. His exultation grew, - and fear with it. He was like a child trembling before a joy too great to - be realised, frightened lest it should vanish. He said without looking at - her: - </p> - <p> - “Why have you come here?” - </p> - <p> - “Where else should I go? Unless—” She halted on the word. - </p> - <p> - “Unless what?” - </p> - <p> - She broke into an impatient cry. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, can't you speak? Do you want me to say everything? There is no need - for you to be silent any longer.” She faced him. “Who was the woman—the - picture woman we spoke of this afternoon?” - </p> - <p> - “You,” he said. “You. Who else?” There was a quiver of silence. Then he - caught her to him. He spoke foolish words. Their lips met, and passion - held them. - </p> - <p> - “Had I anywhere else to go?” she whispered; and he said, “No.” - </p> - <p> - She released herself, somewhat pale and shaken. Jimmie, scarcely knowing - what he did, took off her cloak and threw it on the long deal table. The - sudden fresh chill on arms and neck made her realise that they were bare. - It was his doing. She blushed. A delicious sense of shyness crept over - her. It soon passed. But evanescent though it was, it remained long in her - memory. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie took her in his arms again. He said: - </p> - <p> - “You madden me. I have loved you so long. I am like a parched soul by a - pool of Paradise.” - </p> - <p> - He took her by the hand, led her to his chair near the stove, and knelt by - her side. She looked at him, the edges of her white teeth together, her - lips parted. She was living the moment that counts for years in a woman's - life. She can only live it once. Great joy or endless shame may come - afterwards, but this moment shall ever be to her comfort or her despair. - </p> - <p> - He asked her how she had known. - </p> - <p> - “You told me so.” - </p> - <p> - “When?” - </p> - <p> - “At Heddon. Do you think I shall ever forget your words?” She laughed - divinely at the puzzledom on his face. “No. You were too loyal to tell me—but - you told Connie Deering. Hush! Don't start. Connie did not betray you. She - is the staunchest soul breathing. You and she were on the slope by the - croquet lawn—do you remember? There was a hedge of clipped yew above—” - </p> - <p> - “And you overheard?” - </p> - <p> - She laughed again, happily, at his look of distress. “I should be rather - pleased—now—if I were you,” she said in the softer and deeper - tones of her voice. - </p> - <p> - A few moments later he said, “You must give me back the portrait. I shall - burn it.” - </p> - <p> - “Why?” - </p> - <p> - “You are a million times more beautiful, more adorable.” He asked her when - she had begun to think of him—the eternal, childlike question. She - met his lover's gaze steadily. Frankness was her great virtue. - </p> - <p> - “It seems now that I have cared for you since the first day. You soon came - into my life, but I did n't know how much you represented. Then I heard - you speaking to Connie. That mattered a great deal. When that man shot - you, I knew that I loved you. I thought you were dead. I rushed down the - slope and propped you up against my knees—and I thought I should go - mad with agony.” - </p> - <p> - “I never heard of that,” said Jimmie in a low voice. - </p> - <p> - He became suddenly thoughtful, rose to his feet and regarded her with a - changed expression, like that of a man awakened from a dream. - </p> - <p> - “What is going to be the end of this?” he asked. - -</p> -<p> - -Norma, for once - unperceptive and replying to a small preoccupation of her own, flushed to - her hair. - </p> - <p> - “I know Connie well enough to look her up and ask her for hospitality.” - </p> - <p> - “I wasn't thinking of that,” said Jimmie. “We have been like children and - had our hour of joy, without thinking of anything else. Now we must be - grown-up people. After what has passed between us, I could only ask you to - be my wife.” - </p> - <p> - “I came here for you to ask me,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “I have no right to do so, dear. I bear a dishonoured name. The wonder and - wild desire of you made me forget.” - </p> - <p> - She looked at him strangely, her lips working in the shadow of her old - smile of mockery. - </p> - <p> - “That proves to me that it is your name and not yourself that is - dishonoured. If it had been yourself, you would not have forgotten.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie drew himself up, and there was a touch of haughtiness in his manner - that Norma in her woman's way noted swiftly. In spite of his homeliness - there was the undefinable spirit of the great gentleman in Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I am dishonoured. The matter was public property. I discuss it with no - one, least of all with you.” - </p> - <p> - “Very well,” she said. “Let it never be mentioned again between us. I - range myself with Aline. I shall believe what I like. You can't prevent my - doing that, can you? I choose to believe you are the one thing God made in - which I can find happiness. That's enough for me, and it ought to be - enough for you.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie put his hand on her shoulder, deeply moved. - </p> - <p> - “My dearest, you must n't say things like that.” He repeated the words, - “You mustn't say things like that.” Then he was conscious of the warm - softness on which his hand rested. She raised her arm and touched his - fingers. It was a moment of deep temptation. He resisted, drew his hand - away gently. - </p> - <p> - “There is another reason why it cannot be,” he said. “You belong to a - world of wealth and luxury, I have been in poverty all my life. God forbid - I should complain. I have never done so. But it is a life of struggle for - daily bread. Aline and I are used to it. We laugh. We often dine with Duke - Humphrey. We make believe like the marchioness. What the discipline of - life and a sort of gipsy faith in Providence have made us regard as a - jest, would be to you a sordid shift, an intolerable ugliness stripping - life of its beauty—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, hush!” she pleaded. - </p> - <p> - “No, I must talk and you must listen,” he said with a certain masterful - dignity. “Look at you now, in the exquisite loveliness of your dress, with - that diamond star in your hair, with that queenly presence of yours. Do - you fit in with all this? Your place is in great houses, among historic - pictures, rare carpets, furniture that is invested with the charm of an - artist's touch. The chair you are sitting in—the leather is split - and the springs are broken.” He was walking now backwards and forwards - across the studio, fulfilling his task bravely, scarcely trusting himself - to look at her. “Your place,” he continued, “is among the great ones of - the earth—princes, ambassadors, men of genius. Here are but the - little folk: even should they come, as they used to do: homely men with - rough ways and their wives—sweet simple women with a baby and a - frock a year, God help them! I can't ask you to share this life with me, - my dear. I should be a scoundrel if I did. As it is, I have fallen below - myself in letting you know that I love you. You must forgive me. A man is, - after all, a man, whether he be beggar or prince. You must go back into - your world and forget it all. The passion-flower cannot thrive in the - hedge with the dog-rose, my dearest. It will pine and fade. We must end it - all. Don't you see? You don't know what poverty means. Even decent poverty - like ours. Look—the men you know have valets to dress them—when - you came Aline was sewing new cuffs on my shirts. I don't suppose you ever - knew that such things were done. Mere existence is a matter of ever - anxious detail. I am a careless fellow, I am a selfish brute, like most - men, and give over to the women folk around me the thousand harassing - considerations of ways and means for every day in every year. But I see - more than they think. Aline can tell you. I dare n't, my dear, ask you to - share this life with me. I dare n't, I dare n't.” - </p> - <p> - He came to a stop in front of her; saw her leaning over the arm of the - chair away from him, her face covered by her hands. Her white shoulders - twitched in little convulsive movements. - </p> - <p> - “Why, my dear—my dear—” he said in a bewilderment of distress; - and kneeling by her, he took her wrists and drew them to him. The palms of - her hands and her cheeks were wet with miserable tears. - </p> - <p> - “What must you think of me? What futile, feeble creature must you think - me? Heaven knows I'm degraded enough—but not to that level. Do you - suppose I ever thought you a rich man? Oh, you have hurt me—flayed - me alive. I did n't deserve it! I would follow you in rags barefoot - through the world. What does it matter so long as it is you that I - follow?” - </p> - <p> - What could mortal man do but take the wounded woman of his idolatry into - his arms? The single-hearted creature, aghast at the havoc he had wrought, - bitterly reproached himself for want of faith in the perfect being. He had - committed a horrible crime, plunged daggers, stab after stab, into that - radiant bosom. She sobbed in his embrace—a little longer than was - strictly necessary. Tears and sobs were a wonder to her, who since early - childhood had never known the woman's relief of weeping. It came upon her - first as a wondrous new-found emotion; when his strong arms were about - her, as an unutterably sweet solace. And the man's voice in her ears was - all that has nearly been said but never been quite said in music. - </p> - <p> - Presently she drew herself away from him. - </p> - <p> - “Do you think I am such a fool that I can't sew?” - </p> - <p> - He sank back on his heels. She rose, helping herself to rise by a hand on - his arm, an action wonderfully sweet in its intimacy, and crossed over to - Aline's cane-bottomed, armless easy-chair. She plucked the shirt from the - basket on the top of which Aline had thrust it, groped among the - wilderness of spools, tape, bits of ribbon, scissors, needle-cases, - patterns and year-old draper's bills for a thimble, found the needle - sticking in the work, and began to sew with a little air of defiance. - Jimmie looked on, ravished. He drew nearer. - </p> - <p> - “God bless my soul,” he said. “Do you mean to say you can do that?” - </p> - <p> - There was nothing she could not do in this hour of exaltation. She had - found herself—simple woman with simple man. It was her hour. Her - feet trod the roots of life; her head touched the stars. - </p> - <p> - “Sit in your chair and smoke, and let us see what it will be like,” she - commanded. - </p> - <p> - He obeyed. But whether it was tobacco or gunpowder in his old briarwood - pipe he could not have told. The poor wretch was mazed with happiness. - </p> - <p> - “Poor little Aline is all by herself upstairs,” said Norma, after a while. - </p> - <p> - “Heaven forgive me,” cried Jimmie, starting up. “I had n't thought about - her!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXIV—MRS. HARDACRE FORGETS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HILE this tragical - comedy of the domestic felicities was being enacted, Connie Deering's - brougham containing three agitated, silent, human beings was rapidly - approaching the scene. - </p> - <p> - They had made certain of finding Norma at Bryanston Square. The news that - she had not arrived disquieted them. Morland anxiously suggested the - police. They had a hurried colloquy, Morland and Connie standing on the - pavement, Mrs. Hardacre inside the carriage, thrusting her head through - the window. Connie falteringly confessed to the meeting of Jimmie and - Norma in the afternoon. Something serious had evidently passed between - them. - </p> - <p> - Morland broke into an oath. “By God! That's where she's gone. Damn him!” - </p> - <p> - “We must get her away at all costs,” said Mrs. Hardacre, tensely. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid it is my fault,” said Connie. - </p> - <p> - “Of course it is,” Mrs. Hardacre replied brutally. “The best you can do is - to help us to rescue her.” - </p> - <p> - They started. The brougham was small, the air heavy, their quest - distasteful, its result doubtful. The sense of fretfulness became acute. - Mrs. Hardacre gave vent to her maternal feelings. When she touched on the vile seducer of her daughter's affections, Connie turned upon her almost - shrewishly. - </p> - <p> - “This is my carriage, and I am not going to hear my dearest friend abused - in it.” - </p> - <p> - Morland sat silent and worried. When they stopped at the house, he said: - </p> - <p> - “I think I shall stay outside.” - </p> - <p> - Connie, angry with him for having damned Jimmie, bent forward. - </p> - <p> - “Are you afraid of facing Jimmie?” she said with a little note of - contempt. - </p> - <p> - “Certainly not,” he replied viciously. - </p> - <p> - A few moments later Aline ran into the studio with a scared face. - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie!” - </p> - <p> - He went up to her, and she whispered into his ear; then he turned to - Norma. - </p> - <p> - “Your mother and Connie and Morland are upstairs. I don't suppose you are - anxious to see them. May I tell them what has happened?” - </p> - <p> - Norma rose and joined him in the centre of the studio. “I would sooner - tell them myself. Can they come down here?” - </p> - <p> - “If you wish it.” - </p> - <p> - He gave the order to Aline. Before going, she took him by the arm and - swiftly glancing at Norma, asked eagerly: - </p> - <p> - “What has happened?” - </p> - <p> - “The wonder of wonders, dear,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - With a glad cry she ran upstairs and brought down the visitors, who were - waiting in the hall. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie stood by the open door to receive them. Norma retired to the far - end of the studio. She held her head high, and felt astonishingly cool and - self-possessed. Mrs. Hardacre entered first, and without condescending to - look at Jimmie marched straight up to her daughter. Then came Connie and - Aline, the girl excited, her arm round her friend's waist. Morland, on - entering, drew Jimmie aside. - </p> - <p> - “So you've bested me,” he said in an angry whisper. “You held the cards, I - know. I did n't think you would use them. I wish you joy.” - </p> - <p> - A sudden flash of pain and indignation lit Jimmie's eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Good God, man! Have you sunk so low as to accuse me of that? <i>Me?</i>” - </p> - <p> - He turned away. Morland caught him by the sleeve. - </p> - <p> - “I say—” he began. - </p> - <p> - But Jimmie shook him off and went to the side of Norma, who was listening - to her mother's opening attack. It was shrill and bitter. When she paused, - Norma said stonily: - </p> - <p> - “I am not going home with you to-night, mother. I sleep at Connie's. She - will not refuse me a bed.” - </p> - <p> - “Your father means what he says.” - </p> - <p> - “So do I, mother. I can manage pretty well without your protection till I - am married. Then I sha'n't need it.” - </p> - <p> - “Pray whom are you going to marry?” asked Mrs. Hardacre, acidly. - </p> - <p> - “I should think it was obvious,” said Norma. “Mr. Padgate has done me the - very great honour to ask me to be his wife. I have agreed. I am over age - and a free agent, so there's nothing more to be said, mother.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre refused to take the announcement seriously. Her thin lips - worked into a smile. - </p> - <p> - “This is sheer folly, my dear Norma. Over age or not we can't allow you to - disgrace yourself and us—” - </p> - <p> - “We have never had such honour conferred on us in all our lives,” said - Norma. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre shrugged her shoulders pityingly. - </p> - <p> - “Among sane folks it would be a disgrace and a scandal. Even Mr. Padgate - would scarcely take advantage of a fit of hysterical folly.” She turned to - Jimmie. “I assure you she is hardly responsible for her actions. You are - aware what you would be guilty of in bringing her into this—this—?” - She paused for a word and waved her hand around. - </p> - <p> - “Hovel?” suggested Jimmie, grimly. “Yes. I am aware of it. Miss Hardacre - must not consider herself bound by anything she has said to-night.” - </p> - <p> - Connie Deering, who had come up waiting for a chance to speak, her - forget-me-not eyes curiously hard and dangerous, broke in quickly: - </p> - <p> - “Why did you say <i>even</i> Mr. Padgate, Mrs. Hardacre?” - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Padgate has a reputation—” said Mrs. Hardacre, with an - expressive gesture. - </p> - <p> - “Jimmie—” - </p> - <p> - He checked his advocate. “Please, no more.” - </p> - <p> - “I should think not, indeed! Are you coming, Norma?” - </p> - <p> - “You had better go,” said Jimmie, softly. “Why quarrel with your parents? - To-morrow, a week, a month hence you can tell me your wishes. I set you - quite free.” -</p> - <p> -Norma made a movement of impatience. - </p> - <p> - “Don't make me say things I should regret—I am not going to change - my mind. No, mother, I am not coming.” -</p> - <p> -Morland had not said a word, but - stood in the background, hating himself. Only Connie's taunt had caused - him to enter this maddeningly false position. He knew that his accusation, - though he believed it true at the time, was false and base. Jimmie was - true gold. He had not betrayed him. Connie, when Jimmie had checked her, - went across to Morland. - </p> - <p> - “Do <i>you</i> believe that Jimmie deserves his reputation?” she said for - his ears alone. - </p> - <p> - “I don't know,” he answered moodily, kicking at a hassock. - </p> - <p> - “I do know,” she said, “and it's damnable.” - </p> - <p> - A quick glance exchanged completed her assurance. He saw that she knew, - and despised him. For a few moments he lost consciousness of externals in - alarmed contemplation of this new thing—a self openly despised by - one of his equals. Mrs. Hardacre's voice aroused him. She was saying her - final words to Norma. - </p> - <p> - “I leave you. When you are in the gutter with this person, don't come to - ask me for help. You can <i>encanailler</i> yourself as much as you like, - for all I care. This adventurer—” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie interposed in his grand manner. - </p> - <p> - “Pray remember, Mrs. Hardacre, that for the moment you are my guest.” - </p> - <p> - “Your guest!” For the second time that evening she had been rebuked. Her - eyes glittered with spite and fury. She lost control. “Your guest! If I - went to rescue my daughter from a house of ill fame, should I regard - myself as a guest of the keeper? How dare you? How do I know what does n't - go on in this house? That girl over there—” - </p> - <p> - Norma sprang forward and gripped her by the arm. - </p> - <p> - “Mother!” - </p> - <p> - She shook herself free. “How do I know? How <i>do</i> you know? The man's - name stinks over England. No decent woman has anything to do with him. - Have you forgotten last autumn? That beastly affair? If you choose to - succeed the other woman—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, damn it!” burst out Morland, suddenly. “This is more than I can - stand. Have you forgotten what I told you a week ago?” - </p> - <p> - The venomous woman was brought to a full stop. She stared helplessly at - Morland, drawing quick panting breaths. She had forgotten that he was in - the room. - </p> - <p> - The cynicism was too gross even for him. There are limits to every man's - baseness and cowardice. Moreover, his secret was known. To proclaim it - himself was a more heroic escape than to let it be revealed with killing - contempt by another. The two forces converged suddenly, and found their - resultant in his outburst. It was characteristic of him that there should - be two motives, though which one was the stronger it were hard to say—most - likely revolt at the cynicism, for he was not a depraved man. - </p> - <p> -Norma looked - swiftly from one to the other. - </p> - <p> -“What did you tell my mother a week ago?” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie picked up Morland's crush-hat that lay on the table and thrust it - into his hand. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, that's enough, my dear good fellow. Don't talk about those horrible - things. Mrs. Hardacre would like to be going. You had better see her home. - Good-night.” -</p> - <p> -He pushed him, as he spoke, gently towards Mrs. Hardacre, who - was already moving towards the door. But Norma came up. - </p> - <p> - “I insist upon knowing,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “No, no,” said Jimmie, in an agitated voice. “Let the dead past bury its - dead. Don't rake up old horrors.” -</p> - <p> -Morland cleared himself away from Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “My God! You are a good man. I've been an infernal blackguard. Everybody - had better know. If Jimmie hadn't taken it upon himself, that madman would - have shot me. He would have hit the right man. I wish to heaven he had.” - </p> - <p> - Norma grew white. - </p> - <p> - “And this is what you told my mother?” - </p> - <p> - “I thought I ought to,” said Morland, looking away from the anxious faces - around him. - </p> - <p> - “You shouldn't have done it,” said Jimmie, in a low voice. He was bent - like a guilty person. - </p> - <p> - Norma went to the door and opened it. - </p> - <p> - “Kindly see my mother into a cab.” - </p> - <p> - “Please take the brougham,” said Connie. “Norma and I will take a cab - later.” - </p> - <p> - Morland made a movement as if to speak to Jimmie. Norma intercepted him, - waved her hand towards her mother, who stood motionless. - </p> - <p> - “Go. Please go,” she said in a constrained voice. “Take the brougham. She - will catch cold while you are whistling for a cab—and you will be - the sooner gone.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hardacre, stunned by the utter disaster that she had brought about, - mechanically obeyed Morland's gesture and passed through the open door, - without looking at her daughter. As Morland passed her, he plucked up a - little courage. - </p> - <p> - “We both lied for your sake,” he said; which might have been an apology or - a tribute. Norma gave no sign that she had heard him. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie followed them upstairs and opened the front door. He put out his - hand to Morland, who took it and said “Good-night” in a shamefaced way. - Mrs. Hardacre stepped into the brougham like a somnambulist. Morland did - not accompany her. He had seen enough of Mrs. Hardacre for the rest of his - life. - </p> - <p> - When Jimmie went down to the studio, he saw Norma and Connie bending over - a chair in the far corner. Aline had fainted. - </p> - <p> - They administered what restoratives were to hand—water and Connie's - smelling-salts—and took the girl up to her bedroom, where she was - left in charge of Mrs. Deering. Jimmie and Norma returned to the studio. - The preoccupation of tending Aline, whose joy in the utter vindication of - her splendid faith had been too sudden a strain upon an overwrought - nervous system, had been welcomed almost as a relief to the emotional - tenseness. They had not spoken of the things that were uppermost. - </p> - <p> - They sat down in their former places, without exchanging a remark. Jimmie - took up his pipe from the table by his side, and knocked the ashes into - the ash-tray and blew through it to clear it. Then he began to fill it - from his old tobacco-pouch, clumsy as all covered pouches are and rough - with faded clumps of moss-roses and forget-me-nots worked by Aline years - before. - </p> - <p> - “Why don't you go on with the sewing?” he said. - </p> - <p> - She waited a second or two before answering, and when she spoke did not - trust herself to look at him. - </p> - <p> - “I ought to say something, I know,” she said in a low voice. “But there - are things one can't talk of, only feel.” - </p> - <p> - “We never need talk of them,” said Jimmie. “They are over and done with. - Old, forgotten, far-off things now.” - </p> - <p> - “Are they? You don't understand. They will always remain. They make up - your life. You are too big for such as me altogether. By rights I should - be on my knees before you. Thank God, I did n't wait until I learned all - this, but came to you in faith. I feel poor enough to hug that to myself - as a virtue.” - </p> - <p> - “I am very glad you believed in me,” said Jimmie, laying down the unlit - pipe which he had been fondling. “I would n't be human if I did n't—but - you must n't exaggerate. Exposure would have ruined Morland's career, and - I thought it would go near breaking your heart. To me, an insignificant - devil, what did it matter?” - </p> - <p> - “Did n't my love for you matter? Did n't all that you have suffered - matter? Oh, don't minimise what you have done. I am afraid of you. Your - thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways not my ways. You will always - be among the stars while I am crawling about the earth.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie rose hurriedly and fell at her feet, and took both her hands and - placed them against his cheeks. - </p> - <p> - “My dear,” he said, moved to his depths. “My dear. My wonderful, - worshipped, God-sent dear. You are wrong—utterly wrong. I am only a - poor fool of a man, as you will soon find out, whose one merit is to love - you. I would sell my body and my soul for you. If I made a little - sacrifice for the love of you, what have you done tonight for me—the - sacrifice of all the splendour and grace of life?” - </p> - <p> - “The lies and the rottenness,” said Norma, with a shiver. “Did you - comprehend my mother?” - </p> - <p> - He took her hands from his face and kissed her fingers. - </p> - <p> - “Dear, those are the unhappy, far-off things. Let us forget them. They - never happened. Only one thing in the world has ever happened. You have - come to me, Norma,” he said softly, speaking her name for the first - tremulous time, “Norma!” - </p> - <p> - Their eyes met, and then their lips. The world stood still for a space. - She sighed and looked at him. - </p> - <p> - “You will have to teach me many things,” she said. “You will have to begin - at the very beginning.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXV—THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>VERY one knew that - the marriage arranged between Morland King and Norma Hardacre would not - take place. It was announced in the “Times” and “Morning Post” on the - Tuesday morning; those bidden to the wedding received hurried messages, - and a day or two later the wedding-gifts were returned to the senders, who - stored them up for some happier pair. But the new engagement upon which - Norma had entered remained a secret. Norma herself did not desire to - complete the banquet of gossip she had afforded society, and Mrs. Hardacre - was not anxious to fill to overflowing the cup of her own humiliation. The - stricken lady maintained a discreet reserve. The lovers had quarrelled, - Norma had broken off the match and would not be going out for some time. - She even defied the duchess, who commanded an explicit statement of - reasons. Her grace retorted severely that she ought to have brought her - daughter up better, and signified that this was the second time Norma had - behaved with scandalous want of consideration for her august convenience. - “She shall not have the opportunity of doing it again. I dislike being - mixed up in scandals,” said the duchess; and Mrs. Hardacre saw the gates - of Wiltshire House and Chiltern Towers closed to her forever. But of the - impossible painter wretch she spoke not a word, hoping desperately that in - some mysterious fashion the God of her fathers would avert this crowning - disgrace from them and would lead Norma forth again into the paths of - decency and virtue. As for her husband, he stormily refused to speak or - hear the outcast's name. He had done with her. She should never sleep - again beneath the roof she had dishonoured. He would not allow her a - penny. He would cut her out of his will. She had dragged him in the mud, - and by heaven! she could go to the devil! It took much to rouse the - passions of the feeble, mean-faced little man; but once they were roused, - he had the snarling tenacity of the fox. Mrs. Hardacre did not tell him of - Morland's confession and the rehabilitation of his rival. The memory of - her stunning humiliation brought on a feeling akin to physical nausea. She - strove to bury it deep down in her sub-consciousness, beneath all the - other unhallowed memories. There were none quite so rank. On the other - hand, her husband's vilification of the detested creature was a source of - consolation which she had no desire to choke. Why should she deny herself - this comfort. The supreme joy of vitriol throwing was not countenanced in - her social sphere. At odd times she regretted that she was a lady. - </p> - <p> - While the black fog of depression darkened Devonshire Place, in - neighbouring parts of London the days were radiant. A thousand suns - glorified the heavens and the breaths of a thousand springs perfumed the - air. It was a period of exaggeration, unreality, a page out of a fairy - tale lived and relived. Norma abandoned herself to the intoxication, - heedless of the fog in Devonshire Place, and the decent grey of the world - elsewhere. She refused to think or speculate. Rose veils shrouded the - future; the present was a fantasy of delight. For material things, food, - shelter, raiment, she had no concern. Connie fed and housed her, making - her the thrice welcome guest, the beloved sister. From society she - withdrew altogether. Visitors paid calls, odd people were entertained at - meals, the routine of a wealthy woman's establishment proceeded in its - ordinary course, and Norma's presence in the house remained unknown and - unsuspected. She was there in hiding. The world was given to understand - that she was in Cornwall. Even common life had thus its air of romance and - mystery. Being as it were a fugitive, she had no engagements. There was a - glorious incongruity in the position. She regarded the beginnings of the - London season with the amused detachment of a disembodied spirit - revisiting the scenes of which it once made a part. Morning, afternoon, - and evening she was free—an exhilarating novelty. Nobody wanted to - see her save Jimmie; save him she wanted to see nobody. - </p> - <p> - They met every day—sometimes in the sitting-room on the ground floor - which Connie had set apart for her guest's exclusive use, and sometimes in - Jimmie's studio. Now and then, when the weather was fine, they walked - together in sweet places unfrequented by the fashionable world, Regent's - Park and Hampstead Heath, fresh woods and pastures new to Norma, who had - heard of the heath vaguely as an undesirable common where the lower orders - wore each other's hats and shied at cocoanuts. Its smiling loneliness and - April beauty, seen perhaps through the artist's eyes, enchanted her. - Jimmie pointed out its undulations; like a bosom, said he, swelling with - the first breaths of pure air on its release from London. - </p> - <p> - Most of all she loved to drive up to St. John's Wood after dinner and - burst upon him unexpectedly. The new Bohemian freedom of it all was a part - of the queer delicious life. She laughed in anticipation at his cry of - delighted welcome. When she heard it, her eyes grew soft. To lift her veil - and hang back her head to receive his kiss on her lips was an ever-new - sensation. The intimacy had a bewildering sweetness. To complete it she - threw aside gloves and jacket and unpinned her hat, a battered gilt Empire - mirror over the long table serving her to guide the necessary touches to - her hair. Although she did not repeat the little comedy of the shirt which - had been inspired by the exaltation of a rare moment, yet she sat in - Aline's chair, now called her own, and knitted at a silk tie she was - making for him. She had learned the art from her aunt in Cornwall, and she - brought the materials in a little black silk bag slung to her wrist. The - housewifely avocation fitted in with the fairy tale. Jimmie smoked and - talked, the most responsive and least tiring of companions. His allusive - speech, that of the imaginative and cultured man, in itself brought her - into a world different from the one she had left. His simplicity, his - ignorance of the ways of women, his delight at the little discoveries she - allowed him to make, gave it a touch of Arcadia. In passionate moments - there was the unfamiliar, poetic, rhapsodic in his utterance which turned - the world into a corner of heaven. And so the magic hours passed. - </p> - <p> - “I do believe I have found a soul,” she remarked on one of these evenings, - “and that's why I must be so immoderately happy. I'm like a child with a - new toy.” - </p> - <p> - She was unconscious of the instinctive, pitiless analysis of herself; and - Jimmie, drunk with the wonder of her, did not heed the warning. - </p> - <p> - Of their future life together they only spoke as happy lovers in the rosy - mist shed about them by the veil. They dwelt in the glamour of the fairy - tale, where the princess who marries the shepherd lives not only happy - ever afterwards, but also delicately dressed and daintily environed, her - chief occupation being to tie silk bows round the lambs' necks, and to - serve to her husband the whitest of bread and the whitest of cheese with - the whitest of hands. Their forecast of the future might have been an - Idyll of Theocritus. - </p> - <p> - “You will be the inspiration of all my pictures, dear,” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “I will sit for you as a model, if I am good enough.” - </p> - <p> - “Good enough!” Language crumbled into meaningless vocables before her - infinite perfection. “I have had a little talent. You will give me - genius.” - </p> - <p> - “I will also give you your dinner.” She laughed adorably. “Do you know - Connie told me I must learn to cook. I had my first lesson this morning in - her kitchen—a most poetic way of doing sweetbreads. Do you like - sweetbreads?” - </p> - <p> - “Now I come to think of it, I do. Enormously. I wonder why Aline never has - them.” - </p> - <p> - “We'll have some—our first lunch—at home.” - </p> - <p> - “And you will cook them?” cried the enraptured man. - </p> - <p> - She nodded. “In a most becoming white apron. You'll see.” - </p> - <p> - “You'll be like a goddess taking her turn preparing the daily ambrosia for - Olympus!” said Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - On another occasion they spoke of summer holidays. They would take a - little cottage in the country. It would have honeysuckle over the porch, - and beds of mignonette under the windows, and an old-fashioned garden full - of stocks and hollyhocks and sunflowers. There would be doves and bees. - They would go out early and come home with the dew on their feet. They - would drink warm milk from the cow. They would go a hay-making. Norma's - idea of the pastoral pathetically resembled that of the Petit Trianon. - </p> - <p> - The magic of the present with its sincerity of passionate worship on the - part of the man, and its satisfaction of a soul's hunger on the part of - the woman, was in itself enough to blind their eyes to the possible prose - of the future. Another interest, one of the sweetest of outside interests - that can bind two lovers together, helped to fix their serious thoughts to - the immediate hour. Side by side with their romance grew up another, - vitally interwoven with it for a spell and now springing clear into - independent life. The two children Aline and Tony Merewether had found - each other again, and the fresh beauty of their young loves lit the deeper - passion of the older pair with the light of spring sunrise. In precious - little moments of confidence Aline opened to Norma her heart's dewy - happiness, and what Norma in delicate honour could divulge she told to - Jimmie, who in his turn had his little tale to bear. More and more was - existence like the last page of a fairy book. - </p> - <p> - The reconciliation of the younger folk had been a very simple matter. It - was the doing of Connie Deering. The morning after Morland's confession - she summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. He arrived wondering. She - asked him point blank: - </p> - <p> - “Are you still in love with Aline Marden or have you forgotten all about - her?” - </p> - <p> - The young fellow declared his undying affection. - </p> - <p> - “Are you aware that you have treated her shamefully?” she said severely. - </p> - <p> - “I am the most miserable dog unhung,” exclaimed the youth. He certainly - looked miserable, thin, and worried. He gave his view of the position. - Connie's heart went out to him. - </p> - <p> - “Suppose I told you that everything was cleared up and you could go to - Aline with a light conscience?” - </p> - <p> - “I should go crazy with happiness!” he cried, springing to his feet. - </p> - <p> - “Aline deserves a sane husband. She is one in a thousand.” - </p> - <p> - “She is one in twenty thousand million!” - </p> - <p> - “There she goes, hand in hand with Jimmie Padgate. It's to tell you that - I've asked you to come. I hope you'll let them both know you're aware of - it.” - </p> - <p> - Satisfied that he was worthy of her confidence, she told him briefly what - had occurred. - </p> - <p> - “And now what are you going to do?” she asked, smiling. - </p> - <p> - “Do? I'll go on my knees. I'll grovel at his feet. I'll ask him to make me - a door-mat. I'll do any mortal thing Aline tells me.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, go now and do your penance and be happy,” Connie said, holding out - her hand. - </p> - <p> - “I don't know how I can thank you, Mrs. Deering,” he cried. “You are the - most gracious woman that ever lived!” - </p> - <p> - A few moments later an impassioned youth was speeding in a hansom cab to - Friary Grove. But Connie, with the memory of his clear-cut, radiant young - face haunting her, sighed. Chance decreed that the very moment should - bring her a letter from Jimmie, written that morning, full of his wonder - and gratitude. She sighed again, pathetically, foolishly, unreasonably - feeling left out in the cold. - </p> - <p> - “I wonder whether it would do me good to cry,” she said, half aloud. But - the footman entering with the announcement that the carriage which was to - take her to her dressmaker was at the door, settled the question. She had - to content herself with sighs. - </p> - <p> - Tony Merewether did not go on his knees, as Aline had ordained; but he - made his apology in so frank and manly a way that Jimmie forgave him at - once. Besides, said he, what had he to forgive? - </p> - <p> - “I feel like Didymus,” said Tony. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie laughed as he clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him out of the - studio. - </p> - <p> - “You had better cultivate the feeling. He became a saint eventually. Aline - will help to make you one.” - </p> - <p> - If plain indication of another's infirmities can tend to qualify him for - canonisation, Aline certainly justified Jimmie's statement. She did not - confer her pardon so readily on the doubting disciple. His offence had - been too rank. It was not merely a question of his saying a <i>credo</i> - and then taking her into his arms. She exacted much penance before she - permitted this blissful consummation. He had to woo and protest and humble - himself exceedingly. But when she had reduced him to a proper state of - penitence, she gave him plenary absolution and yielded to his kiss, as she - had been yearning to do since the beginning of the interview. After that - she settled down to her infinite delight. Nothing was lacking in the new - rapturous scheme of existence. The glory of Jimmie was vindicated. Tony - had come back to her. The bars to their marriage had vanished. Not only - was Tony a man of substance with the legacy of eight thousand pounds that - had been left him, and therefore able to support as many wives as the - Grand Turk, but Jimmie no longer had to be provided for. The wonder of - wonders had happened; she could surrender her precious charge with a free - conscience and a heart bursting with gratitude. - </p> - <p> - Thus the happiness of each pair of lovers caught a reflection from that of - the other, and its colour was rendered ever so little fictitious, unreal. - The light of spring sunrise, exquisite though it is, invests things with a - glamour which the light of noon dispels. The spectacle of the young - romance unfolding itself before the eyes of Jimmie and Norma completed - their delicious sense of the idyllic; but the illusive atmosphere thus - created caused them to view their own romance in slightly false - perspective. Essentially it was a drama of conflict—themselves - against the pettinesses and uglinesses of the world; apparently it was a - pastoral among spring flowers. - </p> - <p> - Another cause that contributed to Norma's unconcern for the future was her - exaggerated sense of the man's loftiness of soul. Instead of viewing him - as a lovable creature capable of the chivalrous and the heroic and - afforded by a happy fate an opportunity of displaying these qualities—for - the opportunity makes the hero as much as it does the thief—she - grovelled whole-sexedly before an impossible idol imbued with impossible - divinity. While knitting silk ties and devising with him the preparation - of foodstuffs (which she did not realise he would not be able to afford) - she was conscious of a grace in the trifling, all the more precious - because of these little earthly things midway between the empyrean and the - abyss which they respectively inhabited. In the deeply human love of each - was a touch of the fantastic. To Jimmie she was the Princess of - Wonderland, the rare Lady of Dreams; to Norma he appeared little less than - a god. - </p> - <p> - She was talking one evening with Connie Deering in a somewhat exalted - strain of her own unworthiness and Jimmie's condescension, when the little - lady broke into an unwonted expression of impatience. - </p> - <p> - “My dear child, every foolish woman is a valet to her hero. You would like - to clean his boots, wouldn't you?” - </p> - <p> - “My dear Connie,” cried Norma, alarmed, “whatever is the matter?” - </p> - <p> - “I think you two had better get married as quickly as possible. It is - getting on one's nerves.” - </p> - <p> - Norma stiffened. “I am sorry—” she began. - </p> - <p> - Connie interrupted her. “Don't be silly. There's nothing for you to be - sorry about.” She brightened and laughed, realising the construction Norma - had put upon her words. “I am only advising you for your good. I had half - an hour's solitary imprisonment with Theodore Weever this afternoon. He - always takes it out of me. It's like having a bath with an electric eel. - He called this afternoon to get news of you.” - </p> - <p> - “Of me?” asked Norma serenely, settling herself in the depths of her - chair. - </p> - <p> - “He is like an eel,” Connie exclaimed with a shiver. “He's the - coldest-blooded thing I've ever come across. I told you about the dinner - at the Carlton, did n't I? It appears that he reckoned on my doing just - what I rushed off to do. It makes me so angry!” she cried with feminine - emphasis on the last word. “Of course he did n't tell me so brutally—he - has a horrid snake-like method of insinuation. He had counted on my - getting at the truth which he had guessed and so stopping the marriage. - 'I'm a true prophet,' he said. 'I knew that marriage would never come - off.'” - </p> - <p> - “So he told me,” said Norma. “Do you know, there must be some goodness in - him to have perceived the goodness in Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “I believe he's a disembodied spirit without either goodness or badness—a - sort of non-moral monster.” Connie was given to hyperbole in her likes and - dislikes. She continued her tale. He had come to ask her advice. Now that - Miss Hardacre was free, did Mrs. Deering think he might press his suit - with advantage? His stay in Europe was drawing to a close. He would like - to take back with him to New York either Miss Hardacre or a definite - refusal. - </p> - <p> - “'You certainly cannot take back Miss Hardacre,' I said, 'because she is - going to marry Jimmie Padgate.' I thought this would annihilate him. But - do you think he moved a muscle? Not he.” - </p> - <p> - “What did he say?” asked Norma, lazily amused. - </p> - <p> - “'This is getting somewhat monotonous,'” replied Connie. - </p> - <p> - Norma laughed. “Nothing else?” - </p> - <p> - “He began to talk about theatres. He has the most disconcerting way of - changing the conversation. But on leaving he sent his congratulations to - you, and said that you were always to remember that you were the wife - specially designed for him by Providence.” - </p> - <p> - “You dear thing,” said Norma, “and did that get on your nerves?” - </p> - <p> - “Would n't it get on yours?” - </p> - <p> - Norma shook her head. “I have n't any nerves for things to get on. People - don't have nerves when they're happy.” - </p> - <p> - “And are you happy, really, really happy?” - </p> - <p> - “I am deliciously happy,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - She went to bed laughing at the discomfiture of Weever and the remoteness - of him and of the days last summer when she first met him among the - Monzies' disreputable crowd. He belonged to a former state of existence. - Jimmie's portrait, which had been put for two or three reasons in her - bedroom, caught her attention. She looked at it with a dreamy smile for a - long time, and then turned to the glass. Made curiously happy by what she - saw there, she kissed her fingers to the portrait. - </p> - <p> - “He is the better prophet,” she said. - </p> - <p> - But Connie's advice as to the desirability of a speedy marriage remained - in her mind. Jimmie with characteristic diffidence had not yet suggested - definite arrangements. She was gifted with so much insight as to apprehend - the reasons for his lack of initiative. His very worship of her, his - overwhelming sense of goddess-conferred boon in her every smile and - condescension, precluded the asking of favours. So far it was she who had - arranged their daily life. It was she who had established the custom of - the studio visits, and she had taken off her hat and had inaugurated the - comedy of the domestic felicities of her own accord. She treasured this - worship in her heart as a priceless thing, all the more exquisite because - it lay by the side of the knowledge of her own unworthiness. The sacrifice - of maidenly modesty in proposing instead of coyly yielding was at once a - delicious penance for hypocritical assumption of superiority, and a salve - to her pride as a beautiful and desirable woman. It was with a glorious - sureness of relation, therefore, that she asked him the next day if he had - thought of a date for their marriage. - </p> - <p> - “There is no reason for a long engagement that I can see,” she added, with - a blush which she felt, and was tremulously happy at feeling. - </p> - <p> - “I was waiting for you to say, dear,” he replied, his arm around her. “I - dared not ask.” - </p> - <p> - She laughed the deep laugh of a woman's happiness. - </p> - <p> - “I knew you would say that,” she murmured. “Let it be some time next - month.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXVI—EARTH AGAIN - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>NE day Norma - received a polite intimation from her bankers that her account was - overdrawn. This had happened before but on previous occasions she had - obtained from her father an advance on her allowance and the unpleasant - void at the bank had been filled. Now she realised with dismay that the - allowance had been cut off, and that no money could come into her - possession until the payment of the half-yearly dividend from the concern - in which her small private fortune was invested. She looked in her purse - and found five shillings. On this she would have to live for three weeks. - Her money was in the hands of trustees, wisely tied up by the worldly aunt - from whom she had inherited it, so that she could not touch the capital. - While she was contemplating the absurdity of the position, the maid - brought up a parcel from a draper's on which there was three and eleven - pence halfpenny to pay. She surrendered four of her shillings, and - disconsolately regarded the miserable one that remained. The position had - grown even more preposterous. She actually needed money. She had not even - the amount of a cab-fare to Friary Grove. She would not have it for three - weeks. - </p> - <p> - Preposterous or not, the fact was plain, and demanded serious - consideration. She would have to borrow. The repayment of the loan and the - overdraft would reduce the half-yearly dividend. A goodly part of the - remainder would be required to meet an outstanding milliners' bill, not - included in the bridal trousseau for which her father was to pay. The sum - in simple arithmetic frightened her. - </p> - <p> - “I am poverty-stricken,” she said to Connie, to whom she confided her - difficulties. - </p> - <p> - Connie blotted the cheque that was to provide for immediate wants, and - laughed sympathetically. - </p> - <p> - “You'll have to learn to be economical, dear. I believe it's quite easy.” - </p> - <p> - “You mean I must go in omnibuses and things?” said Norma, vaguely. - </p> - <p> - “And not order so many hats and gowns.” - </p> - <p> - “I see,” said Norma, folding up the cheque. - </p> - <p> - With money again in her pocket, she felt lighter of heart, but she knew - that she had stepped for a moment out of fairyland into the grey world of - reality. The first experience was unpleasant. It left a haunting dread - which made her cling closer to Jimmie in the embrace of their next - meeting. It was a relief to get back into the Garden of Enchantment and - leave sordid things outside. Wilfully she kept the conversation from - serious discussion of their marriage. - </p> - <p> - When next she had occasion to go to the studio, she remembered the - necessity of economy, and took the St. John's Wood omnibus. As a general - rule the travellers between Baker Street station and the Swiss Cottage are - of a superior class, being mostly the well-to-do residents in the - neighbourhood and their visitors; but, by an unlucky chance, this - particular omnibus was crowded, and Norma found herself wedged between a - labouring man redolent of stale beer and bad tobacco, and a fat Jewish - lady highly flavoured with musk. A youth getting out awkwardly knocked her - hat awry with his elbow. It began to rain—a smart April shower. The - wet umbrella of a new arrival dripped on her dress while he stood waiting - for a place to be made for him opposite. The omnibus stopped at a - shelterless corner, the nearest point to Friary Grove. She descended to - pitiless rain and streaming pavements and a five minutes' walk, for all of - which her umbrella and shoes were inadequate. She vowed miserably a - life-long detestation of omnibuses. She would never enter one again. Cabs - were the only possible conveyances for people who could not afford to keep - their carriage. She fought down the dread that she might not be able to - afford cabs. The Almighty, who had obviously intended her to drive in - cabs, would certainly see that His intentions were carried out. - </p> - <p> - She arrived at the studio, wet, bedraggled, and angry; but Jimmie's - exaggerated concern disarmed her. It could not have been less had she - wandered for miles and been drenched to the skin and chilled to the bone. - He sent Aline to fetch her daintiest slippers to replace the damp shoes, - established the storm-driven sufferer in the big leathern armchair with - cushions at her back and hassocks at her feet, made a roaring fire and - insisted on her swallowing cherry brandy, a bottle of which he kept in the - house in case of illness. In the unwonted luxury of being loved and petted - and foolishly fussed over, Norma again forgot her troubles. Jimmie - consoled the specific grievance by saying magniloquently that omnibuses - were the engines of the devil and vehicles of the wrath to come. With a - drugged economic conscience she went home in a cab. But the conscience - awoke later, somewhat suffering, and she recognised that her exasperated - vow had been vain. Jimmie was a poor man. She recalled to mind his words - on the night of their engagement, and apprehended their significance. The - trivial incident of the omnibus was a key. The abandonment of cabs and - carriages meant the surrender of countless luxuries that went therewith. - Her own two hundred a year would not greatly raise the scale of living. - She was to be a poor man's wife; would have to wear cheap dresses, eat - plain food, keep household books in which pennies were accounted for; hers - would be the humdrum existence of the less prosperous middle class. The - first pang of doubt frightened her for a while and left her ashamed. Noble - revolt followed. Had she not renounced the pomps and vanities of a world - which she scorned? Had not this wonderful baptism of love brought New - Birth? She had been reborn, a braver, purer woman; she had been initiated - into life's deeper mysteries; her soul had been filled with joy. Of what - count were externals? - </p> - <p> - The next evening Connie Deering gave a small dinner-party in honour of the - two engagements. Old Colonel Pawley, charged under pain of her perpetual - displeasure not to reveal the secret of Norma's whereabouts, was invited - to balance the sexes. He was delighted to hear of Norma's romantic - marriage. - </p> - <p> - “I can still present the fan,” he said, rubbing his soft palms together; - “but I'm afraid I shall have to write a fresh set of verses.” - </p> - <p> - “You had better give Norma a cookery-book,” laughed Connie. - </p> - <p> - “I have a beautiful one of my own in manuscript which no publisher will - take up,” sighed Colonel Pawley. - </p> - <p> - Norma, who had been wont to speak with drastic contempt of the amiable old - warrior, welcomed him so cordially that he was confused. He was not - accustomed to exuberant demonstrations of friendship from the beautiful - Miss Hardacre. At dinner, sitting next her, he enjoyed himself enormously. - Instead of freezing his geniality with sarcastic remarks, she lured him on - to the gossip in which his heart delighted. When Connie rallied her, - later, on her flirtation with the old man, she laughed. - </p> - <p> - “Remember I've been a prisoner here. He's one of the familiar faces from - outside.” - </p> - <p> - Although jestingly, she had spoken with her usual frankness, and her - confession was more deeply significant than she was aware at the time. She - had welcomed Colonel Pawley not for what he was, but for what he - represented. As soon as she was alone she realised the moral lapse, and - rebuked herself severely. She was sentimental enough to hang by a ribbon - around her neck the simple engagement ring which Jimmie had given her, and - to sleep with it as a talisman against evil thoughts. - </p> - <p> - She spent the following evening at the studio, heroically enduring the - discomforts of the detested omnibus. When she descended she drew a breath - of relief, but felt the glow that comes from virtuous achievement. Jimmie - was informed of this practice in the art of economy. He regarded her - wistfully. There were times when he too fought with doubts,—not of - her loyalty, but of his own honesty in bringing her down into his humble - sphere. Even now, accustomed as he was to the adored sight of her there, - he could not but note the contrast between herself and her surroundings. - She brought with her in every detail of her person, in every detail of her - dress, in every detail of her manner, an atmosphere of a dainty, luxurious - life pathetically incongruous with the shabby little house. He had not - even the wherewithal to call in decorators and upholsterers and make the - little house less shabby. So when she spoke of practising economy, he - looked at her wistfully. - </p> - <p> - “Your eyes are open, dear, are n't they?” he said. “You really do realise - what a sacrifice you are making in marrying me?” - </p> - <p> - “By not marrying you,” she replied, “I should have gained the world and - lost my own soul. Now I am doing the reverse.”' - </p> - <p> - He kissed her finger-tips lover-wise. “I am afraid I must be the devil's - advocate, and say that the loss and gain need not be so absolutely - differentiated. I want you to be happy. My God! I want you to be happy,” - he burst out with sudden passion, “and if you found that things were - infinitely worse than what you had expected, that you had married me in - awful ignorance—” - </p> - <p> - She covered his lips with the palm of her hand. - </p> - <p> - “Don't go on. You pain me. You make me despise myself. I have counted the - cost, such as it is. Did I not tell you from the first that I would go - with you in rags and barefoot through the world? Could woman say more? - Don't you believe me?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I believe you,” he replied, bowing his head. “You are a - great-hearted woman.” - </p> - <p> - She unfastened her hat, skewered it through with the pins, and gave it him - to put down. - </p> - <p> - “I remember my Solomon,” she said, trying to laugh lightly, for there had - been a faint but disconcerting sense of effort in her protestation. - “'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred - there with.' Besides, you forget another important matter. I am now a - homeless, penniless outcast. I am not sacrificing anything. It is very - kind of you to offer to take me in and shelter me.” - </p> - <p> - “These are sophistries,” said Jimmie, with a laugh. “You gave up all on my - account.” - </p> - <p> - “But I am really penniless,” she said, ignoring his argument. “<i>Anch' io - son pittore</i>. I too have felt the pinch of poverty.” - </p> - <p> - “You?” - </p> - <p> - She revealed her financial position—the overdraft at the bank, the - shilling between herself and starvation. Were it not for Connie, she would - have to sing in the streets. She alluded thoughtlessly, with her class's - notions as to the value of money, to her “miserable two hundred a year.” - </p> - <p> - “Two hundred a year!” cried Jimmie. “Why, that's a fortune!” - </p> - <p> - His tone struck a sudden chill through her. He genuinely regarded the - paltry sum as untold riches. She struggled desperately down to his point - of view. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps it may come in useful for us,” she said lamely. -</p> - <p> -“I should think - it will! Why did n't you tell me before?” - </p> - <p> - “Have you never thought I might have a little of my own?” she asked with a - touch of her old hardness. - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Jimmie. “Of course not.” - </p> - <p> - “I don't see any 'of course' in the matter. The ordinary man would have - speculated—it would have been natural—almost common-sense.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie threw up his hands deprecatingly. - </p> - <p> - “I have been too much dazzled by the glorious gift of yourself to think of - anything else you might bring. I am an impossible creature, as you will - find out. I ought to have considered the practical side.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh! I am very glad you did n't!” she exclaimed. “Heaven forbid you should - have the mercenary ideas of the average man. It is beautiful to have - thought of me only.” - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid I was thinking of myself, my dear,” said he. “I must get out - of the way of it, and think of the two of us. Now let us be severely - business-like. You have taken a load off my mind. There are a thousand - things you can surround yourself with that I imagined you would lack.” He - took her two hands and swung them backwards and forwards. “Now I shan't - regard myself as such a criminal in asking you to marry me.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you think two hundred a year a fortune, Jimmie?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “To the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts perhaps not—but everything is - relative.” - </p> - <p> - “Everything?” - </p> - <p> - Her heart spoke suddenly, demanding relief. Their eyes met. - </p> - <p> - “No, dear,” he said. “One thing at least is absolute.” An interlude of - conviction succeeded doubt. She felt that she had never loved him so much - as at that moment. It was more with the quickly lit passion of the - awakened woman than with the ardour of a girl that she clasped her hands - round his head and drew it down to their kiss. She had an awful need of - the assurance of the absolute. - </p> - <p> - It nerved her to face a discussion on ways and means with Aline, whom - Jimmie at her request summoned from demure sewing in her little - drawing-room. - </p> - <p> - “You are right,” she had said, referring to his former remark. “We ought - to be severely business-like. I must begin to learn things. You don't know - how hopelessly ignorant I am.” - </p> - <p> - Aline came down to give the first lesson in elementary housekeeping. She - brought with her a pile of little black books which she spread out at the - end of the long table. The two girls sat side by side. Jimmie hovered - about them for a while, but was soon dismissed by Aline to a distant part - of the studio, where, having nothing wherewith to occupy himself, he - proceeded to make a charcoal sketch of the two intent faces. - </p> - <p> - Aline, proud at being able to display her housewifely knowledge before - appreciative eyes, opened her books, and expounded them with a charming - business air. These were the receipts for the last twelve months; these - the general disbursements. They were balanced to a halfpenny. - </p> - <p> - “Of course anything I can't account for, I put down to the item 'Jimmie,'” - she said naively. “He <i>will</i> go to the money-drawer and help himself - without letting me know. Is n't it tiresome of him?” - </p> - <p> - Norma smiled absently, wrinkling her brows over the unfamiliar figures. - She had no grasp of the relation the amounts of the various items bore to - one another, but they all seemed exceedingly small. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose it's necessary to make up this annual balance?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “Of course. Otherwise you would n't know how much you could apportion to - each item. Jimmie says it's nonsense to keep books; but if you listen to - Jimmie, you 'll have the brokers in in a month.” - </p> - <p> - “Brokers?” - </p> - <p> - Aline laughed at her perplexed look. “Yes, to seize the furniture in - payment of debt.” - </p> - <p> - The main financial facts having been stated, Aline came to detail. These - were the weekly books from the various tradesmen. She showed a typical - week's expenditure. - </p> - <p> - “What about the fishmonger?” asked Norma, noting an obvious omission. - </p> - <p> - “Fish is too expensive to have regularly,” Aline explained, “and so I - don't have an account. When I buy any, I pay for it at once, in the shop.” - </p> - <p> - “When <i>you</i> buy it?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, yes. You'll find it much better to go and choose things for yourself - than let them call for orders. Then you can get exactly what you want, - instead of what suits the tradesman's convenience. You see, I go to the - butcher and look round, and say 'I want a piece of that joint,' and of - course he does as he's told. It seems horrid to any one not accustomed to - it to go into a butcher's shop, I know; but really it's not unpleasant, - and it's quite amusing.” - </p> - <p> - “But why should n't your housekeeper do the marketing?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, she does sometimes,” Aline admitted; “but Hannah is n't a good buyer. - She can't <i>judge</i> meat and things, you know, and she is apt to be - wasteful over vegetables.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't bring the—the meat and things—home with you in a - basket, do you?” asked Norma, with a nervous laugh. - </p> - <p> - Jimmie, interested in his sketch, had not listened to the conversation, - which had been carried on in a low tone. The last words, however, pitched - higher, caught his ear. He jumped to his feet. - </p> - <p> - “Norma carry home meat in a basket! Good God! What on earth has the child - been telling you?” - </p> - <p> - “I never said anything of the kind, Jimmie,” cried Aline, indignantly. - “You needn't bring home anything unless you like; our tradesmen are most - obliging.” - </p> - <p> - Norma pushed back her chair from the table and rose and again laughed - nervously. - </p> - <p> - “I am afraid I can't learn all the science of domestic economy in one - lesson. I must do it by degrees.” She passed her hand across her forehead. - “I'm not used to figures, you see.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie looked reproachfully at Aline. “Those horrid little black books!” - he exclaimed. “They are enough to give any one a headache. For heaven's - sake, have nothing to do with them, dear.” - </p> - <p> - “But the brokers will come in,” said Norma, with an uncertain catch in her - voice. - </p> - <p> - “They are Aline's pet hobgoblins,” laughed Jimmie. “My dear child,” - pointing to the books, “please take those depressing records of wasted - hours away.” - </p> - <p> - When they were alone, he said to Norma very tenderly, “I am afraid my - little girl has frightened you.” - </p> - <p> - She started at the keenness of his perception and flushed. - </p> - <p> - “No—not frightened.” - </p> - <p> - “She is so proud of the way she runs her little kingdom here,” he said; - “so proud to show you how it is done. You must forgive her. She is only a - child, my dearest, and forgets that these household delights of hers may - come as shocks to you. I shall not allow you to have these worries that - she loves to concern her head about.” - </p> - <p> - “Then who will have them?” she asked, with her hand on the lapel of his - jacket. “You? That would be absurd. If I am your wife, I must keep your - house.” - </p> - <p> - “My dear,” said Jimmie, kissing her, “if we love each other, there will be - no possibility of worries. I believe in God in a sort of way, and He has - not given you to me to curse and wither your life.” - </p> - <p> - “You could only bless and sanctify it,” she murmured. - </p> - <p> - “Not I, dear; but our love.” - </p> - <p> - Soothed, she raised a smiling face. - </p> - <p> - “But still, I'll have to keep house. Do you think I would let you go to - the butcher's? What would Aline say if you made such a proposal?” - </p> - <p> - “She would peremptorily forbid him to take my orders,” he replied, - laughing. - </p> - <p> - “I am sure I should,” she said. - </p> - <p> - It was growing late. She glanced at the wheezy tilted old Dutch clock in - the corner, and spoke of departure. She reflected for a moment on the - means of home-getting. To her lowered spirits the omnibus loomed like a - lumbering torture-chamber. The consolation of a cab seemed cowardice. An - inspiration occurred to her. She would walk; perhaps he would accompany - her to Bryanston Square. He was enraptured at the suggestion. But could - she manage the distance? - </p> - <p> - “I should like to try. I am a good walker—and when we are outside,” - she added softly, “we can talk a little of other matters.” - </p> - <p> - It was a mild spring night, and the quiet stars shone benignantly upon - them as they walked arm in arm, and talked of “other matters.” As she had - needed a little while before the assurance of the absolute, so now she - craved the spirituality of the man himself, the inner light of faith in - the world's beauty, the sweetness, the courage—all that indefinable - something in him which raised him, and could alone raise her, above the - terrifying things of earth. She clung to his arm in a pathos of yearning - for him to lead her upward and teach her the things of the spirit. Only - thus lay her salvation. - </p> - <p> - He, clean, simple soul, lost in the splendour of their love, expounding, - as it chanced, his guileless philosophy of life and his somewhat - childishly pagan religious convictions, was far from suspecting the battle - into which he was being called to champion the side of righteousness. He - went to sleep that night the most blissfully happy of men. Norma lay - awake, a miserable woman. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXVII—A DINNER OF HERBS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>HE loved him. Of - that there was no doubt. To her he was the man of men. The half angel, - half fool of her original conception had melted into an heroic figure - capable of infinite tendernesses. The lingering barbaric woman in her - thrilled at the memory of him contemptuously facing death before the - madman's revolver. Her higher nature was awed at the perfect heroism of - his sacrifice. She knelt at his feet, recognising the loftier soul. Sex - was stirred to the depths when his arms were about her and his kiss was on - her lips. In lighter relations he was the perfect companion. For all her - vacillation, let that be remembered: she loved him. All of her that was - worth the giving he had in its plenitude. - </p> - <p> - The days which followed her initiation into domestic economy were days of - alternating fear and shame and scornful resolution. She lost grip of - herself. The proud beauty curving a contumelious lip at the puppet show of - life was a creature of the past. Set the proudest and most self-sufficing - of women naked in what assembly you please, and she will crouch, helpless, - paralysed, in the furthest corner. Some such denudation of the moral woman - had occurred in the case of Norma Hardacre. The old garments were stripped - from her. She was bewildered, terrified, no longer endowed with - personality. - </p> - <p> - Sometimes despising herself and resolved to perform her manifest duty, she - sought other lessons from Aline. They ended invariably in dismay. Once she - learned that Jimmie had never had a banking account. The money was kept in - a drawer of which Jimmie and Aline had each a key. On occasions the drawer - had been empty. Another lesson taught her that certain shops in the - neighbourhood were to be avoided as being too expensive; that cream was - regarded as a luxury, and asparagus as an impossible extravagance. Every - new fact in the economy of a poor household caused her to shiver with - apprehension. All was so trivial, so contemptibly unimportant, and yet it - grew to be a sordid barrier baffling her love. She loathed the base - weakness of her nature. It was degrading to feel such repulsion. - </p> - <p> - One evening Connie Deering was going to a Foreign Office reception, and - came down an enchanting vision in a new gown from Paquin and exhibited - herself to Norma. - </p> - <p> - “I think it's rather a success. Don't you?” - </p> - <p> - Norma assented somewhat listlessly, but to please her friend inspected the - creation and listened to her chatter. She was feeling lonely and - dispirited. At Aline's entreaty she had persuaded Jimmie to go with Tony - Merewether to the Langham Sketch Club, thus showing himself, for the first - time since the scandal, among his old associates. For her altruism she - paid the penalty of a dull evening. Their visits to each other were her - sole occupation now, all that was left in life to interest her. In moments - of solitude she began to feel the appalling narrowness of the circle in - which she was caged. Reading tired instead of refreshing her. She had been - accustomed to men and women rather than to books, to the sight of many - faces, to the constant change of scene. When she speculated on employment - for future solitary hours, she thought ruefully of recuffing shirts. - </p> - <p> - Connie apologised for leaving her, hoped she would manage to amuse - herself. Norma, who had made strenuous efforts to hide the traces of - tumult, returned a smiling answer. Connie, quite deceived, put an arm - round her waist and said suddenly in her bright, teasing way: - </p> - <p> - “Now don't you wish you were coming too?” - </p> - <p> - Norma, staggered at the point-blank question, was mistress enough of - herself to observe the decencies of reply, but when Connie had gone, she - sat down on the sofa and stared in front of her. She did wish she were - going with Connie. She had been wishing vaguely, half-consciously all the - evening. Now the wish was the pain of craving. It came upon her like the - craving of the alcoholic subject for drink—this sudden longing for - the glitter, the excitement, the whirl of the life she had renounced. Her - indictment of it seemed unreal, the confused memory of a brain-sick mood. - It was her world. She had not cut herself free. All the fibres of her body - seemed to be rooted in it, and she was being drawn thither by irresistible - desire. The many, many people, the diamonds, the brilliance, the flattery, - the envy, the very atmosphere heavy with many perfumes—she saw and - felt it all; panted for it, yearned for it. That never, never again would - she take up her birthright was impossible. That she should stand - forevermore in the humble street outside the gates of that dazzling, - wonderful, kaleidoscopic world was unthinkable. - </p> - <p> - She remembered her talk with Morland at the Duchess of Wiltshire's - reception at the end of the last season, her shiver at the idea of a life - of poverty; was it a premonition? She remembered the blessed sense of - security when she had looked round the splendid scene and felt that she - and it were indissoluble parts of the same scheme of things. A crust and - heel of cheese as Jimmie's wife had crossed her mind then as a grotesque - fantasy; the air of that brilliant gathering was the breath of her being. - </p> - <p> - But now the grotesque fancy was to be the reality; the other was to become - the shadow of a dream. No yearning or panting could restore it. The - impossible was the inevitable. The unthinkable was the commonplace. She - had made her choice deliberately, irrevocably. She had lost the whole - world to gain her own soul. In the despair of her mood she questioned the - worth of the sacrifice. The finality of the choice oppressed her. If at - this eleventh hour she could still have the opportunity of the heroic—if - still the gates of the world were open to her, she would have had a - stimulus to continued nobility. The world and the passionate love for the - perfect man—which would she choose? Her exaltation would still have - swept her to the greater choice. Of, this she was desperately aware. But - the gates were shut. She had already chosen. The heroic moment had gone. - The acceptance of conditions was now mere uninspired duty. She gave way to - unreason. - </p> - <p> - “O God! Why cannot I have both—my own love and my own life?” - </p> - <p> - The tears she shed calmed her. - </p> - <p> - The next day she felt ill from the strain, paying the highly bred woman's - penalty of nervous break-down. Connie Deering noted the circles beneath - her eyes and the pinched nostrils. Norma casually mentioned a night's - neuralgia. It would pass off during the day. She refused to be doctored. - She would pay a visit to Jimmie before lunch. The fresh air would do her - good. - </p> - <p> - “The fresh air and Jimmie,” laughed her friend. “You are the most - beautifully in love young woman I have ever met.” - </p> - <p> - Norma started on her visit, walking fast. At Baker Street station it began - to rain. She took the penitential omnibus; but her thoughts were too - anxious to concern themselves with its discomforts. Besides, it was almost - empty. The night had brought counsel. She would go to Jimmie and be her - true self, frank and unsparing. With a touch of her old scorn she had - resolved to confess unreservedly all the meanness and cowardice of which - she had of late been guilty. She would bare to him the soon spotted soul - and crave his cleansing. He would understand, pardon, and purify. Perhaps, - when he knew all, he would be able to devise some new scheme of existence. - At any rate, she would no longer receive his kisses with a lie in her - heart. She loved him too ardently. He should know what she was, what were - her needs, her limitations. The meeting would be a crisis in their lives. - Out of it would come reconstruction on some unshakable basis. Up to a - certain point she reasoned; beyond it, the pathetic unreason of a woman - drifted rudderless. - </p> - <p> - It had stopped raining when she left the omnibus and started on the short - walk from the corner to Friary Grove. At the familiar gate her heart - already seemed lighter; she opened it, mounted the front steps, and rang. - The middle-aged servant, minus cap and with thin untidy hair, in a soiled - print dress, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow exposing red coarse arms, - was the first shock to Norma when the door opened. - </p> - <p> - “Both the Master and Miss Aline are out, Miss,” said Hannah, with a - good-natured smile. “He has gone into town on business, and Miss Aline, - went out a little while ago with her young man. But they'll be back for - lunch. Won't you come in and wait, Miss?” - </p> - <p> - Norma, vaguely resenting the familiar address of the servant and her - slatternly appearance, hesitated for a moment before deciding to enter. - Hannah showed her into the drawing-room and retired. It was a small dark - room looking on to the back. Part of it had been cut off when the house - had been altered, so as to construct the studio staircase, which contained - one of the original windows. Norma felt strangely ill at ease in the room. - The prim, cheap furniture, the threadbare carpet, the flimsy girlish - contrivances at decoration, gave the place an air of shabby gentility. The - gilt mirror was starred with spots and had a crack across the corner. Some - of Jimmie's socks and underwear lay on the table for mending. They were - much darned, and fresh holes could not fail to meet the eye that rested - but momentarily on the pile. To mend these would in the future be her - duty. She took up an undervest shrinkingly and shook it out; then folded - it again and closed her eyes.... She could not wait there: the gloom - depressed her. The studio would be brighter and more familiar. She went - downstairs. Nothing in the room she knew so well was changed, yet it - seemed to wear a different aspect. The homely charm had vanished. Here, - too, shabbiness and poverty stared at her. The morning light streaming - through the great high window showed pitilessly the cracks and stains and - missing buttons of the old leathern suite, and the ragged holes in the - squares of old carpet laid upon the boards. It was a mere bleak workshop, - not a room for human habitation. The pictures on the walls and easels - ceased to possess decorative or even intimate value. The large picture of - the faun that had exercised so great an influence upon her had been - despatched to its purchaser, and in its place was a hopeless gap. - </p> - <p> - She sat down in her accustomed chair, and once more strove to realise the - future. There would be children who would need her care. On herself would - all the sordid burdens fall. She saw herself a soured woman, worn with the - struggle to make ends meet, working with her hands at menial tasks. The - joy of Life! She laughed mirthlessly. - </p> - <p> - She rose, walked restlessly about the studio, longing for Jimmie to come - and exorcise the devils that possessed her. A little sharp cry of distress - escaped her lips. The place echoed like a vault, and she felt awfully - alone. In her nervous tension she could bear it no longer. She went up the - stairs again into the bare hall. On the pegs hung two or three discoloured - hats and an old coat. Scarce knowing whither she went, she entered the - dining-room. Luncheon had been laid. A freak of destiny had reproduced the - meal of which Morland had spoken at Wiltshire House and of which last - night had revived the memory: a scrag end of cold boiled mutton, blackened - and shapeless, with the hard suet round about it; a dried-up heel of - yellow American cheese; the half of a cottage loaf. The table-cloth—it - was Friday—was stained with a week's meals. It was coarse in - texture, old and thin and darned. The enamel on the plates was cracked, - the hundred tiny fissures showing up dark brown. The plate on the forks - had worn off in places, disclosing the yellowish metal beneath. The - tumblers were thick and common, of glass scarcely transparent. She stared - helplessly at the table. Never in her life had she seen such preparations - for a meal. To the woman always daintily fed, daintily environed, it - seemed squalor unspeakable. - </p> - <p> - She shrank back into the hall, pressed her hands to her eyes, looked - round, as if to search for some refuge. The stairs met her eye. She had - never seen what lay above the ground floor—except once, on the - memorable evening when Aline had fainted. Suddenly madness seized her—an - insane craving to spy out the whole nakedness of the house. The worn - stair-carpet ended at the first landing. Then bare boards. The door of the - bathroom was wide open. She peeked in. The ceiling was blackened with gas; - the bath cracked and stained; the appointments as bare as those in a - workhouse. Her glance fell upon a battered tin dish holding an - uncompromising cube of yellow soap with hard sharp edges. She withdrew her - head and shut the door hurriedly. Another door stood ajar. She pushed it - open and entered. It was the front bedroom—inhabited by Jimmie. The - thought that it would be her own, which a fortnight before might have - clothed her in delicious confusion, chilled her to the bone. Bare boards - again; a strip of oil-cloth by the narrow cheap iron bedstead; a painted - deal table with a little mirror and the humblest of toilette equipments - laid upon it; a painted deal chest of drawers with white handles; a - painted deal wash-stand; a great triangular bit broken out of the mouth of - the ewer. - </p> - <p> - It was poverty—grinding, sordid, squalid poverty. From the one - dishevelled, slatternly, middle-aged servant to the cheap paper peeling - off the wall in the bedrooms, all she had seen was poverty. The gathering - terror of it burst like a thunderstorm above her head. Her courage failed - her utterly. Like a creature distracted, she rushed downstairs and fled - from the house. She walked homewards with an instinctive sense of - direction. Afterwards she had little memory of the portion of the road she - traversed on foot. She moved in a shuddering nightmare. All the love in - the world could not shed a glamour over the nakedness of the existence - that had now been revealed to her in its entire crudity. She could not - face it. Other women of gentle birth had forsaken all and followed the men - they loved; they had loved peasants and had led great-heartedly the - peasant's life. They had qualities of soul that she lacked. Hideously - base, despicably cowardly she knew herself to be. It was her nature. She - could not alter. The world of graceful living was her world. In the other - she would die. He had warned her. The gipsy faith in Providence had made - him regard as a jest what would be to her a sordid shift, an intolerable - ugliness, stripping life of its beauty. The passion-flower could not - thrive in the hedge with the dog-rose. It was true—mercilessly true. - The craving of last night awoke afresh, imperiously insistent. She walked - blindly, tripped, and nearly fell. A subconscious self hailed a passing - hansom and gave the address. - </p> - <p> - What would become of her she knew not. She thought wildly of suicide as - the only possible escape. From her own world she was outcast. Its gates - were barred with gold and opened but to golden keys. She was penniless. In - this other world she would die. Love could not prevent her starving on its - diet of herbs. She clung to life, to the stalled ox, and recked little of - the hatred; but at the banquet she no longer had a seat. She had said she - would follow him in rags and barefoot over the earth. She had not fingered - the rags when she had made the senseless vow; she had not tried her tender - feet on the stones. She could have shrieked with terror at the prospect. - There was no way out but death. - </p> - <p> - The Garden of Enchantment faded from her mind like a forgotten dream. The - sweet Arcadian make-believe alone rose up in ironical mockery, a scathing - memory which seemed to flay the living heart of her. She sat huddled - together in a corner of the cab, tortured and desperate. On either hand - hung the doom of death. In the one case it would be lingering: the soul - would die first; the man she loved would be tied to a living corpse; she - would be a devastating curse to him instead of a blessing. In the other - she could leave him in the fulness of their unsullied love. The years that - the locust hath eaten would not stretch an impassable waste between them. - In his sorrow there would be the imperishable sense of beauty. And for - herself the quick end were better. - </p> - <p> - She was aroused to consciousness of external things by a husky voice - addressing her from somewhere above her head. The cab had stopped at - Connie's house in Bryanston Square. She descended, handed to the man the - first coin in her purse that her fingers happened to grasp. He looked at - it, said that he was sorry he had not change for a sovereign. She waved - her hand vaguely, deaf to his words. The cabman, with a clear conscience, - whipped up his horse smartly and drove off. - </p> - <p> - A figure on the doorstep raised his hat. - </p> - <p> - “How delightful of you to arrive at the very moment, Miss Hardacre! I am - summoned back to America. I sail to-morrow. I was calling on the chance of - being able to bid you good-bye.” - </p> - <p> - Norma collected her scattered wits and recognised Theodore Weever. She - looked at him full in the eyes. - </p> - <p> - Her lips were parted; her breath came fast. He stretched out his hand to - press the electric button, so as to gain admittance to the house. She - touched his arm, restraining his action, and still stared at him. - </p> - <p> - “Wait,” she said at last. “I have something to say to you.” - </p> - <p> - “I am honoured,” he replied in his imperturbable way. - </p> - <p> - “Have you found your decorative wife, Mr. Weever?” - </p> - <p> - A sudden light shone lambently in his pale, expressionless blue eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Am I to understand that I can find her on Mrs. Deering's doorstep?” - </p> - <p> - “If you look hard enough,” said Norma. - </p> - <p> - He took her hand and shook it with the air of a man concluding a bargain. - </p> - <p> - “I felt sure of it,” he said. “I intended from the first to marry you. I - shall ever be your most devoted servant.'” - </p> - <p> - “I make one condition,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Name it.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't enter this house, and I sail with you to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “Certainly.” - </p> - <p> - “What train shall I catch and from what station shall I start?” - </p> - <p> - “The ten o'clock from Waterloo.” - </p> - <p> - She rang the bell. - </p> - <p> - “May I trouble you to book my passage?” - </p> - <p> - “It will be my happiness.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Au revoir</i>,” she said, holding out her hand. - </p> - <p> - He raised his hat and walked away briskly. The door opened, and Norma - entered the house. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - Chapter XXVIII—THE WORD OF ALINE - </h2> - <h3> - |WHAT she wrote to him is no great matter. - </h3> - <p> - Her letter, which he opened on coming down to breakfast the next morning, - filled many pages. It was a rhapsody of passionate love and - self-abasement, with frantic appeals for forgiveness. In its cowardice - there was something horribly piteous. Jimmie read it beneath the high - north window of the studio, his back turned towards Aline, who was seated - at the breakfast-table at the other end. For a long, long while he stood - there, quite still, holding the letter in his hand. Aline, in wonder, - stole up quietly and touched his arm. When he turned, she saw that his - face was ashen-grey, like a dead man's. - </p> - <p> - The shock left its mark upon him. Physically it accomplished the work of - ten years, wiping the youth from his face and setting in its stead the - seal of middle age. It is common enough for grief or illness to lay its - hand on the face of a woman no longer young and shrivel up her beauty like - a leaf and set her free, old and withered. But with a man, who has no such - beauty to be marred, the case is rare. - </p> - <p> - For a week he remained silent. The two women who loved him waited in - patience until the time should come for their comforting to be of use. - From the very first morning he let no change appear in his habits, but set - his palette as usual and went on with the new picture that was nearing - completion. In the afternoon he went for a walk. Aline, going down to the - studio, happened to look at his morning's work. For a moment she was - puzzled by what she saw, for she was familiar with his methods. Gradually - the solution dawned upon her. He had been painting meaninglessly, - incoherently, putting in splotches of colour that had no relation to the - tone of the picture, crudely accentuating outlines, daubing here, there, - and anywhere with an aimless brush. It was the work of a child or a - drunken man. Aline cast herself on the model-platform and cried till she - could cry no more. When he came back, he took a turpentine rag and - obliterated the whole picture. For days he worked incessantly, trying in - vain to repaint. Nothing would come right. The elementary technique of his - art seemed to have left him. Aline strove to get him away. He resisted. He - had to do his day's work, he said. - </p> - <p> - “But you're not well, dear,” she urged. “You will kill yourself if you go - on like this.” - </p> - <p> - “I've never heard of work killing a man,” he answered. Then after a pause, - “No. It's not work that kills.” - </p> - <p> - At last the sleep that had failed him returned, and he awoke one morning - free from the daze in the brain against which he had been obstinately - struggling. He rose and faced the world again with clear eyes. When Aline - entered the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him painting at the - unhappy picture with his accustomed sureness of touch. He leaned back and - surveyed his handiwork. - </p> - <p> - “It's going to be magnificent, is n't it? What a blessing I wiped out the - first attempt!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, this is ever so much better, Jimmie,” the girl replied, with tears - very near her eyes. But her heart swelled with happy relief. The aching - strain of the past week was over. She had dreaded break-down, illness, and - permanent paralysis of his faculties. The man she knew and loved had - seemed to be dead and his place taken by a vacant-eyed simulacrum. Now he - had come to life again, and his first words sounded the eternal chord of - hope and faith. - </p> - <p> - From that day onwards he gave no sign of pain or preoccupation. Only the - stamp of middle age upon his face betrayed the suffering through which he - had passed. He concerned himself about Aline's marriage. Arrangements had - been made for it to take place on the same day as that of their elders—a - day, however, that Norma had never fixed. The recent catastrophe had - caused its indefinite postponement. Aline declared herself to be in the - same position as before, the responsibility of the beloved's welfare being - again thrust upon her shoulders. She pleaded with her lover for delay, and - young Merewether, disappointed though he was, acquiesced with good grace. - At last Jimmie called them before him, and waving his old briar-root pipe, - as he spoke, delivered his ultimatum. - </p> - <p> - “My dear children,” said he, standing up before them, as they sat together - on the rusty sofa, “you have the two greatest and most glorious things in - a great and glorious world, youth and love. Don't despise the one and - waste the other. Get all the beauty you can out of life and you'll shed it - on other people. You'll shed it on me. That's why I want you to marry as - soon as ever you are ready. You'll let me come and look at you sometimes, - and if you are happy together, as God grant you will be, that will be my - great happiness—the greatest I think that earth has in store for me. - I have stood between you long enough—all that is over. I shall miss - my little girl, Tony. I should be an inhuman monster if I didn't. But I - should be a monster never before imagined by a disordered brain if I found - any pleasure in having her here to look after me when she ought to be - living her life in fulness. And that's the very end of the matter. I speak - selfishly. I can't help it. I have a great longing for joy around me once - more. Go upstairs and settle everything finally between you.” - </p> - <p> - When they had gone, he sighed. “Yes,” he said to himself, “a great longing - for joy—and the sound of the steps of little children.” Then he - laughed, calling himself a fool, and went on with his painting. - </p> - <p> - A day or two afterwards Connie Deering, who had been a frequent visitor - since Norma's flight, walked into the studio while Jimmie was working. - </p> - <p> - “Don't let me disturb you. Please go on,” she cried in her bright, airy - way. “If you don't, I'll disappear. I've only come for a gossip.” - </p> - <p> - Jimmie drew a chair near the easel and resumed his brush. She - congratulated him on the picture. It was shaping beautifully. She had been - talking about it last night to Lord Hyston, who had promised to call at - the studio to inspect it. Lord Hyston was a well-known buyer of modern - work. - </p> - <p> - “He is stocking a castle in Wales, which he never goes near, with acres - of paint,” she said encouragingly. “So I don't see why you should n't - have a look in.” - </p> - <p> - “Is there a family ghost in the castle?” - </p> - <p> - “I believe there are two!” - </p> - <p> - “That's a blessing,” said Jimmie. “Some one, at any rate, will look at the - pictures.” - </p> - <p> - She watched him in silence for a minute or two. Then she came to the - important topic. - </p> - <p> - “So the two children have made up their minds at last.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, they are to be married on the twenty-eighth of May.” - </p> - <p> - “Poor young things,” said Connie. - </p> - <p> - “Why poor?” - </p> - <p> - “I don't know,” she said 'with a sigh. “The subject of marriage always - makes me sad nowadays. I am growing old and pessimistic.” - </p> - <p> - “You are bewilderingly youthful,” replied Jimmie. - </p> - <p> - “Do you know how old I am?” - </p> - <p> - “I have forgotten how to do subtraction,” he said, thinking of his own - age. - </p> - <p> - “Yes. Of course you know. It's awful. And Aline is—what—seventeen?” - </p> - <p> - “Eighteen.” - </p> - <p> - “You'll be dreadfully lonely without her.” - </p> - <p> - “Lonely? Oh, no. I have my thoughts—and my memories.” - </p> - <p> - She looked at him fleetingly. - </p> - <p> - “I should have thought you would wish to escape from memories, Jimmie.” - </p> - <p> - “Why should I?” - </p> - <p> - “'The sorrow's crown of sorrows.'” - </p> - <p> - “I don't believe in it,” he said, turning towards her. “What has been has - been. A joy that once has been is imperishable. Remembering happier things - is a sorrow's crown of consolation. Thank God! I have had them to - remember.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you think she is finding consolation in memories?” She spoke with - sudden heat, for Norma's conduct had filled her heart with blazing - indignation. - </p> - <p> - “I hope so,” said Jimmie dreamily, after a pause. “But she has not so many - as I. She loved me deeply. She had her hour—but I had my day.” - </p> - <p> - “If I were you, I should want never to think of her again.” - </p> - <p> - “Not if you were I, my dear Connie,” he said gently. “If either of us was - in the wrong, it was not she.” - </p> - <p> - “Rubbish,” said Mrs. Deering. - </p> - <p> - “No. It is the truth. She was made for kings' palaces and not for this - sort of thing. I knew it was impossible from the first—but the joy - and wonder of it all blinded my eyes. She gave me the immortal part of - herself. It is mine for all eternity. I wrote to her a day or two ago—I - was not able at first. I could not sleep, you know; something seemed to - have gone wrong with my head.” - </p> - <p> - “You wrote to her?” - </p> - <p> - “To tell her not to be unhappy for my sake.” - </p> - <p> - “And you have forgiven her entirely?” - </p> - <p> - “Since our love is unchanged, how could I do otherwise?” - </p> - <p> - “But she has gone and thrown herself into the arms of another man—and - such a man!” said Connie, brusquely. A quiver of pain passed over his - face. - </p> - <p> - “Those are things of the flesh that the discipline of life teaches a man - to subdue. I think I am man enough for that. The others are things of the - spirit. If ever woman loved a man, she loved me. I thank God,” he added in - a low voice, “that she realised the impossibility before we were married.” - </p> - <p> - “So do I; devoutly,” said Connie. - </p> - <p> - “It would have made all the difference.” - </p> - <p> - “Precisely,” said Connie. - </p> - <p> - “She would have been chained hand and foot to an intolerable existence. - She would have fretted and pined. Her life would have been an infinite - burden. Heaven's mercy saved her.” - </p> - <p> - “I was n't looking at it from her point of view at all,” exclaimed Connie. - </p> - <p> - “Hers is the only one from which one can look at it,” he answered gravely. - </p> - <p> - When she bade him good-bye some ten minutes later, she did not withdraw - the hand which he held. Her forget-me-not eyes grew pleading, and her - voice trembled a little. - </p> - <p> - “I wish I could comfort you, Jimmie—not only now, but in the lonely - years to come. But remember, dear, there is nothing on earth I would n't - give you or do for you—nothing on earth.” - </p> - <p> - It was not till long afterwards that he fully comprehended the meaning of - her words; and then she herself prettily vouchsafed the interpretation. - For immediate answer he kissed her on the cheek in the brotherly fashion - in which he had kissed her twice before. - </p> - <p> - “What greater comfort,” said he, “can I have than to hear you say that? I - am a truly enviable man, Connie. Love and affection are showered upon me - in full measure. Life is very, very sweet.” - </p> - <p> - The next two or three weeks brought pleasant surprises which strengthened - his conviction. One by one old friends sought him out, and, some heartily, - others shamefacedly, extended to him the hand of brotherhood. His evening - at the Langham Sketch Club had inaugurated the new order of things. The - Frewen-Smiths, whose New Year party had marked the epoch between child and - woman in Aline's life, invited the two outcasts to dinner, and pointedly - signified that they were the honoured guests. Brother artists looked in - casually on Sunday evenings. Their wives called upon Aline, offering - congratulations and wedding-gifts. A lady whose portrait he had painted, - and at whose house he had visited, commissioned him to paint the portraits - of her two children. The ostracism had been removed. How this had been - effected Jimmie could not conjecture; and Tony Merewether and Connie - Deering, who were the persons primarily and independently responsible, did - not enlighten him. By Aline's wedding-day all the old circle had gathered - round him, and a whisper of the true story had been heard in Wiltshire - House. - </p> - <p> - Thus the world began to smile upon him, as if to make amends for the - anguish it could not remedy. He took the smile as a proof of the world's - essential goodness. The great glory that for a day had made his life a - blaze of splendour had faded; the sun in his heaven had been eternally - eclipsed. But the lesser glory of the moon and stars remained undimmed; - the tenderness of twilight lost no tone of its beauty. He stood unshaken - in his faith, unchanged in himself—the strong, wise man looking upon - the earth and the fulness thereof with the unclouded eyes of a child. - </p> - <p> - The man whom he had most loved, the woman he had most worshipped, had each - failed him, had each brought upon him bitter and abiding sorrow. They had - passed like dead folks out of his daily life. Yet each retained in his - heart the once inhabited chambers. They were dear ghosts. His incurable - optimism in this wise brought about its consolation. For optimism involves - courage of a serene quality. Aline, with her swift perception of him, had - the opportunity of flashing this into an epigram. There was a little - gathering in the studio, and the talk ran on personal bravery. Some one - started the question: What would the perfectly brave man do if attacked - unarmed by a man-eating tiger? - </p> - <p> - “I know what Jimmie would do,” she cried. “He would try to pat the beast - on the head.” - </p> - <p> - There was laughter over the girl's unchallenged championship, but those - who had ears to hear found the saying true. - </p> - <p> - The night before the wedding the two sat up very late, spending their last - hours together, and Aline sat like a child on Jimmie's knee and sobbed on - his breast. The lover seemed a far-away abstraction, a malevolent force - rather than a personality, that was tearing her away from the soil in - which her life was rooted. Jimmie stroked her hair and spoke brave words. - But he had not realised till then the wrench of parting. Till then, - perhaps, neither had realised the strength of the bond between them. They - were both fervent natures, who felt intensely, and their mutual affection - had been a vital part of their lives. If bright and gallant youth had not - flashed across the girl's path and, after the human way, had not caught - her wondering maidenhood in strong young arms; if deeper and more tragic - passion had not swept away the mature man, it is probable that this rare, - pure love of theirs might have insensibly changed into the greater need - one of the other, and the morrow's bells might have rung for these two. - But as it was, no such impulse stirred their exquisite relationship. They - were father and daughter without the barrier of paternity; brother and - sister without the ties of consanguinity; lovers without the lovers' - throb; intimate, passionate friends with the sweet and subtle magic of the - sex's difference. - </p> - <p> - “I can't bear leaving you,” she moaned. “I can't bear leaving the dear - beautiful life. I'll think of you every second of every minute of every - hour sitting here all alone, alone. I don't want to go. If you say the - word now, I'll remain and it shall be as it has been for ever and ever.” - </p> - <p> - “I shall miss you—terribly, my dear,” said he. “But I'll be the - gainer in the end. You'll give me Tony as a sort of younger brother. I am - getting to be an old man, darling—and soon I shall find the need of - <i>les jeunes</i> in my painting life. You can't understand that yet. Tony - will bring around me the younger generation with new enthusiasms and fresh - impulses. It is to my very great good, dear. And if God gives you - children, I'll be the only grandfather they'll ever have, poor things, and - I'd like to have a child about me again. I have experience. I have washed - your chubby face and hands, <i>moi qui vous parle</i>, and undressed you - and put you to bed, my young lady who is about to be married.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Jimmie, I remember it—and I had to tell you how to do - everything.” - </p> - <p> - “It seems the day before yesterday,” said Jimmie. “<i>Eheu fugaces!</i>” - </p> - <p> - The next day when she in her wedding-dress (a present from Connie Deering) - walked down the aisle on her husband's arm and stole a shy glance at him, - radiant, full of the promise and the pride of manhood, and met the glad - love in his eyes, she forgot all else in the throbbing joy of her young - life's completion. It was only afterwards when she was changing her dress, - with Connie Deering's assistance, in her own little room, that she became - again conscience-stricken. - </p> - <p> - “You <i>will</i> look after Jimmie while I am away, <i>won't</i> you?” she - asked tragically—they were going to the Isle of Wight for their - honeymoon. - </p> - <p> - “I would look after him altogether if he would let me,” said Connie, in an - abrupt, emotional little outburst. - </p> - <p> - Aline drew a quick breath. - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean?” - </p> - <p> - Connie threw the simple travelling-hat, whose feathers she was daintily - touching, upon the bed. - </p> - <p> - “What do you think I mean?” she laughed nervously. “I'm not an old woman. - I'm as lonely as Jimmie will be—and—” - </p> - <p> - “What?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!—-only I've found out that I love Jimmie as much as a silly - woman can love anybody, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it—and - you may be quite sure I'll see that no harm comes to him during your - honeymoon, dear.” - </p> - <p> - The ensuing conversation nearly caused the bride to miss her train. But no - bride ever left her girlhood's room more luminously happy. On the - threshold she turned and threw her arms round Connie Deering's neck. - </p> - <p> - “I'll arrange it all when I come back,” she whispered. - </p> - <p> - And Aline kept her word. - </p> - <h3> - THE END - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Love Is, by William J. 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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Love Is, by William J. Locke
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
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-Title: Where Love Is
-
-Author: William J. Locke
-
-Release Date: January 18, 2017 [EBook #53996]
-Last Updated: March 12, 2018
-
-Language: English
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-Character set encoding: UTF-8
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE LOVE IS ***
-
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-
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-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
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-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- WHERE LOVE IS
- </h1>
- <h2>
- By William J. Locke
- </h2>
- <h4>
- New York
- </h4>
- <h4>
- Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
- </h4>
- <h3>
- Copyright, 1903 By John Lane
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <h4>
- “<i>Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and
- hatred therewith</i>.”
- </h4>
- <h4>
- <i>The Proverbe of Solomon</i>
- </h4>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> WHERE LOVE IS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter I—THE FIRST GLIMPSE </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter II—THE FOOL'S WISDOM </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter III—A MODERN BETROTHAL </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter IV—THE GREAT FROCK EPISODE </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter V—A BROKEN BUTTERFLY </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter VI—THE LOVERS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0007"> Chapter VII—A MAD PROPHET </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0008"> Chapter VIII—HER SERENE HIGHNESS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0009"> Chapter IX—SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0010"> Chapter X—TWO IDYLLS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0011"> Chapter XI—DANGER </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0012"> Chapter XII—NORMA'S ENLIGHTENMENT </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0013"> Chapter XIII—THE OPTIMIST AT LARGE </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0014"> Chapter XIV—THE BUBBLE REPUTATION </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0015"> Chapter XV—MRS. HARDACRE LAUGHS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0016"> Chapter XVI—IN THE WILDERNESS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0017"> Chapter XVII—THE INCURABLE MALADY </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0018"> Chapter XVIII—A RUDDERLESS SHIP </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0019"> Chapter XIX—ABANA AND PHARPAR </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0020"> Chapter XX—ALINE PREPARES FOR BATTLE </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0021"> Chapter XXI—THE MOTH MEETS THE STAR </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0022"> Chapter XXII—CATASTROPHE </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0023"> Chapter XXIII—NORMA'S HOUR </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0024"> Chapter XXIV—MRS. HARDACRE FORGETS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0025"> Chapter XXV—THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0026"> Chapter XXVI—EARTH AGAIN </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0027"> Chapter XXVII—A DINNER OF HERBS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2HCH0028"> Chapter XXVIII—THE WORD OF ALINE </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- WHERE LOVE IS
- </h2>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter I—THE FIRST GLIMPSE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>AVE you dined at
- Ranelagh lately?” asked Norma Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never been there in my life,” replied Jimmie Padgate. “In fact,”
- he added simply, “I am not quite sure whether I know where it is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yours is the happier state. It is one of the dullest spots in a dull
- world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then why on earth do people go there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The enquiry was so genuine that Miss Hardacre relaxed her expression of
- handsome boredom and laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because we are all like the muttons of Panurge,” she said. “Where one
- goes, all go. Why are we here to-night?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To enjoy ourselves. How could one do otherwise in Mrs. Deering's house?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have known her a long time, I believe,” remarked Norma, taking the
- opportunity of directing the conversation to a non-contentious topic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Since she was in short frocks. She is a cousin of King's—that's the
- man who took you down to dinner—”
-</p>
- <p>
-She nodded. “I have known Mr. King
- many weary ages.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And he has never told me about you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked him full in the face, with the stony calm of the fashionable
- young woman accustomed to take excellent care of herself. Her companion
- met her stare in whimsical confusion. Even so ingenuous a being as Jimmie
- Padgate could not tell a girl he had met for the first time that she was
- beautiful, adorable, and graced with divine qualities above all women, and
- that intimate acquaintance with her must be the startling glory of a
- lifetime.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I had known you for ages,” he replied prudently, “I should have
- mentioned your name to Morland King.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you such friends then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fast friends: we were at school together, and as I was a lonely little
- beggar I used to spend many of my holidays with his people. That is how I
- knew Mrs. Deering in short frocks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's odd, then, that I have n't met you about before,” said the girl,
- giving him a more scrutinising glance than she had hitherto troubled to
- bestow upon him. A second afterwards she felt that her remark might have
- been in the nature of an indiscretion, for her companion had not at all
- the air of a man moving in the smart world to which she belonged. His
- dress-suit was old and of lamentable cut; his shirt-cuffs were frayed; a
- little bone stud, threatening every moment to slip the button-hole,
- precariously secured his shirt-front. His thin, iron-grey hair was untidy;
- his moustache was ragged, innocent of wax or tongs or any of the
- adventitious aids to masculine adornment. His aspect gave the impression,
- if not of poverty, at least of narrow means and humble ways of life.
- Although he had sat next her at dinner, she had paid little attention to
- him, finding easier entertainment in her conversation with King on topics
- of common interest, than in possible argument with a strange man whom she
- heard discussing the functions of art and other such head-splitting
- matters with his right-hand neighbour. Indeed, her question about Ranelagh
- when she found him by her side, later, in the drawing-room was practically
- the first she had addressed to him with any show of interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- She hastened to repair her maladroit observation by adding before he could
- reply,—
-</p>
- <p>
-“That is rather an imbecile thing to say considering the
- millions of people in London. But one is apt to talk in an imbecile manner
- after a twelve hours' day of hard racket in the season. Don't you think
- so? One's stock of ideas gets used up, like the air at the end of a
- dance.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not if you keep your soul properly ventilated,” he answered.
- </p>
- <p>
- The words were, perhaps, not so arresting as the manner in which they were
- uttered. Norma Hardacre was startled. A little shutter in the back of her
- mind seemed to have flashed open for an elusive second, and revealed a
- prospect wide, generous, alive with free-blowing airs. Then all was dark
- again before she could realise the vision. She was disconcerted, and in a
- much more feminine way than was habitual with her she glanced at him
- again. This time she lost sight of the poor, untidy garments, and found a
- sudden interest in the man's kind, careworn face, and his eyes,
- wonderfully blue and bright, set far apart in the head, that seemed to
- look out on the world with a man's courage and a child's confidence. She
- was uncomfortably conscious of being in contact with a personality widely
- different from that of her usual masculine associates. This her training
- and habit of mind caused her to resent; despising the faint spiritual
- shock, she took refuge in flippancy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I fear our Tobin tubes get choked up in London,” she said with a little
- laugh. “Even if they did n't they are wretched things, which create
- draughts; so anyway our souls are free from chills. Look at that woman
- over there talking to Captain Orton—every one knows he's
- paymaster-general. A breath of fresh air in Mrs. Chance's soul would give
- it rheumatic fever.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The abominable slander falling cynically from young lips brought a look of
- disapproval into Jimmie Padgate's eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why do you say such things?” he asked. “You know you don't believe them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do believe them,” she replied defiantly. “Why shouldn't one believe the
- bad things one hears of one's neighbours? It's a vastly more entertaining
- faith than belief in their virtues. Virtue—being its own reward—is
- deadly stale to one's friends and unprofitable to oneself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cynicism seems cheap to-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile that redeemed his
- words from impertinence. “Won't you give me something of yourself a little
- more worth having?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, who was leaning back in her chair fanning herself languidly,
- suddenly bent forward, with curious animation in her cold face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know who you are or what you are,” she exclaimed. “Why should you
- want more than the ordinary futilities of after-dinner talk?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because one has only to look at you,” he replied, “to see that it must be
- very easy to get. You have beauty inside as well as outside, and everybody
- owes what is beautiful and good in them to their fellow-creatures.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't see why. According to you, women ought to go about like mediaeval
- saints.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Every woman is a saint in the depths of her heart,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are an astonishing person,” replied Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- The conversation ended there, for Morland King came up with Constance
- Deering: he florid, good-looking, perfectly groomed and dressed, the type
- of the commonplace, well-fed, affluent Briton; she a pretty, fragile
- butterfly of a woman. Jimmie rose and was led off to another part of the
- room by his hostess. King dropped into the chair Jimmie had vacated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see you have been sampling my friend Jimmie Padgate. What do you make
- of him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have just told him he was an astonishing person,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear old Jimmie! He's the best fellow in the world,” said King, laughing.
- “A bit Bohemian and eccentric—artists generally are—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, he's an artist?” inquired Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He just manages to make a living by it, poor old chap! He has never come
- off, somehow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Another neglected genius?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know about that,” replied Morland King in a matter-of-fact way,
- not detecting the sneer in the girl's tone. “I don't think he's a great
- swell—I'm no judge, you know. But he has had a bad time. Anyway, he
- always comes up smiling. The more he gets knocked the more cheerful he
- seems to grow. I never met any one like him. The most generous,
- simple-minded beggar living.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He must be wonderful to make you enthusiastic,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look at him now, talking to the Chance woman as if she were an angel of
- light.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma glanced across the room and smiled contemptuously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She seems to like it. She's preening herself as if the wings were already
- grown. Connie,” she called to her hostess, who was passing by, “why have
- you hidden Mr. Padgate from me all this time?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The butterfly lady laughed. “He is too precious. I can only afford to give
- my friends a peep at him now and then. I want to keep him all to myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She fluttered away. Norma leaned back and hid a yawn with her fan; then,
- rousing herself with an effort, made conversation with her companion.
- Presently another man came up and King retired.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How is it getting on?” whispered Mrs. Deering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, steady,” he replied with his hands in his pockets.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lucky man!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland King shrugged his shoulders. “The only thing against it is papa
- and mamma—chiefly mamma. A Gorgon of a woman!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll never get a wife to do you more credit than Norma. With that face
- I wonder she is n't a duchess by now. There <i>was</i> a duke once, but a
- fair American eagle came and swooped him off under Norma's nose. You see,
- she's not the sort of girl to give a man much encouragement.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I can't stand a woman who throws herself at your head,” said King,
- emphatically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What a funny way men have nowadays of confessing to the tender passion!”
- said Mrs. Deering, laughing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What would you have a fellow do?” he asked.
- “Spout blank verse about the stars and things, like a Shakespearean hero?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be prettier, anyhow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, if you will have it, I'm about as hard hit as a man ever was—there!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I 'm delighted to hear it,” said his cousin.
- </p>
- <p>
- A short while afterwards the dinner-party broke up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know whether you care to mix with utter worldlings like us, Mr.
- Padgate,” said Norma, as she bade him good-bye, “but we are always in on
- Tuesdays.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll tie him hand and foot and bring him,” said King. “Good-night, old
- chap. I'm giving Miss Hardacre a lift home in the brougham.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Before Jimmie could say yes or no, they were gone. He found himself the
- last.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are certainly not going for another hour, Jimmie,” said Mrs. Deering,
- as he came forward to take leave. “You will sit in that chair and smoke
- and tell me all about yourself and make me feel good and pretty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well,” he assented, laughing. “Turn me out when it's time for me to
- go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It had been the customary formula between them for many years; for Jimmie
- Padgate lacked the sense of time and kept eccentric hours, and although
- Connie Deering delighted in her rare confidential chats with him, a woman
- with a heavy morrow of engagements must go to bed at a reasonable period
- of the night. She was a woman in the middle thirties, a childless widow
- after a brief and almost forgotten married life, rich, pleasure-loving, in
- the inner circle of London society, and possessing the gayest, kindest,
- most charitable heart in the world. Her friendship with Norma Hardacre had
- been a thing of recent date.
- </p>
- <p>
- She had cultivated it first on account of her cousin Morland King; she had
- ended in enthusiastic admiration.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is awfully good of you,” she said, when they were comfortably settled
- down to talk, “to waste your time with my unintelligent conversation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's no such thing as unintelligent conversation,” he declared.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For a man like you there must be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I could hold an intelligent conversation with a rabbit,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma Hardacre, on arriving home, entered the drawing-room, where her
- mother was reading a novel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?” said Mrs. Hardacre, looking up.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma threw her white silk cloak over the back of a chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Connie sent her love to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is that all you have to say?” asked her mother, sharply. She was a faded
- woman who had once possessed beauty of a cold, severe type; but the years
- had pinched and hardened her features, as they had pinched and hardened
- her heart. Her eyes were of that steel grey which the light of laughter
- seldom softens, and her smile was but a contraction of the muscles of the
- lips. Even this perfunctory tribute to politeness which had greeted
- Norma's entrance vanished at the second question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Morland King drove me home. What a difference there is between a private
- brougham and the beastly things we get from the livery-stable!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He has said nothing?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course not. I should have told you if he had.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whose fault is it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma made a gesture of impatience. “My fault, if you like. I don't lay
- traps to catch him. I don't keep him dangling about me, and I don't
- flatter his vanities or make appeal to his senses, I suppose. I can't do
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't behave like a fool, Norma,” said Mrs. Hardacre, rapping her book
- with a paper-knife. “You have got to marry him. You know you have. Your
- father and I are coming to the end of things. You ought to have married
- years ago, and when one thinks of the chances you have missed, it makes
- one mad. Here have we been pinching and scraping—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And borrowing and mortgaging,” Norma interjected.
-</p>
- <p>
-“—to give you a
- brilliant position,” Mrs. Hardacre continued, unheeding the interruption,
- “and you cast all our efforts in our teeth. It's sheer ingratitude. Why
- you threw over Lord Wyniard I could never make out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You seem to forget that, after all, there is a physical side to
- marriage,” said Norma, with a little shudder of disgust.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hate indelicacy in young girls,” said Mrs. Hardacre, freezingly. “One
- would think you had been brought up in a public house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then let us avoid indelicate subjects,” retorted Norma, opening the first
- book to her hand. “Where is papa?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, how should I know?” said Mrs. Hardacre, irritably.
-</p>
- <p>
-There was silence.
- Norma pretended to read, but her thoughts, away from the printed lines,
- caused her face to harden and her lips to curl scornfully. She had been
- used to such scenes with her mother ever since she had worn a long frock,
- and that was seven years ago, when she came out as a young beauty of
- eighteen. The story of financial embarrassment had lost its fine edge of
- persuasion by overtelling. She had almost ceased to believe in it, and the
- lingering grain of credence she put aside with the cynical feeling that it
- was no great concern of hers, so long as her usual round of life went on.
- She had two hundred a year of her own, all of which she spent in dress, so
- that in that one particular at least, if she chose to be economical, she
- was practically independent. Money for other wants was generally
- procurable, with or without unpleasant dunning of her parents. She lived
- very little in their home in Wiltshire, a beautiful and stately young
- woman of fashion being a decorative adjunct to smart country-house
- parties. In London, if she sighed for a more extensive establishment and a
- more luxurious style of living, it was what she always had done. She had
- hated the furnished house or flat and the livery-stable carriage ever
- since her first season. In the same way she had always considered the
- omission from her scheme of life of a yacht and a villa at Cannes and
- diamonds at discretion as a culpable oversight on the part of the Creator.
- But the sordid makeshift of existence to which she was condemned was not a
- matter of yesterday. In spite of the financial embarrassments of the
- maternal fable she had noticed no cutting down of customary expenditure.
- Her father still played the fool on the stock exchange, her mother still
- attired herself elaborately and disdained to eat otherwise than <i>à la
- carte</i> at expensive restaurants, and she, Norma, went whithersoever the
- smart set drifted her. She had nothing to do with the vulgarity of
- financial embarrassments.
- </p>
- <p>
- As to the question of marriage she was as fully determined as her mother
- that she should make a brilliant match. She had had two or three
- disappointments—the unwary duke, for instance. On the other hand she
- had refused eligibles like Lord Wyniard out of sheer caprice.
- </p>
- <p>
- The only man who had given her a moment's stir of the pulses, a moment's
- thought of throwing her cap over the windmills, was a young soldier in the
- Indian Staff Corps. But he belonged to her second season, before she had
- really seen the world and grasped the inner meaning of life. Besides, her
- mother had almost beaten her; and in an encounter between the dragon who
- guarded the gold of her daughter's affections and the young Siegfried, it
- was the hero that barely escaped destruction; he fled to India for his
- life. Norma lost all sight and count of him for three years. Then she
- heard that he had married a schoolfellow of hers and was a month-old
- father. It was with feelings of peculiar satisfaction and sense of
- deliverance that she sent her congratulations to him, her love to his
- wife, and a set of baby shoes to the child. She had cultivated by this
- time a helpful sardonic humour.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was now Morland King, within reasonable distance of a proposal. Her
- experience detected the signs, although little of sentimentality had
- passed between them. He was young, as marrying men go—a year or two
- under forty—of good family, fairly good-looking, very well off, with
- a safe seat in Parliament being kept warm for him by a valetudinarian ever
- on the point of retirement. Norma meant to accept him. She contemplated
- the marriage as coldly and unemotionally as King contemplated the seat in
- Parliament. But through the corrupted tissue of her being ran one pure and
- virginal thread. She used no lures. She remained chastely aloof, the arts
- of seduction being temperamentally repugnant to her. Knowledge she had of
- good and evil (a euphemism, generally, for an exclusive acquaintance with
- the latter), and she was cynical enough in her disregard of concealment of
- her knowledge; but she revolted from using it to gain any advantage over a
- man. At this period of her life she set great store by herself, and though
- callously determined on marriage condescended with much disdain to be
- wooed. Her mother, bred in a hard school, was not subtle enough to
- perceive this antithesis. Hence the constant scenes of which Norma
- bitterly resented the vulgarity. “We pride ourselves on being women of the
- world, mother,” she said, “but that does n't prevent our remembering that
- we are gentlefolk.” Whereat, on one occasion, Mr. Hardacre, in his
- flustering, feeble way, had told Norma not to be rude to her mother, only
- to draw upon himself the vials of his wife's anger.
- </p>
- <p>
- He came in now, during the silence that had fallen on the two women—a
- short, stout, red-faced man, with a bald head, and a weak chin, and a
- drooping foxy moustache turning grey. He was bursting with an interminable
- tale of scandal that he had picked up at his club—a respectable
- institution with an inner coterie of vapid, middle-aged dullards whose
- cackle was the terror of half London society. It is a superstition among
- good women that man is too noble a creature to descend to gossip. Ten
- minutes in the members' smoking-room of the Burlington Club would paralyse
- the most scandal-mongering tabby of Bath, Cheltenham, or Tunbridge Wells.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We were sure she was a wrong 'un from the first,” he explained in a
- thick, jerky voice to his listless auditors. “And now it turns out that
- she was in thick with poor Billy Withers, you know, and when Billy broke
- his neck—that was through another blessed woman—I'll tell you
- all about her by'm bye—when Billy broke his neck, his confounded
- valet got hold of Mrs. Jack's letters, and how she paid for 'em's the
- cream of the story—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We need not have that now, Benjamin,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a warning
- indication that reverence was due to the young.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, of course that's the end of it,” replied Mr. Hardacre, in some
- confusion.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Norma rose with a laugh of hard mockery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The valet entered the service of Lord Wyniard, and now there's a pretty
- little divorce case in the air, with Jack Dugdale as petitioner and Lord
- Wyniard as corespondent. Are n't you sorry, mother, I did n't marry
- Wyniard and reform him, and save society this terrible scandal?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Turning from her disconcerted parents, Norma pulled back the thick
- curtains from the French window and opened one of the doors.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you doing that for?” cried Mrs. Hardacre irritably, as the cold
- air of a wet May night swept through the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm going to try to ventilate my soul,” said Norma, stepping on to the
- balcony.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter II—THE FOOL'S WISDOM
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>IKE the
- inexplicable run on a particular number at the roulette-table, there often
- seems to be a run on some particular phenomenon thrown up by the wheel of
- daily life. Such a recurrent incident was the meeting of Norma and Jimmie
- Padgate during the next few weeks. She met him at Mrs. Deering's, she ran
- across him in the streets. Going to spend a weekend out of town, she found
- him on the platform of Paddington Station. The series of sheer
- coincidences established between them a certain familiarity. When next
- they met, it was in the crush of an emptying theatre. They found
- themselves blocked side by side, and they laughed as their eyes met.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This seems to have got out of the domain of vulgar chance and become
- Destiny,” she said lightly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am indeed favoured by the gods,” he replied.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't deserve their good will because you have never come to see me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie replied that he was an old bear who loved to growl selfishly in his
- den. Norma retorted with a reference to Constance Deering. In her house he
- could growl altruistically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She pampers me with honey,” he explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid you'll get nothing so Arcadian with us,” she replied, “but I
- can provide you with some excellent glucose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They were moved a few feet forward by the crowd, and then came to a halt
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is my ward, Miss Aline Marden,” he said, presenting a pretty slip of
- a girl of seventeen, who had hung back shyly during the short dialogue,
- and looked with open-eyed admiration at Jimmie's new friend. “That is how
- she would be described in a court of law, but I don't mind telling you
- that really she is my nurse and foster-mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl blushed at the introduction, and gave him an imperceptible twitch
- of the arm. Norma smiled at her graciously and asked her how she had liked
- the play.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was heavenly,” she said with a little sigh. “Did n't you think so?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, who had characterised the piece as the most dismal performance
- outside a little Bethel, was preparing a mendacious answer, when a sudden
- thinning in the crush brought to her side Mrs. Hardacre, from whom she had
- been separated. Mrs. Hardacre inquired querulously for Morland King, who
- had gone in search of the carriage. Norma reassured her as to his ability
- to find it, and introduced Jimmie and Aline. Mr. Padgate was Mr. King's
- oldest friend. Mrs. Hardacre bowed disapprovingly, took in with a hard
- glance the details of Aline's cheap, homemade evening frock, and the
- ready-made cape over her shoulders, and turned her head away with a sniff.
- She had been put out of temper the whole evening by Norma's glacial
- treatment of King, and was not disposed to smile at the nobodies whom it
- happened to please Norma to patronise.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last King beckoned to them from the door, and they crushed through the
- still waiting crowd to join him. By the time Jimmie Padgate and his ward
- had reached the pavement they had driven off.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wonder if we can get a cab,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cab!” cried the girl, taking his arm affectionately. “One would think you
- were a millionaire. You can go in a cab if you like, but I'm going home in
- a 'bus. Come along. We'll get one at Piccadilly Circus.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She hurried him on girlishly, talking of the play they had just seen. It
- was heavenly, she repeated. She had never been in the stalls before. She
- wished kind-hearted managers would send them seats every night. Then
- suddenly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why did n't you tell me how beautiful she was?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who, dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, Miss Hardacre. I think she is the loveliest thing I have ever seen.
- I could sit and look at her all day long. Why don't you paint her portrait—in
- that wonderful ivory-satin dress she was wearing to-night? And the diamond
- star in her hair that made her look like a queen—did you notice it?
- Why, Jimmie, you are not paying the slightest attention!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear, I could repeat verbatim every word you have said,” he replied
- soberly. “She is indeed one of the most beautiful of God's creatures.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you'll paint her portrait?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps, deary,” said Jimmie, “perhaps.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile in the brougham King was giving Norma an account of Jimmie's
- guardianship. She had asked him partly out of curiosity, partly to provide
- him with a subject of conversation, and partly to annoy her mother, whose
- disapproving sniff she had noted with some resentment. And this in brief
- is the tale that King told.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some ten years ago, John Marden, a brother artist of Jimmie Padgate's,
- died penniless, leaving his little girl of seven with the alternative of
- fighting her way alone through an unsympathetic world, or of depending on
- the charity of his only sister, a drunken shrew of a woman, the wife of a
- small apothecary, and the casual mother of a vague and unwashed family.
- Common decency made the first alternative impossible. On their return to
- the house after the funeral, the aunt announced her intention of caring
- for the orphan as her own flesh and blood. Jimmie, who had taken upon
- himself the functions of the intestate's temporary executor, acquiesced
- dubiously. The lady, by no means sober, shed copious tears and a rich
- perfume of whisky. She called Aline to her motherly bosom. The child, who
- had held Jimmie's hand throughout the mournful proceedings, for he had
- been her slave and playfellow for the whole of her little life, advanced
- shyly. Her aunt took her in her arms. But the child, with instinctive
- repugnance to the smell of spirits, shrank from her kisses. The shrew
- arose in the woman; she shook her vindictively, and gave her three or four
- resounding slaps on face and shoulders. Jimmie leaped from his chair, tore
- the scared little girl from the vixen's clutches, and taking her bodily in
- his arms, strode with her out of the house, leaving the apothecary and his
- wife to settle matters between them. It was only when he had walked down
- the street and hailed a cab that he began to consider the situation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What on earth am I to do with you?” he asked whimsically.
- </p>
- <p>
- The small arms tightened round his neck. “Take me to live with you,”
- sobbed the child.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings we learn wisdom. So be it,” said
- Jimmie, and he drove home with his charge.
- </p>
- <p>
- As neither aunt nor uncle nor any human being in the wide world claimed
- the child, she became mistress of Jimmie's home from that hour. Her
- father's pictures and household effects were sold off to pay his
- creditors, and a little bundle of torn frocks and linen was Aline's sole
- legacy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I happened to look in upon him the evening of her arrival,” said King, by
- way of conclusion to his story. “In those days he managed with a charwoman
- who came only in the mornings, so he was quite alone in the place with the
- kid. What do you think I found him doing? Sitting cross-legged on the
- model-platform with a great pair of scissors and needles and thread,
- cutting down one of his own night garments so as to fit her, while the kid
- in a surprising state of <i>déshabillé</i> was seated on a table, kicking
- her bare legs and giving him directions. His explanation was that Miss
- Marden's luggage had not yet arrived and she must be made comfortable for
- the night! But you never saw anything so comic in your life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He leaned back and laughed at the reminiscence, not unkindly. Mrs.
- Hardacre, bored by the unprofitable tale, stared at the dim streets out of
- the brougham window. Norma, on friendlier terms with King, the little
- human story having perhaps drawn them together, joined in the laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And now, I suppose, when she grows a bit older, Mr. Padgate will marry
- her and she will be a dutiful little wife and they will live happy and
- humdrum ever after.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope he will provide her with some decent rags to put on,” said Mrs.
- Hardacre. “Those the child was wearing to-night were fit for a servant
- maid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie would give her his skin if she could wear it,” said Morland,
- somewhat tartly.
- </p>
- <p>
- This expression of feeling gave him, for the first time, a special place
- in Norma's esteem. After all, a woman desires to like the man who in a few
- months' time may be her husband, and hitherto Morland had presented a
- negativity of character which had baffled and irritated her. The positive
- trait of loyalty to a friend she welcomed instinctively, although if
- charged with the emotion she would have repudiated the accusation. When
- the carriage stopped at the awning and red strip of carpet before the
- house in Eaton Square where a dance awaited her, and she took leave of
- him, she returned his handshake with almost a warm pressure and sent him
- away, a sanguine lover, to his club.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next morning Constance Deering, taking her on a round of shopping,
- enquired how the romance was proceeding.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He has had me on probation,” replied Norma, “and has been examining all
- my points. I rather think he finds me satisfactory, and is about to make
- an offer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What an idyllic pair you are!” laughed her friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma took the matter seriously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The man is perfectly right. He is on the lookout for a woman who can keep
- up or perhaps add to his social prestige, who can conduct the affairs of a
- large establishment when he enters political life, who can possibly give
- him a son to inherit his estate, and who can wear his family diamonds with
- distinction—and it does require a woman of presence to do justice to
- family diamonds, you know. He looks round society and sees a girl that may
- suit him. Naturally he takes his time and sizes her up. I have learned
- patience and so I let him size to his heart's content. On the other hand,
- what he can give me falls above the lower limit of my requirements, and
- personally I don't dislike him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mercy on us!” cried Constance Deering, “the man is head over ears in love
- with you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I like him all the better for dissembling it so effectually,” said
- Norma, “and I hope he'll go on dissembling to the end of the chapter. I
- hate sentiment.”
-</p>
- <p>
-They were walking slowly down Bond Street, and happened
- to pause before a picture-dealer's window, where a print of a couple of
- lovers bidding farewell caught Mrs. Deering's attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I call that pretty,” she said. “Do you hate love too?”
-</p>
- <p>
-Norma twirled her
- parasol and moved away, waiting for the other.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Love, my dear Connie, is an appetite of the lower middle classes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Norma!” the other exclaimed, “I do wish Jimmie Padgate could hear
- you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma started at the name. “What has he got to do with the matter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's one of his pictures.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, is it?” said Norma, indifferently. But feminine curiosity compelled a
- swift parting glance at the print.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I imagine our guileless friend has a lot to learn,” she added. “A few
- truths about the ways of this wicked world would do him good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I promised to go and look round his studio to-morrow morning; will you
- come and give him his first lesson?” asked Mrs. Deering, mischievously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly not,” replied Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the destiny she had previously remarked upon seemed to be fulfilling
- itself. A day or two afterwards his familiar figure burst upon her at a
- Private View in a small picture-gallery. His eyes brightened as she
- withdrew from her mother, who was accompanying her, and extended her hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear me, who would have thought of seeing you here? Do you care for
- pictures? Why have n't you told me? I am so glad.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Love of Art did n't bring me here, I assure you,” replied Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then what did?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie in his guilelessness had an uncomfortable way of posing fundamental
- questions. In that respect he was like a child. Norma smiled in silent
- contemplation of the real object of their visit. At first her mother had
- tossed the cards of invitation into the waste-paper basket. It was
- advertising impudence on the part of the painter man, whom she had met but
- once, to take her name in vain on the back of an envelope. Then hearing
- accidentally that the painter man had painted the portraits of many
- high-born ladies, including that of the Duchess of Wiltshire, and that the
- Duchess of Wiltshire herself—their own duchess, who gave Mrs.
- Hardacre the tip of her finger to shake and sometimes the tip of a rasping
- tongue to meditate upon, whom Mrs. Hardacre had tried any time these ten
- years to net for Heddon Court, their place in the country—had
- graciously promised to attend the Private View, in her character of Lady
- Patroness-in-Chief of the painter man, Mrs. Hardacre had hurried home and
- had set the servants' hall agog in search of the cards. Eventually they
- had been discovered in the dust-bin, and she had spent half an hour in
- cleansing them with bread-crumbs, much to Norma's sardonic amusement. The
- duchess not having yet arrived, Mrs. Hardacre had fallen back upon the
- deaf Dowager Countess of Solway, who was discoursing to her in a loud
- voice on her late husband's method of breeding prize pigs. Norma had
- broken away from this exhilarating lecture to greet Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- He kept his eager eyes upon her, still waiting for an answer to his
- question:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, fairly quick-witted, indicated the walls with a little
- comprehensive gesture.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you call this simpering, uninspired stuff Art?” she said, begging the
- question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it's not that,” cried Jimmie, falling into the trap. “It's really
- very good of its kind. Amazingly clever. Of course it's not highly
- finished. It's impressionistic. Look at that sweeping line from the throat
- all the way down to the hem of the skirt,” indicating the picture in front
- of them and following the curve, painter fashion, with bent-back thumb;
- “how many of your fellows in the Academy could get that so clean and
- true?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have just met Mr. Porteous, who said he could n't stay any longer
- because such quackery made him sick,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie glanced round the walls. Porteous, the Royal Academician, was
- right. The colour was thin, the modelling flat, the drawing tricky, the
- invention poor. A dull soullessness ran through the range of full-length
- portraits of women. He realised, with some distress, the clever
- insincerity of the painting; but he had known Foljambe, the author of
- these coloured crimes, as a fellow-student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and
- having come to see his work for the first time, could not bear to judge
- harshly. It was characteristic of him to expatiate on the only merit the
- work possessed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Porteous even said,” continued Norma, “that it was scandalous such a
- man should be making thousands when men of genius were making hundreds. It
- was taking the bread out of their mouths.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sorry he said that,” said Jimmie. “I think we ought rather to be
- glad that a man of poor talent has been so successful. So many of them go
- to the wall.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you always find the success of your inferior rivals so comforting?”
- asked Norma. “I don't.” She thought of the depredatory American.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie pushed his hat to the back of his head—a discoloured Homburg
- hat that had seen much wear—and rammed his hands in his pockets.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's horrible to regard oneself and one's fellow-creatures as so many
- ghastly fishes tearing one another to pieces so as to get at the same
- piece of offal. That's what it all comes to, does n't it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The picture of the rapt duke as garbage floating on the tide of London
- Society brought with it a certain humourous consolation. That of her own
- part in the metaphor did not appear so soothing. Jimmie's proposition
- being, however, incontrovertible, she changed the subject and enquired
- after Aline. Why had n't he brought her?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid we should have argued about Foljambe's painting,” said
- Jimmie, with innocent malice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And we should have agreed about it,” replied Norma. She talked about
- Aline. Morland King had been tale-bearing. It was refreshing, she
- confessed, once in a way to hear good of one's fellow-creatures: like
- getting up at six in the morning in the country and drinking milk fresh
- from the cow. It conferred a sense of unaccustomed virtue. The mention of
- milk reminded her that she was dying for tea. Was it procurable?
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's a roomful of it. Can I take you?” asked Jimmie, eagerly.
- </p>
- <p>
- She assented. Jimmie piloted her through the chattering crowd. On the way
- they passed by Mrs. Hardacre, still devoting the pearls of her attention
- to the pigs. She acknowledged his bow distantly and summoned her daughter
- to her side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you <i>affiché</i>-ing yourself with that nondescript man for?”
- she asked in a cross whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma moved away with a shrug, and went with Jimmie into the crowded
- tea-room. There, while he was fighting for tea at the buffet, she fell
- into a nest of acquaintances. Presently he emerged from the crush
- victorious, and, as he poured out the cream for her, became the
- unconscious target of sharp feminine glances.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is your friend?” asked one lady, as Jimmie retired with the
- cream-jug.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will introduce him if you like,” she replied. He reappeared and was
- introduced vaguely. Then he stood silent, listening to a jargon he was at
- a loss to comprehend. The women spoke in high, hard voices, with impure
- vowel sounds and a clipping of final consonants. The conversation gave him
- a confused impression of Ascot, a horse, a foreign prince, and a lady of
- fashion who was characterised as a “rotter.” Allusion was also made to a
- princely restaurant, which Jimmie, taken thither one evening by King,
- regarded as a fairy-land of rare and exquisite flavours, and the opinion
- was roundly expressed that you could not get anything fit to eat in the
- place and that the wines were poison.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie listened wonderingly. No one seemed disposed to controvert the
- statement, which was made by quite a young girl. Indeed one of her friends
- murmured that she had had awful filth there a few nights before. A smartly
- dressed woman of forty who had drawn away from the general conversation
- asked Jimmie if he had been to Cynthia yet. He replied that he very seldom
- went to theatres. The lady burst out laughing, and then seeing the genuine
- enquiry on his face, checked herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought you were trying to pull my leg,” she explained. “I mean
- Cynthia, the psychic, the crystal gazer. Why, every one is going crazy
- over her. Do you mean to say you have n't been?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heaven forbid!” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You may scoff, but she's wonderful. Do you know she actually gave me the
- straight tip for the Derby? She did n't mean to, for she does n't lay
- herself out for that sort of thing—but she said, after telling me a
- lot of things about myself—things that had really happened—she
- was getting tired, I must tell you—'I see something in your near
- future—it is a horse with a white star on its forehead—it has
- gone—I don't know what it means.' I went to the Derby. I had n't put
- a cent on, as I had been cleaned out at Cairo during the winter and had to
- retrench. The first horse that was led out had a white star on his
- forehead. None of the others had. It was St. Damien—a thirty to one
- chance. I backed him outright for £300. And now I have £9000 to play with.
- Don't tell me there's nothing in Cynthia after that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The knot of ladies dissolved. Jimmie put Norma's teacup down and went
- slowly back with her to the main room. He was feeling depressed, having
- lost his bearings in this unfamiliar world. Suddenly he halted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish you could pinch me,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To test whether I am awake. Have I really heard a sane and educated lady
- expressing her belief in the visions of a crystal-gazing adventuress?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have. She believes firmly. So do heaps of women.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope to heaven you don't!” he cried with a sudden intensity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What concern can my faith be to you?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon. No concern at all,” he said apologetically. “But I
- generally blurt out what is in my mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And what is in your mind? I am a person you can be quite frank with.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I could n't bear the poem of your life to be sullied by all these
- vulgarities,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As I remarked to you the first evening I met you, Mr. Padgate,” she said,
- holding out her hand by way of dismissal, “you are an astonishing person!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The poem of her life! The phrase worried her before she slept that night.
- She shook the buzzing thing away from her impatiently. The poem of her
- life! The man was a fool.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter III—A MODERN BETROTHAL
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> YOUNG woman bred
- to a material view of the cosmos and self-trained to cynical expression of
- her opinions may thoroughly persuade herself that marriage is a social
- bargain in which it would be absurd for sentiment to have a place, and yet
- when the hour comes for deciding on so trivial an engagement, may find
- herself in an irritatingly unequable frame of mind. For Norma the hour had
- all but arrived. Morland King had asked to see her alone in view of an
- important conversation. She had made an appointment for ten o'clock,
- throwing over her evening's engagements. Her parents were entertaining a
- couple of friends in somebody else's box at the opera, and would return in
- time to save the important conversation from over-tediousness. She
- intended to amuse herself placidly with a novel until King's arrival.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was a week or two after her encounter with Jimmie at the
- picture-gallery, since which occasion she had neither seen nor heard of
- him. He had faded from the surface of a consciousness kept on continued
- strain by the thousand incidents and faces of a London season. To Jimmie
- the series of meetings had been a phenomenon of infinite import. She had
- come like a queen of romance into his homely garden, and her radiance
- lingered, making the roses redder and the grass more green. But the
- queenly apparition herself had other things to think about, and when she
- had grown angry and called him a fool, had dismissed him definitely from
- her mind. It was annoying therefore that on this particular evening the
- fool phrase should buzz again in her ears.
- </p>
- <p>
- She threw down her book and went on to the balcony, where, on this close
- summer night, she could breathe a little cool air. A clock somewhere in
- the house chimed the half-hour. Morland was to come at ten. She longed
- for, yet dreaded, his coming; regretted that she had stayed away from the
- opera, where, after all, she could have observed the everlasting human
- comedy. She had dined early; the evening had been interminable; she felt
- nervous, and raged at her weakness. She was tired, out of harmony with
- herself, fretfully conscious too of the jarring notes in a room furnished
- by uneducated people of sudden wealth. The Wolff-Salamons, out of the
- kindness of their shrewd hearts, had offered the house for the season to
- the Hardacres, who had accepted the free quarters with profuse
- expressions of gratitude; which, however, did not prevent Mr. Hardacre
- from railing at the distance of the house (which was in Holland Park) from
- his club, or his wife from deprecating to her friends her temporary
- residence in what she was pleased to term the Ghetto. Nor did the
- Wolff-Salamons' generosity mitigate the effect of their furniture on
- Norma's nerves. When Jimmie's phrase came into her head with the
- suddenness of a mosquito, she could bear the room no longer.
- </p>
- <p>
- She sat on the balcony and waited for Morland. There at least she was free
- from the flaring gold and blue, and the full-length portrait of the lady
- of the house, on which with delicate savagery the eminent painter had
- catalogued all the shades of her ancestral vulgarity. Perhaps it was this
- portrait that had brought back the irony of Jimmie's tribute. The poem of
- her life! She sat with her chin on her palm, thinking bitterly of
- circumstance. She had never been happy, had grown to disbelieve in so
- absurd and animal a state. It had always been the same, as far back as she
- could remember. Her childhood: nurses and governesses—a swift
- succession of the latter till she began to regard them as remote from her
- inner life as the shop girl or railway guard with whom she came into
- casual contact. The life broken by visits abroad to fashionable watering
- or gambling places where she wandered lonely and proud, neglected by her
- parents, watching with keen eyes and imperturbable face the frivolities,
- the vices, the sordidnesses, taking them all in, speculating upon them,
- resolving some problems unaided and storing up others for future
- elucidation. Her year at the expensive finishing school in Paris where the
- smartest daughters of America babbled and chattered of money, money, till
- the air seemed unfit for woman to breathe unless it were saturated with
- gold dust. As hers was not, came discontent and overweening ambitions. Yet
- the purity was not all killed. She remembered her first large
- dinner-party. The same Lord Wyniard of the unclean scandal had taken her
- down. He was thirty years older than she, and an unsavoury reputation had
- reached even her young ears. The man regarded her with the leer of a
- satyr. She realised with a shudder for the first time the meaning of a
- phrase she had constantly met with in French novels—“<i>il la
- dévêtit de ses yeux</i>.” His manner was courtly, his air of breeding
- perfect; yet he managed to touch her fingers twice, and he sought to lead
- her on to dubious topics of conversation. She was frightened.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the drawing-room, seeing him approach, she lost her head, took shelter
- with her mother, and trembling whispered to her, “Don't let that man come
- and talk to me again, mother, he's a beast.” She was bidden not to be a
- fool. The man had a title and twenty thousand a year, and she had
- evidently made an impression. A week afterwards her mother invited a
- bishop and his wife and Lord Wyniard to dinner, and Lord Wyniard took
- Norma down again. And that was her start in the world. She had followed
- the preordained course till now, with many adventures indeed by the way,
- but none that could justify the haunting phrase—the poem of her
- life!
- </p>
- <p>
- Was the man such a fool, after all? Was it even ignorance on his part? Was
- it not, rather, wisdom on a lofty plane immeasurably above the
- commonplaces of ignorance and knowledge? The questions presented
- themselves to her vaguely. She was filled with a strange unrest, a craving
- for she knew not what. Yet she would shortly have in her grasp all—or
- nearly all—that she had aimed at in life. She counted the tale of
- her future possessions—houses, horses, diamonds, and the like. She
- seemed to have owned them a thousand years.
- </p>
- <p>
- The clock in the house chimed ten in a pretentious musical way, which
- irritated her nerves. The silence after the last of the ten inexorable
- tinkles fell gratefully. Then she realised that in a minute or two Morland
- would arrive. Her heart began to beat, and she clasped her hands together
- in a nervous suspense of which she had not dreamed herself capable. A cab
- turned the corner of the street, approached with crescendo rattle, and
- stopped at the house. She saw Morland alight and reach up to pay the
- cabman. For a silly moment she had a wild impulse to cry to him over
- the balcony to go away and leave her in peace. She waited
- until she heard the footman open the front door and admit him, then
- bracing herself, she entered the drawing-room, looked instinctively in a
- mirror, and sat down.
- </p>
- <p>
- She met him cordially enough, returned his glance somewhat defiantly. The
- sight of him, florid, sleek, faultlessly attired, brought her back within
- the every-day sphere of dulled sensation. He held her hand long enough for
- him to say, after the first greeting:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can guess what I've come for, can't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose I do,” she admitted in an off-hand way. “You will find
- frankness one of my vices. Won't you sit down?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She motioned him to a chair, and seating herself on a sofa, prepared to
- listen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've come to ask you to marry me,” said King.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?” she asked, looking at him steadily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to know how it strikes you,” he continued after a brief pause. “I
- think you know practically all that I can tell you about myself. I can
- give you what you want up to about fifteen thousand a year—it will
- be more when my mother dies. We're decent folk—old county family—I
- can offer you whatever society you like. You and I have tastes in common,
- care for the same things, same sort of people. I'm sound in wind and limb—never
- had a day's illness in my life, so you would n't have to look after a
- cripple. And I'd give the eyes out of my head to have you; you know that.
- How does it strike you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma had averted her glance from him towards the end of his speech, and
- leaning back was looking intently at her hands in her lap. For the moment
- she felt it impossible to reply. The words that had formulated themselves
- in her mind, “I think, Mr. King, the arrangement will be eminently
- advantageous to both parties,” were too ludicrous in their adequacy to the
- situation. So she merely sat silent and motionless, regarding her
- manicured finger-nails, and awaiting another opening. King changed his
- seat to the sofa, by her side, and leaned forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you had been a simpler, more unsophisticated girl, Norma, I should
- have begun differently. I thought it would please you if I put sentiment
- aside.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her head motioned acquiescence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I'm not going to put it aside,” he went on. “It has got its place in
- the world, even when a man makes a proposal of marriage. And when I say
- I'm in love with you, that I have been in love with you since the first
- time I saw you, it's honest truth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say you have a regard, a high regard, even,” said Norma, still not
- looking at him, “and I'll believe you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm hanged if I will,” said Morland. “I say I'm in love with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma suddenly softened. The phrase tickled her ears again—this time
- pleasantly. The previous half-hour's groping in the dark of herself seemed
- to have resulted in discovery. She gave him a fleeting smile of mockery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen,” she said. “If you will be contented with regard, a high regard,
- on my side, I will marry you. I really like you very much. Will that do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is all I ask now. The rest will come by and by.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm not so sure. We had better be perfectly frank with each other from
- the start, for we shall respect each other far more. Anyhow, if you treat
- me decently, as I am sure you will, you may be satisfied that I shall
- carry out my part of the bargain. My bosom friends tell one another that I
- am worldly and heartless and all that—but I've never lied seriously
- or broken a promise in my life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well. Let us leave it at that,” said Morland. “I suppose your people
- will have no objection?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “None whatever,” replied Norma, drily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When can I announce our engagement?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whenever you like.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He took two or three reflective steps about the room and reseated himself
- on the sofa.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Norma,” he said softly, bending towards her, “I believe on such occasions
- there is a sort of privilege accorded to a fellow—may I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She glanced at him, hesitated, then proffered her cheek. He touched it
- with his lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- The ceremony over, there ensued a few minutes of anticlimax. Norma
- breathed more freely. There had been no difficulties, no hypocrisies. The
- mild approach to rapture on Morland's part was perhaps, after all, only a
- matter of common decency, to be accepted by her as a convention of the <i>scène
- à faire</i>. So was the kiss. She broke the spell of awkwardness by
- rising, crossing the room, and turning off an electric pendant that
- illuminated the full-length portrait on the wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can't stand Mrs. Wolff-Salamon's congratulations so soon,” she said
- with a laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Conversation again became possible. They discussed arrangements. King
- suggested a marriage in the autumn. Norma, with a view to the prolongation
- of what appealed to her as a novel and desirable phase of existence—maidenhood
- relieved of the hateful duty of husband-hunting and unclouded by parental
- disapprobation—pleaded for delay till Christmas. She argued that in
- all human probability the Parliamentary vacancy at Cosford, the safe seat
- on which Morland reckoned, would occur in the autumn, and he could not fix
- the date of an election at his own good pleasure. He must, besides, devote
- his entire energy to the business; time enough when it was over to think
- of such secondary matters as weddings, bridal tours, and the setting up of
- establishments.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you have to be considered, Norma,” he said, half convinced.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Morland,” she replied with a derisive lip, “I should never dream
- of coming between you and your public career.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He reflected a moment. “Why should we not get married at once?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma laughed. “You are positively pastoral! No, my dear Morland, that's
- what the passionate young lover always says to the coy maiden in the play,
- but if you will remember, it does n't seem to work even there. Besides,
- you must let me gratify my ambitions. When I was very young, I vowed I
- would marry an emperor. Then I toned him down into a prince. Later,
- becoming more practical, I dreamed of a peer. Finally I descended to a
- Member of Parliament. I can't marry you before you are a Member.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You could have had dozens of 'em for the asking, I'm sure,” returned the
- prospective legislator with a grin. “Take them all round, they're a shoddy
- lot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He yielded eventually to Norma's proposal, alluding, however, with an air
- of ruefulness, to the infinite months of waiting he would have to endure.
- Tactfully she switched him off the line of sentiment to that of soberer
- politics. She put forward the platitude that a Parliamentary life was one
- of great interest. Morland did not rise even to this level of enthusiasm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Pon my soul, I really don't know why I'm going in for it. I promised old
- Potter years ago that I would come in when he gave up, and the people down
- there more or less took it for granted, the duchess included, and so
- without having thought much of it one way or the other, I find myself
- caught in a net. It will be a horrible bore. The whole of the session will
- be one dismal yawn. Never to be certain of sitting down to one's dinner in
- peace and comfort. Never to know when one will have to rush off at a
- moment's notice to take part in a confounded division. To have shoals of
- correspondence on subjects one knows nothing of and cares less for. It
- will be the life of a sweated tailor. And I, of all people, who like to
- take things easy! I'm not quite sure whether I'm an idiot or a hero.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He ended in a short laugh and leaned against the mantelpiece, his hands in
- his pockets.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be the sweet and pretty thing for me to say,” remarked Norma,
- “that in my eyes you will always be heroic.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, 'pon my soul, I shall be. We 'll see precious little of one another.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We 'll have all the more chance of prolonging our illusions,” she replied.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the whole, however, her conduct towards him was irreproachable. The
- thaw from her usual iciness to this comparatively harmless raillery
- flattered the lover's self-esteem. Woman-wise, as every man in the
- profundity of his vain heart believes himself to be, he not only
- attributed the change to his own powers of seduction, but interpreted as
- significant of a yet greater transformation. A man of Morland's type is
- seldom afflicted with a morbid subtlety of perception; and when he has
- gained for his own personal use and adornment a woman of singular
- distinction, he may be readily pardoned for a slight attack of fatuity.
- </p>
- <p>
- The idyllic hour was brought to a close by the return of Norma's parents.
- As Norma, shrinking from the vulgarity of the prearranged scene and
- intolerable maternal coaching in her part, had not informed them of her
- appointment with Morland, alleging as an excuse for not going to the opera
- a disinclination to be bored to tears by <i>Aida</i>, they were mildly
- surprised by his presence in the house at so late an hour. In a few words
- he acquainted them with what had taken place. He formally asked their
- consent. Mr. Hardacre wrung his hand fervently. Mrs. Hardacre's steel-grey
- eyes glittered welcome into her family. She turned to her dear child and
- expressed her heartfelt joy. Norma, submissive to conventional decencies,
- suffered herself to be kissed. Mother and daughter had given up kissing as
- a habit for some years past, though they practised it occasionally before
- strangers. Mr. Hardacre put his arm around her in a diffident way and
- patted her back, murmuring incoherent wishes for her happiness. Everything
- to be said and done was effected in a perfectly well-bred manner. Norma
- spoke very little, regarding the proceedings with an impersonal air of
- satiric interest. At last Mr. Hardacre suggested to Morland a chat over
- whisky and soda and a cigar in the library. In unsophisticated circles it
- is not unusual at such a conjuncture for a girl's friends and relations to
- afford the lovers some unblushing opportunity of bidding each other a
- private farewell. Norma, anticipating any such possible though improbable
- departure from sanity on the part of her parents, made good her escape
- after shaking hands in an ordinary way with Morland. Mrs. Hardacre
- followed her upstairs, eager to learn details, which were eventually given
- with some acidity by her daughter, and the two men retired below.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My boy,” said Mr. Hardacre, as they parted an hour afterwards, “you will
- find that Norma has had the training that will make her a damned fine
- woman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter IV—THE GREAT FROCK EPISODE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">J</span>IMMIE PADGATE was
- the son of a retired commander in the Navy, of irreproachable birth and
- breeding, of a breezy impulsive disposition, and with a pretty talent as
- an amateur actor. Finding idleness the root of all boredom, he took to the
- stage, and during the first week of his first provincial tour fell in love
- with the leading lady, a fragile waif of a woman of vague upbringing. That
- so delicate a creature should have to face the miseries of a touring life—the
- comfortless lodgings, the ill-cooked food, the damp death-traps of
- dressing-rooms, the long circuitous Sunday train-journeys—roused him
- to furious indignation. He married her right away, took her incontinently
- from things theatrical, and found congenial occupation in adoring her. But
- the hapless lady survived her marriage only long enough to see Jimmie safe
- into short frocks, and then fell sick and died. The impulsive sailor
- educated the boy in his own fashion for a dozen years or so, and then he,
- in his turn, died, leaving his son a small inheritance to be administered
- by his only brother, an easy-going bachelor in a Government office. This
- inheritance sufficed to send Jimmie to Harrow, where he began his
- life-long friendship with Morland King, and to the École des Beaux-Arts in
- Paris, where he learned many useful things beside the method of painting
- pictures. When he returned to London, his uncle handed him over the
- hundred or two that remained, and, his duty being accomplished, fell over
- a precipice in the Alps, and concerned himself no more about his nephew.
- Then Jimmie set to work to earn his living.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he snatched the child Aline from the embraces of her tipsy aunt and
- carried her out into the street, wondering what in the world he should do
- with her, he was just under thirty years of age. How he had earned a
- livelihood till then and kept himself free from debt he scarcely knew.
- When he obtained a fair price for a picture, he deposited a lump sum with
- his landlord in respect of rent in advance, another sum with the keeper of
- the little restaurant where he ate his meals, and frittered the rest away
- among his necessitous friends. In the long intervals between sales, he
- either went about penniless or provided himself with pocket money by black
- and white or other odd work that comes in the young artist's way. His
- residence at that time consisted in a studio and a bedroom in Camden Town.
- His wants were few, his hopes were many. He loved his art, he loved the
- world. His optimistic temperament brought him smiles from all those with
- whom he came in contact—even from dealers, when he wasted their time
- in expounding to them the commercial value of an unmarketable picture. He
- was quite happy, quite irresponsible. When soberer friends reproached him
- for his hand-to-mouth way of living, he argued that if he scraped to-day
- he would probably spread the butter thick tomorrow, thus securing the
- average, the golden mean, which was the ideal of their respectability. As
- for success, that elusive will-o'-the-wisp, the man who did not enjoy the
- humour of failure never deserved to succeed.
- </p>
- <p>
- But when he had rescued Aline from the limbo over the small apothecary's
- shop, as thoughtlessly and as gallantly as his father before him had
- rescued the delicate lady from the trials of theatrical vagabondage, he
- found himself face to face with a perplexing problem. That first night he
- had risen from an amorphous bed he had arranged for himself on the studio
- floor, and entered his own bedroom on tiptoe, and looked with pathetic
- helplessness on the tiny child asleep beneath his bedclothes. If it had
- been a boy, he would have had no particular puzzle. A boy could have been
- stowed in a corner of the studio, where he could have learned manners and
- the fear of God and the way of smiling at adversity. He would have
- profited enormously, as Jimmie felt assured, by his education. But with a
- girl it was vastly different. An endless vista of shadowy, dreamy,
- delicate possibilities perplexed him. He conceived women as beings
- ethereal, with a range of exquisite emotions denied to masculine
- coarseness. Even the Rue Bonaparte had not destroyed his illusion, and he
- still attributed to the fair Maenads of the Bal des Quatre-z' Arts the
- lingering fragrance of the original Psyche. Of course Jimmie was a fool,
- as ten years afterwards Norma had decided; but this view of himself not
- occurring to him, he had to manage according to his lights. Here was this
- mysterious embryo goddess entirely dependent on him. No corner of the
- studio and rough-and-tumble discipline for her. She must sleep on down and
- be covered with silk; the airs of heaven must not visit her cheek too
- roughly; the clatter of the brazen world must not be allowed to deafen her
- to her own sweet inner harmonies. Jimmie was sorely perplexed.
- </p>
- <p>
- His charwoman next morning could throw no light on the riddle. She had
- seven children of her own, four of them girls, and they had to get along
- the best way they could. She was of opinion that if let alone and just
- physicked when she had any complaint, Aline would grow up of her own
- accord. Jimmie said that this possibility had not struck him, but
- doubtless the lady was right. Could she tell him how many times a day a
- little girl ought to be fed and what she was to eat? The charwoman's draft
- upon her own family experiences enlightened Jimmie so far that he put a
- sovereign into her hand to provide a dinner for her children. After that
- he consulted her no more. It was an expensive process.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile it was obvious that a studio and one bedroom would not be
- sufficient accommodation, and Jimmie, greatly daring, took a house. He
- also engaged a resident housekeeper for himself and a respectable cat for
- Aline, and when he had settled down, after having spent every penny he
- could scrape together on furniture, began to wonder how he could pay the
- rent. A month or two before he would have as soon thought of buying a
- palace in Park Lane as renting a house in St. John's Wood—a cheap,
- shabby little house, it is true; but still a house, with drawing-room,
- dining-room, bedrooms, and a studio built over the space where once the
- garden tried to smile. He wandered through it with a wonderment quite as
- childish as that of Aline, who had helped him to buy the furniture. But
- how was he ever going to pay the rent?
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time he ceased asking the question. The ravens that fed Elijah
- provided him with the twenty quarterly pieces of gold. Picture-dealers of
- every hue and grade supplied him with the wherewithal to live. In those
- early days he penetrated most of the murky byways of his art—alleys
- he would have passed by with pinched nose a year before, when an empty
- pocket and an empty stomach concerned himself alone. Now, when the money
- for the last picture had gone, and no more was forthcoming by way of
- advance on royalties on plates, and the black and white market was
- congested, he did amazing things. He copied old Masters for a red-faced,
- beery print-seller in Frith Street, who found some mysterious market for
- them. The price can be gauged by the fact that years afterwards Jimmie
- recognised one of his own copies in an auction room, and heard it knocked
- down as a genuine Velasquez for eleven shillings and sixpence. He also
- painted oil landscapes for a dealer who did an immense trade in this line,
- selling them to drapers and fancy-warehousemen, who in their turn retailed
- them to an art-loving public, framed in gold, at one and eleven pence
- three farthings; and the artist's rate of payment was five shillings a
- dozen—panels supplied, but not the paint. To see Jimmie attack these
- was the child Aline's delight. In after years she wept in a foolish way
- over the memory. He would do half a dozen at a time: first dash in the
- foregrounds, either meadows or stretches of shore, then wash in bold,
- stormy skies, then a bit of water, smooth or rugged according as it was
- meant to represent pool or sea; then a few vigorous strokes would put in a
- ship and a lighthouse on one panel, a tree and a cow on a second, a woman
- and a cottage on a third. And all the time, as he worked at lightning
- speed, he would laugh and joke with the child, who sat fascinated by the
- magic with which each mysterious mass of daubs and smudges grew into a
- living picture under his hand. When his invention was at a loss, he would
- call upon her to suggest accessories; and if she cried out “windmill,”
- suddenly there would spring from under the darting brush-point a mill with
- flapping sails against the sky. Now and again in his hurry Jimmie would
- make a mistake, and Aline would shriek with delight:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, Jimmie, that's a cow!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And sure enough, horned and uddered, and with casual tail, a cow was
- wandering over the ocean, mildly speculating on the lighthouse. Then
- Jimmie would roar with laughter, and he would tether the cow to a buoy and
- put in a milkmaid in a boat coming to milk the cow, and at Aline's
- breathless suggestion, a robber with a bow and arrow shooting the
- unnatural animal from the lighthouse top. Thus he would waste an hour
- elaborating the absurdity, finishing it off beautifully so that it should
- be worthy of a place on Aline's bedroom wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- The months and years passed, and Jimmie found himself, if not on the
- highroad to fortune, at least relieved of the necessity of frequenting the
- murky byways aforesaid. He even acquired a little reputation as a portrait
- painter, much to his conscientious, but comical despair. “I am taking
- people's money under false pretences,” he would say. “I am an imaginative
- painter. I can't do portraits. Your real portrait painter can jerk the
- very soul out of a man and splash it on to his face. I can't. Why do they
- come to me to be photographed, when Brown, Jones, or Robinson would give
- them a portrait? Why can't they buy my subject-pictures which are good? In
- taking their money I am a mercenary, unscrupulous villain!” Indeed, if
- Aline had not been there to keep him within the bounds of sanity, his
- Quixotism might have led him to send his clients to Brown or Jones, where
- they could get better value for their money. But Aline was there, rising
- gradually from the little child into girlhood, and growing in grace day by
- day. After all, the charwoman seemed to be right. The tender plant, left
- to itself, thrived, shot up apparently of its own accord, much to Jimmie's
- mystification. It never occurred to him that he was the all in all of her
- training—her mother, father, nurse, teacher, counsellor, example.
- Everything she was susceptible of being taught by a human being, he taught
- her—from the common rudiments when she was a little child to the
- deeper things of literature and history when she was a ripening maiden.
- Her life was bound up with his. Her mind took the prevailing colour of his
- mind as inevitably as the grasshopper takes the green of grass or the
- locust the grey-brown of the sand. But Jimmie in his simple way regarded
- the girl's sweet development as a miracle of spontaneous growth.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet Aline on her part instinctively appreciated the child in Jimmie, and
- from very early years assumed a quaint attitude of protection in common
- every-day matters. From the age of twelve she knew the exact state of his
- financial affairs, and gravely deliberated with him over items of special
- expenditure; and when she was fourteen she profited by a change in
- housekeepers to take upon herself the charge of the household. Her
- unlimited knowledge of domestic science was another thing that astounded
- Jimmie, who to the end of his days would have cheerfully given two
- shillings a pound for potatoes. And thus, while adoring Jimmie and
- conscious that she owed him the quickening of the soul within her, she
- became undisputed mistress of her small material domain, and regarded him
- as a kind of godlike baby.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last there came a memorable day. According to a custom five or six
- years old, Jimmie and Aline were to spend New Year's Eve with some
- friends, the Frewen-Smiths.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was a rising architect who had lately won two or three important
- competitions and had gradually been extending his scale of living. The New
- Year's Eve party was to be a much more elaborate affair than usual. Aline
- had received a beautifully printed card of invitation, with “Dancing” in
- the corner. She looked through her slender wardrobe. Not a frock could she
- find equal to such a festival. And as she gazed wistfully at the simple
- child's finery laid out upon her bed, a desire that had dawned vaguely
- some time before and had week by week broadened into craving, burst into
- the full blaze of a necessity. She sat down on her bed and puckered her
- young brows, considering the matter in all its aspects. Then, with her
- sex's guilelessness, she went down to the studio, where Jimmie was
- painting, and put her arms round his neck. Did he think she could get a
- new frock for Mrs. Frewen-Smith's party?
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear child,” said Jimmie in astonishment, “what an idiotic question!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I want really a nice one,” said Aline, coaxingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then get one, dear,” said Jimmie, swinging round on his stool, so as to
- look at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I'd like you to give me this one as a present. I don't want it to be
- like the others that I help myself to and you know nothing about—although
- they all are presents, if it comes to that—I want you to give me
- this one specially.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie laid down palette and mahl-stick and brush, and from a letter-case
- in his pocket drew out three five-pound notes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will this buy one?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl's eyes filled with tears. “Oh, you are silly, Jimmie,” she cried.
- “A quarter of it will do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She took one of the notes, kissed him, and ran out of the studio, leaving
- Jimmie wondering why the female sex were so prone to weeping. The next day
- he saw a strange woman established at the dining-room table. He learned
- that it was a dressmaker. For the next week an air of mystery hung over
- the place. The girl, in her neat short frock and with her soft brown hair
- tied with a ribbon, went about her household duties as usual; but there
- was a subdued light in her eyes that Jimmie noticed, but could not
- understand. Occasionally he enquired about the new frock. It was
- progressing famously, said Aline. It was going to be a most beautiful
- frock. He would have seen nothing like it since he was born.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Vanity, thy name is little girls,” he laughed, pinching her chin.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the evening of the 31st of December Jimmie, in his well-worn evening
- suit, came down to the dining-room, and for the first time in his life
- waited for Aline. He sat down by the fire with a book. The cab that had
- been ordered drew up outside. It was a remarkable thing for Aline to be
- late. After a while the door opened, and a voice said, “I am ready.”
- Jimmie rose, turned round, and for a moment stared stupidly at the sight
- that met his eyes. It was Aline certainly, but a new Aline, quite a
- different Aline from the little girl he had known hitherto. Her brown hair
- was done up in a mysterious manner on the top of her head, and the tip of
- a silver-mounted tortoise-shell comb (a present, she afterwards confessed,
- from Constance Deering, who was in her secret) peeped coquettishly from
- the coils. The fashionably-cut white evening dress showed her neck and
- shoulders and pretty round arms, and displayed in a manner that was a
- revelation the delicate curves of her young figure. A little gold locket
- that Jimmie had given her rose and fell on her bosom. She met his stare in
- laughing, blushing defiance, and whisked round so as to present a side
- view of the costume. The astonishing thing had a train.
- </p>
- <p>
- “God bless my soul!” cried Jimmie. “It never entered my head!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That you're a young woman, that you're grown up, that we'll have all the
- young men in the place falling in love with you, that you'll be getting
- married, and that I'm becoming a decrepit old fogey. Well, God bless my
- soul!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She came up and put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You think it becoming, don't you, Jimmie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Becoming! Why, it's ravishing! It's irresistible! Do you mean to say that
- you got all that, gloves and shoes and everything, out of a five-pound
- note?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good Lord!” said Jimmie in astonishment.
- </p>
- <p>
- In this manner came realisation of the fact that the tiny child he had
- undressed and put to sleep in his own bed ten years before had grown into
- a woman. The shock brought back some of the old perplexities, and created
- for a short while an odd shyness in his dealings with her. He treated her
- deferentially, regarded apologetically the mean viands on which he forced
- this fresh-winged goddess to dine, went out and wasted his money on
- adornments befitting her rank, and behaved with such pathetic foolishness
- that Aline, crying and laughing, threatened to run away and earn her
- living as a nursery-maid if he did not amend his conduct. Whereupon there
- was a very touching scene, and Jimmie's undertaking to revert to his
- previous brutality put their relations once more on a sound basis; but all
- the same there stole into Jimmie's environment a subtle grace which the
- sensitive in him was quick to perceive. Its fragrance revived the tender
- grace of a departed day, before he had taken Aline—a day that had
- ended in a woeful flight to Paris, where he had arrived just in time to
- follow through the streets a poor little funeral procession to a poor
- little grave-side in the cemetery of Bagneux. Her name was Sidonie
- Bourdain, and she was a good girl and had loved Jimmie with all her heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- The tender grace was that of March violets. The essence of a maid's
- springtide diffused itself through the house, and springtide began to bud
- again in the man's breast. It was a strange hyperphysical transfusion of
- quickening sap. His jesting pictured himself as of a sudden grown hoary,
- the potential father of a full-blown woman, two or three years short of
- grandfatherdom. But these were words thrown off from the very lightness of
- a mood, and vanishing like bubbles in the air. Deep down worked the
- craving of the man still young for love and romance and the sweet message
- in a woman's eyes. It was a gentle madness—utterly unsuspected by
- its victim—but a madness such as the god first inflicts upon him
- whom he desires to drive to love's destruction. In the middle of it all,
- while Aline and himself were finding a tentative footing on the newly
- established basis of their relationship, the ironical deity took him by
- the hand and led him into the cold and queenly presence of Norma Hardacre.
- .
- </p>
- <p>
- After that Jimmie fell back into his old ways with Aline, and the Great
- Frock Episode was closed.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter V—A BROKEN BUTTERFLY
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>LINE sat in the
- studio, the picture of housewifely concern, mending Jimmie's socks. It was
- not the unoffending garments that brought the expression into her face,
- but her glance at the old Dutch clock—so old and crotchety that
- unless it were tilted to one side it would not consent to go—whose
- hands had come with an asthmatic whir to the hour of eleven. And Jimmie
- had not yet come down to breakfast. She had called him an hour ago. His
- cheery response had been her sanction for putting the meal into
- preparation, and now the bacon would be uneatable. She sighed. Taking care
- of Jimmie was no light responsibility. Not that he would complain; far
- from it. He would eat the bacon raw or calcined if she set it before him.
- But that would not be for his good, and hence the responsibility. In
- slipping from her grasp and doing the things he ought not to do, he was an
- eel or a twelve-year-old schoolboy. Last night, for instance, instead of
- finishing off some urgent work for an art periodical, he had assured her
- in his superlative manner that it was of no consequence, and had wasted
- his evening with her at the Earl's Court Exhibition. It had been warm and
- lovely, and the band and the bright crowd had set her young pulses
- throbbing, and they had sat at a little table, and Jimmie had given her
- some celestial liquid which she had sucked through a straw, and
- altogether, to use her own unsophisticated dialect, it had been perfectly
- heavenly. But it was wrong of Jimmie to have sacrificed himself for her
- pleasure, and to have deceived her into accepting it. For at three or four
- o'clock she had heard him tiptoeing softly past her door on his way to
- bed, and the finished work she had found on his table this morning
- betrayed his occupation. Even the consolation of scolding him for
- oversleep and a spoiled breakfast was thus denied. She spread out her hand
- in the sock so as to gauge the extent of a hole, and, contemplating it,
- sighed again.
- </p>
- <p>
- The studio was a vast room distempered in bluish grey, and Aline, sitting
- solitary at the far end, in the line of a broad quivering beam of light
- that streamed through a lofty window running the whole width of the
- north-east side, looked like a little brown saint in a bare conventual
- hall. For an ascetic simplicity was the studio's key-note. No curtains,
- draperies, screens, Japaneseries, no artistic scheme of decoration, no
- rare toys of furniture filled the place with luxurious inspiration. Here
- and there about the walls hung a sketch by a brother artist; of his own
- unsold pictures and studies some were hung, others stacked together on the
- floor. An old, rusty, leather drawing-room suite distributed about the
- studio afforded sitting accommodation. There was the big easel bearing the
- subject-picture on which he now was at work, with a smaller easel carrying
- the study by its side. On the model-stand a draped lay figure sprawled
- grotesquely. A long deal table was the untidy home of piles of papers,
- books, colours, brushes, artistic properties. A smaller table at the end
- where Aline sat was laid for breakfast. It was one of Jimmie's
- eccentricities to breakfast in the studio. The dining-room for dinner—he
- yielded to the convention; for lunch, perhaps; for breakfast, no. All his
- intimate life had been passed in the studio; the prim little drawing-room
- he scarcely entered half-a-dozen times in the year.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline was contemplating the hole in the sock when the door opened. She
- sprang to her feet, advanced a step, and then halted with a little
- exclamation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it's you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. Are you disappointed?” asked the smiling youth who had appeared
- instead of the expected Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can get over it. How are you, Tony?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Anthony Merewether gave her the superfluous assurance that he was in
- good health. He had the pleasant boyish face and clean-limbed figure of
- the young Englishman upon whom cares sit lightly. Aline resumed her work
- demurely. The young man seated himself near by.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How is Jimmie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whom are you calling 'Jimmie'?” asked Aline. “Mr. Padgate, if you
- please.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You call him Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've called him so ever since I could speak. I think it was one of the
- first three words I learned. When you can say the same, you can call him
- Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, how is Mr. Padgate?” the snubbed youth asked with due humility.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can never tell how a man is before breakfast. Why are n't you at
- work?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He bowed to her sagacity, and in answer to her question explained the
- purport of his visit. He was going to spend the day sketching up the
- river. Would she put on her hat and come with him?
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fine lot of sketching you'd do, if I did,” said Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man vowed with fervour that as soon as he had settled down to a
- view he would work furiously and would not exchange a remark with her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which would be very amusing for me,” retorted Aline. “No, I can't come.
- I'm far too busy. I've got to hunt up a model for the new picture.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony leant back in his chair, dispirited, and began to protest. She
- laughed at his woeful face, and half yielding, questioned him about
- trains. He overwhelmed her with a rush of figures, then paused to give her
- time to recover. His eyes wandered to the breakfast-table, where lay
- Jimmie's unopened correspondence. One letter lay apart from the others.
- Tony took it up idly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here's a letter come to the wrong house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No; it is quite right,” said Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is David Rendell, Esquire?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Rendell is a friend of Jimmie's, I believe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never heard of him. What's he like?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know. Jimmie never speaks of him,” replied Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's odd.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man threw the letter on the table and returned to the subject of
- the outing. She must accompany him. He felt a perfect watercolour working
- itself up within him. One of those dreamy bits of backwater. He had a
- title for it already, “The Heart of Summer.” The difference her presence
- in the punt would make to the picture would be that between life and
- deadness.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl fluttered a shy, pleased glance at him. But she loved to tease;
- besides, had she not but lately awakened to the sweet novelty of her young
- womanhood?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps Jimmie won't let me go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony sprang to his feet. “Jimmie won't let you go!” he exclaimed in
- indignant echo. “Did he ever deny you a pleasure since you were born?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her eyes sparkled at his tribute to the adored one's excellences. “That's
- just where it is, you see, Tony. His very goodness to me won't let me do
- things sometimes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The servant hurried in with the breakfast-tray and the news that the
- master was coming down. Aline anxiously inspected the bacon. To her relief
- it was freshly cooked. In a minute or two a voice humming an air was heard
- outside, and Jimmie entered, smilingly content with existence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hallo, Tony, what are you doing here, wasting the morning light? Have
- some breakfast? Why haven't you laid a place for him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony declined the invitation, and explained his presence. Jimmie rubbed
- his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A day on the river! The very thing for Aline. It will do her good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did n't say I was going, Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not going? Rubbish. Put on your things and be off at once.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How can I until I have given you your breakfast? And then there's the
- model—you would never be able to engage her by yourself. And you
- must have her to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know I'm helpless, dear, but I can engage a model.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And waste your time. Besides, you won't be able to find the address.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are cab-horses, dear, with unerring instinct.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your breakfast is getting cold, Jimmie,” said Aline, not condescending to
- notice the outrage of her economic principles.
- </p>
- <p>
- Eventually Jimmie had his way. Tony Merewether was summarily dismissed,
- but bidden to return in an hour's time, when Aline would be graciously
- pleased to be ready. She poured out Jimmie's coffee, and sat at the side
- of the table, watching him eat. He turned to his letters, picked up the
- one addressed to “David Rendell.” Aline noticed a shade of displeasure
- cross his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is Mr. Rendell, Jimmie?” asked Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A man I know, dear,” he replied, putting the envelope in his pocket. He
- went on with his breakfast meditatively for a few moments, then opened his
- other letters. He threw a couple of bills across the table. His face had
- regained its serenity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See that these ill-mannered people are paid, Aline.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What with, dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Money, my child, money. What!” he exclaimed, noting a familiar expression
- on her face. “Are we running short? Send them telegrams to say we'll pay
- next week. Something is bound to come in by then.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mrs. Bullingdon ought to send the cheque for her portrait,” said Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course she will. And there's something due from Hyam. What a thing it
- is to have great expectations! Here's one from Renshaw,” he said, opening
- another letter. “'Dear Padgate'—Dear Padgate!” He put his hands on
- the table and looked across at Aline. “Now, what on earth can I have done
- to offend him? I've been 'Dear Jimmie' for the last twelve years.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline shook her young head pityingly. “Don't you know yet that it is
- always 'Dear Padgate' when they want to borrow money of you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie glanced at the letter and then across the table again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear me,” he said thoughtfully. “Your knowledge of the world at your
- tender age is surprising. He does want money. Poor old chap! It is really
- quite touching. 'For the love of God lend me four pounds ten to carry me
- on to the end of the quarter.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's two months off. Mr. Renshaw will have to be more economical than
- usual,” said Aline, drily. “I am afraid he drinks dreadfully, Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hush, dear!” he said, becoming grave. “A man's infirmities are his
- infirmities, and we are not called upon to be his judges. How much have we
- in the house altogether?” he asked with a sudden return to his bright
- manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ten pounds three and sixpence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, that's a fortune. Of course we can help Renshaw. Wire him his four
- pounds ten when you go out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, Jimmie——” expostulated this royal person's minister of
- finance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do what I say, my dear,” said Jimmie, quietly.
- </p>
- <p>
- That note in his voice always brought about instant submission, fetched
- her down from heights of pitying protection to the prostrate humility of a
- little girl saying “Yes, Jimmie,” as to a directing providence. She did
- not know from which of the two positions, the height or the depth, she
- loved him the more. As a matter of fact, the two ranges of emotion were
- perfect complements one of the other, the sex in her finding satisfaction
- of its two imperious cravings, to shelter and to worship.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Renshaw incident was closed, locked up as it were in her heart by the
- little snap of the “Yes, Jimmie.” One or two other letters were discussed
- gaily. The last to be opened was a note from Mrs. Deering. “Come to lunch
- on Sunday and bring Aline. I am asking your friend Norma Hardacre.” Aline
- clapped her hands. She had been longing to see that beautiful Miss
- Hardacre again. Of course Jimmie would go? He smiled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Another unconscious sitting for the portrait,” he said. His glance
- wandered to a strainer that stood with its face to the wall, at a further
- end of the room, and he became absent-minded. Lately he had been dreaming
- a boy's shadowy dreams, too sweet as yet for him to seek to give them form
- in his waking hours. A warm touch on his hand brought him back to diurnal
- things. It was the coffee-pot held by Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have asked you twice if you would have more coffee,” she laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose I'm the happiest being in existence,” he said irrelevantly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline poured out the coffee. “You have n't got much to make you happy,
- poor dear!” she remarked, when the operation was concluded.
- </p>
- <p>
- His retort was checked by a violent peal at the front door-bell and a
- thundering knock.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's Morland,” cried Jimmie. “He is like the day of doom—always
- heralds his approach by an earthquake.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland it was, in riding tweeds, a whip in his hand. He pointed an
- upbraiding finger at the half-eaten breakfast. The sloth of these
- painters! Aline flew to the loved one's protection. Jimmie had not gone to
- bed till four. The poor dear had to sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did n't get to bed till four, either,” said Morland, with the healthy,
- sport-loving man's contempt for people who require sleep, “but I was up at
- eight and was riding in the Park at nine. Then I thought I'd come up here.
- I've got some news for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline escaped. Morland's air of health and prosperity overpowered her. She
- did not dare whisper detraction of him to Jimmie, in whose eyes he was
- incomparable, but to Tony Merewether she had made known her wish that he
- did not look always so provokingly clean, so eternally satisfied with
- himself. All the colour of his mind had gone into his face, was her
- uncharitable epigram. Aline, it will be observed, saw no advantage in a
- tongue perpetually tipped with honey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is your news?” asked Jimmie, as soon as they were alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have done it at last,” said Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
-“What?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Proposed. I'm engaged. I'm going to be married.”
-</p>
- <p>
-Jimmie's honest face
- beamed pleasure. He wrung Morland's hand. The best news he had heard for a
- long time. When had he taken the plunge into the pool of happiness?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Last night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you have come straight to tell me? It is like you. I am touched, it
- is good to know you carry me in your heart like that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland laughed. “My dear old Jimmie—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am so glad. I never suspected anything of the kind. Well, she's an
- amazingly lucky young woman whoever she is. When can I have a timid peep
- at the divinity?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whenever you like—why, don't you know who it is?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lord, no, man; how should I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Norma Hardacre.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Norma Hardacre!” The echo came from Jimmie as from a hollow cave, and was
- followed by a silence no less cavernous. The world was suddenly reduced to
- an empty shell, black, meaningless.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Morland, with a short laugh. He carefully selected, cut, and
- lit a cigar, then turned his back and examined the half-finished picture.
- He felt the Briton's shamefacedness in the novelty of the position of
- affianced lover. The echo that in Jimmie's ears had sounded so forlorn was
- to him a mere exclamation of surprise. His solicitude as to the cigar and
- his inspection of the picture saved him by lucky chance from seeing
- Jimmie's face, which wore the blank, piteous look of a child that has had
- its most cherished possession snatched out of its hand and thrown into the
- fire. Such episodes in life cannot be measured by time as it is reckoned
- in the physical universe. To Jimmie, standing amid the chaos of his
- dreams, indefinite hours seemed to have passed since he had spoken. For
- indefinite hours he seemed to grope towards reconstruction. He lived
- intensely in the soul's realm, where time is not, was swept through
- infinite phases of emotion; finally awoke to a consciousness of
- renunciation, full and generous. Perhaps a minute and a half had elapsed.
- He crossed swiftly to Morland and clapped him on the shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The woman among all women I could have wished for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His voice quavered a little; but Morland, turning round, saw nothing in
- Jimmie's eyes but the honest gladness he had taken for granted he should
- find there. The earnest scrutiny he missed. He laughed again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are not many in London to touch her,” he said in his self-satisfied
- way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is there one?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You seem more royalist than—well, than Morland King,” said the
- happy lover, chuckling at his joke. “I wish I had the artist's command of
- superlatives as you have, Jimmie. It would come in deuced handy sometimes.
- Now if, for instance, you wanted to describe the reddest thing that ever
- was, you would find some hyperbolic image for it, whereas I could only say
- it was damned red. See what I mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It does n't matter what you say, but what you feel,” said Jimmie.
- “Perhaps we hyperbolic people fritter away emotions in the mere frenzy of
- expressing them. The mute man often has deeper feelings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I'm not going to set up as an unerupted volcano,” laughed Morland.
- “I'm only the average man that has got the girl he has set his heart on—and
- of course I think her in many ways a paragon, otherwise I should n't have
- set my heart on her. There are plenty to pick from, God knows. And they
- let you know it too, by Jove. You're lucky enough to live out of what is
- called Society, so you can't realise how they shy themselves at you.
- Sometimes one has to be simply a brute and dump 'em down hard. That's what
- I liked about Norma Hardacre. She required no dumping.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should think not,” said Jimmie.
-</p>
- <p>
-“There's one thing that pleases me
- immensely,” Morland remarked, “and that is the fancy she has taken for
- you. It's genuine. I've never heard her talk of any one else as she does
- of you. She is not given to gush, as you may have observed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a very deep pleasure to me to hear it,” said Jimmie, looking bravely
- in the eyes of the happy man. “My opinion of Miss Hardacre I have told you
- already.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland waved his cigar as a sign of acceptance of the tribute to the
- lady.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was thinking of myself,” he said. “There are a good many men I shall
- have to drop more or less when I'm married. Norma would n't have 'em in
- the house. There are others that will have to be on probation. Now I
- shouldn't have liked you to be on probation—to run the risk of my
- wife not approving of you—caring to see you—you know what I
- mean. But you're different from anybody else, Jimmie. I'm not given to
- talking sentiment—but we've grown up together—and somehow, in
- spite of our being thrown in different worlds, you have got to be a part
- of my life. There!” he concluded with a sigh of relief, putting on his hat
- and holding out his hand, “I've said it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The brightening of Jimmie's eyes gave token of a heart keenly touched.
- Deeply rooted indeed must be the affection that could have impelled
- Morland to so unusual a demonstration of feeling. His nature was as
- responsive as a harp set in the wind. His counterpart in woman would have
- felt the tears well into her eyes. A man is allowed but a breath, a
- moisture, that makes the eyes bright. Morland had said the final word of
- sentiment; equally, utterly true of himself. Morland was equally a part of
- his life. It were folly to discuss the reasons. Loyal friendships between
- men are often the divinest of paradoxes.
- </p>
- <p>
- The touch upon Jimmie's heart was magnetic. It soothed pain. It set free a
- flood of generous emotion, even thanksgiving that he was thus allowed
- vicarious joy in infinite perfections. It was vouchsafed him to be happy
- in the happiness of two dear to him. This much he said to Morland, with
- what intensity of meaning the fortunate lover was a myriad leagues from
- suspecting.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll see you safely mounted,” said Jimmie, opening the studio door. Then
- suddenly like a cold wind a memory buffeted him. He shut the door again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I forgot. I have a letter for you. It came this morning.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland took the letter addressed to “David Rendell” which Jimmie drew
- from his pocket, and uttered an angry exclamation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought this infernal business was over and done with.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He tore open the envelope, read the contents, then tilted his hat to the
- back of his head, and sitting down on one of the dilapidated
- straight-backed chairs of the leather suite, looked at Jimmie in great
- perplexity. In justice to the man it must be said that anger had vanished.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose you know what these letters mean that you have been taking in
- for me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never permitted myself to speculate,” said Jimmie. “You asked me
- to do you a very great service. It was a little one. You are not a man to
- do anything dishonourable. I concluded you had your reasons, which it
- would have been impertinent of me to inquire into.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's the usual thing,” said Morland, with a self-incriminatory shrug. “A
- girl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A love affair was obvious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland spat out an exclamation of impatient disgust for himself and rose
- to his feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heaven knows how it began—she was poor and lonely—almost a
- lady—and she had beauty and manners and that sort of thing above her
- class.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They always have,” said Jimmie, with a pained expression. “You need n't
- tell me the story. It's about the miserablest on God's earth, is n't it
- now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose so. Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The unwonted rarefied air of sentiment that he had been breathing for the
- last twelve hours had, as it were, intoxicated him. Had the letter reached
- him the day before, he would have left the story connected with it in the
- cold-storage depository where men are wont to keep such things. No one
- would have dreamed of its existence. But now he felt an exaggerated
- remorse, a craving for confession, and yet he made the naked remorseful
- human's instinctive clutch at palliatives.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Upon my soul, I'm not a beast, Jimmie. I swear I loved her at first. You
- know what it is. You yourself loved a little girl in Paris—you told
- me about it—did n't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie set his teeth, and said, “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland went on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some women have ways with them, you know. They turn you into one of those
- toy thermometers—you hold the bulb, and the spirit in it rises and
- bubbles. She got hold of me that way—I bubbled, I suppose—it
- was n't her fault, she was sweet and innocent. It was her nature. You
- artistic people call the damned thing a temperament, I believe. Anyhow I
- was in earnest at the beginning. Then—one always does—I found
- it was only a passing fancy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And like a passing cab it has splashed you with mud. How does the matter
- stand now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Read this,” said Morland, handing him the letter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dearest,” it ran, “the time is coming when you can be very good to me.
- Jenny.” That was all. Jimmie, holding the paper in front of him, looked up
- distressfully at Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'The time is coming when you can be very good to me.' How confoundedly
- pathetic! Poor little girl! Oh, damn it, Morland, you are going to be good
- to her, are n't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll do all I can. Of course I'll do all I can. I tell you I'm not a
- beast. Heaps of other men would n't care a hang about it. They would tell
- her to go to the devil. I'm not that sort.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know you're not,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland lit another cigar with the air of a man whose virtues deserve some
- reward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The letter can only have one interpretation. Have you known of it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never dreamed of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was there any question of marriage?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “None whatever. Difference of position and all the rest of it. She quite
- understood. In fact, it was like your Quartier Latin affair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie winced. “It was n't the Quartier Latin—and I was going to
- marry her—only she died before—oh, don't mind me, Morland.
- What's going to be done now?” Morland shrugged his shoulders again, having
- palliated himself into a more normal condition. His conscience, to speak
- by the book, was clothed and in its right mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's infernally hard lines it should come just at this time. You see,
- I've heaps of things to think about. My position—Parliament—I'm
- going to contest Cosford in the autumn. If the constituency gets hold of
- any scandal, I'm ruined. You know the Alpine heights of morality of a
- British constituency—and there's always some moral scavenger about.
- And then there's Norma—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, there's Norma,” said Jimmie, seriously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's unpleasant, you see. If she should know—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would break her heart,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland started and looked at Jimmie stupidly, his mental faculties for
- the second paralysed, incapable of grappling with the idea. Was it
- scathing sarcasm or sheer idiocy? Recovering his wits, he realised that
- Jimmie was whole-heartedly, childishly sincere. With an effort he
- controlled a rebellious risible muscle at the corner of his lip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would give her great pain,” he said in grave acquiescence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a miserable business,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland paced the studio. Suddenly he stopped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Should there be any unpleasantness over this, can I rely on your help to
- pull me through?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know you can,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland looked relieved.
- </p>
- <p>
- “May I write a note?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie pointed to a corner of the long deal table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll find over there all the materials for mending a broken butterfly,”
- he said sadly.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter VI—THE LOVERS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>ROUD in the
- make-believe that he was a fashionable groom, the loafer holding Morland's
- horse touched his ragged hat smartly at his temporary master's approach.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give him something, Jimmie; I have n't any change,” cried Morland. He
- mounted and rode away, debonair, with a wave of farewell. Jimmie drew from
- his pocket the first coin to hand, a florin, and gave it to the loafer,
- who came down forthwith from his dreams of high estate to commonplace
- earth, and after the manner of his class adjured the Deity to love the
- munificent gentleman. The two shillings would bring gladness into the
- hearts of his sick wife and starving children. Subject to the attestation
- of the Deity, he put forward as a truth the statement that they had not
- eaten food for a week. He himself was a hard-working man, but the
- profession of holding horses in the quiet roads of St. John's Wood was not
- lucrative.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're telling me lies, I'm afraid,” said Jimmie, “but you look miserable
- enough to say anything. Here!” He gave him two more shillings. The loafer
- thanked him and made a bee-line for the nearest public-house, while
- Jimmie, forgetting for the moment the pitiable aspect that poor humanity
- sometimes wears in the persons of the lowly, watched Morland's well-set-up
- figure disappear at the turn of the road. There was no sign of black care
- sitting behind that rider. It perched instead on Jimmie's shoulders, and
- there stayed for the rest of the day. In spite of his staunch trust in
- Morland's honour and uprightness, he found it hard to condone the fault.
- The parallel which Morland had not too ingenuously drawn with the far-away
- passionate episode in his own life had not seemed just. He had winced,
- wondered at the failure in tact, rebelled against the desecration of a
- memory so exquisitely sad. The moment after he had forgiven the blundering
- friend and opened his heart again to pity. He was no strict moralist,
- turning his head sanctimoniously aside at the sight of unwedded lovers.
- His heart was too big and generous. But between the romance of illicit
- love and the commonplace of vulgar seduction stretched an immeasurable
- distance. The words of the pathetic note, however, lingering in his mind,
- brought with them a redeeming fragrance. They conjured up the picture of
- sweet womanhood. They hinted no reproach; merely a trust which was
- expected to be fulfilled. To her Morland was the honourable gentleman all
- knew; he had promised nothing that he had not performed, that he would not
- perform. All day long, as he sat before his easel, mechanically copying
- folds of drapery from the lay figure on the platform, Jimmie strove to
- exonerate his friend from the baser fault, and to raise the poor love
- affair to a plane touched by diviner rays. But the black care still sat
- upon his shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next morning he rose earlier than usual, and sought Morland at his
- house in Sussex Gardens. He found him eating an untroubled breakfast.
- Silver dishes, tray, and service were before him. A great flower-stand
- filled with Maréchal Niel roses stood in the centre of the table. Fine
- pictures hung round the walls. Rare china, old oak chairs, and sideboard
- bright with silver bowls—all the harmonious and soothing luxury of a
- rich man's dining-room, gave the impression of ease, of a life apart from
- petty cares, petty vices, petty ambitions. A thick carpet sheltered the
- ears from the creaking footsteps of indiscretion. Awnings before the open
- windows screened the too impertinent light of the morning sun. And the
- face and bearing of the owner of the room were in harmony with its
- atmosphere. Jimmie reproached himself for the doubts that had caused his
- visit. Morland laughed at them. Had he not twice or thrice declared
- himself not a beast? Surely Jimmie must trust his oldest friend to have
- conducted himself honourably. There was never question of marriage. There
- had been no seduction. Could n't he understand? They had parted amicably
- some three months ago, each a little disillusioned. Morland was generous
- enough to strip a man's vanity from himself and stand confessed as one of
- whom a superior woman had grown tired. The new development of the affair
- revealed yesterday had, he repeated, come upon him like an unexpected
- lash. The irony of it, too, in the first flush of his engagement!
- Naturally he was remorseful; naturally he would do all that a man of
- honour could under the circumstances.
- </p>
- <p>
- “More is not expected and not wanted. On my word of honour,” said Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had been upset, he continued smilingly. The consequences might be
- serious—to himself, not so much to Jenny. There were complications
- in the matter that might be tightened—not by Jenny—into a
- devil of a tangle. Had he not pleaded special urgency when he had first
- asked Jimmie to take in the letters under a false name? It might be a
- devil of a tangle, he repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But till that happens—and please God it may never happen—we
- may dismiss the whole thing from our minds,” said Morland, reassuringly.
- “Jenny will want for nothing, and want nothing. Do you think if there were
- any melodramatic villainy on my conscience I would go and engage myself to
- marry Norma Hardacre?”
- </p>
- <p>
- This was the final argument that sent the black care, desperately clinging
- with the points of its claws, into infinite space. Jimmie smiled again.
- Morland waved away the uncongenial topic and called for a small bottle of
- champagne on ice. A glass apiece, he said, to toast the engagement.
- Rightly, champagne was the wine of the morning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the morning sunshine itself distilled,” said Jimmie, lifting up his
- glass.
- </p>
- <p>
- He went home on the top of an omnibus greatly cheered, convinced that,
- whatever had happened, Morland had done no grievous wrong. When Aline went
- to the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him busy upon the sketch
- portrait of Norma, and humming a tune—a habit of his when work was
- proceeding happily under his fingers. She looked over his shoulder
- critically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's very good,” she condescended to remark. “Now that Miss Hardacre is
- engaged to Mr. King, why don't you ask her to come and sit?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think it's a good likeness?” he asked, leaning back and regarding
- the picture.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the best likeness you have ever got in a portrait,” replied Aline,
- truthfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then, wisest of infants, what reason could I have for asking Miss
- Hardacre to sit? Besides, I don't want her to know anything about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline glowed with inspiration. Why should things the most distantly
- connected with somebody else's marriage so exhilarate the female heart?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it going to be a wedding present, Jimmie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is a study in indiscretion, my child,” he replied enigmatically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are perfectly horrid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose I am,” he admitted, looking at the portrait with some
- wistfulness. “Ugly as sin, and with as much manners as a kangaroo =—does
- your feminine wisdom think a woman could ever fall in love with me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She touched caressingly the top of his head where the hair was thinning,
- and her feminine wisdom made this astounding answer:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, you are too old, Jimmie dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Too old! He turned and regarded her for a moment in rueful wonder. Absurd
- though it was, the statement gave him a shock. He was barely forty, and
- here was this full-grown, demure, smiling young woman telling him he was
- too old for any of her sex to trouble their heads about him. His forlorn
- aspect brought a rush of colour to the girl's cheeks. She put her arms
- round his neck.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Jimmie, I have hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm a silly little goose. It's a
- wonder that every woman on earth is n't in love with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is the tone of exaggerated affection, but not of conviction,” he
- said. “I am the masculine of what in a woman is termed <i>passée</i>. I
- might gain the esteem of a person of the opposite sex elderly like myself,
- but my gallant exterior can no longer inspire a romantic passion. My day
- is over. No, you have not hurt me. The sword of truth pierces, but it does
- not hurt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he broke into his good, sunny laughter, and rose and put his arm with
- rough tenderness round her shoulder, as he had done ever since she could
- walk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are the youngest thing I have come across for a long time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline, as she nestled up against him on their way out of the studio, was
- thus impressed with a salutary consciousness of her extreme youth. But
- this in itself magnified Jimmie's age. She loved him with a pure
- passionate tenderness; no one, she thought, could know him without loving
- him; but her ideal of the hero of romance for whom fair ladies pined away
- in despairing secret was far different. She was too young as yet, too
- little versed in the signs by which the human heart can be read, to
- suspect what his playful question implied of sadness, hopelessness,
- renunciation.
- </p>
- <p>
- On Sunday they lunched with Connie Deering. Morland and Norma and old
- Colonel Pawley, an ancient acquaintance of every one, were the only other
- guests. It was almost a family party, cried Connie, gaily; and it had been
- an inspiration, seeing that the invitations had been sent out before the
- engagement had taken place. Jimmie and Aline, being the first arrivals,
- had their hostess to themselves for a few moments.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They both think it bad form to show a sign of it, but they are awfully
- gone upon each other,” Connie said. “So you must n't judge Norma by what
- she says. All girls like to appear cynical nowadays. It's the fashion. But
- they fall in love in the same silly way, just as they used to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad to hear they are fond of one another,” said Jimmie. “The deeper
- their love the happier I shall be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The little lady looked at him for a second out of the corner of her eye.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What an odd thing to say!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ought to be a commonplace thing to feel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In the happiness of others there is always something that is pleasing. By
- giving him the lie like that you will make poor Rochefoucauld turn in his
- grave.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He ought to be kept revolving like Ixion,” said Jimmie. “His maxims are
- the Beatitudes of Hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed off the too trenchant edge of his epigram, qualifying it in his
- kind way. After all, you must n't take your cynic too literally. No doubt
- a kindly heart beats in the ducal bosom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should like to know your real opinion of the devil,” laughed Mrs.
- Deering.
- </p>
- <p>
- The opportunity for so doing was lost for the moment. The lovers entered,
- having driven together from the Park. At the sight of Norma, Aline
- twitched Jimmie's arm with a little gasp of admiration and Jimmie's breath
- came faster. He had not seen her hitherto quite so coldly, radiantly
- beautiful. Perhaps it was the great white hat she wore, a mystery of
- millinery, chiffon and roses and feathers melting one with the other into
- an effect of broad simplicity, that formed an unsanctified but alluring
- halo to a queenly head. Perhaps it was the elaborately simple cream dress,
- open-worked at neck and arms, that moulded her ripe figure into especial
- stateliness. Perhaps, thought poor Jimmie, it was the proud loveliness
- into which love was wont to transfigure princesses.
- </p>
- <p>
- She received Connie's kiss and outpouring of welcome with her usual
- mocking smile. “If you offer me congratulations, I shall go away, Connie.
- I have been smirking for the last hour and a half. We were so exhausted by
- playing the sentimental idiots that we did n't exchange a word on our way
- here; though I believe Morland likes it. We saw those dreadful
- Fry-Robertsons bearing down upon us. He actually dragged me up to meet
- them, as who should say 'Let us go up and get congratulated.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't see why I should hide my luck under a bushel,” laughed Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank you for the compliment,” said Norma. “But if you won at Monte Carlo
- you would n't pin the banknotes all over your coat and strut about the
- street. By the way, Connie, we're late. Need we apologise?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're not the last. Colonel Pawley is coming.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh dear! that old man radiates boredom. How can you stand him, Connie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's the sweetest thing on earth,” said her hostess.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma laughed a little contemptuously and came forward to greet Aline and
- Jimmie. As she did so, her face softened. Jimmie, drawing her aside,
- offered his best wishes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The happiness of a man whom I have loved like a brother all my life can't
- be indifferent to me. On that account you must forgive my speaking warmly.
- May you be very happy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall be happy in having such a champion of my husband for a
- brother-in-law,” said Norma, lightly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A loyal friend of your own, if you will,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a short pause. Norma ran the tip of her gloved finger down the
- leaf of a plant on a stand. They were by the window. A vibration in his
- voice vaguely troubled her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you really mean by 'loyal'?” she said at last, without looking at
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The word has but one meaning. If I tried to explain further, I should
- only appear to be floundering in fatuity.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe you are the kind that would stick to a woman through thick and
- thin, through good repute and ill repute. That's what you mean. Only you
- don't like to hint that I might at any time become disreputable. I may.
- All things are possible in this world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not that,” said Jimmie. “Perhaps I was unconsciously pleading for myself.
- Say you are a queen in your palace. While humbly soliciting a position in
- your household, I somewhat grandiloquently submit my qualifications.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's all this about?” asked Morland, coming up, having overheard the
- last sentence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am pleading for a modest position in Her Majesty's Household,” said
- Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We'll fit him up with cap and bells,” laughed Morland, “and make him
- chief jester, and give him a bladder to whack us over the head with. He's
- fond of doing that when we misbehave ourselves. Then he can get us out of
- our scrapes, like the fellow in Dumas—what's his name—Chicot,
- was n't it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Pleased with his jest, he turned to acquaint Connie with Jimmie's new
- dignity. Both the jest and the laugh that greeted it jarred upon Norma.
- Jimmie said to her good-humouredly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I might be Chicot, the loyal friend, without the cap and bells. I am a
- dull dog.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked out of the window and laughed somewhat bitterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think you are a great deal too good to have anything to do with any of
- us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It pleases you to talk arrant nonsense,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- Luncheon was announced. At table Jimmie and Norma were neighbours. Aline
- sat between Morland, who was next to Norma, and old Colonel Pawley. As the
- latter at first talked to Mrs. Deering, Aline and Morland carried on a
- frigid conversation. They had never been friends. To Morland, naturally,
- she was merely a little girl of no account, who had often been annoyingly
- in the way when he wanted to converse with Jimmie; and Aline, with a
- little girl's keen intuition, had divined more of his real character than
- she was aware of, and disliked and distrusted him. Like a well-brought-up
- young lady she answered “yes” and “no” politely to his remarks, but
- started no fresh topic. At last, to her relief, Colonel Pawley rescued her
- from embarrassed silence. To him she had extended her favour. He was a
- short fat man, with soft hands and a curious soft purring voice, and the
- air rather of a comfortable old lady than of a warrior who had retired on
- well-merited laurels. He occupied his plentiful leisure by painting on
- silk, which he made into fans for innumerable lady acquaintances. In his
- coat-tail pocket invariably reposed a dainty volume bound in crushed
- morocco—a copy of little poems of his own composition—and
- this, when he was in company with a sympathetic feminine soul, he would
- abstract with apoplectic wheezing and bashfully present. He also played
- little tunes on the harp. Aline, with the irreverence of youth, treated
- him as a kind of human toy.
- </p>
- <p>
- His first word roused the girl's spontaneous gaiety. She bubbled over with
- banter. The mild old warrior chuckled with her, threw himself unreservedly
- into the childish play. Connie whispered to Jimmie:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should like to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck and turn him
- loose in a meadow. I am sure he would frisk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland exchanged casual remarks with Norma. She answered absently. The
- change in Aline from the unsmiling primness wherewith Morland's society
- had cloaked her to sunny merriment with Colonel Pawley was too marked to
- escape her attention. In spite of the ludicrousness of the comparison, she
- could not help perceiving that the old man who radiated boredom had a
- quality of charm unpossessed by Morland, and she felt absurdly
- disappointed with her lover. During the last few days she had made up her
- mind to like him. Sober forecast of a lifetime spent in the inevitable
- intimacy of marriage had forced her to several conclusions. One, that it
- was essential to daily comfort that a woman should find the personality of
- a husband pleasing rather than antipathetic. With more ingenuousness than
- the world would have put to her credit, she had set herself deliberately
- to attain this essential ideal. The natural consequence was a sharply
- critical attitude and a quickly developing sensitiveness, whereby, as in a
- balance of great nicety, the minor evidences of his character were
- continually being estimated. Thus, Morland's jest before luncheon had
- jarred upon her. His careless air of patronage had betrayed a lack of
- appreciation of something—the word “spiritual” was not in her
- vocabulary, or she might have used it—of something, at all events,
- in his friend which differentiated him from the casual artist and which
- she herself had, not without discomfort, divined at their first meeting.
- The remark had appeared to her in bad taste. Still ruffled, she became all
- the more critical, and noted with displeasure his failure to have won a
- child's esteem. And yet she felt a touch of resentment against Jimmie for
- being the innocent cause of her discomposure. It gave rise to a little
- feline impulse to scratch him and see whether he were not mortal like
- every one else.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you ever exhibit at the Royal Academy?” she asked suddenly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They won't have me,” said he.
-</p>
- <p>
-“But you send in, don't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With heart-breaking regularity. They did have me once.” He sighed. “But
- that was many years ago, when the Academy was young and foolish.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have heard they are exceedingly conservative,” said Norma, with the
- claws still unsheathed. “Perhaps you work on too original lines.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But she could draw from him no expression of vanity. He smiled. “I suppose
- they don't think my pictures good enough,” he said simply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie's work is far too good for that wretched Academy,” said Connie
- Deering. “The pictures there always give you a headache. Jimmie's never
- do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should like to kill the Academy,” Aline broke in sharply, on the brink
- of tears. A little tragedy of murdered hopes lurked in her tone. Then,
- seeing that she had caused a startled silence, she reddened and looked at
- her plate. Jimmie laughed outright.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is n't she bloodthirsty? All the seventy of them weltering in their gore!
- Only the other day she said she would like to slaughter the whole Chinese
- Empire, because they ate puppies and birds'-nests!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie chimed a frivolous remark in tune with Jimmie. Morland, as befitted
- a coming statesman, took up the parable of the march westwards of the
- yellow races. Colonel Pawley, who had been through the Taeping rebellion,
- was appealed to as an authority on the development of the Chinaman. He
- almost blushed, wriggled uncomfortably, and as soon as he could brought
- the conversation to the milder topic of Chinese teacups. Successful, he
- sighed with relief and told Aline the story of the willow pattern. The
- Royal Academy was forgotten. But Norma felt guilty and ashamed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nor was she set more at ease with herself by a careless remark of
- Morland's as Connie's front door closed behind them an hour or so later.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid you rather rubbed it into poor old Jimmie about the Academy.
- The little girl looked as if she would like to fly at you. She is a
- spoiled little cat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have noticed she does n't seem to like you,” answered Norma, sourly.
- </p>
- <p>
- The drive as far as Grosvenor Place, where Norma proposed to pay a
- solitary call, was not as pleasant as he had anticipated. He parted from
- her somewhat resentful of an irritable mood, and walked back towards
- Sussex Gardens through the Park, reviling the capriciousness of woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter VII—A MAD PROPHET
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> VIOLENT man,
- pallid and perspiring, with crazy dark eyes and a voice hoarse from the
- effort to make himself heard above the noise of a hymn-singing group a few
- yards to the right and of a brazen-throated atheist on the left, was
- delivering his soul of its message to mankind—a confused,
- disconnected, oft-delivered message, so inconsequent as to suggest that it
- had been worn into shreds and tatters of catch-phrases by process of
- over-delivery, yet uttered with the passion of one inspired with a new and
- amazing gospel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am speaking to you, the working-men, the proletariat, the downtrodden
- slaves of the plutocracy, the creators in darkness of the wealth that the
- idlers enjoy in dazzling halls of brightness. I do not address the
- bourgeoisie rotting in sloth and apathy. They are the parasites of the
- rich. They sweat the workers in order to pander to the vices of the rich.
- They despise the poor and grovel before the rich. They shrink from
- touching the poor man's hand, but they offer their bodies slavishly to the
- kick of the rich man's foot. It is not in their hands, but in yours,
- brother toilers and brother sufferers, that lies the glorious work of the
- great social revolution whose sun just rising is tipping the mountain-tops
- with its radiant promise of an immortal day. It is against them and not
- with them that you have to struggle. In that day of Armageddon you will
- find all tailordom, all grocerdom, all apothecarydom, all attorneydom
- arrayed in serried ranks around the accursed standards of plutocracy, of
- aristocracy, of bureaucracy. Beware of them. Have naught to do with them
- on peril of your salvation. The great social revolution will come not from
- above, but from below, from the depths. <i>De profundis clamavi!</i>
- “From the depths have I cried, O Lord!”
-
-</p>
-<p>
-
-He paused, wiped his forehead,
- cleared his throat, and went on in the same strain, indifferent to ribald
- interjections and the Sunday apathy of his casual audience. The mere size
- of the crowd he was addressing seemed to satisfy him. The number was above
- the average. A few working-men in the inner ring drank in the wild
- utterances with pathetic thirst. The majority listened, half amused, half
- attracted by the personality of the speaker. A great many were captivated
- by the sonority of the words, the unfaltering roll of the sentences, the
- vague associations and impressions called up by the successive images. It
- is astonishing what little account our sociological writers take of the
- elementary nature of the minds of the masses; how easily they are amused;
- how readily they are imposed upon; how little they are capable of
- analytical thought; at the same time, how intellectually vain they are,
- which is their undoing. The ineptitudes of the music hall which make the
- judicious grieve—the satirical presentment, for instance, of the
- modern fop, which does not contain one single salient characteristic of
- the type, which is the blatant convention of fifty years back—are
- greeted with roars of unintelligent laughter. Books are written, vulgar,
- fallacious, with a specious semblance of philosophical profundity, and
- sell by the hundred thousand. The masses read them without thought,
- without even common intelligence. It is too great an intellectual effort
- to grasp the ideas so disingenuously presented; but the readers can
- understand just enough to perceive vaguely that they are in touch with the
- deeper questions of philosophy, and through sheer vanity delude themselves
- into the belief that they are vastly superior people in being able to find
- pleasure in literature of such high quality. And the word Mesopotamia is
- still blessed in their ears. Nothing but considerations such as these can
- explain the popularity of some of the well-known Sunday orators in Hyde
- Park. The conductors of the various properly organised mission services
- belong naturally to a different category. It is the socialist, the
- revivalist, the atheist, the man whose blood and breath seem to have
- turned into inexhaustible verbiage, that present the problem.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some such reflections forced themselves into the not uncharitable mind of
- Jimmie as he stood on the outer fringe of the pallid man's audience and
- listened wonderingly to the inspired nonsense. He had left a delighted
- Aline to be taken by Colonel Pawley to the Zoological Gardens, and had
- strolled down from Bryanston Square to the north side of the Park. To
- lounge pleasantly on a Sunday afternoon from group to group had always
- been a favourite Sunday pastime, and the pallid man was a familiar figure.
- Jimmie had often thought of painting him as the central character of some
- historical picture—an expectorated Jonah crying to Nineveh, or a
- Flagellant in the time of the plague, with foaming mouth and bleeding
- body, calling upon the stricken city to repent. His artist's vision could
- see the hairy, haggard, muscular anatomy beneath the man's rusty black
- garments. He could make a capital picture out of him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man paused only for a few seconds, and again took up his parable—the
- battle of the poor and the rich. The flow of words poured forth, platitude
- on platitude, in turbid flood, sound and fury signifying elusively,
- sometimes the collectivist doctrine, at others the mere <i>sans-culotte</i>
- hatred of the aristocrat. Jimmie, speculating on the impression made by
- the oratory on the minds of the audience, moved slightly apart from the
- crowd. His glance wandering away took in Morland on his way home, walking
- sedately on the path towards the Marble Arch. He ran across the few yards
- of intervening space and accosted his friend gaily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come and have a lesson in public speaking, and at the same time hear the
- other side of the political question.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What! go and stand among that rabble?” cried Morland, aghast.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll have to stand among worse, so you had better get used to it.
- Besides, the man is a delightful fellow, with a face like Habakkuk,
- capable of everything. To hear him one would think he were erupting
- red-hot lava, whereas really it is molten omelette. Come. Your purple and
- fine linen will be a red rag to him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Laughing, he dragged the protesting Morland within earshot of the speaker.
- Morland listened superciliously for a few moments.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What possible amusement can you find in this drivel?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is so devilish pathetic,” said Jimmie, “so human—the infinite
- aspiration and the futile accomplishment. Listen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The hymn next door had ceased, the atheist was hunting up a reference, and
- the words of the pallid man's peroration resounded startlingly in the
- temporary silence:
- </p>
- <p>
- “In that day when the sovereign people's will is law, when the weakest and
- the strongest shall share alike in the plenteous bounty of Providence, no
- longer shall the poor be mangled beneath the Juggernaut car of wealth, no
- longer shall your daughters be bound to the rich man's chariot-wheels and
- whirled shrieking into an infamy worse than death, no longer shall the
- poor man's soul burn with hell fire at the rich man's desecration of the
- once pure woman that he loves, no more rottenness, foulness, stench,
- iniquity, but the earth shall rest in purity, securely folded in the angel
- wings of peace!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He waved his arms in a gesture of dismissal, turned his back on the crowd,
- and sat down exhausted on the little wooden bench that had been his
- platform. The crowd gradually moved away, some laughing idly, others
- reflectively chewing the cud of their Barmecide meal. Morland pointed a
- gold-mounted cane at the late speaker.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who and what is this particular brand of damned fool?”
- </p>
- <p>
-Jimmie checked
- with a glance a working-man who had issued from the inner ring and was
- passing by, and translated Morland's question into soberer English.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Him?” replied the working-man. “That's Daniel Stone, sir. Some people say
- he's cracked, but he always has something good to say and I like listening
- to him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What does he do when he is n't talking?” asked Jimmie. “Snatches a nap
- and a mouthful of food, I should say, sir,” said the man, with a laugh. He
- caught Jimmie's responsive smile, touched his cap, like the downtrodden
- slave that he was, and went on his way. Jimmie glanced round for Morland
- and saw him striding off rapidly. He ran after him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is the hurry?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That damned man—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which? The one I was talking to? You surely did n't object—?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course not. The other—Daniel Stone—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what of him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's a dangerous lunatic. I have heard of him. Why the devil did you want
- me to make an exhibition of myself among this scum?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie stared. Morland broke into a laugh and held out his hand. “Never
- mind. The beast got on my nerves with his chariot wheels and his
- desecration of maidens and the rest of it. I must be off. Good-bye.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie watched him disappear through the gate and turned back towards the
- groups. The pallid man was still sitting on his bench; a few children hung
- round and scanned him idly. Presently he rose and tucked his bench under
- his arm, and walked slowly away from the scene of his oratory. His burning
- eyes fixed themselves on Jimmie as he passed by. Jimmie accosted him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been greatly interested in your address.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I saw you with another of the enemies of mankind. You are a gentleman, I
- suppose?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope so,” said Jimmie, smiling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I have nothing to do with you,” retorted the man, with an angry
- gesture. “I hate you and all your class.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what have we done to you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have turned my blood into gall and my soul into consuming fire.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let us get out of the dust and sit down under a tree and talk it over. We
- may get to understand each other.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no wish to understand you,” said the man, coldly. “Good-day to
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile. “I am sorry you will not let us be
- better acquainted.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned to the next group, who were listening to a disproof of God's
- existence. But the atheist was a commonplace thunderer in a bowler hat,
- whose utterances fell tame on Jimmie's ears after those of the
- haggard-eyed prophet. He wandered away from the crowd, striking diagonally
- across the Park, and when he found comparative shade and solitude, cast
- himself on the grass beneath a tree. The personality of Daniel Stone
- interested him. He began to speculate on his daily life, his history. Why
- should he have vowed undying hatred against his social superiors? He
- reminded Jimmie of a character in fiction, and after some groping the
- association was recalled. It was the monk in Dumas, the son of Miladi. He
- wove an idle romance about the man. Perhaps Stone was the disinherited of
- noble blood, thirsting for a senseless vengeance. Gradually the drowsiness
- of deep June fell upon him. He went fast asleep, and when he awoke half an
- hour afterwards and began to walk homewards, he thought no more of Daniel
- Stone.
- </p>
- <p>
- But on following Sunday afternoons he frequently stood for a while to
- listen to the man. It was always the same tale—sound and fury,
- signifying nothing. On one occasion he caught Jimmie's eye, and denounced
- him vehemently as an enemy of society. After that, Jimmie, who was of a
- peaceful disposition, ceased attending his lectures. He sympathised with
- Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter VIII—HER SERENE HIGHNESS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> PRETTY quarrel
- between a princess and a duchess gave rise to circumstances in which the
- destiny of Jimmie was determined, or in which, to speak with modern
- metaphor, the germ of his destiny found the necessary conditions for
- development. Had it not been for this quarrel, Jimmie would not have
- stayed at the Hardacres' house; and had he not been their guest, the events
- hereafter to be recorded would not have happened. Such concatenation is
- there in the scheme of human affairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Duchess of Wiltshire was a mighty personage in the Hardacres' part of
- the county. She made social laws and abrogated them. She gave and she took
- away the brevet of county rank. She made and unmade marriages. To fall
- under the ban of her displeasure was to be disgraced indeed. She held a
- double sway in that the duke, her husband, had delegated to her his
- authority in sublunary matters, he being a severe mathematician and a dry
- astronomer, who looked at the world out of dull eyes, and regarded it with
- indifference as a mass of indistinguishable atoms forming a nebula, a sort
- of Milky Way, concerning which philosophic minds had from time to time
- theorised. He lived icily remote from society; the duchess, on the
- contrary, was warmly interested in its doings. In the county she reigned
- absolute; but in London, recognising the fact that there were other
- duchesses scattered about Mayfair and Belgravia, she was high-minded
- enough to modify her claims to despotic government. She felt it, however,
- her duty to decree that her last reception should mark the end of the
- London season.
- </p>
- <p>
- To this reception the Hardacres were always invited.
- </p>
- <p>
- In previous years they had mounted the great staircase of Wiltshire House,
- their names had been called out, the duchess had given them the tips of
- her fingers, and the duke, tall, white-haired, ascetic, had let them touch
- his hand with the air of a man absently watching ants crawl over him; they
- had passed on, mixed with the crowd, and seen their host and hostess no
- more. But this year, to Mrs. Hardacre's thrilling delight, the duchess
- gave her quite a friendly squeeze, smiled her entire approbation of Mrs.
- Hardacre's existence, and detained her for a moment in conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't forget to come and have a little talk with me later. I have n't
- seen you since dear Norma's engagement.”
- </p>
- <p>
- To dear Norma she was equally urbane, called her a lucky girl, and
- presented her as a bride-elect to the duke, who murmured a vague formula
- of congratulation which he had remembered from early terrestrial days.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't tell you how proud I am of you, Norma!” said Mrs. Hardacre, with
- a lump in her throat, as they passed on. “The dear duchess! I wonder if I
- am sufficiently grateful to Providence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, although in her heart pleased by the manifestation of ducal favour,
- could not let the opportunity for a taunt pass by.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can refer to it in your prayers, mother: 'O God, I thank Thee for
- shedding Her Grace upon me.' Won't that do, father.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eh, what?” asked Mr. Hardacre, very red in the face, trailing half a pace
- behind his wife and daughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma repeated her form of Thanksgiving.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ha! ha! Devilish good! Tell that in the club,” he said in high
- good-humour. His wife's glance suddenly withered him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't approve of blasphemy,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Towards whom, mother dear?” asked Norma, suavely. “The Almighty or the
- duchess?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Both,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a snap.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hardacre, seeing in the distance a man to whom he thought he could
- sell a horse, escaped from the domestic wrangle. Mother and daughter
- wandered through the crowd, greeted by friends, pausing here and there to
- exchange a few words, until they came to the door of the music-room,
- filled to overflowing, where an operatic singer held the assembly in
- well-bred silence. At the door the crush was ten deep. On the outskirts
- conversation hummed like an echo of the noise from the suite of rooms
- behind. There they were joined by Morland. Mrs. Hardacre told him of the
- duchess's graciousness. He grinned, taking the information with the air of
- a man to whom the favour of duchesses bestowed upon his betrothed is a
- tribute to his own excellence. He thought she would be pleased, he said.
- They must get the old girl to come to the wedding. Mrs. Hardacre was
- pained, but she granted young love indulgence for the profanity. If they
- only could, she assented, the success of the ceremony would be assured.
- Norma turned to Morland with a laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We shall be married with a vengeance, if it's sanctified by the duchess.
- Do you think a parson is at all necessary?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He joined in her mirth. She drew him aside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what's the news?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He accounted, loverwise, for his day.. At last he said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I looked in upon Jimmie Padgate this morning. I wanted him to go to
- Christie's and buy a picture or two for me—for us, I ought to say,”
- he added, with a little bow. “He knows more about 'em than I do. He's a
- happy beggar, you know,” he exclaimed, after a short pause.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What makes you say so?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “His perfect conviction that everything is for the best in the best of all
- possible worlds. There he was sitting at lunch over the black scrag end of
- a boiled mutton bone and a rind of some astonishing-looking yellow cheese—absolutely
- happy. And he waved his hand towards it as if it had been a feast of
- Lucullus and asked me to share it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you?” asked Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had n't time,” said Morland. “I was fearfully busy to-day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma did not reply. She looked over the heads of the crowd in front of
- her towards the music-room whence came the full notes of the singer. Then
- she said to him with a little shiver:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad you are a rich man, Morland.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So am I. Otherwise I should not have got you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's true enough,” she said. “I pretend to scoff at all this, but I
- could n't live without it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It has its points,” he assented, turning and regarding the brilliant
- scene.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma turned with him. She was glad it was her birthright and her
- marriage-right. The vast state ballroom, lit as with full daylight by rows
- of electric lamps cunningly hidden behind the cornices and the
- ground-glass panels of the ceiling, stately with its Corinthian pilasters
- and classic frieze, its walls adorned with priceless pictures, notably
- four full-length cavaliers of Vandyck, smiling down in their high-bred way
- upon this assembly of their descendants, its atmosphere glittering with
- jewels, radiant with colour, contained all the magnificence, all the
- aristocracy, all the ambitions, all the ideals that she had been trained
- to worship, to set before her as the lodestars of her life's destiny. Here
- and there from amid the indistinguishable mass of diamonds, the white
- flesh of women's shoulders, the black and white chequer and brilliant
- uniforms of men, flashed out the familiar features of some possessor of an
- historic name, some woman of world-famed beauty, some great personage
- whose name was on the lips of Europe. There, by the wall, lonely for the
- moment, stood the Chinese Ambassador, in loose maroon silk, and horse-tail
- plumed cap, his yellow, wizened face rendered more sardonic by the thin
- drooping grey moustache and thin grey imperial, looking through horn
- spectacles, expressionless, impassive, inhumanly indifferent, at one of
- the most splendid scenes a despised civilisation could set before him.
- There, in the centre of a group of envious and unembarrassed ladies, an
- Indian potentate blazed in diamonds and emeralds, and rolled his dusky
- eyes on charms which (most oddly to his Oriental conceptions) belonged to
- other men. Here a Turk's red fez, a Knight of the Garter's broad blue
- sash, an ambassador's sparkle of stars and orders; and there the sweet,
- fresh rosebud beauty of a girl caught for a moment and lost in the moving
- press. And there, at the end of the vast, living hall, a dimly seen
- haggard woman, with a diamond tiara on her grey hair, surrounded by a
- little court of the elect, sat Her Serene Highness, the Princess of
- Herren-Rothbeck, sister to a reigning monarch, and bosom friend, despite
- the pretty quarrel, of Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire.
- </p>
- <p>
- The song in the music-room coming to an end, the audience for the most
- part rose and pressed into the ballroom. The Hardacres and Morland were
- driven forward. There was a long period of desultory conversation with
- acquaintances. Morland, proud in the possession of Norma's beauty,
- remained dutifully attendant, and received congratulations with almost
- blushing gratification. Mrs. Hardacre, preoccupied by anticipation of her
- promised talk with the duchess, kept casting distracted glances at the
- door whereby the great lady would enter. The appearance from a group of
- neighbouring people of a pleasant young fellow with a fair moustache and
- very thin fair hair, who greeted her cordially, brought her back to the
- affairs of the moment. This was the Honourable Charlie Sandys, a distant
- relative of the duchess, and her Grand Vizier, Master of the Horse, Groom
- of the Chambers, and general right-hand man. He was two and twenty, and
- had all the amazing wisdom of that ingenuous age. Morland shook hands with
- him, but being tapped on the arm by the fan of a friendly dowager, left
- him to converse alone with Mrs. Hardacre and Norma. The youth indicated
- Morland's retiring figure by a jerk of the head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Parliament—Cosford division.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We hope so,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
-</p>
- <p>
-“Must get in. Radical for her
- constituency would make duchess buy her coffin. The end of the world for
- her. She has a great idea of King. Going to take him up <i>con amore</i>.
- And when she does take anybody up—well—”
- </p>
- <p>
- His wave of the hand signified the tremendous consequences.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She does n't merely uproot <i>him</i>,” said Norma, whose mind now and
- then worked with disconcerting swiftness, “but she takes up also the
- half-acre where he is planted.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just so,” replied the youth. “Not only him, but his manservant and
- maidservant, his ox and his ass and everything that is his. Funny woman,
- you know—one of the best, of course, but quaint. Thinks the Member
- for Cosford is ordained by Providence to represent her in Parliament.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He rattled on, highly pleased with himself. Norma cast a malicious glance
- at her mother, who perceptibly winced. They were shining in the duchess's
- eyes in a light borrowed from Morland. They were taken up with the ox and
- the ass and the remainder of Morland's live-stock. That was the reason,
- then, of the exceptional marks of favour bestowed on them by Her Grace.
- Mrs. Hardacre kept the muscles of her lips at the smile, but her steely
- eyes grew hard. Norma, on the contrary, was enjoying herself. Charlie
- Sandys was unconscious of the little comedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad to see the princess here to-night,” said Mrs. Hardacre, by way
- of turning the conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- The youth made practically the same reply as he had made at least a dozen
- times to the same remark during the course of the evening. He was an
- injudicious Groom of the Chambers, being vain of the privileges attached
- to his post.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There has been an awful row, you know,” he said confidentially, looking
- round to see that he was not overheard. “They have scarcely made it up
- yet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do tell us about it, Mr. Sandys,” said Norma, smiling upon him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's rather a joke. Let us get out of the way and I'll tell you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He piloted them through the crush into a corridor, and found them a vacant
- seat by some palms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's all about pictures,” he resumed. “Princess wants to have her
- portrait painted in London. Why she should n't have it made in Germany I
- don't know. Anyhow she comes to duchess for advice. Duchess has taken up
- Foljambe, you know—chap that has painted about twenty miles of women
- full length—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We saw the dear duchess at his Private View,” Mrs. Hardacre interjected.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. She runs him for all she's worth. Told the princess there was only
- one man possible for her portrait, and that was Foljambe. Princess—she's
- as hard as nails, you know—inquires his price, knocks him down half.
- He agrees. Everything is arranged. Princess to sit for the portrait when
- she stays with duchess at Chiltern Towers in September—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, we are going to have the princess down with us?” Mrs. Hardacre grew
- more alert.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. Couldn't find time to sit now—going next week to
- Herren-Rothbeck—coming back in September. Well, it was all settled
- nicely—you know the duchess's way. On Friday, however, she takes the
- princess to see Foljambe's show—for the first time. Just like her.
- The princess looks round, drops her lorgnon, cries out, 'Lieber Gott in
- Himmel! The man baints as if he was bainting on de bavement!' and utterly
- refuses to have anything to do with him. I tell you there were ructions!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He embraced a knee and leant back, laughing boyishly at the memory of the
- battle royal between the high-born dames.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then who is going to paint the portrait?” asked Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's what I am supposed to find out,” replied the youth. “But I can't
- get a man to do it cheap enough. One can't go to a swell R. A. and ask him
- to paint a portrait of a princess for eighteen pence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma had an inspiration.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can I recommend a friend of mine?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Would he do it?”,
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think so—if I asked him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By Jove, who is he?” asked the youth, pulling down his shirtcuff for the
- purpose of making memoranda.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. James Padgate, 10 Friary Grove, N. W. He is Mr. King's most intimate
- friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He can paint all right, can't he?” asked the youth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Beautifully,” replied Norma. “Friary, not Priory,” she corrected,
- watching him make the note. She felt the uncommon satisfaction of having
- performed a virtuous act; one almost of penance for her cruelty to him on
- Sunday week, the memory of which had teased a not over-sensitive
- conscience. The scrag end of boiled mutton and the rind of cheese had also
- affected her, stirred her pity for the poor optimist, although in a
- revulsion of feeling she had shivered at his lot. She had closed her eyes
- for a second, and some impish wizardry of the brain had conjured up a
- picture of herself sitting down to such a meal, with Jimmie at the other
- side of the table. It was horrible. She had turned to fill her soul with
- the solid magnificence about her. The pity for Jimmie lingered, however,
- as a soothing sensation, and she welcomed the opportunity of playing Lady
- Bountiful. She glanced with some malice from the annotated cuff to her
- mother's face, expecting to see the glitter of disapproval in her eyes. To
- her astonishment, Mrs. Hardacre wore an expression of pleased
- abstraction.
- </p>
- <p>
- Charlie Sandys pocketed his gold pencil and retired. He was a young man
- with the weight of many affairs on his shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's a capital idea of yours, Norma,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm glad you think so,” replied Norma, wonderingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do. It was most happy. We'll do all we can to help Morland's friend. A
- most interesting man. And if the princess gives him the commission, we can
- ask him down to Heddon to stay with us while he is painting the picture.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma was puzzled. Hitherto her mother had turned up the nose of distaste
- against Mr. Padgate and all his works. Whence this sudden change? Not from
- sweet charitableness, that was certain. Hardly from desire to please
- Morland. Various solutions ran in her head. Did an overweening ambition
- prompt her mother to start forth a rival to the duchess, as a snapper up
- of unconsidered painters? Scarcely possible. Defiance of the duchess? That
- way madness could only lie; and she was renowned for the subtle caution of
- her social enterprises. The little problem of motive interested her
- keenly. At last the light flashed upon her, and she looked at Mrs.
- Hardacre almost with admiration.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What a wonderful brain you have, mother!” she cried, half mockingly, half
- in earnest. “Fancy your having schemed out all that in three minutes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Enjoyment of this display of worldcraft was still in her eyes when she
- came across Morland a little later; but she only told him of her
- recommendation of Jimmie to paint the princess's portrait. He professed
- delight. How had she come to think of it?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I must have caught the disease of altruism from Mr. Padgate,” she
- said. Then following up an idle train of thought:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose you often put work—portraits and things—in his
- way?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't say that I do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not? You know hundreds of wealthy people.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie is not a man to be patronised,” said Morland, sententiously, “and
- really, you know, I can't go about touting for commissions for him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course not,” said Norma; “he is far too insignificant a person to
- trouble one's head about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland looked pained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't like to hear you talk in that way about Jimmie,” he said
- reproachfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- The little scornful curl appeared on her lip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you?” was all she vouchsafed to say. Unreasonably irritated, she
- turned aside and caught a passing <i>attache</i> of the French Embassy.
- Morland, dismissed, sauntered off, and Norma went down to supper with the
- young Frenchman, who entertained her for half an hour with a technical
- description of his motor-car. And the trouble, he said, to keep it in
- order. It needed all the delicate cares of a baby. It was as variable as a
- woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know,” said Norma, stifling a yawn. “<i>La donna e automobile</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the drive home in the hired brougham, whose obvious hiredom caused
- Norma such chafing of spirit, Mrs. Hardacre glowed with triumph, and while
- her husband dozed dejectedly opposite, she narrated her good fortunes. She
- had had her little chat with the duchess. They had spoken of Mr. Padgate,
- Charlie Sandys having run to show her his cuff immediately. The duchess
- looked favourably on the proposal. A friend of Mr. King's was a
- recommendation in itself. But the princess, she asseverated with ducal
- disregard of metaphor, had her own ideas of art and would not buy a pig in
- a poke. They must inspect Mr. Padgate's work before there was any question
- of commission. She would send Charlie Sandys to them to-morrow to talk
- over the necessary arrangements.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I told her,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “that Mr. Padgate was coming to pay us a
- visit in any case in September, and suggested that he could drive over to
- Chiltern Towers every morning while the princess was honouring him with
- sittings, and paint the picture there. And she quite jumped at the idea.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No doubt,” said Norma, drily.
- </p>
- <p>
- But her dryness had no withering effect on her mother's exuberance. The
- hard woman saw the goal of a life's ambition within easy reach, and for
- the exultant moment softened humanly. She chattered like a school-girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And she took me up to the princess,” she said, “and presented me as her
- nearest country neighbour. Was n't that nice of her? And the princess is
- such a sweet woman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear, dear!” said Norma. “How wicked people are! Every one says she is
- the most vinegarish old cat in Christendom.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter IX—SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>AME and fortune
- were coming at last. There was no doubt of it in Jimmie's optimistic mind.
- For years they had lagged with desperately heavy feet, but now they were
- in sight, slowly approaching, hand in hand. Jimmie made fantastic
- preparations to welcome them, and wore his most radiant smile. In vain did
- Aline, with her practical young woman's view of things, point to the
- exiguity of the price fixed by Her Serene Highness. If that was the advent
- of fortune, she came in very humble guise, the girl insinuated. Jimmie,
- with a magnificent sweep of the hand, dismissed such contemptible
- considerations as present pounds, shillings, and pence. He was going to
- paint the portrait of the sister of a reigning monarch. Did not Aline see
- that this might lead to his painting the portrait of the reigning monarch
- himself? Would not the counterfeit presentment of one crowned head attract
- the attention of other crowned heads to the successful artist? Did she not
- see him then appointed painter in ordinary to all the emperors, kings,
- queens, princes, and princesses of Europe? He would star the Continent,
- make a royal progress from court to court, disputed for by potentates and
- flattered by mighty sovereigns. He grew dithyrambic, a condition in which
- Aline regarded him as hopelessly impervious to reason. His portraits, he
- said, would adorn halls of state, and the dreams that he put on canvas,
- hitherto disregarded by a blind world, would find places of honour in the
- Treasure Houses of the Nations. It would be fame for him and fortune for
- Aline. She should go attired in silk and shod with gold. She should have a
- stall at the theatre whenever she wanted, and a carriage and pair to fetch
- her home. She should eat vanilla ices every night. And then she might
- marry a prince and live happy ever after.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want to marry a prince or any one else, dear,” Aline said once,
- bringing visions down into the light of common day. “I just want to go on
- staying with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On another occasion she hinted at his possible espousal of a princess.
- Again Jimmie dropped from the empyrean, and rubbed his head ruefully.
- There was only one princess in the world for him, an enthroned personage
- of radiant beauty who now and then took warm pity on him and admitted him
- to her friendship, but of whom it were disloyalty worse than all folly to
- think of. And yet he could not help his heart leaping at the sight of her,
- or the thrill quivering through him when he saw the rare softness come
- into her eyes which he and none other had evoked. What he had to give her
- he could give to no other woman, no other princess. The gift was
- unoffered: it remained in his own keeping, but consecrated to the
- divinity. He enshrined it, as many another poor chivalrous wretch has
- done, in an exquisite sanctuary, making it the symbol of a vague sweet
- religion whose secret observances brought consolation. But of all this,
- not a whisper, not a sign to Aline. When she spoke of marriageable
- princesses, he explained the rueful rubbing of his head by reference to
- his unattractive old fogeydom, and his unfitness for the life of high
- society.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Aline ought to have her prince. The coming fortune would help to give
- the girl what was due to her. For himself he cared nothing. Cold mutton
- and heel of cheese would satisfy him to the end of his days. And fame? In
- quieter moments he shrugged his shoulders. An artist has a message to
- deliver to his generation, and how can he deliver it if he cannot sell his
- pictures? Let him give out to the world what was best in him, and he
- would be content. Let him but be able to say, “I have delivered my
- message,” and that would be fame enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- These were things of the depths. The surface of his mood was exuberant,
- almost childish, delight, tempered with whimsical diffidence in his power
- of comporting himself correctly towards such high personages. For the
- duchess, who never did things by halves, and was also determined, as she
- had said, of not buying a pig in a poke, had conveyed to him the
- intimation that Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck would
- honour him with a visit to his studio on the following Thursday. Jimmie
- and Aline held long counsel together. What was the proper way to receive a
- Serene Highness? Jimmie had a vague idea of an awning outside the door and
- a strip of red baize down the steps and across the pavement. Tony
- Merewether, who was called into consultation, suggested, with the
- flippancy of youth, a brass band and a chorus of maidens to strew flowers;
- whereat Aline turned her back upon him, and Jimmie, adding pages in fancy
- dress to hold up the serene train and a major-domo in a court suit with a
- wand, encouraged the offender. Aline retired from so futile a discussion
- and went on sewing in dignified silence. At last she condescended to throw
- out a suggestion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I were you, Jimmie, I should get the princess some portraits to look
- at.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “God bless my soul,” cried Jimmie, putting down his pipe, “I never thought
- of it. Tony, my boy, that child with the innocence of the dove combines
- the wisdom of the original serpent. My brain reels to think what I should
- be without her. We'll telegraph to all the people that have sat to me and
- ask them to send in their portraits by Thursday.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He crossed the studio and began to rummage among the litter on the long
- table. Aline asked him what he was looking for.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Telegram forms. Why have n't we got any? Tony, run round the corner to
- the post-office, like a good boy, and get some.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Aline checked the execution of this maniacal project. Three portraits
- would be quite sufficient. Jimmie would have to pick out three ladies of
- whom he could best ask such a favour, and write them polite little notes
- and offer to send a van in the orthodox way to collect the pictures.
- Jimmie bowed before such sagacity, and wrote the letters.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the course of the week the portraits arrived, and the studio for a
- whole day became the undisputed kingdom of Aline and a charwoman. The long
- untidy table, so dear to Jimmie, was ruthlessly cleared and set in
- dismaying order. The frame-maker was summoned, and the unsold pictures
- that had long slumbered sadly on the ground with their faces to the wall,
- were dusted and hung in advantageous lights. The square of Persian carpet,
- which Jimmie during an unprotected walk through Regent Street had once
- bought for Aline's bedroom, was brought down and spread on the bare boards
- of the model-platform. A few cushions were scattered about the rusty
- drawing-room suite, and various odds and ends of artists' properties, bits
- of drapery, screens, old weapons, were brought to light and used for
- purposes of decoration. So that when Jimmie, who had been banished the
- house for the day, returned in the evening, he found a flushed and
- exhausted damsel awaiting him in a transfigured studio.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear little girl,” he said, touched, “my dear little girl, it's
- beautiful, it's magical. But you have tired yourself to death. Why did n't
- you let me do all this?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You would never have done it yourself, Jimmie. You know you wouldn't,”
- said Aline. “You would have gone on talking nonsense about red baize
- strips and flower-girls and pages—anything to make those about you
- laugh and be happy—and you would never have thought of showing off
- what you have to its full advantage.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should never have dreamed of robbing your poor little room of its
- carpet, dear,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- They went upstairs for their simple evening meal, and returned as usual to
- the beloved studio. Aline filled Jimmie's pipe.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think I dare smoke in all this magnificence?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed and struck a match.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You did not realise what a lot of beautiful pictures you had, did you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They make a brave show,” he said, looking round. “After all, I'm not
- entirely sorry they have never been sold. I should not like to part with
- them. No, I did not realise how many there were.” In spite of his
- cheeriness the last words sounded a note of pathos that caught the girl's
- sensitive ear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Let us make a tour of inspection,” she said. They went the round,
- pausing long before each picture. He said little, contrary to his habit,
- for he was wont to descant on his work with playful magniloquence. He saw
- the years unfold behind him and disclose the hopes of long ago yet
- unfulfilled. What endless months of dreams and thrills and passionate toil
- hung profitless upon these walls! Things there were, wrought from the
- depths of his radiant faith in man, plucked from the heart of his
- suffering, consecrated by the purest visions of his soul. Had Aline been
- an older woman, a woman who had loved him, lived with him in a wife's
- intimate communion, instead of being merely the tender-hearted child of
- his adoption, she would have wept her heart out. For she, alone of
- mortals, would have got behind such imperfections as there were, and would
- have seen nothing but a crucifixion of the quivering things torn out of
- the life of the beloved man. Only vaguely, elusively did the girl feel
- this. But even her half-comprehending sympathy was of great comfort. She
- thought no one in the world could paint like Jimmie, and held in angry
- contempt a public that could pass him by. She was hotly his advocate,
- furious at his rejection by hanging committees, miserably disappointed
- when his pictures came back from exhibitions unsold, or when negotiations
- with dealers for rights of reproduction fell through. But she was too
- young to pierce to the heart of the tragedy; and Jimmie was too brave and
- laughter-loving to show his pain. Other forces, too, had been at work in
- her development. Recently her mind had been grappling with the problem of
- her unpayable debt to him. This silent pilgrimage round the years brought
- her thoughts instinctively to herself and the monstrous burden she had
- been.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been wondering lately, Jimmie dear,” she said at last, “whether
- you would not have been more successful if you had not had all the worry
- and expense and responsibility of me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good Lord!” he cried in simple amazement, “whatever are you talking of?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She repeated her apologia, though in less coherent terms. She felt
- foolish, as a girl does when a carefully prepared expression of feeling
- falls upon ears which, though inexpressibly dear, are nevertheless not
- quite comprehending.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have had to do pot-boilers,” she said, falling into miserable bathos,
- “and I remember the five-shillings-a-dozen landscapes—and you would
- have spent all that time on your real work—Oh, don't you see what I
- mean, Jimmie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked up at him pathetically—she was a slight slip of a girl,
- and he was above the medium height. He smiled and took her fresh young
- face between his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear,” he said, “you're the only successful piece of work I've ever
- turned out in my life. Please allow me to have some artistic satisfaction—and
- you have been worth a gold-mine to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus each was comforted. Jimmie settled down to his pipe and a book, Aline
- sat over her sewing—the articles to which she devoted her perennial
- industry were a never solved mystery to him—and they spent a
- pleasant evening. The inevitable topic naturally arose in conversation.
- They discussed the princess's visit, the great question—how was she
- to be received?
- </p>
- <p>
- “The best thing you can do,” said the practical Aline, “is to go to Mrs.
- Deering to-morrow and get properly coached.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie looked at her in admiration.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are worth your weight in diamonds,” he said. “I will.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He carried out his project, and not only did he have the pleasure of
- finding Connie at home undisturbed by strange tea-drinking women, but
- Norma Hardacre came in soon after his arrival. The two ladies formed
- themselves into a committee of advice, and sent Jimmie home with most
- definite notions regarding the correct method of receiving Serene
- Highnesses. He also brought Aline the news that the committee would honour
- him with a visit the following morning, accompanied by Mrs. Hardacre, who
- had been pleased to express a desire to see his pictures.
- </p>
- <p>
- The appointed hour came, and with it the ladies. Mrs. Hardacre's lips
- smiled sweetly at the man who was to be taken up by a duchess and to paint
- the portrait of a princess. She declared herself delighted with the studio
- and professed admiration for the pictures.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are they all really your own, Mr. Padgate?” she asked, turning towards
- him, her tortoise-shell lorgnon held sceptre-wise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm afraid so,” answered Jimmie, with a smile. “Sometimes I wish they
- were not so much my own.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I should feel quite proud of them, if I were you,” said the lady,
- desirous to please.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie broke into a laugh, and explained that Jimmie had implied a regret
- that they had found no purchasers. Mrs. Hardacre sniffed. She did not like
- being laughed at, especially as she had gone out of her way to be urbane.
- This was unfortunate for Jimmie; for though he strove hard to remove the
- impression that he had consciously dug a pit of ridicule for her
- entrapment, Mrs. Hardacre listened to his remarks with suspicion and
- became painfully aware of the shabbiness of his coat. Presently she
- regarded one of the portraits—that of a pretty, fluffy-haired woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear me,” she remarked somewhat frigidly, “that is Mrs. Marmaduke
- Hewson.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie, in the simplicity of his heart, was delighted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. A most charming lady. Do you know her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no; I don't know her, but I know of her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her stress on the preposition signified even deeper and more far-reaching
- things than the nod of Lord Burleigh in the play.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you know of her?” asked Jimmie, bluntly. Mrs. Hardacre smiled
- frostily, and her lean shoulders moved in an imperceptible shrug.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Those matters belong to the realm of unhappy gossip, Mr. Padgate; but I'm
- afraid the duchess won't find her portrait attractive.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is really rather a good portrait,” said Jimmie, in puzzled modesty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is the pity of it,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, sweetly.
-</p>
- <p>
-The victim
- smiled. “Surely the private character of the subject can have nothing to
- do with a person's judgment of a portrait as a specimen of the painter's
- art. And besides, Mrs. Hewson is as dear and sweet and true a little woman
- as I have ever met.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are not the first of your sex that has said so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I most sincerely hope I shall not be the last,” said Jimmie, with a
- little flush and a little flash in his eyes and the politest of little
- bows. Whereupon Mrs. Hardacre bit her lip and hated him. Norma, seizing
- the opportunity of contributing to the final rout of her mother,
- unwittingly did Jimmie some damage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We women ought not to have given up fancy work,” she said in her hardest
- and most artificial tones. “As we don't embroider with our fingers, we
- embroider with our tongues. You can have no idea what an elaborate tissue
- of lies has been woven about that poor little Mrs. Hewson. I agree with
- Mr. Padgate. I am sorry you believe them, mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie's grateful glance smote her undeserving heart. She had gained
- credit under false pretences and felt hypocritical—an unpleasant
- feeling, for the assumption of unpossessed virtues was not one of her
- faults. She succeeded, however, in rendering her mother furious. In a very
- short time Mrs. Hardacre remembered an engagement and went away in a
- hansom-cab, refusing the seat in Connie's carriage, which was put at her
- disposal on the condition of her waiting a few moments longer. She had
- thanked Jimmie, however, for the pleasure afforded by his delightful
- pictures with such politeness when he saw her into the cab, that he did
- not for a moment suspect that the lady who had entered the house with
- expressions of friendliness had driven away in a rage, with feelings
- towards him ludicrously hostile. He returned to the studio at peace with
- all womankind; not sorry that Mrs. Hardacre had departed, but only because
- courtesy no longer demanded his relegating to the second sphere of his
- attention the divine personage of whom he felt himself to be the slave. No
- suspicion of Mrs. Hardacre's spiteful motive in deprecating the display of
- his most striking piece of portraiture ever entered his head. He ran down
- the studio stairs with the eagerness of a boy released from the flattering
- but embarrassing society of his elders and free to enjoy the companionship
- of his congeners. And he was childishly eager to show his pictures to
- Norma, to hear her verdict, to secure her approval, so that he should
- stand in her eyes as a person in some humble way worthy of the regard that
- Morland said she bestowed on him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He found his visitors not looking at pictures at all, but talking to
- Aline, who rushed to him as soon as he entered the studio.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Jimmie—just fancy! Mrs. Deering is going to take me to
- Horlingham on Saturday, and is coming upstairs with me to see what I can
- do in the way of a frock. You don't mind, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie looked down into the happy young face and laughed a happy laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mrs. Deering is an angel from the most exclusive part of heaven,” he
- said. And this was one of the rare occasions on which he was guilty of a
- double meaning. Had not the angel thus contrived an unlooked-for joy—a
- few minutes' undisturbed communion with his divinity?
- </p>
- <p>
- The first words that Norma spoke when they were alone were an apology.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must not take what my mother said in ill part. She and I have been
- bred, I'm afraid, in a hard school.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was very kind of Mrs. Hardacre to warn me of the possibility of the
- duchess being prejudiced against me by the exhibition of a particular
- portrait. I can't conceive the possibility myself. But still Mrs.
- Hardacre's intention was kindly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma turned her head away for a moment. She could not trust herself to
- speak, for a stinging sarcasm with just a touch of the hysterical would
- have been all she could utter, and she had not the heart to undeceive him.
- She shot into the by-path of the gossip concerning Mrs. Hewson.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mother believes the stories about her. So do I in the loose sort of way
- in which our faith in anything is composed—even in our
- fellow-creatures' failings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You defended her,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You made me do so.”
- </p>
- <h3>
- “I?”
- </h3>
- <p>
- “Either you, because you carry about with you an uncomfortable Palace of
- Truth sort of atmosphere, or else the desire to rub it into my mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rub what in?” Jimmie was puzzled.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma laughed somewhat bitterly. She saw that he was incapable of
- understanding the vulgar pettiness of the scheme of motives that had
- prompted the utterances of her mother and herself. She could not explain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think you are born out of your century,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was lucky for Jimmie that he was unaware of the passionate tribute the
- light words implied. She gave him no time to answer, but carried him
- straight to the pictures.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had no idea you did such beautiful work,” she said, looking around her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie followed her glance, and the melancholy of the artist laid its
- touch for a moment upon him. He sighed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They might have been beautiful if I had done what I started out to do. It
- is the eternal tragedy of the clipped wings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was oddly responsive to a vibration in his voice, and gave out, like a
- passive violin, the harmonic of the struck note.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better to have wings that are clipped than to have no wings at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had never uttered such a sentiment, never thought such a thought in
- her life before. Her words sounded unreal in her own ears, and yet she had
- a profound sense of their sincerity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is no apteryx among human souls,” said Jimmie, released from the
- melancholy fingers. They argued the point in a lighter vein, discussed
- individual pictures. Charmed by her sympathy, he spoke freely of his work,
- his motives, his past dreams. Had Norma not begun to know him, she might
- have wondered at the lack of bitterness in his talk. To this man of many
- struggles and many crushing disappointments the world was still young and
- sweet, and his faith in the ultimate righteousness of things undimmed. The
- simple courage of his attitude towards life moved her admiration. She felt
- somewhat humbled in the presence of a spirit stronger, clearer than any
- into which chance had hitherto afforded her a glimpse. And as he talked in
- his bright, half-earnest, half-humourous way, it crossed her mind that
- there was a fair world of thought and emotion in which she and her like
- had not set their feet; not the world entirely of poetic and artistic
- imaginings, but one where inner things mattered more than outer
- circumstance, where it would not be ridiculous or affected to think of the
- existence of a soul and its needs and their true fulfilment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Hitherto meeting him as an alien in her world, she had regarded him with a
- touch of patronising pity. From this she was now free. She saw him for the
- first time in harmony with his environment, as the artist sensitive and
- responsive, integral with the beautiful creations that hung around the
- walls, and still homely and simple, bearing the rubs of time as bravely
- and frankly as the old drawing-room suite that furnished the unpretentious
- studio. Now it was she who felt herself somewhat disconcertingly out of
- her element. The sensation, however, had a curious charm.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was one picture that had attracted her from the first. She stood in
- front of it moved by its pity and tenderness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me about this one,” she said without looking at him. She divined
- that it was very near his heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the foreground amid laughing woodland crouched a faun with little furry
- ears and stumps of horns, and he was staring in piteous terror at a
- vision; and the vision was that of a shivering, outcast woman on a wet
- pavement in a sordid street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the joyous, elemental creature's first conception of pain,” said
- Jimmie, after a few moments' silence. “You see, life has been to him only
- the sunshine, and the earth drenched with colour and music—as the
- earth ought to be—and now he sees a world that is coming grey with
- rain and misty with tears, and he has the horror of it in his eyes. I am
- not given to such moralising in paint,” he added with a smile. “This is a
- very early picture.” He looked at it for some time with eyes growing
- wistful. “Yes,” he sighed, “I did it many years ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It has a history then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” he admitted; and he remembered how the outcast figure in the rain
- had symbolised that little funeral procession in Paris and how terribly
- grey the world had been.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma's chastened mood had not awed the spirit of mockery within her, but
- had rendered it less bitter, and had softened her voice. She waved her
- hand towards the crouching faun.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And that is you?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie caught a kind raillery in her glance, and laughed. Yes, she had his
- secret; was the only person who had ever guessed him beneath the travesty
- of horns and goat's feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I like you for laughing,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Other painters have shown me their pictures.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which signifies—?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That this is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen,” she
- replied.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But why are you glad that I laughed?” asked Jimmie, in happy puzzledom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have told you, Mr. Padgate, all that I am going to tell you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I accept the inscrutable,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you believe in the old pagan joy of life?” she asked after a pause. “I
- mean, was there, is there such a thing? One has heard of it; in fact it is
- a catch phrase that any portentous poseur has on the tip of his tongue.
- When one comes to examine it, however, it generally means champagne and
- oysters and an unpresentable lady, and it ends with liver and—and
- all sorts of things, don't you know. But you are not a poseur—I
- think you are the honestest man I have ever met—and yet you paint
- this creature as if you utterly believe in what he typifies.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would go hard with me if I did n't,” said Jimmie. “I can't talk to you
- in philosophic terms and explain all my reasons, because I have read very
- little philosophy. When I do try, my head gets addled. I knew a chap once
- who used to devour Berkeley and Kant and all the rest, and used to write
- about them, and I used to sit at his feet in a kind of awed wonder at the
- tremendousness of his brain. A man called Smith. He was colossally
- clever,” he added after a reflective pause. “But I can only grope after
- the obvious. Don't you think the beauty of the world is obvious?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It all depends upon which world,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which world? Why, God's world. It is sweet to draw the breath of life. I
- love living; don't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never thought of it,” she answered. “I should n't like to die, it
- is true, but I don't know why. Most people seem to spend two-thirds of
- their existence in a state of boredom, and the rest in sleep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is because they reject my poor faun's inheritance.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been asking you what that is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The joy and laughter of life. They put it from them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They draw the soul's curtains and light the gas, instead of letting God's
- sunshine stream in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma turned away from the picture with a laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That reminds me of the first time I met you. You told me to go and
- ventilate my soul. It gave me quite a shock, I assure you. But I have been
- trying to follow your precept ever since. Don't you think I am a little
- bit fresher?”
- </p>
- <p>
- For the moment the girl still lingering in her five-and-twenty hard years
- flashed to the surface, adorably warming the cold, finely sculptured face,
- and bringing rare laughter into her eyes. Jimmie marvelled at the infinite
- sweetness of her, and fed his poor hungry soul thereon.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You look like a midsummer morning,” he said unsteadily.
- </p>
- <p>
- The tone caught her, sobered her; but the colour deepened on her cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll treasure that as a pretty compliment,” she said. There was a little
- space of silence—quite a perilous little space, with various unsaid
- things lurking in ambush. Norma broke it first.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now I have seen everything, have n't I? No. There are some on the floor
- against the wall.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie explained their lack of value, showed her two or three. They were
- mostly the wasters from his picture factory, he said. She found in each a
- subject for admiration, and Jimmie glowed with pleasure at her praise.
- While he was replacing them she moved across the studio.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And this one?” she asked, with her finger on the top of a strainer. He
- looked round and followed swiftly to her side. It was her own portrait
- with its face to the wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not going to show you that,” he said hurriedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a crazy thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should love to see it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you it's a crazy thing,” he repeated. “A mad artist's dream.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma arched her eyebrows. “Aha! That is very like a confession!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of what?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The ideal woman?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought everything was so positive in your scheme of life,” she
- remarked teasingly. “Don't you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Jimmie, “I know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Again the vibration that Jimmie, poorest of actors, could not keep from
- his voice, stirred her. She felt the indelicacy of having trodden upon
- sanctified ground. She turned away and sat down. They talked of other
- matters, somewhat self-consciously. Both welcomed the entrance of Connie
- Deering and Aline. The former filled the studio at once with laughing
- chatter. She hoped Norma had not turned Jimmie's hair white with the
- dreadful things she must have said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't turn a hair, as I'm a mere worldling, but Jimmie is an
- unsophisticated child of nature, and is n't accustomed to you, my dear
- Norma.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She went on to explain that she was Jimmie's natural protectress, and that
- they who harmed him would have to reckon with her. Jimmie flew gaily to
- Norma's defence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And this child's garments?” he asked, indicating Aline, whose face was
- irradiated by a vision of splendid attire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't meddle with what does n't concern you,” replied Connie, while she
- and the girl exchanged the glances of conspirators.
- </p>
- <p>
- A short while afterwards the two visitors drove away. For some time Norma
- responded somewhat absently to Mrs. Deering's light talk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am so glad you have taken to Jimmie,” said the latter at last. “Is n't
- he a dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I remember your saying that before. But is n't it rather an odd word to
- use with reference to him?” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Odd—? But that's just what he is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma turned in some resentment on her friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Connie, how dare we talk patronisingly of a man like that? He's worth
- a thousand of the empty-souled, bridge-playing people we live among.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that's just why I call him a dear,” said Mrs. Deering,
- uncomprehendingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma shrugged her shoulders, fell into a silence which she broke by
- risking:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know whom he is in love with?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good gracious, Norma,” cried the little lady, in alarm. “You don't say
- that Jimmie is in love? Oh, it would spoil him. He can't be!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There was one picture—of a woman—which he would not let me
- see,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma paused for some seconds before she replied:
- </p>
- <p>
- “He called it 'a mad artist's dream.' I have been wondering whether it was
- not better than a sane politician's reality.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is a sane politician's reality, dear?” Connie asked, mystified.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, woman-like, she turned the conversation to the turpitudes of her
- dressmaker.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter X—TWO IDYLLS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">J</span>IMMIE was trudging
- along the undulating highroad that leads from Dieppe to the little village
- of Berneval, very hot, very dusty, very thirsty, and very contented. He
- carried a stick and a little black bag. His content proceeded from a
- variety of causes. In the first place it was a glorious August day,
- drenched with sunshine and with deep blue ether; and the smiling plain of
- Normandy rolled before him, a land of ripening orchards and lazy pastures.
- He had been longing for the simple beauty of sun and sky and green trees,
- and for the homely sights and sounds of country things, and now he had his
- fill. Secondly, Aline was having a much needed holiday. She had been
- growing a little pale and languid, he thought, in London, after a year's
- confined administering to his selfish wants. She was enjoying herself,
- too, and the few days she had already spent in the sea air had brought the
- blood to her cheeks again. Thirdly, he was free for the moment from
- everyday cares. A dealer had fallen from heaven into his studio and paid
- money down for the copyright of two of his worst pictures. Fourthly, he
- had definitely received the commission for the portrait of the Princess of
- Herren-Rothbeck. Her Serene Highness and her tutelary duchess had paid
- their visit, expressed themselves delighted with his work (the duchess
- especially commending the portrait of the hapless Mrs. Marmaduke Hewson),
- and had driven away in a most satisfactory condition of serenity and
- graciousness.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie was happy. What could man want more? In addition to all these
- blessings, Norma had written to him from Lord Monzie's place in Scotland a
- letter <i>à propos</i> of nothing, merely expressive of good-will and
- friendliness; and he had received it that morning. He had never seen her
- handwriting before. Bold, incisive, distinguished, it seemed to complement
- his conception of the radiant lady, and in a foolish way he tried to
- harmonise the ink-marks with the curves of her proud lips, the setting of
- her eyes, and the poise of her queenly head. The dreariness of a rainy
- afternoon with all the men and half the women away on the grouse-moor had
- been, she said, her excuse for writing. She sketched various members of
- the house-party with light, satiric touches; notably one Theodore Weever,
- an American, whose sister had married an impecunious and embarrassing
- cousin of the Duchess of Wiltshire. He was building himself a palace in
- Fifth Avenue, wrote Norma, and had been buying pictures in Europe to
- decorate it with; now he was anxious to purchase a really decorative wife.
- Morland was expected in a few days, and she would be glad when he appeared
- upon the scene. She did not say why; but Jimmie naturally understood that
- her heart was yearning for the presence of the man she loved. “I have very
- little to say that can interest you,” she concluded, “but you can say many
- things to interest me: this letter is purely selfish, a mere minnow, after
- all, that I use as bait.” So Jimmie walked along the dusty road thinking
- out an answer that could bring comfort to the Hero pining for her Leander;
- thinking also of Aline, and revelling in the sunshine.
- </p>
- <p>
- He delighted, like a child, in all he saw. He stopped before the red,
- gold, and green paradise of an orchard and feasted upon its colour. He
- lingered in talk with a tiny girl driving a great brown cow; asked her its
- age, how many calves it had had, its name, and whether she were not afraid
- it would mistake her for a blade of grass and bite her. The little girl
- scoffed at the possibility. She could drive three cows, and, if it came to
- that, a bull. “<i>Ça me connaît, les bêtes,</i>” she said. Whereupon he
- put a couple of sous in her hand and went on his way. Presently he sat
- down on the rough wooden bench in front of a wayside café and drank cider
- from an earthenware bowl, and played with a mongrel puppy belonging to the
- establishment. When the latter had darted off to bark amid the cloud of
- dust and petroleum fumes left by a passing motor-car, Jimmie, sipping his
- second bowl of sour cider in great content, re-read the precious letter,
- filled his pipe, and reflected peacefully on the great harmony of things.
- The hopelessness of his own love for Norma struck no discord. The Stephen
- so closely connected with the life of Saint Catherine of Siena did not
- love with less hope or more devotion.
- </p>
- <p>
- He paid the few coppers for his reckoning, took up his stick and little
- black bag, and trudged on refreshed, and as he neared Berneval the
- expectation of Aline's welcome gladdened him. He had rented for the month
- a cottage with a straggling piece of ground behind, from an artist friend
- whose possession it was. The friend had fixed the figure absurdly low; the
- modest living under Aline's experienced management was cheap, and the <i>bonne
- à tout faire</i> cooked divinely for a few halfpence a day. By a curious
- coincidence Mr. Anthony Merewether had also pitched upon Berneval as a
- summer resting-place. He had come on business, he gave out,
- and every morning saw him issue from the hotel by the beach, armed with
- easel and camp-stool, and the rest of the landscape-painter's
- paraphernalia, and every evening saw him smoking cigarettes on Jimmie's
- veranda. Whether the hours of sunshine saw him consistently hard at work,
- Jimmie was inclined to doubt. He certainly bathed a great deal and ran
- about with Aline a great deal, and Jimmie read the pair moral lessons on
- the evil effects of idleness. But Tony was a fresh-minded boy; his
- ingenuous conversation provided Jimmie with much entertainment, and his
- presence on their holiday gave him the satisfaction of feeling that Aline
- had some one of her own age to play with.
- </p>
- <p>
- The ramshackle vehicle, half diligence, half omnibus, that plies between
- Berneval and Dieppe, passed him with great cracking of whip and straining
- of rusty harness and loud <i>hue</i>'s from the driver, just as he entered
- the village. It was late afternoon, and the trim white and green of the
- place was bathed in mellow sunshine. The short cut home lay up a lane and
- through the churchyard, a cluster of grey slabs around a little grey
- church; and many of the slabs bore the story of the pitiless sea—how
- Jean-Marie Dulac, many years ago, was drowned at the age of nineteen, and
- how Jacques Lemerre perished in a storm; for it has been from time
- immemorial a tiny village of fisher-folk and every family has given of its
- own to the waves. The pathos of the simple legends on the stones always
- touched him as he walked by; and now he paused to decipher some moss-grown
- letters of fifty years ago. He stooped, made out the same sad tale,
- moralised a little thereon, and rose with a sigh of relief to greet the
- sunshine and the fair earth. But the sight that suddenly met his eyes
- banished dead fishermen and hungry sea and sunny tree-tops from his mind.
- It was a boy and a girl very close together, his arm about her waist, her
- head upon his shoulder, walking by the little church. Their backs were
- towards him. He stared open-mouthed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “God bless my soul!” said he, in amazement.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he dropped his stick, which clattered upon a gravestone.
- </p>
- <p>
- The foolish pair started at the sound, assumed a correct attitude with
- remarkable swiftness, and turning, recognised Jimmie. Tony Merewether, who
- was a fair youth, grew very red and looked sheepish; Aline awaited events
- demurely, with downcast eyes. Jimmie pushed his old Homburg hat to the
- back of his head, and in two or three strides confronted them. He tried to
- look fiercely at Tony. The young man drew himself up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have asked Aline to marry me, sir,” he said frankly. “I was going to
- speak to you about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good Lord!” said Jimmie, helplessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can't marry just yet,” said Tony, “but I hope you will give your
- consent.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie looked from one to the other.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why did n't you let me know of this state of things before?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have n't done anything underhand. I thought you guessed,” said Tony.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you, Aline?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stole a shy glance at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was n't quite sure of it until just now,” she replied. And then she
- blushed furiously and ran to Jimmie's arms. “Oh, Jimmie dear, don't be
- cross!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cross, my child?” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- The world of tender reproach in his tone touched her. The ready tears
- started.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are an angel, Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The hand that was on her shoulder patted it comfortingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, dear, I am a blind elderly idiot. O Lord, Tony, I hope you feel
- infernally ashamed of yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “As Tony says, we sha'n't be able to get married for a long, long time,”
- said Aline, by way of consolation, “so for years and years we'll go on in
- just the same way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I only ask you to consent to our engagement, sir,” said Tony,
- diplomatically. “I am quite willing to wait for Aline as long as you
- like.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The abandonment of Jimmie by Aline had been the subject of the last
- half-hour's discussion between the lovers. The thought of Jimmie alone and
- helpless appalled her. She was a horrid selfish wretch, she had informed
- Tony, for listening to a word he said. How could Jimmie live by himself?
- She shuddered at the dismal chaos of the studio, the gaping holes in his
- socks, the impossible meals, the fleecing of him by every plausible beggar
- in frock coat or rags, the empty treasury. He needed more care than a
- baby. She would marry Tony, some day, because her head was full of him,
- and because she had let him kiss her and had found a peculiar, dreamy
- happiness during the process, and because she could not conceive the
- possibility of marrying any one else. But she was more than content to
- leave the date indefinite. Perhaps, in the stretch of aeons between now
- and then, something would happen to release her from her responsibilities.
- She had made the position luminously clear to Mr. Merewether before she
- had consented to be foolish and walk about with her head on his shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, until Jimmie gets properly suited,” she said, quickly following
- Tony's last remark.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear foolish children,” said Jimmie, “you had better get married as
- soon as ever you can keep the wolf from the door. What on earth is the
- good of waiting till you are old? Get all the happiness you can out of
- your youth, and God bless you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young man bowed his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will give my life to her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie touched him on the arm, waved his hand around, indicating the
- little grey church, the quiet graves.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is not the place where a man should say such a thing lightly,” he
- said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not the man to say such a thing lightly in any place,” retorted the
- youth, with spirit.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie nodded approvingly. “My dear,” he said to Aline, “that is the way I
- like to hear a man talk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned and collected the fallen stick and the black bag which he had
- deposited by the side of the slab. He had gone into Dieppe that morning
- partly for the sake of the walk and partly to purchase some odds and ends
- for the house. Aline, not trusting to his memory, had given him a list of
- items with directions attached as to the places where he was to procure
- them, so that when he came to “pepper,” he should seek it at a grocery and
- not at a milliner's establishment. Now, without saying a word, he opened
- the bag and rummaged among its queer contents, which Aline regarded with
- some twinges of a tender conscience. She ought to have gone into Dieppe
- herself, and made her purchases like a notable housewife, instead of
- sending Jimmie and passing the day in selfish lovemaking. The twinge grew
- sharper when Jimmie at last fished out a little cardboard box and put it
- in her hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “At any rate, I can give you an engagement present before Tony,” he said
- with a laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was only an old filigree silver waist-buckle he had picked up at a
- curio shop in the town, but it was a gem of infinite value to the girl,
- for she knew that Jimmie's love went with it. She showed it to Tony
- Merewether, who admired the workmanship.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you can give me anything I shall prize more, you will be a lucky
- fellow,” she said in a low voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- The three strolled quietly towards the cottage, and it was Jimmie's arm
- that Aline clung to, and Mr. Merewether who carried the black bag. That
- night, after she had dismissed the young man, she sat a long time with
- Jimmie on the veranda, telling him in one shy breath of the wonder that
- had suddenly come into her life, and in the next that she would never
- leave him until he was rich and famous and able to live by himself.
- Jimmie, unguileful in the nature of men and maidens and the ways of this
- wicked world, kept on repeating like a refrain his formula of
- astonishment:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It never entered my head, dear, that you two children would fall in love
- with one another.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't think I ought n't to have done it, do you, Jimmie?” she said at
- last.
- </p>
- <p>
- He broke into his happy laugh, and kissed her. “If you want to please me,
- you'll go on doing it,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was some time after he had gone to bed that sleep came. Yes; Nature,
- the dear mother, had spoken, and who could gainsay her? A clean, bright,
- healthy English lad, and a clean, bright, healthy English girl had read
- truth in each other's eyes. It was one of the sweet things in the world,
- for which we who live in the world should be thankful. The dimly seen
- white curtains of his bed became gossamer veils that enveloped him with
- beauty. Now, on either side, his inner life was touched by the magic of
- romance: the fair dream of these two children, and the love of the other
- betrothed pair. It was on happy eyelids that sleep settled at last. And
- Aline, too, lay awake, her young cheeks burning at the delicious yet
- frightening memory of a kiss in the little churchyard, and her heart
- swelling at the thought of the infinite goodness of Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile, unconscious of these idyllic happenings and romantic
- speculations, Norma was enjoying herself in her worldly way at Lord
- Monzie's place in Scotland. Lord Monzie, a dissipated young man who had
- lately come into the title, had married a well-to-do young woman in very
- smart society. Consequently there was no lack of modern entertainment in
- the house. So modern was everything that the host had got down Mr. Joseph
- Ascherberg, the financier, to hold a roulette bank every night against all
- comers; but he took care that he himself, or his own confidential man,
- turned the wheel and spun the marble. Most of the people had unimaginative
- nicknames, the extremes of the Submerged Tenth and the Upper Ten thus
- curiously meeting. Lord Monzie was called “Muggins;” his bosom friend,
- and, as some whispered, his <i>âme damnée</i>, Sir Calthrop Boyle, was
- alluded to as “The Boiler;” and Ascherberg responded to the appellation of
- “Freddy.” There were also modern conveniences for the gratification of
- caprices or predilections that need not be insisted upon. In fact the
- atmosphere was surcharged with modernity; so much so that Norma, who would
- have walked about the Suburra of Imperial Rome with cynical indifference,
- gasped a little when she entered it. One or two things actually shocked
- her, at which she wondered greatly. She regarded Mr. Ascherberg with
- extreme disfavour, and winced at the women's conversation when they were
- cosily free from men. For the first day or two she held herself somewhat
- apart, preferring solitude on sequestered bits of terrace, where she could
- read a novel, or look at the grey hills that met the stretch of purple
- moorland. But gradually the sweeter tone of mind which she had brought
- with her lost its flavour, and having won sixty pounds from Ascherberg,
- and having told the feminine coterie what she knew of the Wyniard affair,
- she began to breathe the atmosphere without much difficulty. Yet
- occasionally she had spasms of revolt. In a corner of the drawing-room
- stood a marble copy of the little Laughing Faun in the Louvre, put there
- by the late baron, and every time her eye fell upon it, the picture of
- another faun arose before her, and with it the memory of a homely man with
- bright kind eyes, and she seemed to draw a breath of purer air. But she
- called the fancy foolishness and hardened her heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- Still, had it not been for Theodore Weever, the American man of affairs,
- she would probably have found some pretext for an abrupt departure. He
- alone was a personality among the characterless, vicious men and women of
- the house-party. Short, spare, alert, bald-headed, clean-shaven,
- clear-featured, he was of a type apart. Norma, who had a keen
- intelligence, divined in him from the first an adversary upon whom she
- could sharpen her wit and a companion who would not bore her with dreary
- tales of sport or the unprofitable details of his last night's play. And
- from the first Theodore Weever was attracted towards Norma. Their lax
- associates, in spite of her engagement to Morland being perfectly well
- known and in spite of Morland's expected arrival, recognised their pairing
- with embarrassing frankness, and said appalling things about them behind
- their backs. For a few days therefore they found themselves inseparable.
- At last their friendship reached the confidential stage. Mr. Theodore
- Weever avowed the object of his present visit to England. He was in search
- of a decorative wife.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ought to be as easy as turning over a book of wallpapers,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And as difficult to choose,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must know what scheme of colouring and design you want.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Precisely. I don't find it in the books of stock patterns, either here or
- in America. And I've ransacked America.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is n't the line—I believe in commercial circles they call it a line—is
- n't the line of specially selected duchesses for the English market good
- enough for you?” she asked with a smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was about to light a cigarette when she began her question. He lit it
- and blew out the first few puffs of smoke before he replied. They were
- sitting in Norma's favourite nook on the terrace, where he, solitary male
- who had not gone forth with a gun that morning, had been gratuitously told
- by an obliging hostess that he would find her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The American woman makes a good decorative duchess,” he said in his
- incisive tone, “because she has to sweep herself clean of every tradition
- she was born with and accept bodily the very much bigger and more dazzling
- tradition of your old aristocracy. She can do it, because she is
- infinitely sensitive and intelligent. But she is a changed creature. She
- has to live up to her duke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He puffed for a moment or two at his cigarette.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you see what I am coming to?” he continued. “I am not an English duke.
- I am a plain American citizen. No woman in America would make it her ideal
- in life to live up to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't mean to be rude,” interrupted Norma, with a laugh, “but do you
- think any Englishwoman would?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do,” he replied. “Not to this insignificant, baldheaded thing that is
- I, but to what in the way of position and power I represent. An American
- woman would bring her traditions along with her—her superior
- culture, her natural right to be enthroned as queen, her expectation that
- I would take a back seat in my own house. It is I that would become a sort
- of grotesque decoration in the place. Now, I may be grotesque, but I will
- not consent to be decorative. I fully intend to be master. I am not going
- to be Mrs. Theodore Weever's husband. I want an Englishwoman to bring
- along her traditions. She will be naturally <i>grande dame</i>; she will
- come to my house, my social world, frankly the wife of Theodore Weever,
- and ready to support the dignity, whatever it may be, of Theodore Weever,
- just as she would have supported the dignity of Lord So and So, had she
- been married to him in England.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will find thousands of English girls who can do that,” said Norma. “I
- don't see your difficulty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She must be decorative,” said Weever.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And that means?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She must be a queenly woman, but one content to be queen consort. Your
- queenly woman—with brains—is not so easy to find. I have met
- only one in my life who is beyond all my dreams of the ideal. Of course
- the inherent malice of things screws her down like one blade of a pair of
- scissors to another fellow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is the paragon?” asked Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It wouldn't be fair on the other fellow to tell you,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it sheer honesty, or the fear of being cut in half by the pair of
- scissors that keeps you from coming between them?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think it's honesty,” he replied. “If I can guess rightly, the scissors
- have n't so fine an edge on them as to make them dangerous.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They may be desperately in love with one another, for all you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are delightful worldlings of our own particular world, dear lady,”
- said Weever, with a smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus was Norma given to understand that the post of decorative queen
- consort in Mr. Theodore Weever's Fifth Avenue palace was at her disposal.
- A year ago she might have considered the offer seriously; now that she
- felt secure of a brilliant position as Morland's wife, she was amused by
- its frank impudence. She held other laughing conversations with him on the
- subject of his search, but too prudent to commit indiscretions, she gave
- no hint that she had understood his personal allusion, and Weever was too
- shrewd to proceed any further towards his own undoing. They remained
- paired, however, to their mutual satisfaction, until Morland's arrival,
- when Theodore Weever took his departure. In fact, the same carriage that
- conveyed the American to the station remained for a necessary half-hour to
- meet Morland's train, and Norma, who dutifully drove down to welcome her
- affianced, shared the carriage with the departing guest.
- </p>
- <p>
- She stood on the platform chatting with him as he leaned out of the
- window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When shall we see each other again?” she said idly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Next month.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where?” she asked, somewhat taken aback by his decided tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am putting in some time at Chiltern Towers. I had a letter this morning
- from the duchess, asking me to come and meet the Princess of
- Herren-Rothbeck.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They looked at each other, and Norma laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Beware of Her Serene Highness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I've had dealings with her before,” replied Weever. “I reckon I get
- my money's worth. Don't you fret about me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The guard came up and touched his cap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We are off now, miss.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She shook hands with Weever, saying with a laugh, “I hope you will find
- that bit of decoration.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you fret about that, either,” he said with a quick, hard glance.
- “I'm in no hurry. I can wait.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The train started, and was soon swallowed by a tunnel a few hundred yards
- up the line. Norma patrolled the platform of the little wayside station
- waiting for Morland. The place was very still. The only porter had
- departed somewhither. The station-master had retired into his office. The
- coachman outside the station sat like a well-bred image on his box, and
- the occasional clink of the harness, as the horses threw up their heads,
- sounded sharp and clear. Nothing around but mountain and moorland; a short
- distance in front a ravine with a lazily trickling, half-dried-up mountain
- stream. Here and there a clump of larch and fir, and a rough granite
- boulder. An overcast sky threw dreariness on the silent waste. Norma
- shivered, suddenly struck with a sense of isolation. She seemed to stand
- in the same relation with her soul's horizon as with the physical
- universe. The man that had gone had left her with a little feeling of fear
- for the future, a little after-taste of bitterness. The man that was
- coming would bring her no thrill of joy. As she stood between a drab sky
- and a bleak earth, so stood she utterly alone in the still pause between a
- past and a future equally unillumined. She longed for the sun to break out
- of the heaven, for the sounds of joyous things to come from plain and
- mountain; and she longed for light and song in her heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- She had been watching for the past few days the proceedings of a
- half-recognised, irregular union. The woman was the frivolous, heartless,
- almost passionless wife of a casual husband at the other end of the earth;
- the man an underbred fellow on the stock exchange. She ordered him about
- and called him Tommy. He clothed her in extravagant finery, and openly
- showed her his sovereign male's contempt. Norma had overheard him tell her
- to go to the devil and leave him alone, when she hinted one night, in a
- whisper that was meant for his ears alone, that he was drinking overmuch
- whisky. It was all so sordid, so vulgar—the bond between them so
- unsanctified by anything like tenderness, chivalry, devotion. Norma had
- felt the revulsion of her sex.
- </p>
- <p>
- What would be the future? By any chance like this woman's life? Would the
- day come when she would sell herself for a gown and a bracelet, thrown at
- her with a man's contemptuous word? Was marriage very widely different
- from such a union? Was not she selling herself? Might not the man she was
- waiting for go the way of so many others of his type, drink and coarsen
- and tell her to go to the devil?
- </p>
- <p>
- She longed for the sun, but not a gleam pierced the leaden sky; she sought
- in her soul for a ray of light, but none came.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last with a shriek and a billowing plume of smoke the down train
- emerged from the tunnel. Norma set her face in its calm ironic mask and
- waited for the train to draw up. Only two passengers alighted, Morland and
- his man. Morland came to her with smiling looks and grasped her by the
- hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are looking more beautiful than ever,” he whispered, bringing his
- face close to hers.
- </p>
- <p>
- She started back as if she had been struck. The fumes of brandy were in
- his breath. Her hideous forebodings were in process of fulfilment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The whole station will hear you,” she said coldly, turning away.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Imp of Mischance rubbed his hands gleefully at his contrivance.
- Morland, a temperate man, had merely felt chilly after an all-night's
- journey, and, more out of idleness than from a desire for alcohol, had
- foolishly taken a sip out of his brandy flask a moment or two before, when
- he was putting up his hand-bag.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma collected herself, summoned with bitter cynicism her common-sense to
- her aid, and made smiling amends for her shrewish remark. She suffered him
- to kiss her on the drive home, and strove not to despise herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XI—DANGER
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>EDDON COURT had
- been purchased by a wealthy Hardacre at the beginning of the nineteenth
- century, and was exhibited by his grandnephew, the present occupant, as a
- gem of Georgian architecture. Mr. Hardacre had but a vague idea what the
- definition meant, but it sounded very impressive. As a matter of fact, it
- was a Palladian stone building, with pediments over the windows and severe
- rustication on the lower courses. As none of the succeeding Hardacres had
- any money to devote to extensions, the building had remained in its
- original perfection of formality, and Mr. Hardacre did well to be proud of
- it. The grounds had been laid out in the Italian style; but the tastes
- and fashions of over a hundred years had caused the classic architect's
- design to be practically indiscernible. A lawn with trim flower-beds,
- bounded by an arc of elm-trees and bordered by a circular carriage drive
- faced the south front. Along the east front ran a series of terraces. The
- highest, a foot or two below the level of the drawing-room floor, ended on
- the north in a porticoed temple, now used as an afternoon lounge, and
- incongruously furnished with rugs and frivolous wickerwork chairs and
- tables. The next terrace, some eight feet below, was devoted to a tennis
- court. A thick hedge of clipped yew and a screen of wire netting hid the
- lowest, the most charming of all, which, surrounded on all sides by a
- sloping bank and flanked on three sides by tall trees, had been delicately
- turfed for a bowling-green and was now used for croquet.
- </p>
- <p>
- In this stately paradise, warmed by sunny September weather, Jimmie had
- already spent two or three blissful days. His only regret was the absence
- of Aline. She had been invited, but for reasons in which doubtless Tony
- Merewether had a place, she had declined the invitation. She gave Jimmie
- to understand that she had already had her holiday, that the house could
- not possibly look after itself any longer, and that she had no clothes fit
- to appear in among his grand friends. The last argument being
- unanswerable, save by contentions at which the young woman tossed a
- superior head, Jimmie had yielded and come down alone. His regret,
- however, was tempered by the reflection that Aline was probably enjoying
- herself after the manner of betrothed maidens, and it did not seriously
- affect his happiness. Either chance or the lady's own sweet courtesy
- towards a guest had caused him to see much of Norma. She had driven him
- over to Chiltern Towers, where the sittings had begun. She had walked with
- him to Cosford to show him the beautiful fourteenth-century church with
- its decorated spire. She had strolled with him up and down the croquet
- lawn. She had chatted with him in the morning-room yesterday for a whole
- rainy hour after lunch. His head was full of her beauty and condescension.
- It was not unnatural that they should be thrown much together. Morland's
- day was taken up by partridges and electors. Mr. Hardacre, honestly afraid
- of Jimmie, not knowing what on earth to talk to him about, and only half
- comprehending his conversation, kept out of his way as much as his duties
- as host would allow, and Mrs. Hardacre, who, though exceedingly civil, had
- not forgotten her defeat in the studio, felt justified in leaving his
- entertainment in the hands of others who professed to admire the creature.
- These were Norma, Morland, and Connie Deering.
- </p>
- <p>
- This afternoon they found themselves again alone together, at tea in the
- classic temple at the end of the terrace. Mrs. Hardacre and Connie had
- driven off to pay a call, and the men were shooting over ducal turnips.
- Jimmie had received an invitation to join the shooting-party, but not
- having handled a gun since boyish days (and even then Jimmie with firearms
- was Morland's conception of the terror that walketh by day), and also
- having an appointment with the princess for a second sitting, he had
- declined, and Morland, when he heard of it, had clapped him on the back
- and expressed his fervent gratitude.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie had been narrating his morning's adventures at Chiltern Towers, and
- explaining the point of view from which he was painting the portrait. It
- was to be that of the very great lady, with the blood of the earth's great
- rulers in her veins. It was to be half full-length, just showing the
- transparent, aristocratic hands set off by rich old lace at the wrists. A
- certain acidity of temper betrayed by the pinched nostrils and thin lips
- he would try to modify, as it would be out of keeping with his basic
- conception. Norma listened, interested more in the speaker than in the
- subject, her mind occasionally wandering, as it had been wont to do of
- late, to a comparison of ideals. Since that half-hour's loneliness on the
- platform of the little Highland station, she had passed through many hours
- of unrest. To-day the mood had again come upon her. A talk with her mother
- about the great garden-party they were giving in two days' time, to which
- the princess and the duchess were coming, had aroused her scorn; a casual
- phrase of Morland's in reference to the election had jarred upon her; a
- sudden meeting in Cosford with Theodore Weever, and a laughing reference
- to the decorative wife had brought back the little shiver of fear. The
- only human being in the world who could settle her mood—and now she
- felt it consciously—was this odd, sweet-natured man who seemed to
- live in a beautiful world.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he talked she listened, and her mind wandered from the subject. She
- thought of his life, his surroundings, of the girl whose love affair he
- had told her of so tenderly. She took advantage of a pause, occasioned by
- the handing of a second cup of tea and the judicious choosing of cake, to
- start the new topic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose Aline is very happy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie laughed. “What put my little girl into your head?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been thinking a good deal about her since you wrote of her
- engagement. Is it really such an idyll?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The love of two sweet, clean young people is always idyllic. It is so
- untainted—pure as a mountain spring; There is nothing quite like it
- in the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When are they going to set up house together?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Soon, I hope.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will miss her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course,” said Jimmie, “enormously. But the thoughts of her happiness
- will keep me pleasant company. I shall get on all right. Meanwhile it is
- beautiful to see her. She does n't know that I watch, but I do. It is
- sweet to see her eyes brighten and her cheeks flush and to hear her
- laughter. It is like stepping for an enchanted moment into a fairy-tale.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish I could step into it—just for one enchanted moment,” said
- Norma..
- </p>
- <p>
- “You?” asked Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never been in one in my life. I disbelieved in them till you came
- like an apostle of fairyland and converted me. Now I want the consolations
- of my faith.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An earnest note in her voice surprised him. She did not meet his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't understand you,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought perhaps you would,” she answered. “You seem to understand most
- things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have your own—happiness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He hesitated on the word. A quick glance assured her of his ingenuousness.
- She longed to undeceive him, to shriek out her heartlessness, her contempt
- for herself and for her life. But pride and loyalty to Morland restrained
- her within bounds of sanity. She assented to his proposition with a
- gesture of the shapely hand that lay on the tea-table absently tracing the
- pattern of the cloth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I have that. But it isn't the fairyland of those two children. You
- yourself say there is nothing like it in the world. You don't know how I
- pine for it sometimes—for the things that are sweet and clean and
- untainted and pure as a mountain spring. They don't come my way. They
- never will.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are wrong,” said Jimmie. “Love will bring them all to you—that
- and a perfect wedded life and little children.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For a flash she raised her eyes and looked full into his, and for the
- first time the love in the man's heart surged tumultuously. It rose of a
- sudden, without warning, flooding his being, choking him. What it was of
- yearning, despair, passion, horror that he saw in her eyes he knew not. He
- did not read in them the craving of a starved soul for food. To him their
- burning light was a mystery. All that ever reached his consciousness was
- that it was a look such as he had never before beheld in a woman's face;
- and against his will and against his reason it acted like some dark
- talisman and unlocked floodgates. He clenched the arms of the wickerwork
- chair, and bit his lip hard, and stared at the ground.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma broke into a hard laugh, and lay back in her chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must be thinking me a great fool,” she said, in her usual mocking
- tones. “When a woman tries to swim in sentiment, she flounders, and either
- drowns or has to be lugged ignominiously to shore. She can't swim like a
- man. Thanks for the rescue, Mr. Padgate.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at her for a moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean?” he said curtly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm back on dry land. Oh! it is safer for me. There I am protected by my
- little bodyguard of three—the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I
- can't get on without them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie leaped from his chair and brought his clenched hands down to his
- sides in a passionate gesture.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Stop talking like that, I say!” he cried imperiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then meeting her scared and indignant glance, he bowed somewhat wide of
- her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon,” he said, in a tone of no great apology, and marched
- out of the little temple and along the gravelled walk of the terrace.
- Flight, or the loss of self-control, was his only alternative. What she
- thought of him he did not care. The sense of increasing distance from her
- alone brought security to his soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- At the further end he met Mrs. Deering just back from her drive.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, what is the matter, Jimmie?” she asked, twirling an idle sunshade
- over her pretty head, for the terrace was in deep afternoon shadow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing,” he replied, with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “I am going for
- a walk before dinner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He left her standing, reached the highroad and pounded along it. What a
- fool he had been! What a mad fool he had been!
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Deering, with a puzzled expression on her face, watched him
- disappear. She turned and strolled down to Norma, who greeted her with a
- satiric smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What have you been doing to Jimmie?” asked Mr. Deering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been giving him lessons in worldly wisdom.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor dear! They seem to have disagreed with him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma shrugged her shoulders. “That's his affair, not mine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't mean to say that you and Jimmie have quarrelled?” laughed
- Connie. “How delightful! I've always wanted to quarrel with Jimmie just
- for the pleasure of kissing and making friends. But it has been
- impossible. Is it serious?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope not,” Norma answered; and then after a pause, “Oh, Connie, I'm
- afraid I've been a positive brute.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Which evidence of a salutary conviction of her own wrongdoing shows that
- Jimmie's amazing shout of command had not aroused within her any furious
- indignation. Indeed, after the first moment of breathless astonishment,
- she had expressed an odd, almost amusing thrill of admiration for the man
- who had dared address her in that fashion. It was only a small feminine
- satisfaction in the knowledge that by going away he would punish himself
- for his temerity that had restrained her from summoning him back. As soon
- as he was out of call, she reproached herself for misconduct. She could
- have strangled the wanton devil that had prompted her cynical speech. And
- yet the same devil had saved an embarrassing situation. Wedded life and
- little children! If she had spoken what was trembling on her lips, how
- could she have looked the man in the face again? Her sex was revolting
- against that very prospect, was clamouring wildly for she knew not what.
- She dared not betray herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- She greeted him smilingly in the drawing-room before dinner, as if nothing
- had occurred, and chatted pleasantly with Morland over his day's fortunes.
- Jimmie observed her with a sigh of relief. He had passed the last two
- hours greatly agitated; he had trembled lest he had revealed to her his
- soul's secret, and also lest his unmannerliness had given unpardonable
- offence. In any case, now he saw himself forgiven, and breathed freely.
- But he remained unusually silent during dinner, and spent most of the
- evening in the billiard-room with Mr. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- That gentleman, joining the ladies later, fell into conversation with his
- daughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How long is Padgate going to stay?” he asked, mopping his forehead with
- his handkerchief.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Till the princess has completed her sittings, I suppose,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish she'd be quick. I don't know what to do with the fellow. Does n't
- shoot, can't play billiards worth a cent, and does n't seem to know
- anybody. It's like talking to a chap that does n't understand your
- language. I've just been at it. Happened to say I'd like to go to Rome
- again. He fetches a sigh and says so should he. 'Some of the best
- wild-duck shooting in the world,' I said. He stared at me for a moment as
- if I were an escaped lunatic. Now, what on earth should a reasonable being
- go to that beastly place for except to shoot wild-duck on the marshes?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma laughed the little mocking laugh that always irritated her father.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You need n't be afraid of not entertaining Mr. Padgate. He must have
- enjoyed the conversation hugely.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damme—if the fellow is laughing at me—” he began.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He would not be the very fine gentleman that he is,” said Norma. “Where
- is he now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Morland relieved guard in the billiard-room, when the post came in,”
- growled Mr. Hardacre, who shrank from crossing swords with his daughter,
- and indeed with anybody. “He is happy enough with Morland.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At that particular moment, however, there was not overmuch happiness in
- the billiard-room. A letter from Aline had been accompanied by one for
- “David Rendell, Esquire” which she had enclosed. Morland read it, and
- crushed it angrily into the pocket of his dinner-jacket, and began to
- knock the balls about in an aimless way. Jimmie watched him anxiously and,
- as he did not speak, unfolded his own letter from Aline. Suddenly he rose
- from the divan where he had been sitting and approached the table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is something here that you ought to know, Morland. A man has been
- enquiring for you at my house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, why should n't he?” asked Morland, making a savage shot.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He enquired for David Rendell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland threw down his cue.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid Aline, who is a miracle of sagacity as a general rule, has
- made a mess of it. You mustn't be angry with my poor little girl. Her head
- is full of sweeter things.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What has she done?” Morland asked impatiently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll read: 'I told him that Mr. Rendell was a friend of yours, and gave
- him your present address. He muttered something about a false name and
- went away without thanking me.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good God!” cried Morland, “what damned fools women are! Did she say what
- kind of a man he was?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie looked through the letter, and finding the passage, read: “'An
- odd-looking creature, like a mad Methodist parson!'”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland uttered an exclamation of anger and apprehension. His brow grew
- black, and his florid comely features coarsened into ugliness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought so. It could n't have been any one else. He was the only person
- who knew. She has given me away nicely. The devil only knows what will
- happen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie leant up against the table and folded his arms, and looked at
- Morland moving restlessly to and fro and giving vent to his anger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is this man you seem to be so afraid of?” he asked quietly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland stopped upon the unpleasant word, then shrugged his shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I suppose I am afraid of him. One can't reckon upon anything that he
- might or might not do. He's like a mad cat. I've seen him. So have you.”
- </p>
- <h3>
- “I?”
- </h3>
- <p>
- “Yes—that socialist maniac you dragged me to hear one Sunday in Hyde
- Park.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whew!” said Jimmie. He remembered the look in the orator's eyes, his
- crazy, meaningless words, his fierce refusal to enter into friendly talk;
- also Morland's impatient exclamation and abrupt departure as soon as they
- had learned the man's name.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's as mad as a hatter,” he said. “If he should take it into his head to
- come down here and make a row, there will be the deuce to pay,” said
- Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie reflected for a moment. The man, with his wild talk of maidens
- lashed to the chariot-wheels of the rich, must have been tortured by the
- sense of some personal wrong.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How does he come into the story?” he asked. “You had better tell me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The usual way. Oh, I wish to God I had never got into this mess! A man of
- position is an infernal fool to go rotting about after that sort of thing.
- Oh, don't you see? He had a crazy passion for her, was engaged to her—he
- was mad then. When I came along, he had to drop it, and he has been
- persecuting her ever since—divided between the desire to marry her
- in spite of everything, and to murder me. That's why I had the assumed
- name and false address. I would n't have let you in for this bother, but I
- could n't go and run the risk of being blackmailed at a confounded little
- stationer's shop up a back street. He has been trying to get on my track
- all the time—and now he's succeeded, thanks to Aline. Why the devil
- could n't she hold her tongue?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because she is an innocent child, who has never dreamed of evil,” said
- Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland walked about the room, agitated, for a few moments, then halted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes, I know, Jimmie. She is n't to blame. Besides, the mischief is
- done, so it's no use talking.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Were you thinking of any such possibility in the summer when you asked me
- to help you?” said Jimmie. Morland cast a quick, hopeful glance at his
- friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Something of the sort. One never knows. You were the only man I could
- rely on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Does this man know you by sight?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not to my knowledge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then what are you so afraid of? Look here, my dear old boy,” he said
- cheerily, “you are being frighted by false fire. If it is only a question
- of dealing with the man when he comes here—that is, supposing he
- does come—which is very unlikely, I will tackle him as the only
- person who knows anything about David Rendell. I'll tell him David Rendell
- is in Scotland or Honolulu.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is on the track of the false name,” said Morland, uneasily. “Aline
- mentions that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is bound to come to me first,” said Jimmie. “I'll fix him. We'll get
- on capitally together. There's a freemasonry between lunatics. Leave it
- all to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Really?” cried Morland, in great eagerness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course,” said Jimmie. “Let us go upstairs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They passed out of the billiard-room in silence. On their way to the
- drawing-room Morland murmured in a shamefaced way his apologia. He was
- just at the beginning of his electoral campaign. It was his own county. He
- was hand in glove with the duchess, sovereign lady of these parts, and she
- never forgave a scandal. “Besides,” he added, “to quote your own words, it
- would break Norma's heart.” Also, employing the limited vocabulary of his
- class and type, he reiterated the old assurance that he had not been a
- beast. He had done all that a man could to make amends. If Jimmie had not
- loved him so loyally, he would have seen something very pitiful in these
- excuses; but convinced that Morland had atoned as far as lay in his power
- for his fault, he trembled for the happiness of only those dear to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma met them on the drawing-room landing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was coming down to see what had become of you,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been the culprit. I restore him to you,” laughed Jimmie. He
- entered the room and closed the door. The betrothed pair stood for a
- moment in an embarrassed silence. She laid a hesitating hand on his
- sleeve.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Morland—” she said diffidently. “I was really wanting to have a
- little talk with you. Somehow we don't often see one another.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland, surprised at the softness in her voice, led her back to the
- billiard-room.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XII—NORMA'S ENLIGHTENMENT
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE development of
- the germ of goodness in woman may be measured by her tendency towards
- self-sacrifice. Even the most selfish of her sex, provided she has some
- rudimentary virtues, hugs close to her bosom some pet little thorn which
- she loves to dig into her shrinking flesh. She enjoys some odd little
- mortification, some fantastic humiliation, that is known only to the inner
- chamber of her soul. Your great-hearted woman practises Suttee daily,
- greatly to the consternation of an observant yet unperceptive husband.
- Doubtless this characteristic has a sexual basis, psychological perhaps
- rather than directly physiological, being an instinctive assertion of the
- fundamental principle of passivity, which in its turn is translated into
- the need to be held down and subdued. Thus, if the man does not beat her,
- she will beat herself; if he is a fool, she will often apply caustic to
- her wisdom, so that she may reverence him; if he is a knave, she will
- choke her honesty. Side by side with the assertion of this principle, and
- indeed often inextricably confused with it, is the maternal impulse, which
- by manifold divergences from its primary manifestation causes women to
- find a joy, uncomprehended by men, in pangs of suffering. The higher the
- type the stronger the impulse towards this sweet self-martyrdom.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some such theory alone explains the softer tones in Norma's voice when she
- spoke to Morland. She had passed through two periods of sharp development—the
- half-hour in Scotland and the hours she had spent since her talk with
- Jimmie that afternoon. She acted blindly, obeying an imperative voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- They sat down together on the raised divan. She was dressed in black, with
- a bunch of yellow roses at her bosom, and her neck and arms gleamed white
- in the shadow cast by the green shades over the billiard-table. Her face
- had softened. She was infinitely desirable.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been thinking over our relations, Morland,” she said. “Perhaps I
- have been wrong.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean?” he asked in some alarm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I told you when you asked me to marry you that it would be wise to put
- sentiment aside. You agreed, against your will, and have observed the
- convention very loyally. But I have not treated you well. In putting
- sentiment aside I was, perhaps, wrong. That is what I wanted to say to
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me see that I understand you, Norma,” said Morland. “You wish that we
- should be more like—like ordinary lovers?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We might try,” she whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- She waited. Heaven knows what she waited for; but it did not come. The Imp
- of Mischance again scored his point. The man's mind was filled with the
- thoughts of another woman in her agony and of a crazy avenger coming with
- murder in his heart. He took her hand mechanically and raised it to his
- lips. Her yielding to the caress told him that he could throw his arms
- around her and treat her loverwise; her words told him that he ought to do
- so.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet he did not. For the moment he was passionless; and to men of his type
- is not given the power, possessed by men of imaginative temperament, of
- simulating passion. He forced a laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you think we might begin?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She went on bravely with her self-imposed task of submission.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have heard that the man generally takes the initiative.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He kissed her on the cheek. To do less would have been outrageous.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad you realise that I am in love with you, at last,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you sure that you are in love with me?” she asked, the chill that had
- fallen upon her after the lack of response to her first whisper growing
- colder and colder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course I am.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is all I wanted to hear. Good-night,” she said in an odd voice. She
- rose and put out her hand. Morland opened the door for her to pass and
- closed it behind her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma went straight to her room, feeling as though she had been tied by
- the heels to a cart-tail and dragged through the mud. Half undressed, she
- dismissed her maid summarily. Every place on her body that the girl's
- fingers touched seemed to be a bruise. She went to bed stupefied with
- herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile Morland rang for whisky and soda, and cursed all that
- appertained to him, knowing that he had missed an amazing opportunity.
- After the way of feeble men, he thought of a hundred things he might have
- said and done that would have brought her to his feet. Had he not been
- watching patiently, ever since his engagement, for her to put off her
- grand airs, and become a woman like the rest of them? He should have said
- the many things he had often said to others. Or, if words were difficult,
- why in the world had he not kissed her properly after the manner accepted
- by women as the infallible argument? He conjured up the exceeding
- pleasantness of such an act. He could feel the melting of her lips, the
- yielding of her bosom; gradually he worked himself into a red-hot desire.
- A sudden resolve took him upstairs. There he learned that Norma had
- retired for the night, and returning to his whisky in the billiard-room,
- he cursed himself more loudly than before. A hand thrust into the pocket
- of his dinner-jacket met the poor girl's crumpled letter. Mechanically he
- took it to the empty grate, and then cursed the fire for not being lit.
- When Mr. Hardacre came down for a final game of billiards, he found his
- future son-in-law in an irritable temper, and won an easy game. Rallied
- upon his lack of form, Morland explained that the damned election was
- getting on his nerves.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did n't get on them when you were shooting to-day,” said Mr. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I made believe that the birds were the beastly voters,” replied Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma had not yet come down the next morning when he started for Cosford
- on electioneering business. Nor did he meet her, as he hoped, in the town,
- carrying on the work of canvassing which she had begun with great success.
- A dry barrister having been sent down to contest the division in the
- Liberal interest, was not making much headway in a constituency devoted to
- the duchess and other members of the tyrannical classes, and thus the task
- of Norma and her fellow-canvassers was an easy one. Today, however, she
- did not appear. Morland consoled himself with the assurance that he would
- put things right in the evening. After all, it was easy enough to kiss a
- woman who had once shown a desire to be made love to. Every man has his
- own philosophy of woman. This was Morland's.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie also started upon his morning's pursuits without seeing Norma. He
- was somewhat relieved; for he had spent a restless night, dozing off only
- to dream grotesque dreams of the mad orator and waking to fight with
- beasts that gnawed his vitals. He came down unstrung, a haggard mockery of
- himself, and he was glad not to meet her clear eyes. The three-mile walk
- to Chiltern Towers refreshed him, his work on the portrait absorbed his
- faculties, and his neighbours at the ducal luncheon-table, to which the
- duchess in person had invited him, clear-witted women in the inner world
- of politics and diplomacy, kept his attention at straining point. It was
- only when he walked back to Heddon Court, although he made a manful
- attempt to whistle cheerily, that he felt heavy upon his heart the burden
- of the night. It was a languorous September afternoon, and the tired hush
- of dying summer had fallen upon the world. The smell of harvest, the sense
- of golden fulfilment of life hung on the air. Jimmie swung his stick
- impatiently, and filled his lungs with a draught of the mellow warmth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The old earth is good. By God, it's good!” he cried aloud.
- </p>
- <p>
- Brave words of a resolute optimism; but they did not lighten his burden.
- </p>
- <p>
- He reached the house. Beneath an umbrella-tent on the front lawn sat
- Norma, her hands listlessly holding a closed book on her lap. Jimmie would
- have lifted his hat and passed her by, but with, a brightening face she
- summoned him. They talked awhile of commonplace things. Then, after a
- pause, she asked him, half mockingly, to account for his behaviour the day
- before. Why had he rated her in that masterful way?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't bear you to speak evilly of yourself,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, since I deserve it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The <i>you</i> that you sometimes take a pleasure in assuming to be may
- deserve it. The real you does n't. And it is the real you that I know—that
- has given me friendship and is going to marry my dearest friend. The other
- you is a phantom of a hollow world in which circumstances have placed
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think the phantom is happier than the reality,” said Norma, with a
- laugh. “'The dream is better than the drink.' The hollow world is the
- safer place, after all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where imagination doth not corrupt and enthusiasms do not break in and
- steal,” said Jimmie, with unusual bitterness. “I have seen very little of
- it—but you have told me things,” he continued lamely, “and your
- being in it and of it seems a profanation. When you wilfully identify
- yourself with its ideals, you hurt me; and when I am hurt, I cry out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” she
- asked in a tone half of genuine enquiry and half of expectancy, wholly
- kind and soft..
- </p>
- <p>
- He dug the point of his stick into the turf and did not raise his eyes. He
- knew now what a fool's game of peril he was playing, and kept himself in
- check. Yet his voice trembled as he replied:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Morland is very dear to me. You, his future wife, have grown dear to me
- also. I suppose I have lived rather a simple sort of life and take my
- emotions seriously.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you thank God for it,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- The swift rattle of a carriage turning into the drive broke the talk,
- which had grown too personal to be left voluntarily. Jimmie felt
- infinitely grateful to the visitors, like a man suddenly saved from a
- threatening precipice. Leaving Norma with a bow, he fled into the house
- and selecting a book from the library, went onto the terrace. He needed
- solitude. Something of which he was unaware was happening. Circumstances
- were not the same as when he had first arrived. Then he had looked on
- Norma with brave serenity. He was happy, loving her and receiving frank
- friendship from her condescending hands. Now it was growing to be a pain
- to watch her face, a dread to hear her voice. Sweet intercourse had become
- a danger. And a few days had brought about the change. Why? Of the riot in
- the woman's nature he knew nothing. In his blank ignorance, seeking the
- cause within himself, he asked, Why?
- </p>
- <p>
- He crossed the tennis lawn, went through the little opening at the end of
- the hedge, and down to the seclusion of the croquet ground. Half-way along
- the sloping bank beneath the upper terrace some one had left a rug. He
- threw himself upon it, and tried like many another poor fool to reason
- down his hunger. But all the sensitive nerves with which the imaginative
- man, for his curse or his blessing, is endowed, were vibrating from head
- to foot. Her words sang in his ears: “Why should you care so much about
- what I am and what I am not?” The real answer burst passionately from his
- heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had lain there for about half an hour when a gay little laugh aroused
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You idyllic creature!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Connie Deering, bewitchingly apparelled, a dainty, smiling pale
- yellow butterfly, holding as usual an absurd parasol over her head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been looking for you all over the place,” she remarked. “They told
- me you were somewhere about the grounds. May I sit down?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He made room for her on the rug, and taking the parasol from her hand,
- closed it. She settled herself gracefully by his side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I repeat I have been looking for you,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
-“The overpowering sense
- of honour done me has deprived me of speech,” replied Jimmie, with an
- attempted return to his light-hearted manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Norma is entertaining those dreadful Spencer-Temples,” said Mrs. Deering,
- irrelevantly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must have had a premonition of their terrors, for I fled from before
- their path,” he said. “After all, poor people, what have they done to be
- called names?” he added.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are ugly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So am I, yet people don't run away from me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I saw you run away from them,” she said with a significant nod. “I was at
- my bedroom window. They spoiled a most interesting little conversation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie was startled. He looked at her keenly, but only met laughing eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They interrupted me certainly. But I could n't have inflicted my society
- on Miss Hardacre all the afternoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You would have liked to, wouldn't you? Jimmie dear,” she said with a
- change of tone, “I want to have a talk with you. I'm the oldest woman
- friend you have—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And by far the sweetest and kindest and prettiest and fascinatingest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She tapped his hand with her fingers. “Ssh! I'm serious, awfully serious.
- I've never been so serious in my life before. I've got a duty. I don't
- often have it, but when I do, it's a terrible matter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had better go and have it extracted at once, Connie,” he laughed,
- determined to keep the talk in a frivolous channel. But the little lady
- was determined also.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie dear,” she said, holding up her forefinger, “I am afraid you are
- running into danger. I want to warn you. An old friend can do that, can't
- she?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can say anything you like to me, Connie. But I don't know what you
- mean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He suspected her meaning, however, only too shrewdly, and his heart beat
- with apprehension. Had he been fool enough to betray his secret?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are n't you getting just a little too fond of Norma, Jimmie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I could n't get too fond of her,” he said, “seeing that she is to be
- Morland's wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's just why you must n't. Come, Jimmie, have n't you fallen a bit in
- love with her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” he said with some heat. “Certainly not. How dare I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Kindness and teasing were in her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My poor dear husband used to say I had the brain of a bird, but I may
- have the sharp eyes of a bird as well. Come—not just one little bit
- in love?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had sought him with the best intentions in the world. She had long
- suspected; yesterday and to-day had given her certainty. She would put him
- on his guard, talk to him like an elder sister, pour forth upon him her
- vast wisdom in affairs of the heart, and finally persuade him-from his
- folly to more sensible courses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He sha'n't come to grief over Norma if I can prevent it,” she had said to
- herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- And now, in spite of her altruistic resolve, she could not resist the
- pleasure of teasing him. She had done so all her life. Her method became
- less elder-sisterly than she had intended. But she was miles from
- realising that she touched bare nerves, and that the man was less a man
- than a living pain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you I'm not in love with her, Connie,” he said. “How could I dream
- of loving her? It would be damnable folly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie,” she said, enjoying his confusion, “what a miserably
- poor liar you make—and what a precious time you would have in the
- witness-box if you were a co-respondent! You can't deceive for nuts. You
- had better confess and have done with it.” Then seeing something of the
- anguish on his face, she bethought her of the serious aspect of her
- mission. “I could not bear you to break your heart over Norma, dear,” she
- said quite softly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't madden me, Connie—you don't know what you are saying,” he
- muttered below his breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie Deering had never heard a man speak in agony of spirit. Her lot had
- fallen among pleasant places, where life was a smooth, shaven lawn and
- emotions not more violent than the ripples on a piece of ornamental water.
- His tone gave her a sudden fright.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You do love her, then?” she whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Jimmie, drawing himself up in a tight, awkward heap on the
- slope. “My God, yes, I do love her. I love her with every fibre of brain
- and body.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The words were out. More came. He could not restrain them. He gave up the
- attempt, surrendered himself to the drunkenness of his passion, poured out
- a torrent of riotous speech. What he said he knew not. Such divine madness
- comes to a man but few times in a life. The sweet-hearted, frivolous
- woman, sitting there in the trim little paradise of green, with its velvet
- turf and trim slopes, and tall mask of trees, all mellow in the shade of
- the soft September afternoon, listened to him with wondering eyes and pale
- cheeks. It was no longer Jimmie of the homely face that was talking; he
- was transfigured. His very voice had changed its quality.... Did he love
- her? The word was inept in its inadequacy. He worshipped her like a
- Madonna. He adored her like a queen. He loved her as the man of hot blood
- loves a woman. Soul and heart and body clamoured for her. Compared with
- hers, every other woman's beauty was a glow-worm unto lightning. Her voice
- haunted him like music heard in sleep. Her presence left a fragrance
- behind that clouded his senses like incense. Her beauty twined itself into
- every tendril of every woman's hair he painted, stole into the depths of
- every woman's eyes. It was a divine obsession.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must fight against it,” Connie whispered tonelessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should I? Who is harmed? Norma? Who will tell her? Not I. If I choose
- to fill my life with her splendour, what is that to any one? The desire of
- the moth for the star! Who heeds the moth?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He went on reckless of speech until his passion had spent itself. Then he
- could only repeat in a broken way:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Love her? Heaven knows I love her. My soul is a footstool for her to rest
- her feet upon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie Deering laid her hand on his.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry, Jimmie. God bless you, dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He raised the hand to his lips. Neither spoke. He plucked at the grass by
- his side; at length he looked up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You won't give me away, will you?” he said with a smile, using her
- dialect.
- </p>
- <p>
- She went on her knees and clasped both his wrists. She said the first
- thing that came, as something sacred, into her head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I could no more speak of this to any one than of some of my dead
- husband's kisses.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know you are a good true woman, Connie,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the silence that followed, Norma, who had come to summon Connie to tea
- (the Spencer-Temples having called on their drive past the gates merely to
- deliver a message), and hearing the voice behind the hedge had been
- compelled against her will to listen—Norma, deadly white, shaken to
- the roots of her being, crept across the tennis lawn and fled in swaying
- darkness to her room.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XIII—THE OPTIMIST AT LARGE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>ONNIE DEERING
- walked back to the house with a silent and still tremulous Jimmie. She had
- slid her hand through his arm, and now and then gave it an affectionate
- pat. Within the limitations of her light, gay nature she was a sympathetic
- and loyal woman, and she had loved Jimmie for many years with the
- unquestioning fondness that one has for a beloved and satisfying domestic
- animal. She had recovered from the fright his frantic demonstration had
- caused her, and her easy temperament had shaken off the little chill of
- solemnity that had accompanied her vow of secrecy. But she pitied him with
- all her kind heart, and in herself felt agreeably sentimental.
- </p>
- <p>
- They strolled slowly into the hall, and paused for a moment before
- parting.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When you come to think of it seriously, you won't consider I have made
- too impossible a fool of myself?” he asked with an apologetic smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I promise,” she said affectionately. Then she laughed. Not only was
- Jimmie's smile contagious, but Connie Deering could not face the pleasant
- world for more than an hour without laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have always said you were a dear, Jimmie, and you are. I almost wish I
- could kiss you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie looked around. They were quite unperceived.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do quite,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now we are really brother and sister,” she said with a flush. “You are
- not going to be too unhappy, are you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I? Oh no, not I,” he replied heartily. He repeated this asseveration to
- himself while dressing for dinner. Why indeed should he be unhappy? Had he
- not looked a few hours before at God's earth and found that it was good?
- Besides, to add to the common stock of the world's unhappiness were a
- crime. “Yes, a crime,” he said aloud, with a vigorous pull at his white
- tie. Then he perceived that it was hopelessly mangled, and wished for
- Aline, who usually conducted that part of the ceremony of his toilette.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It will have to do,” he said cheerfully, as he turned away from the
- glass.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet, for all his philosophising, he was surprised at the relief that his
- wild confession to Connie had afforded him. The burden that had seemed too
- heavy for him to bear had now grown magically light. He attributed the
- phenomenon to Connie Deering, to the witchery of her sweet sympathy and
- the comfort of her sisterly kiss. By the time he had finished dressing the
- acute pain of the past two days had vanished, and as he went down the
- stairs he accounted himself a happy man. In the drawing-room he met Norma,
- and chatted to her almost light-heartedly. He did not notice the
- constraint in her manner, her avoidance of his glance, the little pucker
- of troubled brows; nor was he aware of her sigh of relief when the door
- opened and the servant announced Mr. Theodore Weever, who with one or two
- other people were dining at the house. Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre followed on
- the American's heels, and soon the rest of the party had assembled. Jimmie
- had no opportunity for further talk with Norma, who studiously kept apart
- from him all the evening, and during dinner devoted herself to subacid
- conversation with Morland and to a reckless interchange of cynical banter
- with Weever. Jimmie, talking with picturesque fancy about his student days
- in the Rue Bonaparte to his neighbour, a frank fox-hunting and
- sport-loving young woman, never dreamed of the chaos of thoughts and
- feelings that whirled behind the proud face on the opposite side of the
- table; and Norma, when her mind now and then worked lucidly, wondered at
- the strength and sweetness of the man who could subdue such passion and
- laugh with a gaiety so honest and sincere. For herself, Theodore Weever,
- with his icy humour that crystallised her own irony into almost deadly
- wit, was her sole salvation during the interminable meal. Once Morland,
- listening with admiration, whispered in her ear:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've never heard you in such good form.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had to choke down an hysterical impulse of laughter and swallow a
- mouthful of champagne. Later, when the women guests had gone, she slipped
- up to her room without saying good-night to Morland, and, dismissing her
- maid, as she had done the night before, sat for a long time, holding her
- head in her hands, vainly seeking to rid it of words that seemed to have
- eaten into her brain. And when she thought of Morland, of last night, of
- her humiliation, she flushed hot from hair to feet. She was only
- five-and-twenty, and the world had not as yet completed its work of
- hardening. It was a treacherous and deceitful world; she had prided
- herself on being a finished product of petrifaction, and here she lay,
- scorched and bewildered, like any soft and foolish girl who had been
- suddenly brought too near the flame of life. Keenly she felt the
- piteousness of her defeat. In what it exactly consisted she did not know.
- She was only conscious of broken pride, the shattering of the little
- hard-faced gods in her temple, the tearing up of the rails upon which she
- had reckoned to travel to her journey's end. Hers was a confused soul
- state, devoid of immediate purpose. A breach of her engagement with
- Morland did not occur to her mind, and Jimmie was merely an impersonal
- utterer of volcanic words. She slept but little. In the morning she found
- habit by her bedside; she clothed herself therein and faced the day.
- </p>
- <p>
- Much was expected of her. The great garden-party was to take place that
- afternoon. Her Serene Highness the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck had
- signified that she would do Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre the honour of being
- present. Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire would accompany the princess.
- The <i>ban</i> and <i>arriere-ban</i> of the county had been invited, and
- the place would be filled with fair women agog to bask in the smiles of
- royalty, and ill-tempered men dragged away from their partridges by
- ambitious wives. A firm of London caterers had contracted for the
- refreshments. A military band would play on the terrace. A clever French
- showman whom Providence had sent to cheer the dying hours of the London
- season, and had kept during the dead months at a variety theatre, was
- coming down with an authentic Guignol. He had promised the choicest pieces
- in his repertoire—<i>la vraie grivoiserie française</i>—and
- men who had got wind of the proposed entertainment winked at one another
- wickedly. The garden-party was to be an affair of splendour worthy of the
- royal lady who had deigned to shed her serenity upon the county families
- assembled; and Mr. Hardacre had raised a special sum of money to meet the
- expenses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall have to go to the Jews, my dear,” he had said to his wife when
- they were first discussing ways and means.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, go to the—Jews then,” said Mrs. Hardacre, almost betrayed, in
- her irritation, into an unwifely retort. “What does it matter, what does
- any sacrifice matter, when once we have royalty at the house? You are such
- a fool, Benjamin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had a singular faculty for arousing the waspishness of his wife; yet,
- save on rare occasions, he was the meekest of men in her presence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you know best, Eliza,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have n't been married to you for six-and-twenty years without being
- perfectly certain of that,” she replied tartly.
- </p>
- <p>
- So Mr. Hardacre went to the Jews, and the princess promised to come to
- Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma was not the only one that morning who was aroused to a sense of
- responsibility. The footman entering Jimmie's bedroom brought with him a
- flat cardboard box neatly addressed in Aline's handwriting. The box
- contained a new shirt, two new collars, a new silk tie, and a pair of grey
- suède gloves; also a letter from Aline instructing him as to the use of
- these various articles of attire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Be sure to wear your frock-coat,” wrote the director of Jimmie's conduct.
- “I wish you had one less than six years old; but I went over it with
- benzine and ammonia before I packed it up, so perhaps it won't be so bad.
- And wear your patent-leather evening shoes. They'll look quite smart if
- you'll tie the laces up tight, and stick the ends in between the shoe and
- the sock. Oh, I wish I could come and turn you out decently! and <i>please</i>,
- Jimmie dear, don't cut yourself shaving and go about all day with a
- ridiculous bit of cotton wool on your dear chin. Tony says you need n't
- wear the frock-coat, but I know better. What acquaintance has he with
- princesses and duchesses? And that reminds me to tell you that Tony—”
- <i>et caetera, et caetera,</i> in a manner that brought the kindest smile
- in the world into Jimmie's eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- He dressed with scrupulous regard to directions, but not in the
- frock-coat. He had a morning sitting with the princess at Chiltern Towers
- to get through before airing himself in the splendour of benzine and
- ammonia. He put on his old tweed jacket and went downstairs. Morland was
- the only person as yet in the breakfast-room. He held a morning paper
- tight in his hand, and stared through the window, his back to the door. On
- Jimmie's entrance he started round, and Jimmie saw by a harassed face that
- something had happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear fellow—” he began in alarm.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland smoothed out the paper with nervous fingers, and threw it somewhat
- ostentatiously on a chair. Then he walked to the table and poured himself
- out some tea. The handle of the silver teapot slid in his grasp, and
- awkwardly trying to save the pouring flood of liquid, he dropped the
- teapot among the cups and saucers. It was a disaster, but one that could
- have been adequately greeted by a simpler series of expletives. He cursed
- vehemently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's the matter, man?” asked Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland turned violently upon him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The very devil's the matter. There never was such a mess since the world
- began. What an infernal fool I have been! You do well to steer clear of
- women.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me what's wrong and I may be able to help you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland looked at him for a moment in gloomy doubt. Then he shook his
- head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can't help me. I thought you could, but you can't. It's a matter for
- a lawyer. I must run up to town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And cut the garden-party?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's where I'm tied,” exclaimed Morland, impatiently. “I ought to start
- now, but if I cut the garden-party the duchess would never forgive me—and
- by Jove, I may need the duchess more than ever—and I've got a
- meeting to attend in Cosford this morning to which a lot of people are
- coming from a distance.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can't I interview the lawyer for you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. I must do it myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The butler entered and looked with grave displeasure at the wreckage on
- the tea-tray. While he was repairing the disaster, Morland went back to
- the window and Jimmie stood by his side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you fight it through squarely, it will all come right in the end.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't mind my not telling you about it?” said Morland, in a low
- voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should I? In everything there is a time for silence and a time for
- speech.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're right,” said Morland, thrusting his hands into his trousers'
- pockets; “but how I am to get through this accursed day in silence I don't
- know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They sat down to breakfast. Morland rejected the offer of tea, and called
- for a whisky and soda which he nearly drained at a gulp. Mr. Hardacre came
- in, and eyed the long glass indulgently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bucking yourself up, eh? Why did n't you ask for a pint of champagne?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He opened the newspaper and ran through the pages. Morland watched him
- with swift nervous glances, and uttered a little gasp of relief when he
- threw it aside and attacked his grilled kidneys. His own meal was soon
- over. Explaining that he had papers to work at in the library, he hurried
- out of the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can't understand a man being so keen on these confounded politics,” his
- host remarked to Jimmie across the table. A polite commonplace was all
- that could be expected in reply. Politics were engrossing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's the worst of it,” said Mr. Hardacre. “In the good old days a man
- could take his politics like a gentleman; now he has got to go at them
- like a damned blaspheming agitator on a tub.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cosford was once a pretty little pocket borough, wasn't it?” said Jimmie.
- “Now Trade's unfeeling train usurp the privileges of His Grace of
- Wiltshire and threaten to dispossess his nominee. Instead of one simple
- shepherd recording his pastoral vote we have an educated electorate daring
- to exercise their discretion.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hardacre looked at Jimmie askance; he always regarded an allusive
- style with suspicion, as if it necessarily harboured revolutionary
- theories.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you're not one of those—” He checked himself as he was going
- to say “low radical fellows.” Politeness forbade. “I hope you are not a
- radical, Mr. Padgate?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sure I don't quite know,” replied Jimmie, cheerfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Humph!” said Mr. Hardacre, “I believe you are.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie laughed; but Mr. Hardacre felt that he held the key to the
- eccentric talk of his guest. Jimmie Padgate was a radical; a fearful
- wildfowl of unutterable proclivities, to whom all things dreadful were
- possible.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I,” he continued, “am proud to be a Tory of the old school.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The entrance of the ladies put a stop to the distressful conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie, whose life during the past few days had been a curious compound of
- sunshine and shadow, went about his morning's work with only Morland's
- troubles weighing upon him. Of their specific nature he had no notion; he
- knew they had to do with the unhappy love affair; but as Morland was going
- to put matters into the hands of his lawyers, a satisfactory solution was
- bound to be discovered. Like all simple-minded men, he had illimitable
- faith in the powers of solicitors and physicians; it was their business to
- get people out of difficulties, and if they were capable men they did
- their business. Deriving much comfort from this fallacy, he thought as
- little as might be about the matter. In fact he quite enjoyed his morning.
- He sat before his easel at the end of a high historic gallery, the bright
- morning light that streamed in through the windows tempered by judiciously
- arranged white blinds; and down the vista were great paintings, and rare
- onyx tables, and priceless chairs and statuary, all harmonising with the
- stately windows and painted ceiling and polished floor. In front of him,
- posed in befitting attitude, sat the royal lady, with her most urbane
- expression upon her features, and, that which pleased him most, the
- picture was just emerging from the blurred mass of paint, an excellent
- though somewhat idealised portrait. So he worked unfalteringly with the
- artist's joy in the consciousness of successful efforts, and his
- good-humour infected even his harsh sitter, who now and then showed a
- wintry gleam of gaiety, and uttered a guttural word of approbation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You shall come to Herren-Rothbeck and baint the bortrait of the brince my
- brother,” she said graciously. “Would that blease you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should just think it would,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- The princess laughed—a creaking, rusty laugh, but thoroughly well
- intentioned. Jimmie glanced at her enquiringly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I like you,” she responded. “You are so natural—what you English
- call refreshing. A German would have made a ceremonious speech as long as
- your mahl-stick.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid I must learn ceremony before I come to court, Madam,” said
- Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you do, you will have forgotten how to baint bor-traits,” said the
- princess.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus, under the sun of princely favour, was Jimmie proceeding on the
- highroad to fortune. Never had the future seemed so bright. His bombastic
- jest about being appointed painter in ordinary to the crowned heads of
- Europe was actually going to turn out a reality. He lost himself in
- daydreams of inexhaustible coffers from which he could toss gold in
- lapfuls to Aline. She should indeed walk in silk attire, and set up
- housekeeping with Tony in a mansion in Park Lane.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the front lawn at Heddon Court he met Connie and waved his hat in the
- air. She went to him, and, peering into his smiling face, laid her hand
- on his sleeve.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whatever has happened? Have you two stepped into each other's shoes?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What on earth do you mean?
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know—Norma.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Connie—” he began.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, it seemed natural. Here are you as happy as an emperor; and there
- is Morland come back from Cosford with the look of a hunted criminal.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XIV—THE BUBBLE REPUTATION
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE princess had
- the affability to inform Mrs. Hardacre that it was a “charming barty,” and
- Mrs. Hardacre felt that she had not lived in vain.
- </p>
- <p>
- Henceforth she would be of the innermost circle of the elect of the
- county. Exclusive front doors would open respectfully to her. She would be
- consulted on matters appertaining to social polity. She would be a
- personage. She would also make her neighbour, Lady FitzHubert, sick with
- envy. A malignant greenness on that lady's face she noted with a thrill of
- pure happiness, and she smilingly frustrated all her manoeuvres to get
- presented to Her Serene Highness. She presented her rival, instead, to
- Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Lady FitzHubert, let me introduce Mr. Padgate, who is painting
- the dear princess's portrait. Mr. Padgate is staying with us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Whereby Mrs. Hardacre conveyed the impression that Heddon Court and
- Chiltern Towers contained just one family party, the members of which ran
- in and out of either house indiscriminately. It may be mentioned that
- Jimmie did not get on particularly well with Lady FitzHubert. He even
- confided afterwards to Connie Deering his suspicion that now and again
- members of the aristocracy were lacking in true urbanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- By declaring the garden-party to be charming the princess only did justice
- to the combined efforts of the Hardacres and Providence. The warm golden
- weather and the chance of meeting august personages had brought guests
- from far and near. The lawns were bright with colour and resonant with
- talk. A red-coated band played on the terrace. Between the items of music,
- Guignol, housed in the Greek temple, with the portico for a proscenium,
- performed his rogueries to the delight of hastily assembling audiences.
- Immediately below, a long white-covered table gleamed with silver tea-urns
- and china, and all the paraphernalia of refreshments. At the other end of
- the lawn sat the august personages surrounded by the elect.
- </p>
- <p>
- Among these was Morland. But for him neither blue September skies nor
- amiable duchesses had any charm. To the man of easy living had come the
- sudden shock of tragedy, and the music and the teacups and the flatteries
- seemed parts of a ghastly farce. The paragraph he had read in the paper
- that morning obsessed him. The hours had seemed one long shudder against
- which he vainly braced his nerves. He had loved the poor girl in his
- facile way. The news in itself was enough to bring him face to face with
- elementals. But there was another terror added. The chance word of a
- laughing woman had put him on the rack of anxiety. Getting out of the
- train at Cosford, she had seen the queerest figure of a man step on to the
- platform, with the face of Peter the Hermit and the costume of Mr.
- Stiggins. Morland's first impulse had been to retreat precipitately from
- Cosford, and take the next train to London, whither he ought to have gone
- that morning. The tradition-bred Englishman's distaste for craven flight
- kept him irresolutely hanging round the duchess. He thought of whispering
- a private word to Jimmie; but Jimmie was far away, being introduced here
- and there, apparently enjoying considerable popularity. Besides, the
- whisper would involve the tale of the newspaper paragraph, and Morland
- shrank from confiding such news to Jimmie. No one on earth must know it
- save his legal adviser, an impersonal instrument of protection. He did
- what he had done once during five horrible weeks at Oxford, when an
- Abingdon barmaid threatened him with a breach of promise action. He did
- nothing and trusted to luck. Happy chance brought to light the fact that
- she was already married. Happy chance might save him again.
- </p>
- <p>
- Beyond the mere commonplaces of civility he had exchanged no words that
- day with Norma. Moved by an irritating feeling of shame coupled with a
- certain repugnance of the flesh, he had deliberately avoided her; and his
- preoccupation had not allowed him to perceive that the avoidance was
- reciprocated. When they happened to meet in their movements among the
- guests, they smiled at each other mechanically and went their respective
- ways. Once, during the afternoon, Mr. Hardacre, red and fussy, took him
- aside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have just heard a couple of infernal old cats talking of Norma and that
- fellow Weever. There they are together now. Will you give Norma a hint, or
- shall I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland looked up and saw the pair on the terrace, midway between the band
- and the Guignol audience.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm glad she has got somebody to amuse her,” he said, turning away. He
- was almost grateful to Weever for taking Norma off his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile Jimmie was continuing to find life full of agreeable surprises.
- Lady FitzHubert was not the only lady to whom he was presented as the Mr.
- Padgate who was painting the princess's portrait. Mrs. Hardacre waived the
- personal grudge, and flourished him tactfully in the face of the county;
- and the county accepted him with unquestioning ingenuousness. He was
- pointed out as a notability, became the well-known portrait-painter, the
- celebrated artist, <i>the</i> James Padgate, and thus achieved the bubble
- reputation. A guest who was surreptitiously reporting the garden-party for
- the local paper took eager notes of the personal appearance of the eminent
- man, and being a woman of the world, professed familiarity with his works.
- For the first time in his life he found himself a person of importance.
- The fact of his easy inclusion in the charmed circle cast a glamour over
- the crudities of the gala costume designed and furbished up with so much
- anxious thought by Aline, and people (who are kindly as a rule when their
- attention is diverted from the trivial) looked only at his face and were
- attracted to the man himself. Only Lady FitzHubert, who had private
- reasons for frigidity, treated him in an unbecoming manner. Other fair
- ladies smiled sweetly upon him, and spread abroad tales of his niceness,
- and thus helped in the launching of him as a fashionable portrait-painter
- upon the gay world.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had a brief interlude of talk with Norma by the refreshment-table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you are not being too much bored by all this,” she said in her
- society manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bored!” he cried. “It's delightful.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about the hollow world where imagination doth not corrupt and
- enthusiasms do not break in and steal?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a phantom dust-heap for inept epigrams. I don't believe it exists.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You mustn't preach a gospel one day and give it the lie the next,” she
- said, half seriously; “for then I won't know what to believe. You don't
- seem to realise your responsibilities.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He echoed the last word in some surprise. Norma broke into a little
- nervous laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't suppose you can go about without affecting your
- fellow-creatures? It is well that you don't know what a disturbing element
- you are.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She turned her head away and closed her eyes for a second or two, for the
- words she had overheard there by the hedge, last evening, rang in her
- ears. Perhaps it had been well for Jimmie if he had known. Before he had
- time to reply, she recovered herself, and added quickly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad you are enjoying yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How can I help it when every one is so kind to me?” he said brightly. “I
- came down here an obscure painter, a veritable <i>pictor ignotus</i>, and
- all your friends are as charming to me as if I were the President of the
- Royal Academy.”
-</p>
- <p>
-Connie Deering came up with a message for Norma and
- carried her off to the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How does Jimmie like being lionised?” she asked on the way.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma repeated his last speech.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He has n't any idea of the people's motives.” She added somewhat
- hysterically:
- </p>
- <p>
- “The man is half fool, half angel—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And altogether a <i>man</i>. Don't you make any mistake about that,” said
- Connie, with a pretty air of finality. “You don't know as much about him
- as I do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm not so sure about that,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am,” said Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie was wandering away from the refreshment-table when Theodore Weever
- stopped him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's a famous portrait of yours, Mr. Padgate. I saw it to-day after
- lunch. I offer you my congratulations.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie thanked him, said modestly that he hoped it was a good likeness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Too good by a long chalk,” laughed the American. “Her Serene Skinflint
- does n't deserve it. I bet you she beat you down like a market-woman
- haggling for fish.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie stuck his hands on his hips and laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't deny it. You should n't have let her. She is rolling in money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid one does n't bother much with the commercial side of things,”
- said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's where you make the mistake. Money is money, and it is better in
- one's own pockets than in anybody else's. But that's not what I wanted to
- speak to you about. I wonder if you would let me have the pleasure of
- calling at your studio some day? I'm collecting a few pictures, and I
- should regard it as a privilege to be allowed to look round yours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie, having no visiting cards, scribbled his address on the back of an
- envelope. He would be delighted to see Mr. Weever any time he was passing
- through London. Weever bowed, and turned to greet a passing acquaintance,
- leaving a happy artist. A miracle had happened; the star of his fortunes
- had arisen. A week ago it was below the horizon, shedding a faint, hopeful
- glimmer in the sky. Now it shone bright overhead. The days of struggle and
- disappointment were over. He had come into his kingdom of recognition. All
- had happened to-day: the princess's promise of another and more
- illustrious royal portrait; the sudden leap into fame; the patronage of
- the American financier. One has to be the poor artist, with his youth—one record of desperate endeavour—behind him, to know what these
- things mean. The delicate flattery of strange women, however commonplace
- or contemptible it may be to the successful, was a new, rare thing to
- Jimmie and appeased an unknown hunger. The prospect of good work done and
- delivered to the world, without sordid, heart-breaking bargainings,
- shimmered before him like a paradise. Old habit made him long for Aline.
- How pleased the child would be when she heard the glad news! He saw the
- joy on her bright face and heard her clap her hands together, and he
- smiled. He would return to her a conqueror, having won the prizes she had
- so often wept for—name and fame and fortune. The band was playing
- the “Wedding March” from “Lohengrin.” By chance, as he was no musician, he
- recognised it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Aline shall have a wedding dress from Paris,” he said half aloud, and he
- smiled again. The world had never been so beautiful.
- </p>
- <p>
- He embraced all of it that was visible in a happy, sweeping glance. Then
- with the swiftness of lightning the smile on his face changed into
- consternation.
- </p>
- <p>
- For a moment he stood stock still, staring at the sudden figure of a man.
- It was Stone, the mad orator of Hyde Park. There was no possibility of
- mistaking him at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards. He wore the same
- rusty black frock-coat and trousers, the same dirty collar and narrow
- black tie, the same shapeless clerical hat. His long neck above the collar
- looked raw and scabious like a vulture's. In his hand he carried a folded
- newspaper. He had suddenly emerged upon the end of the terrace from the
- front entrance, and was descending the steps that led down to the tennis
- lawn. If he walked straight on, he would come to the group surrounding the
- princess and the Duchess of Wiltshire. Two or three people were already
- eyeing him curiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland's strange dread of the man flashed upon Jimmie. He hurried forward
- to meet him. Of what he was about to do he had no definite idea. Perhaps
- he could head Stone off, take him away from the grounds on the pretext of
- listening to his grievances. At any rate, a scandal must be avoided. As he
- drew near, he observed Morland, who had been bending down in conversation
- with the duchess, rise and unexpectedly recognise Stone.
- </p>
- <p>
- A manservant bearing a small tray with some teacups ran up to the
- extraordinary intruder, who waved him away impatiently. The servant put
- down his tray and caught him by the arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have no business here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Stone shook himself free.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have. Where is Mr. Rendell? Tell him I have to speak with him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is no such person here,” said the servant. “Be off!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie reached the spot, as a few of the nearer guests were beginning to
- take a surprised interest in the altercation. Morland came forward from
- behind the duchess's chair and cast a swift glance at Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you don't go, I shall make you,” said the servant, preparing to
- execute his threat. The man looked dangerous.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must see Mr. David Rendell,” he cried, beginning to struggle.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie drew the servant away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know this gentleman,” he said quietly. “Mr. Stone, Mr. Rendell is not
- here, but if you will come with me, I will listen to you, and tell him
- anything you have to say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hardacre, who had seen the scuffle from a distance, came up in a
- fluster.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's all this? What's all this? Who is this creature? Please go away.”
- He began to hustle the man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Stop! He's an acquaintance of Padgate's,” said Morland, huskily.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a short pause. Stone stared around at the well-dressed men and
- women, at the seated figures of the princess and the duchess, at the
- servant who had picked up the tray, at the band who were still playing the
- “Wedding March” from “Lohengrin,” at the red-faced, little, blustering
- man, at the beautiful cool setting of green, and the look in his eyes was
- that of one who saw none of these things. Morland edged to Jimmie's side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For God's sake, get him away,” he said in a low voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie nodded and touched the man's arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, please take him off! What the dickens does he want?” said Mr.
- Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- Stone turned his burning eyes upon him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have come to find an infamous seducer,” he replied, with a melodramatic
- intensity that would have been ludicrous had his face not been so ghastly.
- “His name is Rendell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a shiver of interest in the crowd.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Was sagt er?</i>” the princess whispered to her neighbour.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie again tried to lead Stone away, but the distraught creature seemed
- lost in thought and looked at him fixedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have seen you before,” he said at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course you have,” said Jimmie. “In Hyde Park. Don't you remember?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly, with a wrench of his hands he tore an unmounted photograph from
- the folded newspaper and threw it on the ground. His eyes blazed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought I should find him. One of you is David Rendell. It is not your
- real name. That I know. Which of you is it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie had sprung upon the photograph. Instinct rather than the evidence
- of sight told him that it was an amateur portrait of himself and Morland
- taken one idle afternoon in the studio by young Tony Merewether. It had
- hardly lain the fraction of a second on the ground but to Jimmie it seemed
- as if the two figures had flashed clear upon the sight of all the
- bystanders. He glanced quickly at Morland, who stood quite still now with
- stony face and averted eyes. He too had recognised the photograph, and he
- cursed himself for a fool for having given it to the girl. He had had it
- loose in his pocket; she had pleaded for it; she had no likeness of him at
- all. He was paying now for his imprudent folly. Like Jimmie, he feared
- lest others should have recognised the photograph. But he trusted again to
- chance. Jimmie had undertaken the unpleasant business and his wit would
- possibly save the situation.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie did not hesitate. A man is as God made him, heart and brain. To his
- impulsive imagination the photograph would be proof positive for the world
- that one of the two was the infamous seducer. It did not occur to him to
- brazen the man out, to send him about his business; wherein lies the
- pathos of simple-mindedness. The decisive moment had come. To Morland
- exposure would mean loss of career, and, as he conceived it, loss of
- Norma; and to the beloved woman it would mean misery and heartbreak. So he
- committed an heroic folly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I <i>am</i> Rendell,” he said in a loud voice. “What then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Heedless of shocked whisperings and confused voices, among which rose a
- virtuously indignant “Great heavens!” from Mrs. Hardacre, he moved away
- quickly towards the slope, motioning Stone to follow. But Stone remained
- where he stood, and pointed at Jimmie with lean, outstretched finger, and
- lifted up his voice in crazy rhetoric, which was heard above the “Wedding
- March.” No one tried to stop him. It was too odd, too interesting, too
- dramatic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The world shall know the tale of your lust, and the sun shall not go down
- upon your iniquity. Under false promises you betrayed the sweetest flower
- in God's garden. Basely you taunted her in her hour of need. Murder and
- suicide are on your head. There is the record for all who wish to read it.
- Read it,” he cried, flinging the newspaper at Mrs. Hardacre's feet. “Read
- how she killed her newborn babe, the child of this devil, and then hanged
- herself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie came two or three steps forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Stop this mad foolery,” he cried.
- </p>
- <p>
- Stone glared at him for a fraction of a second, thrust his hand into the
- breast-pocket of his frock-coat, drew out a revolver, and shot him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie staggered as a streak of fire passed through him, and swung round.
- The women shrieked and rushed together behind the princess and the
- duchess, who remained calmly seated. The men with one impulse sprang
- forward to seize the madman; but as he leaped aside and threatened his
- assailants with his revolver, they hung back. The band stopped short in
- the middle of a bar.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma and Connie Deering and one or two others who had been in the house,
- unaware of the commotion of the last few minutes, ran out on the terrace
- as they heard the shot and the sudden cessation of the band. They saw the
- crowd of frightened, nervous people below, and the grotesque figure in his
- rusty black pointing the pistol. And they saw Jimmie march up to him, and
- in a dead silence they heard him say:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give me that revolver. What is a silly fool like you doing with
- fire-arms? You could n't hit a haystack at a yard's distance. Give it to
- me, I say.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man's arm was outstretched, and the pistol was aimed point-blank at
- Jimmie. Connie Deering gripped Norma's arm, and Norma, feeling faint, grew
- white to the lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give it to me,” said Jimmie again.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man wavered, his arm drooped slightly; with the action of one who
- takes a dangerous thing from a child, Jimmie quietly wrenched the revolver
- from his grasp.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma gave a gasp of relief and began to laugh foolishly. Connie clapped
- her hands in excitement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did n't I tell you he was a man? By heavens, the only one in the lot!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie pointed towards the terrace steps.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go!” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- But there was a rush now to seize the disarmed Stone, the red coats of the
- bandsmen mingling with the black of the guests. Jimmie, with a curious
- flame through his shoulder and a swimming in his head, swerved aside.
- Morland ran up, with a white face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My God! He has hit you. I thought he had missed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Jimmie, smiling at the reeling scene. “I'm all right. Keep the
- photograph. It was silly to give one's photograph away. I always was a
- fool.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland pocketed the unmounted print. He tried to utter a word of thanks,
- but the eyes of the scared and scandalised crowd a few steps away were
- upon them, and many were listening. For a moment during the madman's crazy
- indictment of Jimmie—for the horrible facts were only too true—he
- had had the generous impulse to come forward and at all costs save his
- friend; but he had hesitated. The shot had been fired. The dramatic little
- scene had followed. To proclaim Jimmie's innocence and his own guilt now
- would be an anticlimax. It was too late. He would take another opportunity
- of exonerating Jimmie. So he stood helpless before him, and Jimmie,
- feeling fainter and fainter, protested that he was not hurt.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stood a bit apart from the rest. By this time men and women had
- flocked from all quarters, and practically the whole party had assembled
- on the tennis lawn. Norma still stood with Connie on the terrace, her hand
- on her heart. A small group clustered round a man who had picked up the
- newspaper and was reading aloud the ghastly paragraph marked by Stone in
- blue pencil. The Hardacres were wringing their hands before a stony-faced
- princess and an indignant duchess, who announced their intention of
- immediate departure. Every one told every one else the facts he or she had
- managed to gather. Human nature and the morbidly stimulated imagination of
- naturally unimaginative people invented atrocious details. Jimmie's
- new-born fame as a painter was quickly merged into hideous notoriety. His
- star must have been Lucifer, so swift was its fall.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hardacre left his wife's side, and dragged Morland a step or two away,
- and whispered excitedly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What a scandal! What a hell of a scandal! Before royalty, too. It will be
- the death of us. The damned fellow must go. You must clear him out of the
- house!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's hit. Look at him,” exclaimed Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie heard his host's whisper in a dream. It seemed a hoarse voice very,
- very far off. He laughed in an idiotic way, waved his hand to the gyrating
- crowd, and stumbled a few yards towards the slope. The world swam into
- darkness and he fell heavily on his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, to the amazement of the county, Norma with a ringing cry rushed down
- the slope, and threw herself beside Jimmie's body and put his head on her
- lap. And there she stayed until they dragged her away, uttering the queer
- whimpering exclamations of a woman suddenly stricken with great terror.
- She thought Jimmie was dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XV—MRS. HARDACRE LAUGHS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HEY took Jimmie
- into the house, and Norma, looking neither to right nor left, walked by
- the side of those carrying him, the front of her embroidered dress smeared
- with blood. Every time her hands came in contact with the delicate fabric,
- they left a fresh smear. Of this she was unconscious. She was unconscious
- too, save in a dull way, of the staring crowd; but she held her head high,
- and when Morland spoke to her by the drawing-room window through which
- they passed, she listened to what he had to say, bowed slightly, and went
- on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is only a flesh wound. If it had been the lung, he would have spat
- blood. I don't think it is serious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He spoke in a curiously apologetic tone, as if anxious to exculpate
- himself from complicity in the attempted murder.. He was horribly
- frightened. Two deaths laid in one day at a man's door are enough. The
- possibility of a third was intolerable. The sense of the unheroic part he
- had just played was beginning to creep over him like a chilling mist. The
- consequences of confession, the only means whereby Jimmie could be
- rehabilitated, loomed in front of him more and more disastrous. It would
- be presenting himself to the world as a coward as well as a knave. That
- prospect, too, frightened him. Lastly, there was Norma, white,
- terror-stricken, metamorphosed in a second into a creature of primitive
- emotions. Like the other shocks of that unhallowed day, her revelation of
- unsuspected passions brought him face to face with the unfamiliar; and to
- the average sensual man the unfamiliar brings with it an atmosphere of the
- uncanny, the influence to be feared. His attitude, therefore, when he
- addressed her was ludicrously humble.
- </p>
- <p>
- She bowed and passed on. By this time she knew that Jimmie was not dead.
- Morland's words even reassured her. Her breath came hard through her
- delicate nostrils, and her bosom heaved up and down beneath the open-work
- bodice with painful quickness. Only a few were allowed to stay in the
- dining-room, Morland, Mr. Hardacre, Theodore Weever on behalf of the
- duchess, and one or two others, while the Cosford doctor, who had been
- invited to the garden-party, made his examination. Norma went through into
- the hall. At the bottom of the stairs she met Connie in piteous distress.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, my poor dear, my poor dear, we did n't know! I have just heard all
- about it. It is terrible!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma put up her hand beseechingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't, Connie dear; don't talk of it. I can't bear it. I must be alone.
- Send me up word what the doctor says.”
- </p>
- <p>
-She went to her room, sat there and
- waited. Presently her maid entered with the message from Mrs. Deering. The
- doctor's report was favourable—the wound not in any way dangerous,
- the bullet easily extractable. They had carried the patient to his
- bedroom, and Mrs. Deering had wired for Miss Marden to come down by the
- first train. Norma dismissed the maid, and tried, in a miserable wonder,
- to realise all that had happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- A woman accustomed to many emotions can almost always hold herself in
- check, if she be of strong will. Experience has taught her the meaning and
- the danger of those swift rushes of the blood that lead to unreasoning
- outburst. She is forewarned, forearmed, and can resist or not as occasion
- demands. But even she is sometimes taken unawares. How much the more
- likely to give way is the woman who has never felt passionate emotion in
- her life before. The premonitory symptoms fail to convey the sense of
- danger to her inexperienced mind. Before the will has time to act she is
- swept on by a new force, bewildering, irresistible. It becomes an ecstatic
- madness of joy or grief, and to the otherwise rational being her actions
- are of no account. This curse of quick responsiveness afflicts men to a
- less degree. If the first chapters of Genesis could be brought up to date,
- woman would be endowed, not with an extra rib, but with an extra nerve.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now that she knew the shooting of Jimmie to be an affair of no great
- seriousness, her heart sickened at the thought of her wild exhibition of
- feeling. She heard the sniggering and ridicule in every carriage-load of
- homeward-bound guests. From the wife of the scrubby curate to the Princess
- of Herren-Rothbeck, her name was rolled like a delicate morsel on the
- tongue of every woman in the county. And the inference they could not fail
- to draw from her action was true—miserably true. But she had only
- become poignantly aware of things at the moment when she saw the lean
- haggard man in rusty black covering Jimmie with the revolver. Then all the
- unrest of soul which she had striven to allay with her mockery, all the
- disquieting visions of sweet places to which she had scornfully blinded
- her eyes, all the burning words of passion whose clear echoing had wrapped
- her body in hateful fever the night before, converged like electric
- currents into one steady light radiant with significance. Two minutes
- afterwards, when Jimmie fell, civilisation slipped from her like a loose
- garment, and primitive woman threw herself by his side. But now,
- reclothed, she shivered at the memory.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Hardacre entered. There was battle in
- every line of the hard face and in every movement of the thin, stiff
- figure. Norma rose from the window where she had been sitting and faced
- her mother defiantly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know what you are going to say to me. Don't you think you might wait a
- little? It will keep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It won't. Sit down,” said Mrs. Hardacre between her teeth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I prefer to stand for the moment,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre lost her self-control.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are we to send you to a madhouse? What do you mean by your blazing folly?
- Before the whole county—before the duchess—before the
- princess! Do you know what I have had to go through the last half-hour? Do
- you know that we may never set foot in Chiltern Towers again? Do you know
- we are the scandal and the laughing-stock of the county? As if one thing
- was n't sufficient—for you to crown it by behaving like a hysterical
- school-girl! Do you know what interpretation every scandal-mongering tabby
- in the place is putting on your insane conduct?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes,” said Norma, looking at her mother stonily; “and for once in
- their spiteful lives they are quite right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean?” gasped Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think my meaning is obvious.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That man—that painter man dressed like a secondhand clothes-dealer—that—that
- beast?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre could scarcely trust her senses. The true solution of her
- daughter's extraordinary behaviour had never crossed her most desperate
- imaginings. But then she had not had much time for quiet speculatien. The
- speeding of her hurriedly departing guests had usurped all the wits of the
- poor lady.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have indeed given us a dramatic entertainment, dear Mrs. Hardacre,”
- Lady FitzHubert had said with a sympathetic smile. “And poor Norma has
- supplied the curtain. I hope she won't take it too much to heart.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Mrs. Hardacre, livid with rage, had had no weapon wherewith to strike
- her adversary who thus took triumphant vengeance. It had been a half-hour
- of grievous humiliation. The fount and origin thereof was lying
- unconscious with a bullet through his shoulder. The subsidiary stream, so
- to speak, was in her room safe and sound. Human nature, for which she is
- not deserving of over-blame, had driven Mrs. Hardacre thither. At least
- she could vent some of her pent-up fury upon her outrageous daughter, who,
- from Mrs. Hardacre's point of view, indeed owed an explanation of her
- action and deserved maternal censure. This she was more than prepared to
- administer. But when she heard Norma calmly say that Lady FitzHubert and
- the other delighted wreakers of private revenges were entirely in the
- right, she gasped with amazement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That beast!” she repeated with a rising intonation. Norma gave her
- habitual shrug of the shoulders. With her proud, erect bearing, it was a
- gesture not ungraceful.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Considering what I have just admitted, mother, perhaps it would be in
- better taste not to use such language.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't understand your admitting it. I don't know what on earth you
- mean,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a short pause, during which she scanned her daughter's face
- anxiously as if waiting to see a gleam of reason dawn on it. Norma
- reflected for a moment. Should she speak or not? She decided to speak.
- Brutal frankness had ever been her best weapon against her mother. It
- would probably prevent future wrangling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sorry I have n't made my meaning clear,” she said, resuming her seat
- by the window; “and I don't know whether I can make it much clearer.
- Anyhow, I'll try, mother. I used to think that love was either a
- school-girl sentimentality, a fiction of the poets, or else the sort of
- thing that lands married women who don't know how to take care of
- themselves in the divorce court. I find it is n't. That's all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre ran up to the window and faced Norma. “And Morland?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It won't break his heart.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What won't?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The breaking off of our engagement.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre looked at her daughter in a paralysis of bewilderment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The madhouse is the only place for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it is. Anyway I can't marry a man when I care for his intimate
- friend—and when the intimate friend cares for me. Somehow it's not
- quite decent. Even you, mother, can see that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you and the intimate friend have arranged it all between you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no. He does n't know that I care, and he does n't know that I know
- that he cares. I'll say that over again if you like. It is quite
- accurately expressed. And you know I'm not in the habit of lying.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you propose to marry——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't propose to do anything,” interrupted Norma, quickly. “I at least
- can wait till he asks me. And now, mother, I've had rather a bad time—don't
- you think we might stop?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems to me, my dear Norma, we are only just beginning,” said Mrs.
- Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma rose with nervous impatience.
- </p>
- <p>
- “O heavens, mother,” she said, in the full deep notes of her voice, which
- were only sounded at rare moments of feeling, “can't you see that I'm in
- earnest? This man is like no one else I have ever met. I have grown to
- need him. Do you know what that means? With him I am a changed woman—as
- God made me, I suppose; natural, fresh, real—” Mrs. Hardacre sat in
- Norma's vacated chair by the window and stared at her, as she moved about
- the room. “I somehow feel that I am a woman, after all. I have got
- something higher than myself that I can fall at the feet of, and that's
- what every woman craves when she's decent. As for marrying him—I'm
- not fit to marry him. There is n't any one living who is. That's an end of
- it, mother. I can't say anything more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And do you propose to go on seeing this person when he recovers?” asked
- Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I really can't argue with you,” said her mother, mystified. “If you had
- told me this rubbish yesterday, I should have thought you touched in your
- wits. To-day it is midsummer madness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why to-day?” asked Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The man has shown himself to be such a horrible beast. Of course, if you
- think confessing to having seduced a girl under infamous circumstances and
- driven her by his brutality to child-murder and suicide, and blazoning the
- whole thing out at a fashionable garden-party and getting himself shot for
- his pains, are idyllic virtues, nothing more can be said. It's a case, as
- I remarked, for a madhouse.” Norma came and stood before her mother, her
- brows knitted in perplexity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps I am going crazy—I really don't understand what you are
- talking about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre leant forward in her chair and drew a long breath. A gleam
- of intelligence came into her eyes as she looked at Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean to say you don't know what the row was about before the man
- fired the shot?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Norma, blankly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her mother fell back in her chair and laughed. It was the first moment of
- enjoyment she had experienced since Stone's black figure had appeared on
- the terrace. Reaction from strain caused the laughter to ring somewhat
- sharply. Norma regarded her with an anxious frown.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Please tell me exactly what you mean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear child—it's too funny. I thought you would have been too
- clever to be taken in by a man like this. I see, you've been imagining him
- a Galahad—a sort of spotless prophet—though what use you can
- have for such persons I can't make out. Well, this is what happened.”
- Embellishing the story here and there with little spiteful adornments, she
- described with fair accuracy, however, the scene that had occurred. Norma
- listened stonily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is true?” she asked when her mother had finished.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ask any one who was there—your father—Morland.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't believe it. He is not that sort of man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is n't he? I knew he was the first time I set eyes on him. Perhaps
- another time you'll allow me to have some sense—of course, if it is
- immaterial to you whether a man is a brute—What are you ringing the
- bell for?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am going to ask Morland to come up here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The maid appeared, received Norma's message, and retired. Norma sat by her
- little writing-table, with her head turned away from her mother, and there
- was silence between them till the maid returned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. King has just driven off to catch the train, miss. He left a note for
- you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre listened with contracted brow. When the maid retired, she
- bent forward anxiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What does he say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can read it, mother,” replied Norma, wearily. She held out the note.
- Mrs. Hardacre came forward and took it from her hand and sat down again.
- </p>
- <p>
- It ran:
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>“Dear Norma,—I think it best to run up to town on this
- afternoon's business. I have only just time to catch the train at Cosford,
- so you will forgive my not saying good-bye to you more ceremoniously. Take
- care of poor Jimmie.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>“Yours affectionately,</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>“Morland.”</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor Jimmie, indeed!” said Mrs. Hardacre, somewhat relieved at finding
- the note contained no reference to the part played by Norma. “It's very
- good of Morland, but I wish he would not mix himself up in this scandal.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't see what less he could do than look after his friend's
- interests,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish the man had been shot or hanged before he came down here,” said
- Mrs. Hardacre, vindictively. “That's the worst of associating with such
- riff-raff. One never knows what they will do. It will teach you not to
- pick people out of the gutter and set them in a drawing-room.” Mrs.
- Hardacre rose. She did not often have the opportunity of triumphing over
- her daughter. She crossed the room and paused for a moment by Norma, who
- sat motionless with her chin in her hand, apparently too dismayed to
- retort.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad to see symptoms of sanity,” she remarked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma brought down her hand hard upon the table and leaped to her feet and
- faced her mother.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you, it's impossible! Impossible! He is not that kind of man. It
- is some horrible mistake. I will ask him myself. I will get the truth from
- his own lips.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You shall certainly do nothing of the kind,” cried her mother; and in
- order to have the last word she went out and slammed the door behind her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma sat by the window again. The red September sun was setting, and
- bathed downs and trees in warm light, and glinted on the spire of a little
- village church a mile away. Everything it touched was at peace, save the
- bowed head of the girl, clasped with white fingers which still retained
- the dull brown marks of blood. Could she believe the revolting story? A
- woman so driven to desperation must have been cruelly handled. Her sex
- rose up against the destroyer. Her social training had caused her to
- regard with cynical indifference ordinary breaches of what is popularly
- termed the moral law. In the fast, idle set which she generally frequented
- it was as ordinary for a man to neigh after his neighbour's wife as to try
- to win his friend's money; as unsurprising for him to keep a mistress as a
- stud of race-horses; the crime was to marry her. But it was not customary,
- even in smart society, to drive women to murder their new-born babes and
- kill themselves. A callous brutality suggested itself, and the
- contemplation of it touched humanity, sex, essential things. Could she
- believe the story? She shuddered.
- </p>
- <p>
- The dressing-gong sounded through the house. Her maid entered, drew the
- curtains, and lit the gas; then was dismissed. Norma would not go down to
- dinner. A little food and drink in her own room would be all that she
- could swallow.
- </p>
- <p>
- Later, Connie Deering, who had changed her dress, tapped at the door and
- was bidden to enter. A quantity of powder vainly strove to hide the traces
- of recent tears on her pretty face. She was a swollen-featured, piteous
- little butterfly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How is he?” asked Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better, much better. They have taken out the bullet. There is no danger,
- and he has recovered consciousness. I almost wish he hadn't. Oh, Norma
- dear—”
- </p>
- <p>
- She broke down and sat on the bed and sobbed. Norma came up and laid her
- hand on her shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Surely you don't believe this ghastly story?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The fair head nodded above the handkerchief. A voice came from-below it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must—it's horrible—Jimmie, of all men! I thought his life
- was so sweet and clean—almost like a good woman's—I can't
- understand it. If he is as bad as this, what must other men be like? I
- feel as if I shall never be able to look a man in the face again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But why should you take it for granted that he has done this?” asked
- Norma, tonelessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Deering raised her face and looked at her friend in blue-eyed dismay.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did n't take it for granted. He told me so himself. Otherwise do you
- think I should have believed it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He told you so himself! When?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A short while ago. I went into his room. I could n't help it—I felt
- as if I should have gone mad if I didn't know the truth. Parsons was there
- with him. She said I could come in. He smiled at me in his old way, and
- that smile is enough to make any woman fall in love with him. 'You've been
- crying, Connie,' he said. 'That's very foolish of you.' So I began to cry
- more. You would have cried if you had heard him. I asked him how he was
- feeling. He said he had never felt so well in his life. Then I blurted it
- out. I know I was a beast, but it was more than I could stand. 'Tell me
- that this madman's story was all lies.' He looked at me queerly, waited
- for a second or two, and then moved his head. 'It's all true,' he said,
- 'all true.' 'But you must have some explanation!' I cried. He shut his
- eyes as if he were tired and said I must take the facts as they were. Then
- Parsons came up and said I mustn't excite him, and sent me out of the
- room. But I did n't want to hear any more. I had heard enough, had n't I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, as she listened to the little lady's tale, felt her heart grow cold
- and heavy. Doubt was no longer possible. The man himself had spoken. He
- had not even pleaded extenuating circumstances; had merely admitted the
- plain, brutal facts. He had gone under a feigned name, seduced an honest
- girl, abandoned her, driven her to tragedy. It was all too simple to need
- explanation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what are we to do, dear?” cried Connie, as Norma made no remark, but
- stood motionless and silent.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think we had better drop his acquaintance,” she replied with bitter
- irony.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie flinched at the tone, being a tender-natured woman. She retorted
- with some spirit:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't believe you have any heart at all, Norma. And I thought you cared
- for him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You thought I cared for him?” Norma repeated slowly and cuttingly while
- her eyes hardened. “What right had you to form such an opinion?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “People can form any opinions they like, my dear,” said Connie. “That was
- mine. And on the terrace this afternoon you know you cared. If ever a
- woman gave herself away over a man, it was Norma Hardacre.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was n't Norma Hardacre, I assure you. It was a despicable fool whom I
- will ask you to forget. My mother was for putting it into a madhouse. She
- was quite right. Anyhow it has ceased to exist and I am the real Norma
- Hardacre again. Humanity is afflicted, it seems, periodically with a
- peculiar disease. It turns men into beasts and women into idiots. I have
- quite recovered, my dear Connie, and if you'll kindly go down and ask them
- to keep dinner back for five minutes, I'll dress and come down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She rang the bell for her maid. Connie rose from the bed. She longed to
- make some appeal to the other's softer nature for her own sake, as she had
- held Jimmie very dear and felt the need of sympathy in her trouble and
- disillusion.
- </p>
- <p>
- But knowing that from the rock of that cynical mood no water would gush
- forth for any one's magic, she recognised the inefficacy of her own
- guileless arts, and forbore to exercise them. She sighed for answer. By
- chance her glance fell upon Norma's skirt. Human instinct, not altogether
- feminine, seized upon the trivial.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, whatever have you been doing to your dress?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma looked down, and for the first time noticed the disfiguring smears
- of blood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must have spilt something,” she said, turning away quickly, and
- beginning to unfasten the hooks and eyes of her neckband.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope it will come out,” said Connie. “It's such a pretty frock.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As soon as she was alone, Norma looked at the stains with unutterable
- repulsion. She tore off the dress feverishly and threw it into a corner.
- When her maid entered in response to her summons, she pointed to the
- shapeless heap of crêpe and embroidery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take that away and burn it,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XVI—IN THE WILDERNESS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ORMA went down to
- dinner resolved to present a scornful front to public opinion. She found
- the effort taxed her strength. During the night her courage deserted her.
- The cold glitter of triumph in her mother's eyes had been intolerable. Her
- father, generally regarded with contemptuous indifference, had goaded her
- beyond endurance with his futile upbraiding. Aline had arrived,
- white-faced and questioning, and had established herself by Jimmie's
- bedside. Norma shrank from the ordeal of the daily meeting with her and
- the explanation that would inevitably come. She dreaded the return of
- Morland, uncertain of her own intentions. As she tossed about on her
- pillow, she loathed the idea of the marriage. Innermost sex had spoken for
- one passionate moment, and its message still vibrated. She knew that time
- might dull the memory; she knew that her will might one day triumph over
- such things as sex and sentiment; but she must have a breathing space, a
- period of struggle, of reflection, above all, of disassociation from
- present surroundings. If she sold herself, it must be in the accustomed
- cold atmosphere of brain and heart. Not now, when her head burned and
- flaming swords were piercing her through and through. And last, and chief
- of all her dreads, was the wounded man now sleeping beneath that roof.
- Father, mother, Aline, Morland—these, torture though it were, she
- could still steel her nerves to meet; but him, never. He had done what no
- other man in the wide world had done. He had awakened the sleeping,
- sacredest inmost of her, and he had dealt it a deadly wound. If she could
- have consumed him and all the memories surrounding him with fire, as she
- had consumed the garment stained with his blood, she would have done so in
- these hours of misery. And fierce among the bewildering conflict of
- emotions that raged through the long night was one that filled her with
- overwhelming disgust—a horrible, almost grotesque jealousy of the
- dead girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the morning, exhausted, she resolved on immediate flight. In the little
- village of Penwyrn on the Cornish coast, her aunt Janet Hardacre led a
- remote, Quakerish existence. The reply to a telegram before she left her
- room assured Norma of a welcome. By eleven o'clock she had left Heddon
- Court and was speeding westwards without a word to Jimmie or Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland returned in the afternoon, and after a whisky and soda to brace
- his nerves, at once sought Jimmie, who roused himself with an effort to
- greet his visitor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Getting on famously, I hear,” said Morland, with forced airiness. “So
- glad. We'll have you on your feet in a day or two.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope to be able to travel back to London to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-morrow?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Jimmie, with a curious smile. “I fear I have outstayed my
- welcome.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not a bit of it,” said Morland, seating himself at the foot of the bed.
- “We'll put all that right. But you will give one a little time, won't you?
- You mustn't think you've been altogether left. I ran up to town at once to
- see my solicitors—not my usual people, you know, but some others,
- devilish smart fellows at this sort of thing. They'll see that nothing
- gets into the beastly papers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't see that it matters much,” said Jimmie. “
- </p>
- <p>
-Why, of course it does.
- I'm not going to let you take the whole blame. I could n't come forward
- yesterday, it was all so sudden. The scandal would have rotted my election
- altogether. But you shall be cleared—at any rate in the eyes of this
- household. I came down with the intention of telling Norma, but she has
- bolted to Cornwall. Upset, I suppose. However, as soon as she comes back—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let things be as they are,” interrupted Jimmie, closing his eyes for a
- moment wearily, for he had been suffering much bodily pain. “When I said I
- was David Rendell, I meant it. I can go on acting the part. It's pretty
- easy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Impossible, my dear old chap,” said Morland, with an air of heartiness.
- “You went into the affair with your eyes shut. You didn't know it was such
- a horrible mess.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All the more reason for Norma to remain ignorant. It was for her sake as
- well as yours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A peculiar tenderness in Jimmie's tone caused Morland, not usually
- perceptive, to look at him sharply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are very keen upon Norma,” he remarked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie closed his eyes again, and smiled. He was very weak and tired. The
- pain of his wound and a certain mental agitation had kept him awake all
- night, and just before Morland entered he had been dropping off to sleep
- for the first time. An unconquerable drowsiness induced irresponsibility
- of speech.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'The desire of the moth for the star,'” he murmured.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland slid from the bed to his feet, and with his hands in his pockets
- gazed in astonishment at his friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- An entirely novel state of affairs dawned upon him which required a few
- moments to bring into focus. The ghastly tragedy for which he was
- responsible, presenting itself luridly at every instant of the night and
- day, had hidden from his reminiscent vision Norma's rush down the slope.
- and her scared tending of the unconscious man. Jimmie's words brought back
- the scene with unpleasant vividness and provided the interpretation. When
- he saw this clearly, he was the most amazed man in the three kingdoms.
- That Jimmie should have conceived and nourished a silly, romantic passion
- for Norma, although he had never interested himself sufficiently in
- Jimmie's private affairs to suspect it, was humorously comprehensible.
- Ludicrously incomprehensible, however, was a reciprocation of the
- sentiment on the part of Norma. In spite of remorse, in spite of anxiety,
- in spite of the struggle between cowardice and manhood, his uppermost
- sensation at that moment was one of lacerated vanity. He had been
- hoodwinked, befooled, deceived. His own familiar friend had betrayed him;
- the woman he was about to honour with his name had set him at naught. He
- tingled with anger and sense of wrong.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sick man opened his eyes drowsily, and seeing Morland's gaze full
- upon him, started into wakefulness. He motioned him to come nearer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you marry Norma—” he began.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I marry her!” cried Morland. “Of course I'm going to marry her. I'll
- see any other man damned before he marries her! She's the only woman in
- the world I've ever set my mind on, and no matter what happens, I'm going
- to marry her. There are no damned if's about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, there are,” Jimmie retorted weakly. “I was going to preach, but I'm
- too tired. You'll have to be especially good to her—to make up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For what?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For the wrong done to the other.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland was silent. He went up to the window and stared out across the
- lawns and tugged at his moustache. The reproach stung him, and he felt
- that Jimmie was ungenerous. After all, he had only done what thousands of
- other men had done with impunity. The consequences had been enough to
- drive him mad, but they had been the hideous accident of a temperament for
- which he had not been responsible.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You surely don't believe all that mad fool said yesterday?” he muttered
- without turning round.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The promise of marriage?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a crazy invention. There never was any question of marriage. I told
- you so months ago. I did everything in my power.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm glad,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland made no reply, but continued to stare out of the window and
- meditate upon the many injuries that fate had done him. He arraigned
- himself before the bar of his wounded vanity. He had broken the moral law
- and deserved a certain penalty. The magnanimous verdict received the
- applause of an admiring self. He was willing to undergo an adequate
- punishment—the imposition of a fine and the hard labour of setting
- devious things straight. But the alternative sentence to which he saw
- himself condemned—on the one hand, the ruin of his political career,
- his social position, and his marriage with Norma, to all of which he clung
- with a newly found passion, and on the other, ignoble shelter behind an
- innocent man who had done him a great wrong—he rebelled against with
- all his average, sensual Briton's sense of justice. It was grossly unfair.
- If there had been a spiritual “Times,” he would have written to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- The opening of the door caused him to turn round with a start. It was
- Aline, anxious and pale from an all-night sitting by Jimmie's bedside, but
- holding her slim body erect, and wearing the uncompromising air of a
- mother who has found her child evilly entreated at the hands of strangers.
- She glanced at the bed and at Morland; then she put her finger to her lip,
- and pointed at Jimmie, who lay fast asleep. Morland nodded and went on
- tiptoe out of the room. Aline looked round, and being a sensitive young
- person, shivered. She threw open the window wide, as if to rid the place
- of his influence. Jimmie stirred slightly. She bent down and kissed his
- hair.
- </p>
- <p>
- During the dark and troubled time that followed, Morland fell away from
- Jimmie like the bosom friend of a mediaeval artist stricken with the Black
- Death. At first, common decency impelled him to send the tainted one
- affectionate messages, invitations to trust him awhile longer, and
- enlarged, with the crudity of his mental habit, on the noble aspects of
- Jimmie's sacrifice. But after Jimmie left the Hardacres' house, which
- happened as soon as he could bear the journey, Morland shrank from meeting
- him face to face; and when public exposure came, the messages and the
- invitations and the protestations ceased, and Jimmie was left in
- loneliness upon a pinnacle of infamy. Morland, in the futile hope of the
- weak-willed man that he could, by some astonishing chance, sail a middle
- course, did indeed give himself peculiar pains to keep the story out of
- the newspapers, and his ill-success was due to other causes than his own
- lack of effort. It was a tale too picturesque to be wasted in these days
- of sensation-hunger. The fact of the dénouement of the tragedy having
- taken place in the presence of royalty lent it a theatrical glamour. A
- sardonic press filled an Athenian public with what it lusted after.
- Indeed, who shall say with authority that the actual dramas re-enacted
- before our courts and reported in our newspapers have not their value in
- splashing with sudden colour the drab lives of thousands? May it not be
- better for the dulled soul to be occasionally arrested by the
- contemplation of furious passions than to feed contentedly like a pig
- beside the slaughtered body of its fellow?
- </p>
- <p>
- Be that as it may. The press paid no heed to Morland or the smart fellows
- of solicitors whom he employed. It published as many details as it could
- discover or invent. For the tragical business did not end with the scene
- on the Hardacres' lawn. There was an inquest on the dead girl. There was
- the trial of Daniel Stone for attempted murder. The full glare of
- publicity shed itself upon the sordid history. In the one case the jury
- gave a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity; in the other the
- prisoner was found to be insane and was sent to an asylum. These were
- matters of no great public interest. But letters to the dead girl in a
- disguised handwriting were discovered, and Stone gave his crazy evidence,
- and a story of heartless seduction under solemn promise of marriage and of
- abandonment with cynical offer of money was established, and the
- fashionable portrait-painter, who was supposed to be the hero of the tale,
- awoke one morning and found himself infamous. The thing, instead of
- remaining a mere police-court commonplace, became a society scandal.
- Exaggeration was inevitable, not only of facts but of the reprobation a
- virtuous community pronounces on the specially pilloried wrongdoer. The
- scapegoat in its essential significance is by no means a thing of
- legendary history. It exists still, and owes its existence to an
- ineradicable instinct in human nature. The reprobation aforesaid is due
- not entirely to hypocrisy, as the social satirist would have it, but in a
- great measure to an unreasoning impulse towards expiation of offences by
- horrified condemnation of some notorious other. Thus it came to pass that
- upon Jimmie's head were put all the iniquities of the people and all their
- transgressions in all their sins, and he was led away into the social
- wilderness. After that, the world forgot him. He had been obscure enough
- before he burst for a day into the blaze of royal patronage; but now
- blackest darkness swallowed him up. Only Aline remained by his side.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland wrote to Jimmie once after the exposure. As he had been the cause,
- said he, of the probable ruin of Jimmie's professional prospects, it was
- only right that he should endeavour to make some compensation. It was,
- besides, a privilege of their life-long friendship. He enclosed a cheque
- for two thousand pounds. Jimmie returned it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Morland,” he wrote in answer, “loyalty can only be repaid by
- loyalty, love by love. If I accepted money, it would dishonour both
- yourself and me. It is true that I took upon me a greater burden than I
- was aware of. The world, if it knew the facts, would, as you say, call me
- a quixotic fool. But if I took your money it would have the right to call
- me a mercenary knave. I have always suffered fools gladly, myself the
- greatest. I can go on doing so. Meanwhile you can make full compensation
- in the only way possible. Devote your life and energies to the happiness
- of the woman you are about to marry.” This was a stern letter for Jimmie
- to write. After he had posted it he reproached himself for not having put
- in a kind word.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XVII—THE INCURABLE MALADY
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> 'll never let you
- inside the house again until you go down on your knees and beg Jimmie's
- pardon,” cried Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- She stood, a slim incarnation of outraged womanhood, with her hand on the
- knob of the open door. A scared but stubborn youth hesitated on the
- threshold. Few men, least of all lovers, like being turned out.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't believe you care a hang for me!” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't,” she retorted bravely, but with tremulous lip. “Not a hang, as
- you call it. I dislike you exceedingly and I don't want to see you any
- more. I'll never speak to anybody who believes such things of Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, my good child,” expostulated Tony Merewether, “they are facts; he
- never has denied them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He could if he liked.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do I know?” Aline repeated scornfully. “That just shows how far we
- are apart. There's not the slightest reason for talking any more. You have
- insulted Jimmie and you are going on insulting him. I can't stand by this
- door forever. I want you to go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, very well, I'll go,” said the young fellow. “But you've behaved
- damnably to me, Aline—simply damnably.” He strode down the passage
- and slammed the front door behind him. Aline turned back into the prim
- little drawing-room where the interview had taken place, and after an
- attempt to remain composed and dignified, suddenly broke into tears. She
- could struggle no more against the cruelty of man and the hopelessness of
- life. It had been a stormy interview. Tony Merewether had come, as her
- natural protector, to insist upon immediate marriage. A small legacy
- recently bequeathed to him would enable them to marry with reasonable
- prudence. Why should they wait? Aline pleaded for time. How could she
- leave her beloved Jimmie in his blackest hour?
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's just because I don't think it quite right for you to live here any
- longer, that I want you to come away at once,” Tony had said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not right to live here? What on earth do you mean?” The luckless lover
- tried to explain. Aline regarded him icily, and in his confusion and
- discomfiture he lost the careful wrappings which he had prepared for his
- words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You think that Jimmie is not a fit person for me to associate with?” she
- had asked in a dangerous tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, since you choose to put it that way,” he had replied, nettled. He
- believed that women liked a man of spirit and generally yielded to a show
- of masterfulness. He was very young. Taking up his parable with greater
- confidence, he showed her the social and moral necessity of immediate
- recourse to his respectable protection. Naturally he admired her loyalty,
- he signified, with a magnanimous wave of the hand; but there were certain
- things girls did not quite comprehend; a man's judgment had to be trusted.
- He invited her to surrender entirely to his wisdom. The end of it all was
- his ignominious dismissal. She would not see him until he had begged
- Jimmie's pardon on his knees.
- </p>
- <p>
- But now she buried her face in the sofa-cushions and sobbed. It was her
- first poignant disillusion. Tony, whom she loved with all her heart, was
- just like everybody else, incapable of pure faith, ready to believe the
- worst. He was cruel, uncharitable. She would never speak to him again. And
- the sweet shy dream of her young life was over. It was very tragical.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie's step coming up the studio stairs caused her to spring from the
- sofa and frantically dry her eyes before the mirror. The steps advanced
- along the passage, and soon Jimmie's head appeared at the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where have you hidden the little watercolour box?” he asked cheerily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In the cupboard. On the second shelf,” she replied, without turning
- round.
- </p>
- <p>
- He caught sight of the reflection of a tear-stained face, and came and
- stood by her side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, you've been crying!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose I have,” she admitted with affectionate defiance, looking up
- into his face. “Why should n't I, if I like? It's not a crime.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's worse—it's a blunder,” he quoted with a smile. “It can't do
- any one any good, and it makes your pretty nose red. That will spoil your
- good looks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish it would. My looks will never matter to anybody,” she said
- desperately.
- </p>
- <p>
- He put his arm round her shoulders, just as he had done since she could
- remember.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What has happened to distress you—more than usual?” he added.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was silent for a moment, and hung her head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've broken off with Tony,” she said in a low voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll mend it up with Tony at once, my dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll never marry him,” declared Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll write and tell him that you'll marry him at the very first
- opportunity. There are reasons why you should, Aline, grave reasons.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You wouldn't have me marry any one I dislike intensely?” she flashed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wouldn't you do it to please me, even though you hated him violently? I
- have been going to speak to you about this. It's high time you were
- married, dear, and I particularly wish it. So make friends with Tony as
- soon as ever you can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never want to see Tony again—until he has gone on his bended
- knees to you,” said Aline, with a quivering lip. “I don't want to breathe
- the same air with any one who does n't think of you as I do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This was the first allusion that the girl had made to unhappy things,
- since they had become common knowledge a month ago. She had conveyed to
- him by increased tenderness and devotion that she loved him all the more
- for his suffering, and it had been easy for him to perceive that the main
- facts of the story were not unknown to her. But hitherto there had been
- absolute silence on the part of each. He had been greatly puzzled as to
- the proper course he should take. An interview with Tony Merewether that
- morning had decided him. It had been short, coldly courteous on the young
- fellow's side, who merely asked and obtained consent to marry Aline
- forthwith, and wistfully dignified on Jimmie's.
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat down on the arm of a chair and took her hand, deeply moved by her
- passionate faith in him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen, dear. I am a dishonoured man and it is n't right that you should
- live with me any longer. Tony, dear good fellow, is no more to blame for
- what he thinks of me than the crazy wronged man who shot me. But the only
- way for you to make him think better is to marry him. No, don't interrupt.
- Stand quietly and let me talk to you. I've been making plans and I should
- be tremendously upset if there was any difficulty. I'm going to give up
- the house and studio.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline regarded him in frightened amazement, and then looked round as if
- the familiar walls and furniture were in danger of incontinent
- disappearance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What?” she gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall give it up and wander about painting abroad, so it's absolutely
- necessary that you should marry Tony. Otherwise I don't know what on earth
- I should do with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He swung her hand and looked smilingly into her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You see I really am in a hurry to get rid of you,” he added.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline gazed at him for a long time, gradually recovering from her
- stupefaction. Then she withdrew her hand from his clasp and laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are talking unadulterated rubbish, Jimmie,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Upon this declaration she took her stand, and no protest or argument could
- move her. She withstood triumphantly a siege of several days. Jimmie tried
- to exert his quasiparental authority. But the submissive little girl, who
- had always yielded when Jimmie claimed obedience, had given place to a
- calmly inflexible woman. Jimmie swore that he would not commit the crime
- of spoiling her life's happiness. She replied, with a toss of her head and
- a pang of her heart, that her life's happiness had nothing to do with Tony
- Merewether, and that if it did, the crime would lie at his door and not at
- Jimmie's.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As for leaving you alone in the wide world, I would just as soon think of
- deserting a new-born baby in the street,” she said. “You are not fit to be
- by yourself. And whether you like it or not, Jimmie, I must stay and look
- after you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At last, by the underhand methods which women often employ for the greater
- comfort of men, she cajoled him into an admission. The plan of giving up
- the house had, as its sole object, the forcing of her hand. Victorious,
- she allowed herself to shed tears over his goodness. Just for her
- miserable sake he had proposed to turn himself into a homeless wanderer
- over the face of Europe.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do tell me, Jimmie,” she said, “how it feels to be an angel!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laughed in his old bright way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very uncomfortable when a tyrannical young woman cuts your wings off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I do it for your good, Jimmie,” she retorted. “If I did n't, you
- would be flying about helplessly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus the clouds that lay around them were lit with tender jesting. During
- this passage through the darkness he never faltered, serene in his faith,
- having found triumphant vindication thereof in the devotion of Aline. That
- he had made a sacrifice greater than any human being had a right to demand
- of another, he knew full well; he had been driven on to more perilous
- reefs than he had contemplated; the man whom he had imagined Morland to be
- would have thrown all planks of safety to the waves in order to rescue
- him. He felt acutely the pain of his shipwreck; but he did not glorify
- himself as a martyr: he was satisfied that it was for the worshipped
- woman's happiness, and that in itself was a reward. His catholic sympathy
- even found extenuating circumstances in Morland's conduct. Once when Aline
- inveighed against his desertion, he said in the grave manner in which he
- delivered himself of his moral maxims:
- </p>
- <p>
- “We ought never to judge a human being's actions until we know his
- motives.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline thought the actions were quite sufficient for a working philosophy,
- but she did not say so. Jimmie half guessed the motives and judged
- leniently. Though he had lost much that made life sweet to him, his heart
- remained unchanged, his laugh rang true through the house; and were it not
- for the loneliness and the dismal blight in her own little soul, Aline
- would not have realised that any calamitous event had happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- One other of Jimmie's friends maintained relations with him. This was
- Connie Deering. She had gone abroad soon after the disaster, and moved by
- various feelings for which she rather forbade her impulsive self to
- account, had written one or two oddly expressed letters. In the first one
- she had touched lightly upon the difficult subject. She would not have
- believed a word of it, if she had not heard it from his own lips. If he
- would write to her and say that it was all a lie, she would accept his
- word implicitly. He was either a god or a devil—a remark that filled
- Jimmie with considerable alarm. A shrewd brain was inside the pretty
- butterfly head. In his reply he ignored the question, an example which
- Connie followed in her second letter. This consisted mainly in a rambling
- account of the beauty of Stresa and the comforts and excellent cuisine of
- the hotel by the lake; but a postscript informed him that Norma was
- travelling about with her for an indefinite period, and that she had heard
- nothing of Morland, who having easily won his election was now probably
- busy with the beginning of the autumn session. Jimmie, unversed in the
- postscriptal ways of women, accepted the information as merely the literal
- statement of facts. A wiser man would have grasped the delicate
- implication that the relations between the affianced pair were so strained
- that an interval of separation had seemed desirable.
- </p>
- <p>
- The unshaken faith of the man in the ultimate righteousness of things kept
- him serene; but the young girl who had no special faith, save in the
- perfect righteousness of Jimmie and the dastardly unrighteousness of the
- world in general and of Mr. Anthony Merewether in particular, found it
- difficult to live in these high altitudes of philosophy. Indeed she was a
- very miserable little girl when Jimmie was not by, and pined, and cried
- her heart out, and grew thin and pale and sharp-tempered, and filled her
- guardian with much concern. At last Jimmie took heroic measures. Without
- Aline's knowledge he summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. The young
- man came. Jimmie received him in the studio, begged him to take a seat,
- and rang the bell. The middle-aged housekeeper ran down in some
- perturbation at the unusual summons, for it was Jimmie's habit to shout up
- the stairs, generally to Aline, for anything he wanted. She received his
- instructions. Miss Aline would oblige him by coming down at once. During
- the interval of waiting he talked to Mr. Merewether of indifferent things,
- flattering himself on a sudden development of the diplomatic faculty.
- Aline ran into the room, and stopped short at the sight of the young man,
- uttering a little cry of indignant surprise. Jimmie cleared his throat,
- but the oration that he had prepared was never delivered. Aline marched
- straight up to the offending lover.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't see you on your knees,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony, who was entirely unexpectant of this uncompromising attitude, having
- taken it for granted that by some means or other the way had been made
- smooth for him, retorted somewhat sharply:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're not likely to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I wonder,” said Aline, “at your audacity in coming to this house.”
- She turned and marched back to the door, her little figure very erect and
- her dark eyes blazing. Jimmie intercepted her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tony came at my request, my child.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For the first and only time in her life she cast a look of anger upon
- Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me pass, please,” she said, like an outraged princess; and waving
- Jimmie aside, she made the exit of offended majesty.
- </p>
- <p>
- The two men looked stupidly at each other. Their position was ignominious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did it for the best, my boy,” said Jimmie, taking up a pipe which he
- began to fill mechanically. He was just the kind creature of happier days.
- The young fellow's heart was touched. After a minute's silence he
- committed a passionate indiscretion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish to God you would tell me there is something hidden beneath this
- ghastly story, and that it's quite different from what it appears to be!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie drew himself up and looked the young man between the eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's a question I discuss with no human being,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon,” said Tony Merewether, in sincere apology. “I would
- not have taken such a liberty if it had n't been a matter of life and
- death for me. Perhaps you think I ought to do more or less as Aline asks
- me; but she is too precious to purchase with an infernal lie. I'm hanged
- if I'll do it, and I don't think you're the man to misunderstand my
- frankness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie had lit his pipe during the foregoing speech. He drew two or three
- meditative puffs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have as little to do with lies, my boy, as ever you can,” said he. “And
- cheer up, all is sure to come right in the end.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was sunk in reflection for a long time after the young man had gone,
- and again for a long time after Aline had done remorseful penance for her
- loss of temper. Then he went out for a walk and brought back something in
- his pocket. At dinner-time he was unusually preoccupied. When the meal was
- over, he fished up a black bottle from beneath the table, and going to the
- sideboard, came back with a couple of wineglasses. Aline watched him as
- though he were performing some rite in black magic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is rich fruity port,” said he, filling the glasses. “Evans, the
- grocer, told me I should get nothing like it at the price in London. You
- are to drink it. It will do you good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline, still penitent, obeyed meekly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How could you be so extravagant, Jimmie?” she said in mild protest. “It
- must have cost quite three shillings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And sixpence,” said Jimmie, unabashed. He lifted up his glass. “Now
- here's to our <i>Wanderjahr</i>, or as much of it as we can run to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whatever do you mean, Jimmie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a
- tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and beg
- our way through southern Europe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations, in his
- laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating expensive fog
- in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would be cheaper. They
- would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on lagoons, and whisper
- with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling palaces. They would go
- over hills on donkeys. They would steep their souls in Perugino, Del
- Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt Italian flea to respect
- British Keating's powder. They would fraternise with the beautiful maidens
- of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's Campanile. They would do all kinds
- of impossible things. Afford it? Of course they could. Had he not received
- his just dues from the princess and sold two pictures a week or two ago?
- At this point he fell thinking for a couple of dreamy minutes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology.
- “I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I could
- walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out just for
- my sake?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light.
- “I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have
- no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline laughed a joyous laugh which did Jimmie good to hear, and came
- behind his chair and put her arms about his neck, behaving foolishly as a
- young girl penetrated with the sense of the loved one's goodness is
- privileged to do. What she said is of infinitesimal importance, but it
- lifted care from Jimmie's heart and made him as happy as a child. Like two
- children, they discussed the project; and Aline fetching from the top
- shelf of the bookcase in Jimmie's bedroom a forlorn, dusty, yellow-paged
- Continental Bradshaw, twenty years old, they looked up phantom trains that
- had long ceased running, speculated on the merits of dead-and-gone hotels,
- and plunged into the fairyland of anachronistic information.
- </p>
- <p>
- A few days were enough for Jimmie's simple arrangements; and then began
- the pilgrimage of these two, each bearing a burden, a heart-ache, a pain
- from which there was no escaping, but each bearing it with a certain
- splendour of courage that made life beautiful to the other. For the girl
- suffered keenly, as Jimmie knew. She had given a passionate heart for good
- and all to the handsome young fellow who had refused to bow the knee to
- the man whom he had every reason to consider a blackguard. They had come
- together, youth to youth, as naturally as two young birds in the first
- mating-season; but, fortunately or unfortunately for Aline, she was not a
- bird, but a human being of unalterable affections and indomitable
- character. She had the glorious faith, <i>quia incredibile</i>, in Jimmie,
- and rather than swerve aside from it she would have walked on knife edges
- all the rest of her days. So she scorned the pain, and scorned herself for
- feeling it when she saw the serenity with which he bore his cross. Dimly
- she felt that if the truth were known he would stand forth heroically, not
- infamously. She had revered him as a child does its father; but in that
- sweet and pure relationship of theirs, she had also watched him with the
- minute, jealous solicitude that a mother devotes to an only child who is
- incapable of looking after itself. Nothing in his character had escaped
- her. She knew both his strength and his enchanting weaknesses. To her
- trained eyes, he was all but transparent; and of late her quickened vision
- had read in letters of fire across his heart, “The desire of the moth for
- the star.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So they travelled through the world, hand in hand, as it were, and drank
- together of its beauty. They were memorable journeyings. Sleeping-cars and
- palatial hotels and the luxuries of modern travel were not for them.
- Aline, who knew that Jimmie, as far as he himself was concerned, would
- have slept upon wood quite as cheerfully as upon feathers, but for her
- sake would have royally commanded down, held the purse-strings and
- dictated the expenditure. They had long, wonderful third-class journeys,
- stopping at every wayside station, at each having some picturesque change
- of company in the ever-crowded, evil-smelling, wooden-seated compartment.
- She laughed at Jimmie's fears as to her discomfort; protested with
- energetic sincerity that this was the only way in the world to travel with
- enjoyment. It was a never-failing interest to see Jimmie disarm the
- suspicion of peasants by his sympathetic knowledge of their interests, to
- listen to his arguments with the chance-met curé, perspiring and polite,
- or the mild young soldier in a brass helmet a size too big for him. In
- France she understood what they were saying, and maintained a proper
- protectorate over Jimmie by means of a rough and ready acquaintance with
- the vernacular. But in Italy she was dumb, could only regard Jimmie in
- open-mouthed astonishment and admiration. He spoke Italian. She had known
- him all her life and never suspected this accomplishment. It required some
- tact to keep him in his proper position as interpreter and restrain him
- from acting on his own initiative. In the towns they put up at little
- humble hostelries in by-streets and in country-places at rough inns,
- eating rude fare and drinking sour wine with great content. The more they
- economised the longer would the idyllic vagabondage last.
- </p>
- <p>
- Through southern France and northern Italy they wandered without fixed
- plans, going from place to place as humour seized them, seeking the
- sunshine. At last it seemed to be their normal existence. London with its
- pain and its passion grew remote like the remembered anguish of a dream.
- Few communications reached them. The local newspaper gave them all the
- tidings they needed of the great world. It was a life free from vexation.
- The decaying splendour of the larger cities with their treasure-houses of
- painting and sculpture and their majestic palaces profoundly stirred the
- young girl's imagination and widened her conceptions and sympathies. But
- she loved best to arrive by a crazy, old-world diligence at some little
- townlet built on a sunny hillside, whose crumbling walls were the haunts
- of lizards and birds and strange wild-flowers; and having rested and eaten
- at the dark little <i>albergo</i>, smelling of wine and garlic and all
- Italian smells, to saunter out with Jimmie through the narrow, ill-paved,
- clattering streets alive with brown children and dark-eyed mothers, and
- men sitting on doorsteps violently gesticulating and screaming over the
- game of <i>morra</i>, and to explore the impossible place from end to end.
- A step or two when they desired it would bring them to the sudden peace of
- the mediaeval church, with its memories of Romanesque tradition and faint
- stirrings of Gothic curiously reflecting the faith of its builders; the
- rough, weather-beaten casket of one flawless gem of art, a Virgin smiling
- over the child on her lap at many generations of worshippers, superbly
- eternal and yet quaintly woman. And then they would pass out of the chilly
- streets and down the declivitous pathways below the town and sit together
- on the hillside, in a sun-baked spot sheltered from the wind. This Aline,
- vaguely conscious of the Infinite, called “hanging on the edge of
- Nowhere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- One day, on such a hillside Jimmie had been painting three brown-faced
- children whom he had cajoled into posing for him, while Aline looked on
- dreamily. The urchins, dismissed with a few halfpennies, bowed polite
- thanks, the two boys taking off their caps with the air of ragged princes,
- and scampered away like rabbits out of sight.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There!” cried Jimmie, throwing down his brush and holding out the little
- panel at arm's length. “I have never done anything so good in all my life!
- Have n't I got it? Is n't it better than ten cathedralfuls of sermons? Is
- n't it the quintessence of happiness, the perfect trust in the sweet earth
- to yield them its goodness? Could any one after seeing that dare say the
- world was only a dank and dismal prison where men do nothing but sit and
- hear each other groan? Look at it, Aline. What do you think of it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's just lovely, Jimmie,” said Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I painted a pink hippopotamus standing on its head, you would say it
- was lovely. Why did n't you tell me that arm was out of drawing?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He took up his brush and made the necessary correction. Aline laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know one of the few things I can remember my father saying was
- about you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “God bless my soul,” said Jimmie. “I had almost forgotten you ever had a
- father—dear old chap! What did he say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I remember him telling you that one day you would die of incurable
- optimism. For years I used to think it was some horrible disease, and I
- used to whisper in my prayers, 'O God, please cure Jimmie of optimism,'
- and sometimes lie awake at nights thinking of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, do you think your prayer has been answered?” asked Jimmie, amused.
- </p>
- <p>
- She shifted herself a little nearer him and put her hand on his knee.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank goodness, no. You've got it as bad as ever—and I believe I've
- caught it.” Then, between a sob and a laugh, she added:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Jimmie dear, your stupid old head could never tell you what you have
- done for me since we have been abroad. If I had stayed at home I think I
- should have died of—of—of malignant pessimism. You will never,
- never, never understand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And will you ever understand what you have done for me, my child?” said
- Jimmie, gravely. “We won't talk about these things. They are best in our
- hearts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XVIII—A RUDDERLESS SHIP
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT autumn pressed
- heavily upon Mrs. Hardacre. Norma's engagement, without being broken off,
- was indefinitely suspended, and Norma, by going abroad with Mrs. Deering
- immediately on her return from Cornwall, had placed herself beyond reach
- of maternal influence. It is true that Mrs. Hardacre wrote many letters;
- but as Norma's replies mainly consisted of a line or two on a picture
- post-card, it is to be doubted whether she ever read them. Mrs. Hardacre
- began to feel helpless. Morland could give her little assistance. He
- shrugged his shoulders at her appeals. He was perfectly determined to
- marry Norma, but trusted to time to restore her common-sense and lead her
- into the path of reason. Nothing that he could do would be of any avail.
- Mrs. Hardacre urged him to join the ladies on the Continent and bring
- matters to a crisis. He replied that an election was crisis enough for one
- man in a year, and furthermore the autumn session necessitated his
- attendance in the House. He was quite satisfied, he told her stolidly,
- with things as they were, and in the meantime was actually finding an
- interest in his new political life. But Mrs. Hardacre shared neither his
- satisfaction nor his interest, a mother's point of view being so different
- from that of a lover.
- </p>
- <p>
- As if the loss of ducal favour and filial obedience were not enough for
- the distraught lady, her husband one morning threw a business letter upon
- the table, and with petulant curses on the heads of outside brokers,
- incoherently explained that he was ruined. They were liars and knaves and
- thieves, he sputtered. He would drag them all into the police court, he
- would write to the “Times,” he would go and horsewhip the blackguards.
- Damme if he would n't!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish the blackguards could horsewhip you,” remarked his wife, grimly.
- “Have you sufficient brains to realise what an unutterable fool you have
- been?”
- </p>
- <p>
- If he did not realise it by the end of the week, it was not Mrs.
- Hardacre's fault. She reduced the unhappy man to craven submission and
- surreptitious nipping of old brandy in order to keep up the feeble spirit
- that remained in him, and took the direction of affairs into her own
- hands. They were not ruined, but a considerable sum of money had been lost
- through semi-idiotic speculation, and for a time strict economy was
- necessary. By Christmas the establishment in the country was broken up, a
- tenant luckily found for Heddon Court, and a small furnished house taken
- in Devonshire Place. These arrangements gave Mrs. Hardacre much
- occupation, but they did not tend to soften her character. When Norma came
- home, sympathetically inclined and honestly desirous to smooth down
- asperities—for she appreciated the aggravating folly of her father—she
- found her advances coldly repulsed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is the good of saying you are sorry for me,” Mrs. Hardacre asked
- snappishly, “when you refuse to do the one thing that can mend matters?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then followed the old, old story which Norma had heard so often in days
- past, but now barbed with a new moral and adorned with new realism. Norma
- listened wearily, surprised at her own lack of retort. When the familiar
- homily came to an end, her reply was almost meek:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give me a little longer time to think over it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had better cut it as short as possible,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “or you
- may find yourself too late. As it is, you are going off. What have you
- been doing to yourself? You look thirty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I feel fifty,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had better go and have your face massaged, or you'll soon not be fit
- to be seen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I want a course of soul massage,” answered Norma, with a hard
- little laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- But when she was alone in her own room, she looked anxiously at her face
- in the glass. Her mother had confirmed certain dismal imaginings. She had
- grown thinner, older looking; tiny lines were just perceptible at the
- corners of eyes and lips and across the forehead. The fresh bloom of youth
- was fading from her skin. She was certainly going off. She had not been a
- happy woman since her precipitate flight to Cornwall. The present
- discovery added anxiety to depression.
- </p>
- <p>
- A day or two afterwards Mrs. Hardacre returned to the unedifying attack.
- Had Norma written to Morland to inform him of her arrival? Norma replied
- that she had no inordinate longing to see Morland. Mrs. Hardacre used
- language that only hardened and soured women of fashion who are beginning
- to feel the pinch of poverty dare use nowadays. It is far more virulent
- than a fishwife's, for every phrase touches a jangling nerve and every
- gibe tears a delicate fibre, whereas Billingsgate merely shocks and
- belabours. Norma bore it in silence for some time, and then went away
- quivering from head to foot. A new and what seemed a horrible gift had
- been bestowed upon her—the power to feel. Once a sarcastic smile, a
- scornful glance, a withering retort would have carried her in triumph from
- her mother's presence. Secure in her own callous serenity, she would have
- given scarcely a further thought to the quarrel. Now things had
- inexplicably changed. Her mother's stabs hurt. Some curious living growth
- within her was wrung with pain. She could only grope humbled and broken to
- her room and stare at nothing, wishing she could cry like other women.
- </p>
- <p>
- No wonder she looked old, when the spirit had left her and taken with it
- the cold, proud setting of the features that had given her beauty its
- peculiar stamp. Dimly she realised the disintegration. When a nature which
- has taken a colossal vanity for strength and has relied thereon
- unquestioningly for protection against a perilous world, once loses grip
- of that sublime mainstay, it is impossible for it to take firm hold again.
- It must content itself with lesser planks or flounder helplessly, fearful
- of imminent shipwreck. Norma, during those autumn months, had found her
- strength vanity. The fact in rude, symbolic form was brought home to her a
- short time after her return.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a bright Sunday afternoon, when, on her way to pay a call in
- Kensington, she had dismissed her cab at Lancaster Gate and was walking
- through Kensington Gardens. Half-way a familiar figure met her eye. It was
- her own maid sitting on a bench with a man by her side. The girl was
- wearing a cheap long jacket over an elaborate dress, absurdly light for
- the time of year. It caught Norma's attention, and then suddenly it
- flashed upon her that it was the dress she had given to be burned months
- ago. She walked on, aching with a sense of the futility of grandiose
- determinations. She had consigned the garment stained with Jimmie's blood
- contemptuously to the flames. It was incongruously whole in Kensington
- Gardens. She had cast her love for Jimmie out of her heart in the same
- spirit of comedic tragedy. Forlorn and bedraggled it was still there,
- mockingly refusing to be reduced to its proper dust and ashes. Her
- strength had not availed her to cast it out. Her strength was a vain
- thing. Yet being forlorn and bedraggled the love was as hateful as the
- unconsumed garment. It haunted her like an unpurged offence. The newspaper
- details had made it reek disgustfully. At times Connie Deering's half
- faith filled her with an extravagant hope that these sordid horrors which
- had sullied the one pure and beautiful thing that had come into her life
- were nothing but a ghastly mistake; that it was, as Connie suggested, a
- dark mystery from which if Jimmie chose he could emerge clean. But then
- her judgment, trained from childhood to look below the surface of even
- smiling things and find them foul, rebelled. The man had proclaimed
- himself, written himself down a villain. It was in black and white. And
- not only a villain—that might be excusable—but a hypocritical
- canting villain, which was the unforgivable sin. Every woman has a Holy
- Ghost of sorts within her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma did not write to Morland. She dreaded renewal of relations, and yet
- she had not the courage to cut him finally adrift. The thought of withered
- spinsterhood beneath her father's roof was a dismaying vision. Marriage
- was as essential as ever to the scheme of her future. Why not with
- Morland? Her mother's words, though spoken as with the tongues of asps,
- were those of wisdom.
- </p>
- <p>
- All that she could bring to a husband was her beauty, her superb presence,
- her air of royalty. These gone, her chances were as illusory as those of
- the pinched and faded gentlewomen who tittle-tattled at Cosford
- tea-parties. Another year, and at the present rate of decay her beauty
- would have vanished into the limbo of last year's snows. She exaggerated;
- but what young woman of six-and-twenty placed as she has not looked
- tremulously in her mirror and seen feet of crows and heaven knows what
- imaginary fowls that prey upon female charms? At six-and-thirty she smiles
- with wistful, longing regret at the remembered image. Yet youth, happily,
- is not cognisant of youth's absurdities. It takes itself tragically. Thus
- did Norma. Her dowry of beauty was dwindling. She must marry within the
- year. Sometimes she wished that Theodore Weever, who had not yet
- discovered his decorative wife and had managed to find himself at various
- places which she had visited abroad, would come like a Paladin and deliver
- her from her distress and carry her off to his castle in Fifth Avenue. He
- would at least interest her as a human being, which Morland, with all his
- solid British qualities, had never succeeded in doing. But Theodore Weever
- had not spoken. He retained the imperturbability of the bald marble bust
- of himself that he had taken her to see in a Parisian sculptor's studio.
- There only remained Morland. But for some reason, for which she could not
- account, he seemed the last man on earth she desired to marry. When she
- had written to him, soon after her flight to Cornwall, to beg for a
- postponement of the wedding, giving him the very vaguest reasons for her
- request, he had assented with a cheerfulness ill befitting an impatient
- lover. It would be impertinence, he wrote, for him to enquire further into
- her reasons. She was too much a woman of the world to act without due
- consideration, and provided that he could look forward to the very great
- happiness of one day calling her his wife, he was perfectly satisfied with
- whatever she chose to arrange. The absence of becoming fervour, in spite
- of her desire to postpone the dreaded day, produced a feeling of irritated
- disappointment. None of us, least of all women, invariably like to be
- taken at our word. If Morland lay so little value upon her as that, he
- might just as well give her up altogether. She replied impulsively,
- suggesting a rupture of the engagement. Morland, longing for time to raise
- him from the abasement in which he grovelled, had welcomed the proposal to
- defer the marriage; but as he smarted at the same time under a sense of
- wrong—had he not been betrayed by his own familiar friend and the
- woman he loved?—he now unequivocally refused to accept her
- suggestion. He had made up his mind to marry her. He had made all his
- arrangements for marrying her. The check he had experienced had stimulated
- a desire which only through unhappy circumstances had languished for a
- brief season. He persuaded himself that he was more in love with her than
- ever. At all costs, in his stupid, dogged way, he determined to marry her.
- He told her so bluntly. He merely awaited her good pleasure. Norma
- accepted the situation and thought, by going abroad, to leave it at home
- to take care of itself. It might die of inanition. Something miraculous
- might happen to transform it entirely. She returned and found it alive and
- quite undeveloped. It grinned at her with a leer which she loathed from
- the depths of her soul; and the more Mrs. Hardacre pointed at it the more
- it leered, and the greater became the loathing.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last Mrs. Hardacre took matters into her own hands and summoned Morland
- to London. “Norma is in a green, depressed state,” she wrote, “and I think
- your proper place is by her side. I imagine she regrets her foolishness in
- postponing the marriage and is ashamed to confess it. A few words with you
- face to face would bring her back to her old self. Women have these
- idiotic ways, my dear Morland, and men being so much stronger and saner
- must make generous allowances. I confidently expect you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland's vanity, spurred by this letter, brought him in a couple of days
- to London.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Morland, this is a surprise,” cried Mrs. Hardacre dissemblingly,
- as he entered the drawing-room, “we were only just talking of you. I'll
- ring for another cup.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She moved to the bell by the side of the fireplace, and Norma and Morland
- shook hands with the conventional words of greeting.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you've had a good time abroad?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, yes. The usual thing, the usual places, the usual people, the usual
- food. In fact, a highly successful pursuit of the usual. I've invented a
- verb—'to usualise.' I suppose you've been usualising too?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sudden sight of him had braced her, and instinctively she had adopted
- her old, cool manner as defensive armour. Her reply pleased him. There was
- something pungent in her speech, irreconcilable in her attitude, which
- other women did not possess. He was not physiognomist or even perceptive
- enough to notice the subtle change in her expression. He noted, as he
- remarked to her later, that she was “a bit off colour,” but he attributed
- it to the muggy weather, and never dreamed of regarding her otherwise than
- as radically the same woman who had engaged herself to many him in the
- summer. To him she was still the beautiful shrew whose taming appealed to
- masculine instincts. The brown hair sweeping up in a wave from the
- forehead, the finely chiselled sensitive features, the clear brown eyes,
- the mocking lips, the superb poise of the head, the stately figure
- perfectly set off in the dark blue tailor-made dress, all combined to
- impress him with a realisation of the queenliness of the presence that had
- grown somewhat shadowy of late to his unimaginative mental vision.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And how do you like Parliament?” she asked casually, when the teacup had
- been brought and handed to him filled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I find it remarkably interesting,” he replied sententiously. “It is dull
- at times, of course, but no man can sit on those green benches and not
- feel he is helping to shape the destinies of a colossal Empire.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is that what you really feel—or is it what you say when you are
- responding for the House of Commons at a public dinner?” asked Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland hesitated for a moment between huffiness and indulgence. In spite
- of his former gibes at the stale unprofitableness of parliamentary life,
- he had always had the stolid Briton's reverence for our Institutions, and
- now that he was actually a legislator, his traditions led him to take
- himself seriously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have become a very keen politician, I assure you,” he answered. “If you
- saw the amount of work that falls on me, you would be astonished. If it
- were n't for Manisty—that's my secretary, you know—I don't see
- how I could get through it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I always wonder,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “how members manage to find time
- for anything. They work like galley-slaves for nothing at all. I regard
- them as simply sacrificing themselves for the public good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A member of Parliament is the noblest work of God. Don't, mother. Please
- leave us our illusions.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are they?” asked Morland.
-</p>
- <p>
-“One is that there are a few decently
- selfish people left in an age of altruists,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- She talked for the sake of talking, careless of the stupid poverty of her
- epigram. Morland, as the healthy country gentleman alternating with the
- commonplace man about town, was a passable type enough, though failing to
- excite exuberant admiration. But Morland, with his narrow range of
- sympathies and pathetic ignorance of the thought of the day, posing
- solemnly as a trustee of the British Empire, aroused a scorn which she
- dare not express in words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know that we are all altruists,” replied Morland,
- good-temperedly. “If we are good little members of Parliament, we may be
- rewarded with baronetcies and things. But one has to play the game
- thoroughly. It's worth it, is n't it, even from your point of view,
- Norma?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're just the class of man the government does best in rewarding,”
- remarked Mrs. Hardacre, with her wintry smile that was meant to be
- conciliatory. “A man of birth and position upholds the dignity of a title
- and is a credit to his party.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland laughingly observed that it was early in the day to be thinking of
- parliamentary honours. He had not even made his maiden speech. As Norma
- remained silent, the conversation languished. Presently Mrs. Hardacre
- rose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no doubt you two want to have a talk together. Won't you stay and
- dine with us, Morland?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He glanced at Norma, but failing to read an endorsement of the invitation
- in her face, made an excuse for declining.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I will say good-bye and leave you. I would n't stand any nonsense if
- I were you,” she added in a whisper through the door which he held open
- for her.
- </p>
- <p>
- He sauntered up to the fireplace and stood on the hearth-rug, his hands in
- his pockets. Norma, looking at him from her easy-chair, wondered at a
- certain ignobility that she detected for the first time beneath his bluff,
- prosperous air. In spite of birth and breeding he looked common.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?” he said. “We had better have it out at once. What is it to be? I
- must have an answer sooner or later.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can't it be later?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you insist upon it. I'm not going to hold a pistol to your head, my
- dear girl. Only you must admit that I've treated you with every
- consideration. I have n't worried you. You took it into your head to put
- off our marriage. I felt you had your reasons and I raised no objection.
- But we can't go on like this forever, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?” asked Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Human nature. I am in love with you, and want to marry you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But supposing I am not in love with you, Morland. I've never pretended to
- be, have I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We need n't go over old ground. I accepted all that at the beginning. The
- present state of affairs is that we are engaged; when are we going to be
- married?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don't know,” said Norma, desperately. “I have n't thought of it
- seriously. I know I have behaved like a beast to you—you must
- forgive me. At times it has seemed as though I was not the right sort to
- marry and bring children into the world. I should loathe it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don't think so,” said Morland, in a tone he meant to be soothing.
- “Besides—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know what you are going to say—or at any rate what you would like
- to say. It's scarcely decent to talk of such things. But I have n't been
- brought up in a nunnery. I wish to God I had been. At all events, I am
- frank. I would loathe it—all that side of it. Could n't we suppress
- that side? Oh, yes, I am going to speak of it—it has been on my mind
- for months,” she burst out, as Morland made a quick step towards her.
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not allow her to continue. With his hand on the arm of her chair,
- he bent down over her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are talking wild nonsense,” he said; and she flushed red and did not
- meet his eyes. “When a man marries, he marries in the proper sense of the
- term, unless he is an outrageous imbecile. There is to be no question of
- that sort of thing. I thought you knew your world better. I want you—you
- yourself. Don't you understand that?”
- </p>
- <p>
-Norma put out her hand to push him
- away. He seized it in his. She snatched it from him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me get up,” she said, waving him off. She brushed past him, as she
- rose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can't go on talking. What I've said has made it impossible. Let us
- change the subject. How long are you going to stay in town?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm not going to change the subject,” said Morland, rather brutally. “I'm
- far too much interested in it. Hang it all, Norma, you do owe me
- something.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do I owe you? What?” she asked with a sudden flash in her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are a woman of common-sense. I leave you to guess. You admit you have
- n't treated me properly. You have nothing to complain of as far as I am
- concerned. Now, have you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do I know? No. I suppose not, as things go. Once I did try to—to
- feel more like other women—and to make some amends. I told you that
- perhaps we were making a mistake in excluding sentiment. If you had
- chosen, you could have—I don't know—made me care for you,
- perhaps. But you didn't choose. You treated me as if I were a fool. Very
- likely I was.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When was that?” asked Morland, with a touch of sarcasm. “I certainly
- don't remember.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was the last night we had any talk together—in the
- billiard-room. The night before—before the garden-party.” He turned
- away with an involuntary exclamation of anger. He remembered now, tragic
- events having put the incident out of his mind. He was caught in a trap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did n't think you meant it,” he said, hurrying to the base excuse.
- “Women sometimes consider it their duty to say such things—to act a
- little comedy, out of kindness. Some fellows expect it. I thought it would
- be more decent to let you see that I did n't.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a short silence. Norma stood in the centre of the room, biting
- her lip, her head moving slightly from side to side; she was seeking to
- formulate her thoughts in conventional terms. Her cheek grew a shade
- paler.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen,” she said at length. “I am anything bad you like to call me. But
- I'm not a woman who cajoles men. And I'm not a liar. I'm far too cynical
- to lie. Truth is much more deadly. I hate lying. That's the main reason
- why I broke with a man I cared for more than for any other man I have ever
- met—because he lied. You know whom I mean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He faced her with a conscious effort. Even at this moment of strain and
- anger, Norma was struck again with the lurking air of ignobility on his
- face; but she only remembered it afterwards. He brazened it out.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie Padgate, I suppose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't forgive him for lying.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't see how he lied. He faced the music, at any rate, like a man,”
- said Morland, compelled by a remnant of common decency to defend Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All his pose beforehand was a lie—unless the disclosures afterwards
- were lies—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean?” asked Morland, sharply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, never mind. We have not met to discuss the matter. I don't know why I
- referred to it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She paused for a moment. She had begun her tirade at a white heat.
- Suddenly she had cooled down, and felt lassitude in mind and limbs. An
- effort brought her to a lame conclusion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You accused me of acting a comedy. I was n't acting. I was perfectly
- sincere. I have been absolutely frank with you from the hour you proposed
- to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I'm sorry for having misunderstood you. I beg your pardon,” said
- Morland. They took up the conversation from the starting-point, but
- listlessly, dispiritedly. The reference to Jimmie had awakened the
- ever-living remorse in Morland's not entirely callous soul. The man did
- suffer, at times acutely. And now to act the conscious comedy in the face
- of Norma's expressed abhorrence was a difficult and tiring task.
- Unwittingly he grew gentler; and Norma, her anger spent, weakly yielded to
- the change of tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have settled nothing, after all our talk,” he said at last, looking at
- his watch. “Don't you think we had better fix it up now? Society expects
- us to get married. What will people say? Come—what about Easter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma passed her hand wearily over her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I oughtn't to marry you at all. I should loathe it, as I said. I should
- never get to care for you in that way. You see I am honest. Let us break
- off the engagement.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, look here,” said Morland, not unkindly, “let us compromise. I'll
- come back in three days' time. You'll either say it's off altogether or
- we'll be married at Easter. Will that do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Mrs. Hardacre came for news of the interview, Norma told her of the
- arrangement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which is it going to be?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma set her teeth. “I can't marry him,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the proud spirit of Norma Hardacre was broken. The three days' Inferno
- that Mrs. Hardacre created in the house drove the girl to desperation. Her
- father came to her one day with the tears running down his puffy cheeks.
- Unknown to her mother he had borrowed money from Morland, which he had
- lost on the Stock Exchange. Norma looked in her mirror, and found herself
- old, ugly, hag-ridden. Anything was preferable to the torture and
- degradation of her home. The next time that Morland called he stayed to
- dinner, and the wedding was definitely fixed for Easter.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XIX—ABANA AND PHARPAR
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>o you know, Miss
- Hardacre, that I once had a wife?” said Theodore Weever, suddenly.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was after dinner at the Wolff-Salamons', who, it may be remembered, had
- lent their house to the Hardacres in the summer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was not aware of it,” said Norma, wondering at the irrelevance of the
- remark, for they had just been discussing the great painter's merciless
- portrait of their hostess, which simpered vulgarly at them from the wall.
- They were sitting on a sofa in a corner of the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Weever. “She died young. She came from a New England village,
- and played old-fashioned tunes on the piano, and believed in God.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Not a flicker passed over his smooth waxen face or a gleam of sentiment
- appeared in his pale steady eyes. Norma glanced round at the little
- assembly, mainly composed of fleshy company promoters, who, as far as
- decency allowed, continued among themselves the conversation that had
- circulated over the wine downstairs, and their women-kind, who adopted the
- slangy manners of smart society and talked “bridge” to such men as would
- listen to them. Then she glanced back at Weever.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want any more wives of that sort,” he went on. “I've outgrown
- them. I have no use for them. They would wilt like a snow anemone in this
- kind of atmosphere.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it your favourite atmosphere, then?” Norma asked, by way of saying
- something.
- </p>
- <p>
- “More or less. Perhaps I like it not quite so mephitic—You are
- racking your brains to know why I'm telling you about my wife. I'll
- explain. In a little churchyard in Connecticut is a coffin, and in that
- coffin is what a man who is going to ask a woman to marry him ought to
- give her. I could never give a quiet-eyed New England girl anything again.
- At my age she would bore me to death. But I could give the woman who is
- accustomed to hot-houses a perfectly regulated temperature.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma looked at the imperturbable face, half touched by his unsuspected
- humanity, half angered by his assurance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you by any chance making me a formal demand in marriage?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And at last you have found some one who would meet your requirements for
- the decorative wife?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I found her last summer in Scotland,” replied Weever, with a little bow.
- “My countrymen have a habit of finding quickly what they want. They
- generally get it. I could n't in this particular instance, as you were
- engaged to another man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am still engaged,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon. I heard the engagement was broken off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not at all. In fact only yesterday was it settled that we should be
- married at Easter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Having gone so far on a false assumption,” remarked Weever, placidly,
- “may I go without rudeness a step farther? I do not dream of asking you to
- throw over King—if my heart were not in Connecticut, I might—but
- I'll say this, if you will allow me, Miss Hardacre: I don't believe you
- will ever marry Morland King. I have a presentiment that you're going to
- marry me—chiefly because I've planned it, and my plans mostly come
- out straight. Anyway you are the only woman in the world I should ever
- marry, and if at any time there should be a chance for me, a word, a hint,
- a message through the telephone to buy you a pug dog—or anything—would
- bring me devotedly to your feet. Don't forget it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was impossible to be angry with a bloodless thing that spoke like a
- machine. It was also unnecessary to use the conventional terms of
- regretful gratitude in which maidens in their mercy wrap refusals.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll remember it with pleasure, if you like,” she said with a half-smile.
- “But tell me why you don't think I shall marry Mr. King. I don't believe
- in your presentiments.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She caught his eye, and they remained for some seconds looking hard at
- each other. She saw that he had his well-defined reasons.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can tell me exactly what is in your mind,” she said slowly; “you and
- I seem to understand each other.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you understand me, what is the use of compromising speech, my dear
- lady?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't believe in Morland?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “As a statesman I can't say that I do,” replied Weever, with the puckering
- of the faint lines round his eyes that passed for a smile. “That is what
- astonishes me in your English political life—the little one need
- talk and the little one need do. In America the politician is the orator.
- He must move in an atmosphere of words half a mile thick. Wherever he goes
- he must scream himself hoarse. But here—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma touched his arm with her fan.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We were not discussing American and English institutions,” she
- interrupted, “but matters which interest me a little more. You don't
- believe in Morland as a man? I want to know, as they are supposed to say
- in your country. I disregard your hint, as you may perceive. I am also
- indelicate in pressing you to speak unfavourably of the man I'm engaged
- to. Of course, having made me an offer, you would regard it as caddish to
- say anything against him. But supposing I absolve you from anything of the
- kind by putting you on a peculiar plane of friendship?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I should say I was honoured above all mortals,” replied Weever,
- inscrutably, “and ask you to tell me as a friend what has become of the
- artist—the man who got shot—Padgate.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The unexpected allusion was a shock. It brought back a hateful scene. It
- awoke a multitude of feelings. Its relevance was a startling puzzle. She
- strove by hardening her eyes not to betray herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've quite lost sight of him,” she answered in a matter of-fact tone.
- “His little adventure was n't a pleasant one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't believe he had any little adventure at all,” said Weever, coolly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean?” Norma started, and the colour came into her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That of all the idiots let loose in a cynical, unimaginative world,
- Padgate is the greatest I have yet struck. If I were a hundredth part such
- an idiot, I should be a better and a happier man. It's getting late. I'm
- afraid I must be moving.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He rose, and Norma rose with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish you would n't speak in riddles. Can't you tell me plainly what you
- mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I can't,” he said abruptly. “I have said quite enough. Good-night.
- And remember,” he added, shaking hands with her, “remember what I told you
- about myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Only after he had gone did it flash upon her that she had not put to him
- the vital question—what had Padgate to do with his disbelief in
- Morland? As is the way with people pondering over conundrums, the
- ridiculously simple solution did not occur to her. She spent many days in
- profitless speculation. Weever prophesied that the marriage would not take
- place. When pressed for a reason, he brought in the name of Jimmie
- Padgate. Obviously the latter was to stand between Morland and herself.
- But in what capacity? As a lover? Had Weever rightly interpreted her
- insane act on the day of the garden-party, and assumed that she was still
- in love with the detested creature? The thought made her grow hot and cold
- from head to foot. Why was he an idiot? Because he did not take advantage
- of her public confession? or was it because he stood in Weever's eyes as
- a wronged and heroic man? This in the depths of her heart she had been
- yearning for months to believe. Connie Deering almost believed it. About
- the facts once so brutally plain, so vulgarly devoid of mystery, a
- mysterious cloud had gathered and was thickening with time. Reflection
- brought assurance that Theodore Weever regarded Jimmie as innocent; and if
- ever a man viewed human affairs in the dry, relentless light of reason, it
- was the inscrutable, bloodless American.
- </p>
- <p>
- His offer of marriage she put aside from her thoughts. Morland was the
- irrevocably accepted. It was February. Easter falling early, the wedding
- would take place in a little over a month. In a cold, dispassionate way,
- she interested herself in the usual preparations. Peace reigned in
- Devonshire Place. And yet Norma despised herself, feeling the degradation
- of the woman who sells her body.
- </p>
- <p>
- During the session she saw little of Morland. For this she thanked God,
- the duchess, and the electors of Cosford. The sense of freedom caused her
- to repent of her contemptuous attitude towards his political aspirations.
- To encourage and foster them would be to her very great advantage. She
- adopted this policy, much to the edification of Morland, who felt the
- strengthening of a common bond of interest. He regularly balloted for
- seats in the Ladies' Gallery, and condemned her to sit for hours behind
- the grating and listen to uninspiring debates. He came to her with the
- gossip of the lobbies. He made plans for their future life together. They
- would make politics a feature of their house. It would be a rallying-place
- for the new Tory wing, in which Morland after a dinner at the Carlton Club
- when his health was proposed in flattering terms, had found himself
- enlisted. Norma was to bring back the glories of the <i>salon</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When it gets too thick,” he said once laughingly, ashamed of these
- wanderings into the ideal, “we can go off into the country and shoot and
- have some decent people down and amuse ourselves rationally.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet, in spite of absorbing political toys, his complete subjugation of
- Norma, and the smiling aspect of life, a sense of utter wretchedness
- weighed upon the soul of this half-developed man. He could not shake it
- off. It haunted him as he sat stolid and stupefied in his place below the
- gangway. It dulled all sensation of pleasure when he kissed the lips which
- Norma, resigned now to everything, surrendered to him at his pleasure. It
- took the sparkle out of his champagne, the joy out of his life. Now that
- he had asserted himself as the victorious male who had won the female that
- he coveted, the sense of wrong inflicted on him grew less and the
- consciousness of his own shame grew greater. In his shallow way he had
- loved Jimmie dearly. He also had the well-bred Englishman's conventional
- sense of honour. Accusing conscience wrote him down an unutterable knave.
- </p>
- <p>
- One day in March, as he was proceeding citywards to see his solicitors on
- some question relating to marriage settlements, his carriage was blocked
- for some minutes in Oxford Street. Looking idly out of the near side
- window, he saw a familiar figure emerge from a doorway in a narrow passage
- come down to the pavement, and stand for a few moments in anxious thought,
- jostled by the passers-by. He looked thin and ill and worried. The lines
- by the sides of his drooping moustache had deepened. Jimmie, never spruce
- in his attire, now seemed outrageously shabby. Certain men who dress well
- are quick, like women, to notice these things. Morland's keen glance took
- in the discoloured brown boots and the frayed hem of trousers, the weather
- stains on the old tweed suit, the greasiness of the red tie, the irregular
- mark of perspiration on the band of the old Homburg hat. An impulse to
- spring out of the carriage and greet him was struggling with sheer shame,
- when Jimmie suddenly threw up his head—an old trick of his whose
- familiarity brought a pang to the man watching him—and crossed the
- road, disappearing among the traffic behind the brougham. Morland gazed
- meditatively at the little passage. Suddenly he was aware of the three
- brass balls and the name of Attenborough. In a moment he was on the
- pavement and, after a hurried word to his coachman, in pursuit of Jimmie.
- But the traffic had swallowed Jimmie up. It was impossible to track him.
- Morland returned to his brougham and drove on.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was only one explanation of what he had seen. Jimmie was reduced to
- poverty, to pawning his belongings in order to live. The scandal had
- killed the sale of his pictures. No more ladies would sit to him for their
- portraits. No more dealers would purchase works on the strength of his
- name. Jimmie was ill, poor, down at heel, and it was all his, Morland's,
- fault, his very grievous fault. In a dim, futile way he wished he were a
- Roman Catholic, so that he could go to a priest, confess, and receive
- absolution. The idea of confession obsessed him in this chastened mood. By
- lunch-time he had resolved to tell Norma everything and abide by her
- verdict. At any rate, if he married her, he would not do so under false
- pretences. He would feel happier with the load of lies off his mind. At
- half-past four he left the House of Commons to transact its business
- without him as best it could, and drove to Devonshire Place. As he neared
- the door, his courage began to fail. He remembered Norma's passionate
- outburst against lying, and shrank from the withering words that she might
- speak. The situation, however, had to be faced.
- </p>
- <p>
- The maid who opened the front door informed him that Norma was out, but
- that Mrs. Hardacre was at home. He was shown upstairs into the empty
- drawing-room, and while he waited there, a solution of his difficulty
- occurred to him. He caught at it eagerly, as he had caught at compromises
- and palliatives all his life. For he was a man of half-sins, half-virtues,
- half-loves, and half-repentances. His spiritual attitude was that of
- Naaman.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre greeted him with smiles of welcome, and regrets at Norma's
- absence. If only he had sent a message, Norma would have given up her
- unimportant engagement. She would be greatly disappointed. The House took
- up so much of his time, and Norma prized the brief snatches she could
- obtain of his company. All of which, though obviously insincere, none the
- less flattered Morland's vanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it is as well that Norma is away,” said he, “for I want to have a
- little talk with you. Can you give me five minutes?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fifty, my dear Morland,” replied Mrs. Hardacre, graciously. “Will you
- have some tea?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He declined. It was too serious a matter for the accompaniment of
- clattering teaspoons. Mrs. Hardacre sat in an armchair with her back to
- the light—the curtains had not yet been drawn—and Morland sat
- near her, looking at the fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have something on my mind,” he began. “You, as Norma's mother, ought to
- know. It's about my friend Jimmie Padgate.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre put out a lean hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I would rather not hear it. I'm not uncharitable, but I wish none of us
- had ever set eyes on the man. He came near ruining us all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He seems to have ruined himself. He's ill, poor, in dreadful low water. I
- caught a sight of him this morning. The poor old chap was almost in rags.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's very unpleasant for Mr. Padgate, but it fails to strike me as
- pathetic. He has only got his deserts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's where the point lies,” said Morland. “He does n't deserve it. I
- do. I am the only person to blame in the whole infernal business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You?” cried Mrs. Hardacre, her grey eyes glittering with sudden interest.
- “What had you to do with it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, everything. Jimmie never set eyes on the girl in his life. He took
- all the blame to shield me. If he had n't done so, there would have been
- the devil to pay. That's how it stands.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre gave a little gasp.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Morland, you amaze me. You positively shock me. Really, don't you
- think in mentioning the matter to me there is some—indelicacy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are a woman of the world,” said Morland, bluntly, “and you know that
- men don't lead the lives of monks just because they happen to be
- unmarried.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course I know it,” said Mrs. Hardacre, composing herself to sweetness.
- “One knows many things of which it is hardly necessary or desirable to
- talk. Of course I think it shocking and disreputable of you. But it's all
- over and done with. If that was on your mind, wipe it off and let us say
- no more about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm afraid you don't understand,” said Morland, rising and leaning
- against the mantel-piece. “What is done is done. Meanwhile another man is
- suffering for it, while I go about prospering.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But surely that is a matter between Mr. Padgate and yourself. How can it
- possibly concern us?”
- </p>
- <p>
- As Morland had not looked at the case from that point of view, he silently
- inspected it with a puzzled brow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't help feeling a bit of a brute, you know,” he said at length. “I
- meant at first to let him off—to make a clean breast of it—but
- it wasn't feasible. You know how difficult these things are when they get
- put off. Then, of course, I thought I could make it up to Jimmie in other
- ways.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, so you can,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with the elaborate pretence of a
- little yawn, as if the subject had ceased to interest her. “You could
- afford it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Money is no good. He won't touch a penny. I have offered.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then, my dear Morland, you have done your best. If a man is idiot enough
- to saddle himself with other people's responsibilities and refuses to be
- helped when he breaks down under them, you must let him go his own way.
- Really I haven't got any sympathy for him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland, having warmed himself sufficiently and feeling curiously
- comforted by Mrs. Hardacre's wise words, sat down again near her and leant
- forward with his arms on his knees.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think Norma would take the same view?” he asked. After all, in
- spite of certain eccentricities inseparable from an unbalanced sex, she
- had as much fundamental common-sense as her mother. The latter looked at
- him sharply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What has Norma got to do with it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was wondering whether I ought to tell her,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre started bolt upright in her chair. This time her interest
- was genuine. Nothing but her long training in a world of petty strife kept
- the sudden fright out of her eyes and voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell Norma? Whatever for?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought it would be more decent,” said Morland, rather feebly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be sheer lunacy!” cried the lady, appalled at the certain
- catastrophe that such a proceeding would cause. Did not the demented
- creature see that the whole affair was in unstable equilibrium? A touch,
- let alone a shock like this, would bring it toppling down, never to be set
- up again by any prayers, remonstrances, ravings, curses, thumbscrews, or
- racks the ingenuity of an outraged mother could devise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be utter imbecility,” she continued. “My dear man, don't you
- think one mad Don Quixote in a romance is enough? What on earth would you,
- Norma, or any one else gain by telling her? She is as happy as possible
- now, buying her trousseau and making all the wedding arrangements. Why
- spoil her happiness? I think it exceedingly inconsiderate of you—not
- to say selfish—I do really.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hardly that. It was an idea of doing penance,” said Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If that is all,” said Mrs. Hardacre, relaxing into a bantering tone, as
- she joyfully noted the lack of conviction in his manner, “I'll make you a
- hair shirt, and I'll promise it shall be scratchy—untanned pigskin
- with the bristles on, if you like. Be as uncomfortable, my dear Morland,
- as ever you choose—wear a frock-coat with a bowler hat or dine <i>tête-à-tête</i>
- with Mr. Hardacre, but do leave other folks to pass their lives in peace
- and quiet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland threw himself back and laughed, and Mrs. Hardacre knew she had won
- what she paradoxically called a moral victory. They discussed the question
- for a few moments longer, and then Morland rose to take his leave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's awfully good of you to look at things in this broadminded way,” he
- said, with the air of a man whom an indulgent lady has pardoned for a
- small peccadillo. “Awfully good of you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is no other sane way of looking at them,” replied Mrs. Hardacre.
- “Won't you wait and see Norma?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must get back to the House,” replied Morland, consulting his watch.
- “There may be a division before the dinner-hour.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He smoked a great cigar on his way to Westminster, and enjoyed it
- thoroughly. Mrs. Hardacre was quite right. He had done his best. If Jimmie
- was too high and mighty to accept the only compensation possible, he was
- not to blame. The matter was over and done with. It would be idiotic to
- tell Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- Meanwhile, having made confession and received absolution, he felt
- spiritually refreshed.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XX—ALINE PREPARES FOR BATTLE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE look of illness
- that Morland had noticed upon Jimmie's face was due to the fact that he
- had been ill. Italian townlets nestling on hillsides are picturesque, but
- they are not always healthy. A touch of fever had laid him on his back for
- a week, and caused the local doctor to order him to England. He had
- arrived in a limp condition, much to the anxiety of Aline, who had
- expected to see the roses return to his cheek as soon as their slender
- baggage had passed the custom-house. He was shabbily dressed because he
- had fallen on evil times, and had no money to waste on personal vanities.
- The four guineas which Aline had put aside out of their limited resources
- to buy him a new suit he had meanly abstracted from the housekeeping
- drawer, and had devoted, with the surreptitious help of the servant, to
- purchasing necessary articles of attire for Aline. He was looking worried
- because he had forgotten in which of the cheap Oxford Street restaurants
- he had promised to meet that young lady. When he remembered, the cloud
- passed from his face and he darted across the road behind Morland's
- brougham. He found Aline seated primly at a little marble table on which
- were a glass of milk and a lump of amorphous pastry for herself, and a
- plate of cold beef and a small bottle of Bass for Jimmie. It was too early
- for the regular crowd of lunchers—only half-past twelve—and
- the slim, erect little figure looked oddly alone in the almost empty
- restaurant.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie nodded in a general, kindly way at the idle waitresses about the
- buffet, and marched down the room with a quick step, his eyes beaming. He
- sat down with some clatter opposite Aline, and took two cheques, a
- bank-note and a handful of gold and silver from his pocket, and dumped
- them noisily on the table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There, my child. Seven pounds ten. Twenty-five guineas. Five pounds. And
- eight pounds three-and-six-pence. Exit wolf at the door, howling, with his
- tail between his legs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline looked at the wealth with knitted brow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can I take this?” she asked, lifting up the five-pound note.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie pushed the pile towards her. “Take it all, my dear. What on earth
- should I do with it? Besides, it's all your doing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because I made you go and dun those horrid dealers? And even now Hyam has
- only given you half. It was fifty guineas—Oh, Jimmie! Do you mean to
- say you forgot? Now, what did you tell him? Did you produce the
- agreement?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie looked at her ruefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm afraid I forgot the wretched agreement. I went in and twirled my
- moustache fiercely, and said 'Mr. Hyam, I want my money.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline laughed. “And you took him by the throat. I know. Oh, you foolish
- person!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, he asked me if twenty-five would be enough—and it's a lot of
- money, you know, dear—and I thought if I did n't say 'yes,' he would
- n't give me anything. In business affairs one has to be diplomatic.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll have to take Hyam in hand myself,” said Aline, decisively. “Well,
- he'll have to pay up some day. Then there's Blathwayt & Co.,—and
- Tilney—that's quite right—but where did you get all that gold
- from, Jimmie?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, that was somebody else,” he said vaguely. Then turning to the
- waitress, who had sauntered up to open the bottle of Bass, he pointed at
- Aline's lunch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mind taking away that eccentric pie-thing and bringing the most
- nutritious dish you have in the establishment?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, Jimmie, this is a Bath bun. It's delicious,” protested Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear child, growing girls cannot be fed like bears on buns. Ah, here,”
- he said to the waitress who showed him the little wooden-handled frame
- containing the tariff, “bring this young lady some galantine of chicken.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline, who in her secret heart loved the “eccentric pie-thing” beyond all
- other dainties, and trembled at the stupendous charge, possibly ninepence
- or a shilling, that would be made for the galantine, yielded, after the
- manner of women, because she knew it would please Jimmie. But accustomed
- to his diplomatic methods, she felt that a red herring—or a
- galantine—had been drawn across the track.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who was the somebody else?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- He nodded and drank a draught of beer and wiped the froth from his
- moustache. Something unusual in his personal appearance suddenly caught
- her attention. His watch-chain was dangling loose from the buttonhole of
- his waistcoat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your watch!” she gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dissimulation being vain, Jimmie confessed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You told me this morning, my dear, that if we didn't get fifty pounds
- to-day we were ruined. You spoke alarmingly of the workhouse. My debt
- collecting amounted to thirty-eight pounds fifteen. I tried hard to work
- the obdurate bosom up to eleven pounds five, but he would only give me
- eight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't mean to say you have sold your beautiful gold watch for eight
- pounds?” cried the girl, turning as pale as the milk in front of her.
- </p>
- <p>
- It had been a present from a wealthy stockbroker who had been delighted
- with his portrait painted by Jimmie a couple of years ago, and it was
- thick and heavy and the pride of Aline's existence. It invested Jimmie
- with an air of solidity, worldly substantiality; and it was the only
- timekeeper they had ever had in the house which properly executed its
- functions. Now he had sold it! Was there ever so exasperating a man? He
- was worse than Moses with his green spectacles. But Jimmie reassured her.
- He had only pawned the watch at Attenborough's over the way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then give me the ticket, do, or you'll lose it, Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He meekly obeyed. Aline began her galantine with a sigh of relief, and
- condescended to laugh at Jimmie's account of his exploits. But when the
- meal was ended, she insisted on redeeming the precious watch, and much
- happier in knowing it safe in his pocket, she carried him off to a
- ready-made tailor's, where she ordered him a beautiful thin overcoat for
- thirty shillings, a neat blue serge suit for three pounds ten, handing
- over in payment the five-pound note she had abstracted from his gleanings,
- and a new hat, for which she paid from a mysterious private store of her
- own. These matters having been arranged to her satisfaction, she made up
- for her hectoring ways by nestling against him on top of the
- homeward-bound omnibus and telling him what a delightful, lovely morning
- they had spent.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus it will be seen that Jimmie, aided by Aline's stout little heart, was
- battling more than usual against adversity. Aline had many schemes. Why
- should she not obtain some lucrative employment? Jimmie made a wry face at
- the phrase and protested vehemently against the suggestion. A hulking
- varlet like him to let her wear her fingers to the bone by addressing
- envelopes at twopence a million? He would sooner return to the
- five-shillings-a-dozen oil paintings; he would go round the streets at
- dawn and play “ghost” to pavement artists; he would take in washing! The
- idea of the street-pictures caught his fancy. He expatiated upon its
- advantages. Five pitches, say at two shillings a pitch, that would be ten
- shillings a day—three pounds a week. A most business-like plan, to
- say nothing of the education in art it would be to the public! He had his
- own fantastical way of dealing with the petty cares of life. As for Aline
- working, he would not hear of it. Though they lived now from hand to
- mouth, they were always fed. He had faith in the ravens.
- </p>
- <p>
- But all the fantasy and the faith could not subdue Aline's passionate
- rebellion against Jimmie's ostracism. She was very young, very feminine;
- she had not his wide outlook, his generous sympathies, his disdain of
- trivial, ignoble things, his independence of soul. The world was arrayed
- against Jimmie. Society was persecuting him with monstrous injustice. She
- hated his oppressors, longed fiercely for an opportunity of vindicating
- his honour. It was sometimes more than she could bear—to think of
- his straitened means, the absence of sitters, the lowered prices he
- obtained, the hours of unremitting toil he spent at his easel and
- drawing-table. During their travels she had not realised what the scandal
- would mean to him professionally. Now her heart rose in hot revolt and
- thirsted for battle in Jimmie's cause.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her heart had never been hotter than one morning when, the gem of his
- finished Italian studies having been rejected by the committee of a minor
- exhibition, she went down to the studio to give vent to her indignation.
- At breakfast Jimmie had laughed and kissed her and told her not to drop
- tears into his coffee. He would send the picture to the Academy, where it
- would be hung on the line and make him famous. He refused to be
- downhearted and talked buoyantly of other things. But Aline felt that it
- was only for her sake that he hid his bitter disappointment, and an hour
- later she could bear the strain of silence no longer.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door of the studio was open. The girl's footstep was soft, and, not
- hearing it, he did not turn as she entered. For a few seconds she stood
- watching him; feeling shy, embarrassed, an intruder upon unexpected sacred
- things. Jimmie's mind was far away from minor exhibitions. He was sitting
- on his painting-stool, chin in hand, looking at a picture on the easel. On
- his face was unutterable pain, in his eyes an agony of longing. Aline
- caught her breath, frightened at the revelation. The eyes of the painted
- Norma smiled steadfastly into his. The horrible irony of it smote the
- girl. Another catch at the breath became a choking sob. Jimmie started,
- and as if a magic hand had passed across his features, the pain vanished,
- and Aline saw the homely face again with its look of wistful kindness.
- Overwrought, she broke into a passion of weeping. Jimmie put his arms
- about her and soothed her. What did the rejection of a picture matter? It
- was part of the game of painting. She must be his own brave little girl
- and smile at the rubs of fortune. But Aline shook the head buried on his
- shoulder, and stretched out a hand blindly towards the portrait. “It's
- that. I can't bear it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- An impossible thought shot through him. He drew away from her and caught
- her wrists somewhat roughly, and tried to look at her; but she bowed her
- head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean, my child?” he asked curtly, with bent brows.
- </p>
- <p>
- Women are lightning-witted in their interpretation of such questions. The
- blood flooded her face, and her tears dried suddenly and she met his
- glance straight.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think I'm jealous? Do you suppose I have n't known? I can't bear
- you to suffer. I can't bear her not to believe in you. I can't bear her
- not to love you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie let go her wrists and stood before her full of grateful tenderness,
- quite at a loss for words. He looked whimsically at the flushed, defiant
- little face; he shook her by the shoulder and turned away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My valiant tin soldier,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was an old name for her, dating from nursery days, when they thought
- and talked according to the gospel of Hans Christian Andersen.
- </p>
- <p>
- No more passed between them. But thenceforward
- Jimmie put the finishing touches to the portrait openly, Instead of
- painting at it when he knew he should be undisturbed. The wedding was
- drawing near. The date had been announced in the papers, and Jimmie had
- put a cross against it in his diary. If only Norma would accept the
- portrait as a wedding-present, he would feel happier. But how to approach
- her he did not know. In her pure eyes, he was well aware, he must appear
- the basest of men, and things proceeding from him would bear a taint of
- the unspeakable. Yet he hungered for her acceptance. It was the most
- perfect picture he had painted or could ever paint. The divinest part of
- him had gone to the making of it. It held in its passionate simplicity the
- man's soul, as the Monna Lisa in its mysterious complexity holds
- Leonardo's. Of material symbols of things spiritual he could not give her
- more. But how to give?
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie Deering settled the question by coming to the studio one morning, a
- bewildering vision of millinery and smiles and kindness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have persistently refused, you wicked bear, to come and see me since
- my return to London, so I have no choice but to walk into your den. If it
- had n't been for Aline, beyond an occasional 'Dear Connie, I am very well.
- The weather is unusually warm for the time of year. Yours sincerely, J.
- P.', I should n't know whether you were alive or dead. I hope you're
- ashamed of yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This was the little lady's exordium, to which she tactfully gave Jimmie no
- time to reply. She stayed for an hour. The disastrous topic was avoided.
- But Jimmie felt that she forbore to judge him for his supposed offence,
- and learned to his great happiness that Norma had asked after his welfare,
- and would without doubt deign in her divine graciousness to accept the
- portrait. She looked thoughtfully at the picture for some time, and then
- laid a light touch on his arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How you must love her, Jimmie!” she said in a low voice. “I have n't
- forgotten.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish you would,” he answered gravely. “I oughtn't to have said what I
- did. I don't remember what I did say. I lost my head and raved. Every man
- has his hour of madness, and that was mine—all through your
- witchery. And yet somehow it seemed as if I were pouring it all out to
- her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie Deering perceptibly winced. Plucking up courage, she began:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish a man would—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Connie,” Jimmie interrupted kindly, “there are hundreds of men in
- London who are sighing themselves hoarse for you. But you are such a
- hard-hearted butterfly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her lips twitched. “Not so hard-hearted as you think, my good Jimmie,” she
- retorted.
- </p>
- <p>
- A moment later she was all inconsequence and jest. On parting he took both
- her white-gloved little hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can't realise the joy it has been to me to see you, Connie,” he said.
- “It has been like a ray of sunlight through prison bars.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After a private talk with Aline she drove straight to Devonshire Place,
- and on the way dabbed her eyes with the inconsiderable bit of chiffon
- called a handkerchief which she carried in her gold chain purse. She saw
- Norma alone for a moment before lunch, and told her of her visit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't care what he has done,” she declared desperately. “I am not going
- to let it make a difference any longer. He's the same dear creature I have
- known all my life, and I don't believe he has done anything at all. If
- there's a sinner in that horrible business, it is n't Jimmie!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma looked out of the window at the bleak March day.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is what Theodore Weever said,” she answered tonelessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then why don't you give Jimmie the benefit of the doubt?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is better that I should n't.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are a sweet little soul, Connie,” said Norma, her eyes still fixed on
- the grey sky. “But you may do more harm than good. I am better as I am. I
- have benumbed myself into a decent state of insensibility and I don't want
- to feel anything ever again as long as I live.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened, and Mrs. Hardacre appeared on the threshold. Connie bent
- forward and whispered quickly into Norma's ear:
- </p>
- <p>
- “One would think you were afraid to believe in Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She swung round, flushed, femininely excited at having seized the unfair
- moment for dealing a stab.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope I <i>have</i> made her feel,” she thought, as she fluttered
- forward to greet Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- She succeeded perhaps beyond her hope. A sharp glance showed her Norma
- still staring out of window, but staring now with an odd look of fear and
- pain. Her kind heart repented.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Forgive me if I hurt you,” she said on their way downstairs to lunch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What does it matter?” Norma answered by way of pardon.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the shrewd thrust mattered exceedingly. After Connie had gone, the
- wound ached, and Norma found that her boast of having benumbed herself was
- a vain word. In the night she lay awake, frightened at the reaction that
- was taking place. Theodore Weever had shaken her more than she had
- realised. Connie Deering proclaimed the same faith. She felt that she too
- would have to accept it—against argument, against reason, against
- fact. She would have to accept it wholly, implicitly; and she dreaded the
- act of faith. Her marriage with Morland was fixed for that day week, and
- she was agonisingly aware that she loved another man with all her heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next day she received a hurried note from Connie Deering:
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>“Do come in for half an hour for tea on Sunday. I have a beautiful
- wedding-present to show you which I hope you'll like, as great pains have
- been spent over it. And I want to have a last little chat with you.”</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- She promised unreflectingly, seeing no snare. But as she walked to
- Bryanston Square on Sunday afternoon, more of a presentiment, a foreboding
- of evil, than a suspicion fixed itself upon her mind, and she wished she
- had not agreed to come. She was shown into the drawing-room, and there,
- beside a gilt-framed picture over which a cloth was thrown, with her great
- brown eyes meeting her defiantly, stood Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXI—THE MOTH MEETS THE STAR
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HUS had Aline, her
- heart hot for battle in Jimmie's cause, contrived with Connie Deering as
- subsidiary conspirator. She had lain awake most of the night, thinking of
- the approaching interview, composing speeches, elaborating arguments,
- defining her attitude. Her plan of campaign was based on the assumption of
- immediate hostilities. She had pictured a scornful lady moved to sudden
- anger at seeing herself trapped, and haughtily refusing to discuss
- overtures of peace. It was to be war from the first, until she had brought
- her adversary low; and when the door-handle rattled and the door opened to
- admit Norma, every nerve in her young body grew tense, and her heart beat
- like the clapper of a bell.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma entered, looked for a moment in smiling surprise at Aline, came
- quickly forward, and moved by a sudden impulse, a yearning for love,
- sweetness, freshness, peace—she knew not what—she put her arms
- round the girl and kissed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Aline, how sweet it is to see you again!”
-</p>
- <p>
-The poor little girl
- stood helpless. The bottom was knocked out of her half-childish plan of
- campaign. There was no scornful lady, no haughty words, no hostilities.
- She fell to crying. What else could she do?
- </p>
- <p>
- “There, there! Don't cry, dear,” said Norma soothingly, almost as
- helpless. Seating herself on a low chair and drawing Aline to her side,
- she looked up at the piteous face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should you cry, dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did n't know you would be so good to me,” answered Aline, wiping her
- eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should n't I be good to you? What reason could I have for not being
- glad to see you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know,” said the girl, with a touch of bitterness. “Things are so
- different now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma sighed for answer and thought of her premonition. She was aware that
- Connie had deliberately planned this interview, but could find no
- resentment in her heart. The reproach implied in Aline's words she
- accepted humbly. She was at once too spiritless for anger, and too much
- excited by the girl's presence for regret at having come. Her eye fell
- upon the picture leaning against the chair-back, and a conjecture swiftly
- passed through her mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mrs. Deering asked me to come and look at a wedding-present,” she said
- with a smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did she tell you from whom?” asked Aline, thrusting her handkerchief into
- her pocket. She had found her nerve again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's from Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it that over there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline caught and misinterpreted an unsteadiness of voice. She threw
- herself on her knees by Norma's side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You won't refuse it, Miss Hardacre. Oh, say you won't refuse it. Jimmie
- began it ever so long ago. He put everything into it. It would break his
- heart if you refused it—the heart of the best and beautifullest and
- tenderest and most wonderful man God ever made.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma touched with her gloved fingers a wisp of hair straying over the
- girl's forehead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you know he is all that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do I know? How do I know the sun shines and the rain falls? It's just
- so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have faith, my child,” said Norma, oddly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It isn't faith. It's knowledge. You all believe Jimmie has done something
- horrible. He has n't. I know he hasn't. He couldn't. He couldn't harm a
- living creature by word or deed. I know he never did it. If I had thought
- so for one moment, I should have loathed myself so that I would have gone
- out and killed myself. I know very little about it. I did n't read the
- newspapers—it's hideous—it's horrible—Jimmie would as
- soon think of torturing a child. It's not in his nature. He is all love
- and sweetness and chivalry. If you say he has taken the blame on himself
- for some great generous purpose—yes. That's Jimmie. That's Jimmie
- all over. It's cruel—it's monstrous for any one who knows him to
- think otherwise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had risen from her knees half-way through her passionate speech, and
- moved about in front of Norma, wringing her hands. She ended in a sob and
- turned away. Norma lay back in her chair, pale and agitated. The cynical
- worldling with his piercing vision into men and the pure, ignorant child
- had arrived at the same conclusion, not after months of thought, but
- instantly, intuitively. She could make the girl no answer. Aline began
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He could n't. You know he could n't. It's something glorious and
- beautiful he has done and not anything shameful.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She went on, with little pauses, hurling her short, breathless sentences
- across the space that separated her from Norma, forgetful of everything
- save the wrong done to Jimmie. At last Norma rose and went to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hush, dear!” she said. “There are some things I mustn't talk about. I
- daren't. You are too young to understand. Mr. Padgate has sent me a
- wedding-present. Tell him how gladly I accept it and how I shall value it.
- Let me see the picture.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline, her slight bosom still heaving with the after-storm of emotion,
- said nothing, but drew the cloth from the canvas. Norma started back
- in-surprise. She had not anticipated seeing her own portrait.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, but it is beautiful!” she cried involuntarily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes—more than beautiful,” said Aline, and mechanically she moved
- the chair into the full light of the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma looked at the picture for a long time, stepped back and looked at
- herself in the mirror of the overmantel, and returned to the picture. And
- as she looked the soul behind the picture spoke to her. The message
- delivered, she glanced at Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is not I, that woman. I wish to God it were.” She put her hands up to
- her face, and took a step or two across the room, and repeated a little
- wildly, “I wish to God it were!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is very, very like you,” said Aline softly, recovering her girl's
- worship of the other's stately beauty.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma caught her by the arm and pointed at the portrait.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can't you see the difference?”
- </p>
- <p>
- But the soul behind the picture had not spoken to Aline. There was love
- hovering around the pictured woman's lips; happy tenderness and trust and
- promise mingled in her eyes; in so far as the shadow of a flower-like
- woman's passion could strain her features, so were her features strained.
- Yet she looked out of the canvas a proud, queenly woman, capable of
- heroisms and lofty sacrifice. She was one who loved deeply and demanded
- love in return. She was warm of the flesh, infinitely pure of the spirit.
- The face was the face of Norma, but the soul was that of the dream-woman
- who had come and sat in the sitter's chair and communed with Jimmie as he
- painted her. And Norma heard her voice. It was an indictment of her life,
- a judgment and a sentence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am glad you can't, dear,” she said to Aline, regaining her balance.
- “Tell him I shall prize it above all my wedding-gifts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They talked quietly, for a while about Jimmie's affairs, the pilgrimage
- through southern France and northern Italy, his illness, his work. His
- poverty Aline was too proud to mention.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you, my dear?” asked Norma, kindly.
- </p>
- <h3>
- “I?”
- </h3>
- <p>
- “What about yourself? You are not looking as happy as you were. My dear
- child,” she said, bending forward earnestly, “do you know that no one has
- ever come to me with their troubles in all my life—not once. I'm
- beginning to feel I should be happier if some one did. You have had yours—-I
- have heard just a little. You see we all have them and we might help each
- other.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have no troubles, Miss Hardacre,” said Aline, touched. “You are going
- to be married in a week's time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never,” said Aline. “Never.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly she poured her disastrous little love-story into Norma's ears. It
- was a wonderful new comfort to the child, this tender magic of the womanly
- sympathy. Oh! she loved him, of course she loved him, and he loved her;
- that was the piteous part of it. If Miss Hardacre only knew what it was to
- have the heart-ache! It was dreadful. And there was no hope.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And is that all?” asked Norma, when she had lowered the curtain on her
- tragedy. “You are eating out your heart for him and won't see him just
- because he won't believe in Jimmie? Listen. I feel sure that he will soon
- believe in Jimmie. He must. And then you'll be entirely happy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When the girl's grateful arms suddenly flung themselves about her, Norma
- was further on the road to happiness than she had ever travelled before.
- She yielded herself to the moment's exquisite charm. Behind her whirled a
- tumult of longing, shame, struggling faith, nameless suspicion. Before her
- loomed a shivering dread. The actual moment was an isle of enchanted
- peace.
- </p>
- <p>
- The clock on a table at the far end of the room chiming six brought her
- back to the workaday world. She must go home. Morland was coming to
- dinner; also one or two Cosford people, who had already arrived in town in
- view of the wedding. She would have to dress with some elaborateness. Her
- heart grew heavy and cold at the prospect of the dreary party. She rose,
- looked again at the picture in the fading light. Moved by the
- irresistible, she turned to Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should like to see him—to thank him—before—-before
- Wednesday. Do you think he would come?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline blushed guiltily. “Jimmie is in the house now,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Downstairs?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For a moment irresolute, she looked vacantly into the girl's pleading
- eyes. An odd darkness encompassed her and she saw nothing. The
- announcement was a shock of crisis. Dimly she knew that she trod the brink
- of folly and peril. But she had been caught unawares, and she longed
- stupidly, achingly, for the sight of his face. The words of Aline, eager
- in defence of her beloved, seemed far away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course he does n't know you are here. He was to call for me at a
- quarter to six, and I heard the front door open a little while ago. I
- brought the picture in a cab, and he is under the impression that Mrs.
- Deering will ask you to—will do what I have done. Jimmie is
- perfectly innocent, Miss Hardacre. He had not the remotest idea I was to
- meet you—not the remotest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma recovered herself sufficiently to say with a faint smile:
- </p>
- <p>
- “So this has been a conspiracy between you and Connie Deering?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline caught consent in the tone, and ignored the question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shall I send him up to you?” she asked breathlessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a girl's glad cry, a girl's impulsive kiss, and Norma was left
- alone in the room. She had yielded. In a few moments he would be with her—the
- man who had said, “Her voice haunts me like music heard in sleep... I
- worship her like a Madonna... I love her as the man of hot blood loves a
- woman... My soul is a footstool for her to rest her feet upon,” and other
- flaming words of unforgettable passion; the man for whom one instant of
- her life had been elemental sex; the man whose love had transfigured her
- on canvas into the wonder among women that she might have been; the man
- standing in a slough of infamy, whose rising vapours wreathed themselves
- into a halo about his head. She clenched her hands and set her teeth,
- wrestling with herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My God! What kind of a fool am I becoming?” she breathed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Training, the habit of the mask, came to her aid. Jimmie, entering, saw
- only the royal lady who had looked kindly upon him in the golden September
- days. She came to meet him frankly, as one meets an old friend. A new
- vision revealed to her the heart that leapt into his eyes, as they rested
- upon her. Mistress of herself, she hardened her own, but smiled and spoke
- softly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is great good fortune you have come, so that I can thank you,” she
- said. “But how can I ever thank you—for that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is a small gift enough,” said Jimmie. “Your acceptance is more than
- thanks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall prize it dearly. It is like nothing that can be bought. It is
- something out of yourself you are giving me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you look at it in that light,” said he, “I am happy indeed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- With a common instinct they went up to the portrait and regarded it side
- by side. Conventional words passed. He enquired after Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have n't seen him for a long time?” she asked hesitatingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not for a long time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must have been very lonely.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have had Aline—and Connie Deering—and my work.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are they sufficient for you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Any human love a man gets he can make fill his life. It's like the grain
- of mustard-seed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma felt a thrill of admiration. Not a tone in his voice betrayed
- complaint, reproach, or bitterness. Instead, he sounded the note of
- thanksgiving for the love bestowed upon him, of faith in the perfect
- ordering of the world. She glanced at him, and felt that she had wronged
- him. No matter what was the solution of the mystery, she knew him to be a
- sweet-souled man, wonderfully steadfast.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your old way,” she replied with a smile, sitting down and motioning him
- to a chair beside her. “Do you remember that we first met in this very
- room? You have not changed. Have I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” he said gravely, “you were always beautiful, without and within. I
- told you that then, if you remember. Perhaps, now, you are a little truer
- to yourself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think so?” she asked, somewhat bitterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it is the approach of your great happiness,” blundered Jimmie, in
- perfect conviction. She was silent. “It has been more to me than I can
- say,” he went on, “to see you once again—as you are, before your
- marriage. I wish you many blessings—all that love can bring you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think love is necessary for married happiness?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Without it marriage must be a horror,” said Jimmie. For a moment she was
- on the brink of harsh laughter. Did he sincerely believe she was in love
- with Morland? She could have hurled the question at him. Will checked the
- rising hysteria and turned it into other channels.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why have you never married? You must have loved somebody once.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a relief to hurt him. The dusk was gathering in the room, and she
- could scarcely see his face. A Sunday stillness filled the quiet square
- outside. The hour had its dangers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My having loved a woman does not necessarily imply that I could have
- married her,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- The evasion irritated her mood, awoke a longing to make him speak. She
- drew her chair nearer, bent forward, so that the brim of her great hat
- almost brushed his forehead and the fragrance of her overspread him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you remember a picture you would n't show me in your studio? You
- called it a mad painter's dream. You said it was the Ideal Woman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>You</i> said so,” replied Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should like to see it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is mine no longer to show you,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think you must have loved that woman very deeply.” She was tempting him
- as she had tempted no man before, feeling a cruel, senseless joy in it.
- His voice vibrated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. I loved her infinitely.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What was she like?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Like all the splendid flowers of the earth melted into one rose,” said
- Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish some one had ever said that about me,” she whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Many must have thought it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She must be a happy woman to be loved by you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By me? Who am I that I could bring happiness to a woman? I have never
- told her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not?” she whispered. “Do you suppose you can love a woman without her
- knowing it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In what way can the star be cognisant of the moth's desire?” said Jimmie,
- going back to the refrain of his love.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You a moth and she a star! You are a man and she is but a trumpery bit of
- female flesh that on a word would throw herself into your arms.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Jimmie, hoarsely. “No, you don't know what you are saying.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The temptation to goad him was irresistible.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We are all of us alike, all of us. Tell her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dare n't.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me who she is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked at him full, with meaning in her eyes, which glowed like deep
- moons in the dusk. He brought all his courage into his glance. He was the
- master. She turned away her head in confusion, reading his love, his
- strength, his loyalty. A lesser man loving her would have thrown honour to
- the winds. A curious reverence of him filled her. She felt a small thing
- beside him. All doubts vanished forever. Her faith in him was as crystal
- clear as Aline's.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no right to mention her name,” he said after a pause.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma leaned back in her chair and passed her handkerchief across her
- lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Would you do anything in the world she asked you?” she murmured.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I would go through hell for her,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was another span of silence, tense and painful. Jimmie broke it by
- saying:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should you concern yourself about my fantastic affairs? They merely
- belong to dreamland—to the twilight and the stillness. They have no
- existence in the living world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I thought so, should I be sitting in the twilight and the stillness
- listening to you?” she asked. “Or even if I did, may I not enter into
- dreamland too for a few little minutes before the gates are closed to me
- forever? Why should you want to shut me out of it? Do you think much love
- has come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Morland loves you,” said Jimmie, tremulously.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened. The electric light was switched on, showing two pale,
- passion-drawn faces, and Connie Deering brought her sweet gaiety into the
- room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I had known you two were sitting in the dark like this, I should have
- come up earlier. Is n't it nice, Norma, to have Jimmie back again?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The spell was broken. Norma gave an anxious look at the clock and fled,
- after hurried farewells.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mistress of the house arched her pretty eyebrows as she returned to
- Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Eh bien?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Connie—” He cleared his throat. “You have kept my secret?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Loyally,” she said. “Have you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have done my best. God knows I have done my best.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat down, took up a book and began to turn the leaves idly. Connie
- knelt down before the fire and put on a fresh log. This done, she came to
- his side. He took her hand and looked up into her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have n't thanked you, Connie. I do with all my heart.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She smiled at him with an odd wistfulness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You once thanked me in a very pretty manner,” she said. “I think I
- deserve it again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXII—CATASTROPHE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>ONNIE DEERING was
- dining that Sunday evening with some friends at the Carlton, an engagement
- which had caused her to decline an invitation to the Hardacres'. The
- prospect, however, for once did not appeal to her pleasure-loving soul.
- She sighed as she stepped into her brougham, and wished as she drove along
- that she were sitting at home in the tea-gown and tranquillity harmonious
- with a subdued frame of mind. Problems worried her. What had passed
- between Norma and Jimmie? Ordinary delicacy had forbidden her questioning,
- and Jimmie had admitted her no further into his confidence. In that she
- was disappointed. When a sentimental woman asks for a kiss, she expects
- something more. She was also half ashamed of herself for asking him to
- kiss her. A waspish little voice within proclaimed that it was not so much
- for Jimmie's sake as for her own; that her lifelong fondness for Jimmie
- had unconsciously slid on to the rails that lead to absurdity. She drew
- her satin cloak tightly around her as if to suffocate the imp, and
- returned to her speculation. Something had happened—of that there
- was no doubt—something serious, agitating. It could be read on both
- their faces. Had she, who alone knew the hearts of each, done right in
- bringing them together? What had been her object? Even if a marriage
- between them had not been too ludicrous for contemplation, it would not
- have been fair towards her cousin Morland to encourage this intrigue. She
- vowed she had been a little fool to meddle with such gunpowdery matters.
- And yet she had acted in all innocence for Jimmie's sake. It was right for
- Norma to be friends with him again. It was monstrous he should suffer. If
- he could not marry the woman he loved, at least he could have the
- happiness of knowing himself no longer a blackened wretch in her eyes. But
- then, Norma had taken it into her head to love him too. Had she done
- right? Her thoughts flew round in a vicious circle of irritatingly small
- circumference, occasionally flying off on the tangent of the solicited
- kiss.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first person she met in the vestibule of the Carlton was Theodore
- Weever. They exchanged greetings, discovered they belonged to the same
- party. She had come across him frequently of late in the houses that Norma
- and herself had as common ground. In a general way she liked him; since
- Norma had told her of his view of the scandal, he had risen high in her
- estimation; but to-night he seemed to be a link in the drama that
- perplexed her, and she shrank from him, as from something uncanny. He sat
- next her at table. His first words were of Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was buying pictures yesterday from a friend of yours—Padgate.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In her pleasure Connie forgot her nervousness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, he never told me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He could scarcely have had time unless he telephoned or telegraphed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He was at my house this afternoon,” she explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- He carefully peppered his oysters, then turned his imperturbable face
- towards her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So was Miss Hardacre.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you know that?” she cried, startled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was calling in Devonshire Place. Her mother told me. I am not
- necromantic.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His swift uniting of the two names perturbed her. She swallowed her
- oysters unreflectingly, thus missing one of her little pleasures in life,
- for she adored oysters.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which pictures did you buy?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The one I coveted was not for sale. It was a portrait of Miss Hardacre. I
- don't think he meant me to see it, but I came upon him unawares. Have you
- seen it?” They discussed the portrait for a while. Connie repeated her
- former question. Weever replied that he had bought the picture of the faun
- looking at the vision of things to come, and the rejected Italian study.
- Connie expressed her gladness. They contained Jimmie's best work.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very fine,” Weever admitted, “but just failing in finish. Nothing like
- the portrait.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was an interval. Connie exchanged remarks with old Colonel Pawley,
- her right-hand neighbour, who expatiated on the impossibility of consuming
- Bortsch soup with satisfaction outside Russia. The soup removed, Weever
- resumed the conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you read your Lamartine thoroughly? I have. I was sentimental once.
- He says somewhere, <i>Aimer pour être aimé, c'est de l'homme; mais aimer
- pour aimer, c'est presque de l'ange</i>. I remember where it comes from. It
- was said of Cecco in 'Graziella.' Our friend Padgate reminds me of Cecco.
- Do you care much about your cousin Morland King, Mrs. Deering?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie, entirely disconcerted by his manner, looked at him beseechingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why do you ask me that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because he is one of the <i>dramatis persona</i> in a pretty little
- comedy on which the curtain is not yet rung down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She greatly dared. “Are you too in the caste?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Theodore Weever deliberately helped himself to fish before replying. Then
- with equal deliberation he stared into her flushed and puzzled face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope so. A leading part, perhaps, if you are the clever and
- conscientious woman I take you to be.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What part has my cousin Morland played?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must leave you the very simple task of guessing,” said Weever; and he
- took advantage of her consternation to converse with his left-hand
- neighbour.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have painted a peculiarly successful fan, dear Mrs. Deering,” said
- Colonel Pawley, in his purring voice. “A wedding-present for our dear Miss
- Hardacre. I have never been so much pleased with anything before. I should
- like you to see it. When may I come and show it you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The wedding is fixed for two o'clock on Wednesday,” said Connie,
- answering like a woman in a dream. The bright room, the crowd of diners,
- the music, the voice of the old man by her side, all faded from her
- senses, eclipsed by the ghastly light that dawned upon her. Only one
- meaning could be attached to Weever's insinuations. A touch on the arm
- brought her back to her surroundings with a start. It was Colonel Pawley.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope there is nothing—” he began, in a tone of great concern.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, nothing. Really nothing. Do forgive me,” she interrupted in
- confusion. “You were telling me something. Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was about the fan,” said Colonel Pawley, sadly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fan?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, for dear Miss Hardacre—a wedding-present.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She listened to a repetition of the previous remarks and to a description
- of the painting, and this time replied coherently. She would be delighted
- to see both the fan and himself to-morrow morning. The kind old man
- launched into a prothalamion. The happy couple were a splendidly matched
- pair—Norma the perfect type of aristocratic English beauty; Morland
- a representative specimen of the British gentleman, the safeguard of the
- empire, a man, a thorough good fellow, incapable of dishonour, a landed
- proprietor. He had sketched out a little wedding-song which he would like
- to present with the fan. Might he show that, too, to Mrs. Deering?
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a dreadful dinner. On each side the distressing topic hemmed her
- in. In vain she tried to make her old friend talk of travel or gastronomy
- or the comforts of his club; perverse fate brought him always back to
- Norma's wedding. She was forced to listen, for to Weever she dared not
- address a remark. She longed for escape, for solitude wherein to envisage
- her dismay. No suspicion of Morland's complicity in the scandal had
- crossed her mind. Even now it seemed preposterous for a man of honour to
- have so acted towards his dearest and most loyal friend, to say nothing of
- the unhappy things that had gone before. Suddenly, towards the end of
- dinner, she revolted. She turned to Weever.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't believe a word of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of what, dear lady?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of what you have told me about Morland and Jimmie Padgate.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have told you nothing—absolutely nothing,” he replied in his
- expressionless way. “Please remember that. I don't go about libelling my
- acquaintances.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall go and ask Morland straight,” she said with spirit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Au succès</i>,” said Weever.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dinner over, the little party went into the lounge. The screened light
- fell pleasantly on palms and pretty dresses, and made the place reposeful
- after the glare of the dining-room, whose red and white and gold still
- gleamed through the door above the steps. The red-coated band played a
- seductive, almost digestive air. A circle of comfortable chairs reserved
- by the host, invited the contented diner to languorous ease and restful
- gossip. It was the part of a Carlton dinner that Connie usually enjoyed
- the most. She still took her pleasures whole-heartedly, wherein lay much
- of her charm. The world, as Jimmie once told her, had not rubbed the dust
- off her wings. But to-night the sweet after-dinner hour was filled with
- fears and agitations, and while the party was settling down, she begged
- release from her host on the score of headache, and made her escape.
- </p>
- <p>
- She would carry out her threat to Weever. She would see Morland before she
- slept, and ask him to free her from this intolerable suspicion. She was a
- loyal, simple woman, for all her inconsequent ways and close experience of
- the insincerities of life; devoted to her friends, a champion of their
- causes; loving to believe the best, disturbed beyond due measure at being
- forced to believe the worst. Jimmie had most of her heart, more of it than
- she dared confess. But there were places in it both for Norma and for
- Morland. The latter was her cousin. She had known him all her life. To
- believe him to have played this sorry part in what it pleased Theodore
- Weever to call a pretty comedy was very real pain to the little lady. Her
- headache was no pretence. No spirit of curiosity or interference drove her
- to the Hardacres', where she knew she would find Morland; rather a desire
- to rid herself of a nightmare. Granted the possibility of baseness on
- Morland's part, all the dark places in the lamentable business became
- light. That was the maddening part of Weever's solution. And would it
- apply to the puzzle of the afternoon? Had Norma known? Had Jimmie told
- her? The pair had been agitated enough for anything to have happened.
- Theodore Weever, too, had calmly avowed himself an actor in the comedy.
- What part was he playing? She shivered at the conjecture. He looked like a
- pale mummy, she thought confusedly, holding in his dull eyes the
- inscrutable wisdom of the Sphinx. Meanwhile the horses were proceeding at
- a funereal pace. She pulled the checkstring and bade the coachman drive
- faster.
- </p>
- <p>
- The scene that met her eyes when the servant showed her into the
- Hardacres' drawing-room was unexpected. Instead of the ordinary
- after-dinner gathering, only Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre and Morland were in the
- room. The master of the house, very red, very puffy, sat in an armchair
- before the fire, tugging at his mean little red moustache. Mrs. Hardacre,
- her face haggard with anxiety, stood apart with Morland, whose heavy
- features wore an expression of worry, apology, and indignation curiously
- blended. On a clear space of carpet a couple of yards from the door lay
- some strings of large pearls. Connie looked from one to the other of the
- three people who had evidently been interrupted in the midst of an anxious
- discussion. Here, again, something had happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre shook hands with her mechanically. Mr. Hardacre apologised
- for not rising. That infernal gout again, he explained, pointing to the
- slashed slipper of a foot resting on a hassock. Norma had made it worse.
- He had been infernally upset.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Norma?” Connie turned and looked inquiringly at the other two.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, an awful scene,” said Morland, gloomily. “I wish to heaven you had
- been here. You might have done something.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps you might bring her to her senses now, though I doubt it. I think
- she has gone crazy,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what has occurred?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She declares she won't marry me, that's all. There's my wedding-present
- on the floor. Tore it from her neck as she made her exit. I don't know
- what's going to happen!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where is she now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Up in her room smashing the rest of her wedding-presents, I suppose,”
- said Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eh, what? Can't do that. All locked up downstairs in the library,” came
- from the chair by the fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, don't make idiotic remarks, Benjamin,” snapped his wife, viciously.
- </p>
- <p>
- The air was electric with irritation. Connie, a peacemaker at heart,
- forgot her mission in the face of the new development of affairs, and
- spoke soothingly. Norma could not break off the engagement three days
- before the wedding. Such things were not done. She would come round. It
- was merely an attack of nerves. They refused to be comforted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “God knows what it is,” said Morland. “I thought things were perfectly
- square between us. She was n't cordial before dinner, I'll admit; but she
- let me put those beads round her neck. I asked her to wear them all the
- evening, as there were only the four of us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Spencer-Temples sent an excuse this afternoon,” Mrs. Hardacre
- explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She agreed,” Morland continued. “She wore them through dinner. Then
- everything any one of us said seemed to get on her nerves. I talked about
- the House. She withered me up with sarcasm. We talked about the wedding.
- She begged us, for God's sake, to talk of something else. We tried, so as
- to pacify her. But of course it was hardly possible. I said I had met Lord
- Monzie yesterday—told me he and his wife were coming on Wednesday.
- She asked whether Ascherberg and the rest of Monzie's crew of
- money-lenders, harlots, and fools were coming too. I defended Monzie. He's
- a friend of mine and a very decent sort. She shrugged her shoulders. You
- know her way. Mrs. Hardacre changed the subject. After dinner I saw her
- alone for a bit in the drawing-room. She asked me to take back the pearls.
- Said they were throttling her. Had n't we better reconsider the whole
- matter? There was still time. That was the beginning of it. Mr. and Mrs.
- Hardacre came up. We did all we knew. Used every argument. People invited.
- Bishop to perform ceremony. Duchess actually coming. Society expected us.
- The scandal. Her infernally bad treatment of myself. No good. Whatever we
- said only made her worse. Ended up with a diatribe against society. She
- was sick of its lies and its rottenness. She was going to have no more of
- it. She would breathe fresh pure air.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Lord knows what she did n't say. All of us came in for it. Said
- shocking things about her mother. Said I did n't love her, had never loved
- her. A loveless marriage was horrible. Of course I am in love with her.
- You all know that. I said so. She would n't listen. Went on with her
- harangue. We could n't stop her. She would n't marry me for all the
- bishops and duchesses in the world. At last I lost my temper and said it
- was my intention to marry her, and marry me she should. Don't you think I
- was quite right? She lost hers, I suppose, tore off the pearls, made a
- sort of peroration, declaring she would sooner die than commit the infamy
- of marrying me—and that's the end of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He threw out his hands in desperation and turned away. His account of
- events from his point of view was accurate. To him, as to Norma's parents,
- her final revolt appeared the arbitrary act of unreason. They still
- smarted resentfully under her lashes, incapable of realising the sins for
- which they were flagellated.
- </p>
- <p>
- If she had remained at home that afternoon and continued to practise
- insensibility, she would probably have followed the line of least
- resistance during the evening. Or, on the other hand, if she could have
- been alone, a night's fevered sleeplessness would have caused dull
- reaction in the morning. The cold contempt for things outside her, which
- had served for strength, was now gone, leaving a helpless woman to be
- swayed by passion or led spiritless by convention. The heroic in her
- needed the double spur. Passion shook her; miserable bondage, claiming
- her, drove her to rebellion. She rose to sublime heights, undreamed of in
- her earth-bound philosophy.
- </p>
- <p>
- She had gone into the street after her interview with Jimmie, white,
- palpitating, torn. Though the man had spoken tremulous words, it was the
- unspoken, the wave of longing and all unspeakable things in whose heaving
- bosom they had been caught, that mattered. The Garden of Enchantment had
- thrown wide its gates; she had been admitted within its infinitely
- reaching vistas, and flowers of the spirit had bared their hearts before
- her eyes. Dressing, she strove to kill the memory, to deafen her ears to
- the haunting music, to clear her brain of the intoxication. A thing hardly
- a woman, hardly a coherent entity, but half marble, half-consuming fire,
- stood before Morland, as he clasped the pearl necklace around her throat.
- The touch of it against her skin caused a shudder. Up to then sensation
- had blotted out thought. But now the brain worked with startling lucidity.
- There was yet time to escape from the thraldom. The Idea gathered strength
- from every word and incident during the meal. The commonness, sordidness,
- emptiness of the life behind and around and before her were revealed in
- the unpitying searchlight of an awakened soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- She pleaded with Morland for release. The necklace choked her. She
- unclasped it. He refused to take it back. She was his. He loved her. Her
- conduct was an outrage on his affections. She dared him to an expression
- of passionate feeling. He failed miserably, and her anger grew. Unhappily
- he spoke of an outrage upon Society. She fastened on the phrase. His
- affection and Society! One was worth the other. Society—the Mumbo
- Jumbo—the grotesque false god to which women were offered up in
- senseless sacrifice! Her mother instanced the bishop and the duchess as
- avatars of the divinity. Norma poured scorn on the hierarchy. Mrs.
- Hardacre implored her daughter by her love for her not to humiliate her
- thus in the world's eyes. She struck the falsest of notes. Norma turned on
- her, superb, dramatic, holding the three in speechless dismay. Love! what
- love had been given her that she should return? She had grown honest. The
- gods of that house were no longer her gods. They were paltry and
- dishonoured, shams and hypocrisies. Once she worshipped them. To that she
- had been trained from her cradle. Her nurses dangled the shams before her
- eyes. The women who taught her bent fawning knees before the shrines of
- the false gods. A mother's love? what had she learned from her mother? To
- simper and harden her heart. That the envy of other simpering hardened
- women was the ultimate good. That the dazzling end of a young girl's
- career was to capture some man of rank and fortune—that when she was
- married her lofty duty was to wear smarter clothes, give smarter parties,
- and to inveigle to her house by any base and despicable means smarter
- people than her friends. What had she learned from her mother? To let men
- of infamous lives leer at her because they had title or fortune. To pay
- court to shameless women in the hope of getting to know still more
- shameless men who might dishonour her with their name. She had never been
- young—never, never, with a young girl's freshness of heart. She
- spoke venom and was praised for wit. She was the finished product of a
- vapid world. Her whole existence had been an intricate elaboration of
- shams—miserable, empty, despicable futilities. How dared her mother
- stand before her and talk of love?
- </p>
- <p>
- Then a quick angry scene, a crisp thud of the pearls on the floor, a
- stormy exit—and that, as Morland said, was the end of it. The three
- were left staring at each other in angry bewilderment.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the face of this disaster Connie could not find it in her heart to
- reproach Morland, still less to hint at Theodore Weever's insinuation.
- Rather did she reproach herself for being the cause of the catastrophe,
- and she was smitten with a sense of guilt when Mrs. Hardacre turned upon
- her accusingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She had tea with you, did n't she? Did you notice anything wrong?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She didn't seem quite herself—was nervous and strange,” said
- Connie, diplomatically. “I think I had better go up and talk to her,” she
- added after an anxious pause.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, do, for God's sake, Connie,” said Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded, smiled the ghost of her bright smile, and, glad of escape,
- went upstairs. The three sat in gloomy silence, broken only by Mr.
- Hardacre's maledictions on his gout. It was a bitter hour for them.
- </p>
- <p>
- In a few moments Connie burst into the room, with a letter in her hand.
- She looked scared.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can't find her. She's not in the house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not in the house!” shrieked Mrs. Hardacre.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland brought his hand down heavily on the piano.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard the front door slam half an hour ago!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is addressed to you, Mrs. Hardacre. It was stuck in her
- looking-glass.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre opened the note with shaky fingers. It ran:
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>“I mean what I say. I had better leave you all, at least till after
- Wednesday. My stopping here would be more than you or I could stand.”</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hardacre staggered with a gasp of pain to his feet, and his weak eyes
- glared savagely out of his puffy red face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damme, she must come back! If she does n't sleep here to-night, I'll cut
- her off. I won't have anything more to do with her. She has got to come
- back.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right. Go and tell her, then,” retorted his wife. “Where do you
- suppose you are going to find her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, she is sure to have gone to my house,” said Connie. “But suppose she
- has n't,” said Morland, anxiously. “She was in such a state that anything
- is possible.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come with me if you like. The brougham is here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you go too, Eliza, and bring her home with you, d' ye hear?” cried
- Mr. Hardacre. “If you don't, she'll never set foot in my house again. I'm
- damned if she shall!”
- </p>
- <p>
- His wife looked at him queerly for a moment; then she meekly answered:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well, Benjamin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Once only during their long married life had she flouted him when he had
- spoken to her like that. Then in ungovernable fury he had thrown a boot at
- her head.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hardacre glared at Morland and Connie, and scrambled cursing into his
- chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXIII—NORMA'S HOUR
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>OMETHING had
- happened—something mysterious, quickening; a pulsation of the inmost
- harmonies of life. Its tremendous significance Jimmie dared not
- conjecture. It was to be interpreted by the wisdom of the simplest, yet
- that interpretation he put aside. It staggered reason. It was enough for
- them to have met together in an unimagined intimacy of emotion, to have
- shared the throb of this spiritual happening.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was to be married in three days. He set the fact as a block to further
- investigation of the mystery. On this side his loyalty suffered no taint;
- their relations had but received, in some sense, sanctification. Beyond
- the barrier lay shame and dishonour. The two were to be married; therefore
- they loved. He disciplined a disordered mind with a logic of his own
- invention. It was a logic that entirely begged the question. Remembered
- words of Norma, “Do you think much love has come my way? Yours are the
- only lips I have ever heard speak of it,” fell outside his premises. They
- clamoured for explanation. So did the rich tremor of her voice. So did the
- lamentable lack of conviction in his reply. To these things he closed his
- intelligence. They belonged to the interpretation that staggered reason,
- that threatened to turn his fundamental conceptions into chaos. And past
- incidents came before him. During those last days in Wiltshire he had seen
- that her life lacked completion. That memory, too, disturbed his
- discipline. Fanatically he practised it, proving to himself that ice was
- hot and that the sun shone at midnight. She was happy in her love for
- Morland. She was happy in Morland's love for her. She had not identified
- with herself the imaginary woman of his adoration. She had not drunk in
- the outpouring of his passion. Her breath had not fallen warm upon his
- cheek. And the quickening of a wonderful birth had no reference to
- emotions and cravings quite different, intangible, inexpressible, existent
- in a far-away spirit land.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was strangely silent during their homeward journey in the omnibus and
- the simple evening meal, and Aline, sensitive to his mood, choked down the
- eager questions that rose to her lips. It was only after supper in the
- studio, when she lit the spill for Jimmie's pipe—her economical soul
- deprecating waste in matches—that she ventured to say softly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid you'll miss the picture, Jimmie dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He waited until the pipe was alight, and breathed out a puff of smoke with
- a sigh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Our happiness is made up of the things we miss,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's a paradox, and I don't believe it,” said Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Everything in life is a paradox,” he remarked, thinking of his logic. He
- relapsed into his perplexed silence. Aline settled herself in her usual
- chair with her workbasket and her eternal sewing. This evening she was
- recuffing his shirts. Presently she held up a cuff.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See. I'm determined to make you smart and fashionable. I don't care what
- you say. These are square.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are n't you putting a round man into a square cuff, my dear?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed. “Why should you be round? You are smart and rectangular. When
- you're tidied up—don't you know you are exceedingly good-looking,
- almost military?”
-</p>
- <p>
-She was delighted to get him back to foolish talk. His
- preoccupation had disturbed her. Like Connie Deering, she was femininely
- conscious that something out of the ordinary had passed between Norma and
- Jimmie, and apprehension as to her dear one's peace of mind had filled her
- with many imaginings. He returned a smiling answer. She bestirred herself
- to amuse. Had he remarked the man in the omnibus? His nose cut it into two
- compartments. What would he do if he had such a nose? Jimmie felt that he
- had been selfish and fell into the child's humour. He said that he would
- blow it. They discussed the subject of noses. He quoted Tristram Shandy.
- Did she remember him reading to her “Slawkenbergius's Tale”?
- </p>
- <p>
- “The silliest story I ever heard in my life!” cried Aline. “It had neither
- head nor tail.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is the beauty of it,” said Jimmie. “It is all nose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. The only story about a nose that is worth anything,” Aline declared
- with conviction of her age and sex, “is 'Cyrano de Bergerac.'” She paused
- as a thought passed swiftly through her mind. “Do you know, if you had a
- nose like that, you would remind me of Cyrano?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, I don't go about blustering and carving my fellow-citizens into
- mincemeat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. But you—” She began unreflectingly, then she stopped short in
- confusion. Cyrano, Roxana, Christian; Jimmie, Norma, Morland—the
- parallel was of an embarrassing nicety. She lost her head, reddened, saw
- that Jimmie had filled the gap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't care,” she cried. “You <i>are</i> like him. It's splendid, but
- it's senseless. You are worth a million of the other man, and she knows it
- as well as I do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She vindictively stitched at the cuff. Jimmie made no reply, but lay back
- smoking his pipe. Aline recovered and grew remorseful. She had destroyed
- with an idiotic word the little atmosphere of gaiety she had succeeded in
- creating. She pricked her finger several times At last she rose and knelt
- by his side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm sorry, Jimmie. Don't be vexed with me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at her, wrinkling his forehead half humorously, half sadly, and
- patted her cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, dear,” he said. “But I think Slawkenbergius's the better tale. Shall
- I read it you again?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, no, Jimmie,” cried the girl, half crying, half laughing. “Please
- don't, for heaven's sake. I've not been as naughty as that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She resumed her sewing. They talked of daily things. Theodore Weever's
- purchases. The faun—he was sorry to lose it after its companionship
- for all these years. He would paint a replica—but it would not be
- the same thing. Other times, other feelings. Gradually the conversation
- grew spasmodic, dwindled. Jimmie brooded over his mystery, and Aline
- stitched in silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- The whirr of the front door-bell aroused them. Aline put down her work.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Renshaw,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Renshaw, a broken-down, out-at-heels, drunken black-and-white artist, once
- of amazing talent, was almost the only member of a large Bohemian coterie
- who continued to regard Jimmie as at home to his friends on Sunday
- evenings. Jimmie bore with the decayed man, and helped him on his way, and
- was pained when Aline insisted upon opening the windows after his
- departure. Renshaw had been a subject of contention between them for
- years.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He has only come to drink whisky and borrow money. Luckily we have n't
- any whisky in the house,” said Aline.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can give him beer, my child. And if the man is in need of half a
- crown, God forbid we should deny it him. Has Hannah come home yet?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't think so. It is n't ten o'clock.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then let him in, dear,” said Jimmie, finally.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline went upstairs with some unwillingness. She disapproved entirely of
- Renshaw. She devoutly hoped the man was sober. As she opened the front
- door, the sharp sound of a turning cab met her ears, and the cloaked tall
- figure of a woman met her astonished eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Hardacre!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, dear. Won't you let me in?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl drew aside quickly, and Norma passed into the hall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You?” cried Aline. “I don't understand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never mind. Is Mr.—is Jimmie at home?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie!” The girl's heart leaped at the name. She stared wide-eyed at
- Norma, whose features she could scarcely discern by the pin-point of gas
- in the hall-lamp. “Yes. He is in the studio.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can I see him? Alone? Do you mind?”
- </p>
- <p>
- In dumb astonishment Aline took the visitor to the head of the stairs,
- half lit by the streak of light from the open studio door.
- Norma paused, bent forward, and kissed her on the cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know my way,” she whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie heard the rustle of skirts that were not Aline's, and springing to
- his feet, hurried towards the door. But before he could reach it Norma
- entered and stood before him. Her long dark silk evening cloak was open at
- the throat, showing glimpses of white bare neck. Its high standing collar
- set off the stately poise of her head. She wore the diamond star in her
- hair. To the wondering man who gazed at her she was a vision of radiant
- beauty. They held each other's eyes for a second or two; and the first
- dazzling glory in which she seemed to stand having faded, Jimmie read in
- her face that desperate things had come to pass. He caught her hands as
- she came swiftly forward. “Why are you here? My God, why are you here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I could stand it no longer,” she said breathlessly. “I am not going to
- marry Morland. I have cut myself adrift. They all know it. I told them so
- this evening. The horror of it was unbearable. I have done with it forever
- and ever.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The horror of it?” echoed Jimmie.
-
-</p>
-<p>
-
-“Don't you think it a horror for two
- people to marry who have never even pretended to love each other? You said
- so this afternoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He released her hands and turned aside. Even the deep exulting sense of
- what her presence there must mean could not mitigate a terrible dismay.
- The interpretation that staggered reason was the true and only one. He had
- been living in a dream, among shadow-shapes which he himself had cast upon
- the wall. Even now he could not grasp completely the extent of his
- heroical self-deception.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There has never been any love between you and Morland? It has been a
- cold-blooded question of a marriage of convenience? I thought so
- differently.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Since when?” she asked. “Since this afternoon?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—not since this afternoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If it had n't been for you, I should have married him. You made it
- impossible. You taught me things. You made me hate myself and my mean
- ambitions. That was why I hesitated—put it off till Easter. If I had
- n't seen you this afternoon I should have gone through with it on
- Wednesday. When I got home I could n't face it. He put some pearls—a
- wedding-present—round my neck. They seemed like dead fingers choking
- out my soul. At last it grew horrible. I said things I don't remember now.
- I could n't stay in the house. It suffocated me. It would have sent me
- mad. I think a cab whirled me through the streets. I don't know. I have
- burnt my ships.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stopped, panting, with her hands on her bosom. His exultation grew,
- and fear with it. He was like a child trembling before a joy too great to
- be realised, frightened lest it should vanish. He said without looking at
- her:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why have you come here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where else should I go? Unless—” She halted on the word.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Unless what?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She broke into an impatient cry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, can't you speak? Do you want me to say everything? There is no need
- for you to be silent any longer.” She faced him. “Who was the woman—the
- picture woman we spoke of this afternoon?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You,” he said. “You. Who else?” There was a quiver of silence. Then he
- caught her to him. He spoke foolish words. Their lips met, and passion
- held them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Had I anywhere else to go?” she whispered; and he said, “No.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She released herself, somewhat pale and shaken. Jimmie, scarcely knowing
- what he did, took off her cloak and threw it on the long deal table. The
- sudden fresh chill on arms and neck made her realise that they were bare.
- It was his doing. She blushed. A delicious sense of shyness crept over
- her. It soon passed. But evanescent though it was, it remained long in her
- memory.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie took her in his arms again. He said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You madden me. I have loved you so long. I am like a parched soul by a
- pool of Paradise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He took her by the hand, led her to his chair near the stove, and knelt by
- her side. She looked at him, the edges of her white teeth together, her
- lips parted. She was living the moment that counts for years in a woman's
- life. She can only live it once. Great joy or endless shame may come
- afterwards, but this moment shall ever be to her comfort or her despair.
- </p>
- <p>
- He asked her how she had known.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You told me so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “At Heddon. Do you think I shall ever forget your words?” She laughed
- divinely at the puzzledom on his face. “No. You were too loyal to tell me—but
- you told Connie Deering. Hush! Don't start. Connie did not betray you. She
- is the staunchest soul breathing. You and she were on the slope by the
- croquet lawn—do you remember? There was a hedge of clipped yew above—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you overheard?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed again, happily, at his look of distress. “I should be rather
- pleased—now—if I were you,” she said in the softer and deeper
- tones of her voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- A few moments later he said, “You must give me back the portrait. I shall
- burn it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are a million times more beautiful, more adorable.” He asked her when
- she had begun to think of him—the eternal, childlike question. She
- met his lover's gaze steadily. Frankness was her great virtue.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems now that I have cared for you since the first day. You soon came
- into my life, but I did n't know how much you represented. Then I heard
- you speaking to Connie. That mattered a great deal. When that man shot
- you, I knew that I loved you. I thought you were dead. I rushed down the
- slope and propped you up against my knees—and I thought I should go
- mad with agony.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never heard of that,” said Jimmie in a low voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- He became suddenly thoughtful, rose to his feet and regarded her with a
- changed expression, like that of a man awakened from a dream.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is going to be the end of this?” he asked.
-
-</p>
-<p>
-
-Norma, for once
- unperceptive and replying to a small preoccupation of her own, flushed to
- her hair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know Connie well enough to look her up and ask her for hospitality.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wasn't thinking of that,” said Jimmie. “We have been like children and
- had our hour of joy, without thinking of anything else. Now we must be
- grown-up people. After what has passed between us, I could only ask you to
- be my wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I came here for you to ask me,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no right to do so, dear. I bear a dishonoured name. The wonder and
- wild desire of you made me forget.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked at him strangely, her lips working in the shadow of her old
- smile of mockery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That proves to me that it is your name and not yourself that is
- dishonoured. If it had been yourself, you would not have forgotten.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie drew himself up, and there was a touch of haughtiness in his manner
- that Norma in her woman's way noted swiftly. In spite of his homeliness
- there was the undefinable spirit of the great gentleman in Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am dishonoured. The matter was public property. I discuss it with no
- one, least of all with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well,” she said. “Let it never be mentioned again between us. I
- range myself with Aline. I shall believe what I like. You can't prevent my
- doing that, can you? I choose to believe you are the one thing God made in
- which I can find happiness. That's enough for me, and it ought to be
- enough for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie put his hand on her shoulder, deeply moved.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dearest, you must n't say things like that.” He repeated the words,
- “You mustn't say things like that.” Then he was conscious of the warm
- softness on which his hand rested. She raised her arm and touched his
- fingers. It was a moment of deep temptation. He resisted, drew his hand
- away gently.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is another reason why it cannot be,” he said. “You belong to a
- world of wealth and luxury, I have been in poverty all my life. God forbid
- I should complain. I have never done so. But it is a life of struggle for
- daily bread. Aline and I are used to it. We laugh. We often dine with Duke
- Humphrey. We make believe like the marchioness. What the discipline of
- life and a sort of gipsy faith in Providence have made us regard as a
- jest, would be to you a sordid shift, an intolerable ugliness stripping
- life of its beauty—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, hush!” she pleaded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I must talk and you must listen,” he said with a certain masterful
- dignity. “Look at you now, in the exquisite loveliness of your dress, with
- that diamond star in your hair, with that queenly presence of yours. Do
- you fit in with all this? Your place is in great houses, among historic
- pictures, rare carpets, furniture that is invested with the charm of an
- artist's touch. The chair you are sitting in—the leather is split
- and the springs are broken.” He was walking now backwards and forwards
- across the studio, fulfilling his task bravely, scarcely trusting himself
- to look at her. “Your place,” he continued, “is among the great ones of
- the earth—princes, ambassadors, men of genius. Here are but the
- little folk: even should they come, as they used to do: homely men with
- rough ways and their wives—sweet simple women with a baby and a
- frock a year, God help them! I can't ask you to share this life with me,
- my dear. I should be a scoundrel if I did. As it is, I have fallen below
- myself in letting you know that I love you. You must forgive me. A man is,
- after all, a man, whether he be beggar or prince. You must go back into
- your world and forget it all. The passion-flower cannot thrive in the
- hedge with the dog-rose, my dearest. It will pine and fade. We must end it
- all. Don't you see? You don't know what poverty means. Even decent poverty
- like ours. Look—the men you know have valets to dress them—when
- you came Aline was sewing new cuffs on my shirts. I don't suppose you ever
- knew that such things were done. Mere existence is a matter of ever
- anxious detail. I am a careless fellow, I am a selfish brute, like most
- men, and give over to the women folk around me the thousand harassing
- considerations of ways and means for every day in every year. But I see
- more than they think. Aline can tell you. I dare n't, my dear, ask you to
- share this life with me. I dare n't, I dare n't.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He came to a stop in front of her; saw her leaning over the arm of the
- chair away from him, her face covered by her hands. Her white shoulders
- twitched in little convulsive movements.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, my dear—my dear—” he said in a bewilderment of distress;
- and kneeling by her, he took her wrists and drew them to him. The palms of
- her hands and her cheeks were wet with miserable tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What must you think of me? What futile, feeble creature must you think
- me? Heaven knows I'm degraded enough—but not to that level. Do you
- suppose I ever thought you a rich man? Oh, you have hurt me—flayed
- me alive. I did n't deserve it! I would follow you in rags barefoot
- through the world. What does it matter so long as it is you that I
- follow?”
- </p>
- <p>
- What could mortal man do but take the wounded woman of his idolatry into
- his arms? The single-hearted creature, aghast at the havoc he had wrought,
- bitterly reproached himself for want of faith in the perfect being. He had
- committed a horrible crime, plunged daggers, stab after stab, into that
- radiant bosom. She sobbed in his embrace—a little longer than was
- strictly necessary. Tears and sobs were a wonder to her, who since early
- childhood had never known the woman's relief of weeping. It came upon her
- first as a wondrous new-found emotion; when his strong arms were about
- her, as an unutterably sweet solace. And the man's voice in her ears was
- all that has nearly been said but never been quite said in music.
- </p>
- <p>
- Presently she drew herself away from him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think I am such a fool that I can't sew?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sank back on his heels. She rose, helping herself to rise by a hand on
- his arm, an action wonderfully sweet in its intimacy, and crossed over to
- Aline's cane-bottomed, armless easy-chair. She plucked the shirt from the
- basket on the top of which Aline had thrust it, groped among the
- wilderness of spools, tape, bits of ribbon, scissors, needle-cases,
- patterns and year-old draper's bills for a thimble, found the needle
- sticking in the work, and began to sew with a little air of defiance.
- Jimmie looked on, ravished. He drew nearer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “God bless my soul,” he said. “Do you mean to say you can do that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was nothing she could not do in this hour of exaltation. She had
- found herself—simple woman with simple man. It was her hour. Her
- feet trod the roots of life; her head touched the stars.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sit in your chair and smoke, and let us see what it will be like,” she
- commanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- He obeyed. But whether it was tobacco or gunpowder in his old briarwood
- pipe he could not have told. The poor wretch was mazed with happiness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor little Aline is all by herself upstairs,” said Norma, after a while.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heaven forgive me,” cried Jimmie, starting up. “I had n't thought about
- her!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXIV—MRS. HARDACRE FORGETS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HILE this tragical
- comedy of the domestic felicities was being enacted, Connie Deering's
- brougham containing three agitated, silent, human beings was rapidly
- approaching the scene.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had made certain of finding Norma at Bryanston Square. The news that
- she had not arrived disquieted them. Morland anxiously suggested the
- police. They had a hurried colloquy, Morland and Connie standing on the
- pavement, Mrs. Hardacre inside the carriage, thrusting her head through
- the window. Connie falteringly confessed to the meeting of Jimmie and
- Norma in the afternoon. Something serious had evidently passed between
- them.
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland broke into an oath. “By God! That's where she's gone. Damn him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We must get her away at all costs,” said Mrs. Hardacre, tensely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid it is my fault,” said Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course it is,” Mrs. Hardacre replied brutally. “The best you can do is
- to help us to rescue her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They started. The brougham was small, the air heavy, their quest
- distasteful, its result doubtful. The sense of fretfulness became acute.
- Mrs. Hardacre gave vent to her maternal feelings. When she touched on the vile seducer of her daughter's affections, Connie turned upon her almost
- shrewishly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is my carriage, and I am not going to hear my dearest friend abused
- in it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland sat silent and worried. When they stopped at the house, he said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I shall stay outside.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie, angry with him for having damned Jimmie, bent forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you afraid of facing Jimmie?” she said with a little note of
- contempt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly not,” he replied viciously.
- </p>
- <p>
- A few moments later Aline ran into the studio with a scared face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He went up to her, and she whispered into his ear; then he turned to
- Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your mother and Connie and Morland are upstairs. I don't suppose you are
- anxious to see them. May I tell them what has happened?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma rose and joined him in the centre of the studio. “I would sooner
- tell them myself. Can they come down here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you wish it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave the order to Aline. Before going, she took him by the arm and
- swiftly glancing at Norma, asked eagerly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What has happened?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The wonder of wonders, dear,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- With a glad cry she ran upstairs and brought down the visitors, who were
- waiting in the hall.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie stood by the open door to receive them. Norma retired to the far
- end of the studio. She held her head high, and felt astonishingly cool and
- self-possessed. Mrs. Hardacre entered first, and without condescending to
- look at Jimmie marched straight up to her daughter. Then came Connie and
- Aline, the girl excited, her arm round her friend's waist. Morland, on
- entering, drew Jimmie aside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you've bested me,” he said in an angry whisper. “You held the cards, I
- know. I did n't think you would use them. I wish you joy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A sudden flash of pain and indignation lit Jimmie's eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good God, man! Have you sunk so low as to accuse me of that? <i>Me?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned away. Morland caught him by the sleeve.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say—” he began.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Jimmie shook him off and went to the side of Norma, who was listening
- to her mother's opening attack. It was shrill and bitter. When she paused,
- Norma said stonily:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not going home with you to-night, mother. I sleep at Connie's. She
- will not refuse me a bed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your father means what he says.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So do I, mother. I can manage pretty well without your protection till I
- am married. Then I sha'n't need it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pray whom are you going to marry?” asked Mrs. Hardacre, acidly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should think it was obvious,” said Norma. “Mr. Padgate has done me the
- very great honour to ask me to be his wife. I have agreed. I am over age
- and a free agent, so there's nothing more to be said, mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre refused to take the announcement seriously. Her thin lips
- worked into a smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is sheer folly, my dear Norma. Over age or not we can't allow you to
- disgrace yourself and us—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have never had such honour conferred on us in all our lives,” said
- Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre shrugged her shoulders pityingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Among sane folks it would be a disgrace and a scandal. Even Mr. Padgate
- would scarcely take advantage of a fit of hysterical folly.” She turned to
- Jimmie. “I assure you she is hardly responsible for her actions. You are
- aware what you would be guilty of in bringing her into this—this—?”
- She paused for a word and waved her hand around.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hovel?” suggested Jimmie, grimly. “Yes. I am aware of it. Miss Hardacre
- must not consider herself bound by anything she has said to-night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie Deering, who had come up waiting for a chance to speak, her
- forget-me-not eyes curiously hard and dangerous, broke in quickly:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why did you say <i>even</i> Mr. Padgate, Mrs. Hardacre?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Padgate has a reputation—” said Mrs. Hardacre, with an
- expressive gesture.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jimmie—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He checked his advocate. “Please, no more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should think not, indeed! Are you coming, Norma?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had better go,” said Jimmie, softly. “Why quarrel with your parents?
- To-morrow, a week, a month hence you can tell me your wishes. I set you
- quite free.”
-</p>
- <p>
-Norma made a movement of impatience.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't make me say things I should regret—I am not going to change
- my mind. No, mother, I am not coming.”
-</p>
- <p>
-Morland had not said a word, but
- stood in the background, hating himself. Only Connie's taunt had caused
- him to enter this maddeningly false position. He knew that his accusation,
- though he believed it true at the time, was false and base. Jimmie was
- true gold. He had not betrayed him. Connie, when Jimmie had checked her,
- went across to Morland.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do <i>you</i> believe that Jimmie deserves his reputation?” she said for
- his ears alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know,” he answered moodily, kicking at a hassock.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do know,” she said, “and it's damnable.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A quick glance exchanged completed her assurance. He saw that she knew,
- and despised him. For a few moments he lost consciousness of externals in
- alarmed contemplation of this new thing—a self openly despised by
- one of his equals. Mrs. Hardacre's voice aroused him. She was saying her
- final words to Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I leave you. When you are in the gutter with this person, don't come to
- ask me for help. You can <i>encanailler</i> yourself as much as you like,
- for all I care. This adventurer—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie interposed in his grand manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pray remember, Mrs. Hardacre, that for the moment you are my guest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your guest!” For the second time that evening she had been rebuked. Her
- eyes glittered with spite and fury. She lost control. “Your guest! If I
- went to rescue my daughter from a house of ill fame, should I regard
- myself as a guest of the keeper? How dare you? How do I know what does n't
- go on in this house? That girl over there—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma sprang forward and gripped her by the arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mother!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She shook herself free. “How do I know? How <i>do</i> you know? The man's
- name stinks over England. No decent woman has anything to do with him.
- Have you forgotten last autumn? That beastly affair? If you choose to
- succeed the other woman—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, damn it!” burst out Morland, suddenly. “This is more than I can
- stand. Have you forgotten what I told you a week ago?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The venomous woman was brought to a full stop. She stared helplessly at
- Morland, drawing quick panting breaths. She had forgotten that he was in
- the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- The cynicism was too gross even for him. There are limits to every man's
- baseness and cowardice. Moreover, his secret was known. To proclaim it
- himself was a more heroic escape than to let it be revealed with killing
- contempt by another. The two forces converged suddenly, and found their
- resultant in his outburst. It was characteristic of him that there should
- be two motives, though which one was the stronger it were hard to say—most
- likely revolt at the cynicism, for he was not a depraved man.
- </p>
- <p>
-Norma looked
- swiftly from one to the other.
- </p>
- <p>
-“What did you tell my mother a week ago?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie picked up Morland's crush-hat that lay on the table and thrust it
- into his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, that's enough, my dear good fellow. Don't talk about those horrible
- things. Mrs. Hardacre would like to be going. You had better see her home.
- Good-night.”
-</p>
- <p>
-He pushed him, as he spoke, gently towards Mrs. Hardacre, who
- was already moving towards the door. But Norma came up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I insist upon knowing,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, no,” said Jimmie, in an agitated voice. “Let the dead past bury its
- dead. Don't rake up old horrors.”
-</p>
- <p>
-Morland cleared himself away from Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My God! You are a good man. I've been an infernal blackguard. Everybody
- had better know. If Jimmie hadn't taken it upon himself, that madman would
- have shot me. He would have hit the right man. I wish to heaven he had.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma grew white.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And this is what you told my mother?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought I ought to,” said Morland, looking away from the anxious faces
- around him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You shouldn't have done it,” said Jimmie, in a low voice. He was bent
- like a guilty person.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma went to the door and opened it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Kindly see my mother into a cab.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Please take the brougham,” said Connie. “Norma and I will take a cab
- later.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Morland made a movement as if to speak to Jimmie. Norma intercepted him,
- waved her hand towards her mother, who stood motionless.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go. Please go,” she said in a constrained voice. “Take the brougham. She
- will catch cold while you are whistling for a cab—and you will be
- the sooner gone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hardacre, stunned by the utter disaster that she had brought about,
- mechanically obeyed Morland's gesture and passed through the open door,
- without looking at her daughter. As Morland passed her, he plucked up a
- little courage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We both lied for your sake,” he said; which might have been an apology or
- a tribute. Norma gave no sign that she had heard him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie followed them upstairs and opened the front door. He put out his
- hand to Morland, who took it and said “Good-night” in a shamefaced way.
- Mrs. Hardacre stepped into the brougham like a somnambulist. Morland did
- not accompany her. He had seen enough of Mrs. Hardacre for the rest of his
- life.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Jimmie went down to the studio, he saw Norma and Connie bending over
- a chair in the far corner. Aline had fainted.
- </p>
- <p>
- They administered what restoratives were to hand—water and Connie's
- smelling-salts—and took the girl up to her bedroom, where she was
- left in charge of Mrs. Deering. Jimmie and Norma returned to the studio.
- The preoccupation of tending Aline, whose joy in the utter vindication of
- her splendid faith had been too sudden a strain upon an overwrought
- nervous system, had been welcomed almost as a relief to the emotional
- tenseness. They had not spoken of the things that were uppermost.
- </p>
- <p>
- They sat down in their former places, without exchanging a remark. Jimmie
- took up his pipe from the table by his side, and knocked the ashes into
- the ash-tray and blew through it to clear it. Then he began to fill it
- from his old tobacco-pouch, clumsy as all covered pouches are and rough
- with faded clumps of moss-roses and forget-me-nots worked by Aline years
- before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why don't you go on with the sewing?” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- She waited a second or two before answering, and when she spoke did not
- trust herself to look at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ought to say something, I know,” she said in a low voice. “But there
- are things one can't talk of, only feel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We never need talk of them,” said Jimmie. “They are over and done with.
- Old, forgotten, far-off things now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are they? You don't understand. They will always remain. They make up
- your life. You are too big for such as me altogether. By rights I should
- be on my knees before you. Thank God, I did n't wait until I learned all
- this, but came to you in faith. I feel poor enough to hug that to myself
- as a virtue.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am very glad you believed in me,” said Jimmie, laying down the unlit
- pipe which he had been fondling. “I would n't be human if I did n't—but
- you must n't exaggerate. Exposure would have ruined Morland's career, and
- I thought it would go near breaking your heart. To me, an insignificant
- devil, what did it matter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did n't my love for you matter? Did n't all that you have suffered
- matter? Oh, don't minimise what you have done. I am afraid of you. Your
- thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways not my ways. You will always
- be among the stars while I am crawling about the earth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie rose hurriedly and fell at her feet, and took both her hands and
- placed them against his cheeks.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear,” he said, moved to his depths. “My dear. My wonderful,
- worshipped, God-sent dear. You are wrong—utterly wrong. I am only a
- poor fool of a man, as you will soon find out, whose one merit is to love
- you. I would sell my body and my soul for you. If I made a little
- sacrifice for the love of you, what have you done tonight for me—the
- sacrifice of all the splendour and grace of life?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The lies and the rottenness,” said Norma, with a shiver. “Did you
- comprehend my mother?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He took her hands from his face and kissed her fingers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear, those are the unhappy, far-off things. Let us forget them. They
- never happened. Only one thing in the world has ever happened. You have
- come to me, Norma,” he said softly, speaking her name for the first
- tremulous time, “Norma!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Their eyes met, and then their lips. The world stood still for a space.
- She sighed and looked at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will have to teach me many things,” she said. “You will have to begin
- at the very beginning.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXV—THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>VERY one knew that
- the marriage arranged between Morland King and Norma Hardacre would not
- take place. It was announced in the “Times” and “Morning Post” on the
- Tuesday morning; those bidden to the wedding received hurried messages,
- and a day or two later the wedding-gifts were returned to the senders, who
- stored them up for some happier pair. But the new engagement upon which
- Norma had entered remained a secret. Norma herself did not desire to
- complete the banquet of gossip she had afforded society, and Mrs. Hardacre
- was not anxious to fill to overflowing the cup of her own humiliation. The
- stricken lady maintained a discreet reserve. The lovers had quarrelled,
- Norma had broken off the match and would not be going out for some time.
- She even defied the duchess, who commanded an explicit statement of
- reasons. Her grace retorted severely that she ought to have brought her
- daughter up better, and signified that this was the second time Norma had
- behaved with scandalous want of consideration for her august convenience.
- “She shall not have the opportunity of doing it again. I dislike being
- mixed up in scandals,” said the duchess; and Mrs. Hardacre saw the gates
- of Wiltshire House and Chiltern Towers closed to her forever. But of the
- impossible painter wretch she spoke not a word, hoping desperately that in
- some mysterious fashion the God of her fathers would avert this crowning
- disgrace from them and would lead Norma forth again into the paths of
- decency and virtue. As for her husband, he stormily refused to speak or
- hear the outcast's name. He had done with her. She should never sleep
- again beneath the roof she had dishonoured. He would not allow her a
- penny. He would cut her out of his will. She had dragged him in the mud,
- and by heaven! she could go to the devil! It took much to rouse the
- passions of the feeble, mean-faced little man; but once they were roused,
- he had the snarling tenacity of the fox. Mrs. Hardacre did not tell him of
- Morland's confession and the rehabilitation of his rival. The memory of
- her stunning humiliation brought on a feeling akin to physical nausea. She
- strove to bury it deep down in her sub-consciousness, beneath all the
- other unhallowed memories. There were none quite so rank. On the other
- hand, her husband's vilification of the detested creature was a source of
- consolation which she had no desire to choke. Why should she deny herself
- this comfort. The supreme joy of vitriol throwing was not countenanced in
- her social sphere. At odd times she regretted that she was a lady.
- </p>
- <p>
- While the black fog of depression darkened Devonshire Place, in
- neighbouring parts of London the days were radiant. A thousand suns
- glorified the heavens and the breaths of a thousand springs perfumed the
- air. It was a period of exaggeration, unreality, a page out of a fairy
- tale lived and relived. Norma abandoned herself to the intoxication,
- heedless of the fog in Devonshire Place, and the decent grey of the world
- elsewhere. She refused to think or speculate. Rose veils shrouded the
- future; the present was a fantasy of delight. For material things, food,
- shelter, raiment, she had no concern. Connie fed and housed her, making
- her the thrice welcome guest, the beloved sister. From society she
- withdrew altogether. Visitors paid calls, odd people were entertained at
- meals, the routine of a wealthy woman's establishment proceeded in its
- ordinary course, and Norma's presence in the house remained unknown and
- unsuspected. She was there in hiding. The world was given to understand
- that she was in Cornwall. Even common life had thus its air of romance and
- mystery. Being as it were a fugitive, she had no engagements. There was a
- glorious incongruity in the position. She regarded the beginnings of the
- London season with the amused detachment of a disembodied spirit
- revisiting the scenes of which it once made a part. Morning, afternoon,
- and evening she was free—an exhilarating novelty. Nobody wanted to
- see her save Jimmie; save him she wanted to see nobody.
- </p>
- <p>
- They met every day—sometimes in the sitting-room on the ground floor
- which Connie had set apart for her guest's exclusive use, and sometimes in
- Jimmie's studio. Now and then, when the weather was fine, they walked
- together in sweet places unfrequented by the fashionable world, Regent's
- Park and Hampstead Heath, fresh woods and pastures new to Norma, who had
- heard of the heath vaguely as an undesirable common where the lower orders
- wore each other's hats and shied at cocoanuts. Its smiling loneliness and
- April beauty, seen perhaps through the artist's eyes, enchanted her.
- Jimmie pointed out its undulations; like a bosom, said he, swelling with
- the first breaths of pure air on its release from London.
- </p>
- <p>
- Most of all she loved to drive up to St. John's Wood after dinner and
- burst upon him unexpectedly. The new Bohemian freedom of it all was a part
- of the queer delicious life. She laughed in anticipation at his cry of
- delighted welcome. When she heard it, her eyes grew soft. To lift her veil
- and hang back her head to receive his kiss on her lips was an ever-new
- sensation. The intimacy had a bewildering sweetness. To complete it she
- threw aside gloves and jacket and unpinned her hat, a battered gilt Empire
- mirror over the long table serving her to guide the necessary touches to
- her hair. Although she did not repeat the little comedy of the shirt which
- had been inspired by the exaltation of a rare moment, yet she sat in
- Aline's chair, now called her own, and knitted at a silk tie she was
- making for him. She had learned the art from her aunt in Cornwall, and she
- brought the materials in a little black silk bag slung to her wrist. The
- housewifely avocation fitted in with the fairy tale. Jimmie smoked and
- talked, the most responsive and least tiring of companions. His allusive
- speech, that of the imaginative and cultured man, in itself brought her
- into a world different from the one she had left. His simplicity, his
- ignorance of the ways of women, his delight at the little discoveries she
- allowed him to make, gave it a touch of Arcadia. In passionate moments
- there was the unfamiliar, poetic, rhapsodic in his utterance which turned
- the world into a corner of heaven. And so the magic hours passed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do believe I have found a soul,” she remarked on one of these evenings,
- “and that's why I must be so immoderately happy. I'm like a child with a
- new toy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was unconscious of the instinctive, pitiless analysis of herself; and
- Jimmie, drunk with the wonder of her, did not heed the warning.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of their future life together they only spoke as happy lovers in the rosy
- mist shed about them by the veil. They dwelt in the glamour of the fairy
- tale, where the princess who marries the shepherd lives not only happy
- ever afterwards, but also delicately dressed and daintily environed, her
- chief occupation being to tie silk bows round the lambs' necks, and to
- serve to her husband the whitest of bread and the whitest of cheese with
- the whitest of hands. Their forecast of the future might have been an
- Idyll of Theocritus.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will be the inspiration of all my pictures, dear,” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will sit for you as a model, if I am good enough.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good enough!” Language crumbled into meaningless vocables before her
- infinite perfection. “I have had a little talent. You will give me
- genius.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will also give you your dinner.” She laughed adorably. “Do you know
- Connie told me I must learn to cook. I had my first lesson this morning in
- her kitchen—a most poetic way of doing sweetbreads. Do you like
- sweetbreads?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now I come to think of it, I do. Enormously. I wonder why Aline never has
- them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We'll have some—our first lunch—at home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you will cook them?” cried the enraptured man.
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded. “In a most becoming white apron. You'll see.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll be like a goddess taking her turn preparing the daily ambrosia for
- Olympus!” said Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- On another occasion they spoke of summer holidays. They would take a
- little cottage in the country. It would have honeysuckle over the porch,
- and beds of mignonette under the windows, and an old-fashioned garden full
- of stocks and hollyhocks and sunflowers. There would be doves and bees.
- They would go out early and come home with the dew on their feet. They
- would drink warm milk from the cow. They would go a hay-making. Norma's
- idea of the pastoral pathetically resembled that of the Petit Trianon.
- </p>
- <p>
- The magic of the present with its sincerity of passionate worship on the
- part of the man, and its satisfaction of a soul's hunger on the part of
- the woman, was in itself enough to blind their eyes to the possible prose
- of the future. Another interest, one of the sweetest of outside interests
- that can bind two lovers together, helped to fix their serious thoughts to
- the immediate hour. Side by side with their romance grew up another,
- vitally interwoven with it for a spell and now springing clear into
- independent life. The two children Aline and Tony Merewether had found
- each other again, and the fresh beauty of their young loves lit the deeper
- passion of the older pair with the light of spring sunrise. In precious
- little moments of confidence Aline opened to Norma her heart's dewy
- happiness, and what Norma in delicate honour could divulge she told to
- Jimmie, who in his turn had his little tale to bear. More and more was
- existence like the last page of a fairy book.
- </p>
- <p>
- The reconciliation of the younger folk had been a very simple matter. It
- was the doing of Connie Deering. The morning after Morland's confession
- she summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. He arrived wondering. She
- asked him point blank:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you still in love with Aline Marden or have you forgotten all about
- her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The young fellow declared his undying affection.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you aware that you have treated her shamefully?” she said severely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am the most miserable dog unhung,” exclaimed the youth. He certainly
- looked miserable, thin, and worried. He gave his view of the position.
- Connie's heart went out to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Suppose I told you that everything was cleared up and you could go to
- Aline with a light conscience?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should go crazy with happiness!” he cried, springing to his feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Aline deserves a sane husband. She is one in a thousand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is one in twenty thousand million!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There she goes, hand in hand with Jimmie Padgate. It's to tell you that
- I've asked you to come. I hope you'll let them both know you're aware of
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Satisfied that he was worthy of her confidence, she told him briefly what
- had occurred.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And now what are you going to do?” she asked, smiling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do? I'll go on my knees. I'll grovel at his feet. I'll ask him to make me
- a door-mat. I'll do any mortal thing Aline tells me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, go now and do your penance and be happy,” Connie said, holding out
- her hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know how I can thank you, Mrs. Deering,” he cried. “You are the
- most gracious woman that ever lived!”
- </p>
- <p>
- A few moments later an impassioned youth was speeding in a hansom cab to
- Friary Grove. But Connie, with the memory of his clear-cut, radiant young
- face haunting her, sighed. Chance decreed that the very moment should
- bring her a letter from Jimmie, written that morning, full of his wonder
- and gratitude. She sighed again, pathetically, foolishly, unreasonably
- feeling left out in the cold.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wonder whether it would do me good to cry,” she said, half aloud. But
- the footman entering with the announcement that the carriage which was to
- take her to her dressmaker was at the door, settled the question. She had
- to content herself with sighs.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tony Merewether did not go on his knees, as Aline had ordained; but he
- made his apology in so frank and manly a way that Jimmie forgave him at
- once. Besides, said he, what had he to forgive?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I feel like Didymus,” said Tony.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie laughed as he clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him out of the
- studio.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had better cultivate the feeling. He became a saint eventually. Aline
- will help to make you one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- If plain indication of another's infirmities can tend to qualify him for
- canonisation, Aline certainly justified Jimmie's statement. She did not
- confer her pardon so readily on the doubting disciple. His offence had
- been too rank. It was not merely a question of his saying a <i>credo</i>
- and then taking her into his arms. She exacted much penance before she
- permitted this blissful consummation. He had to woo and protest and humble
- himself exceedingly. But when she had reduced him to a proper state of
- penitence, she gave him plenary absolution and yielded to his kiss, as she
- had been yearning to do since the beginning of the interview. After that
- she settled down to her infinite delight. Nothing was lacking in the new
- rapturous scheme of existence. The glory of Jimmie was vindicated. Tony
- had come back to her. The bars to their marriage had vanished. Not only
- was Tony a man of substance with the legacy of eight thousand pounds that
- had been left him, and therefore able to support as many wives as the
- Grand Turk, but Jimmie no longer had to be provided for. The wonder of
- wonders had happened; she could surrender her precious charge with a free
- conscience and a heart bursting with gratitude.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus the happiness of each pair of lovers caught a reflection from that of
- the other, and its colour was rendered ever so little fictitious, unreal.
- The light of spring sunrise, exquisite though it is, invests things with a
- glamour which the light of noon dispels. The spectacle of the young
- romance unfolding itself before the eyes of Jimmie and Norma completed
- their delicious sense of the idyllic; but the illusive atmosphere thus
- created caused them to view their own romance in slightly false
- perspective. Essentially it was a drama of conflict—themselves
- against the pettinesses and uglinesses of the world; apparently it was a
- pastoral among spring flowers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Another cause that contributed to Norma's unconcern for the future was her
- exaggerated sense of the man's loftiness of soul. Instead of viewing him
- as a lovable creature capable of the chivalrous and the heroic and
- afforded by a happy fate an opportunity of displaying these qualities—for
- the opportunity makes the hero as much as it does the thief—she
- grovelled whole-sexedly before an impossible idol imbued with impossible
- divinity. While knitting silk ties and devising with him the preparation
- of foodstuffs (which she did not realise he would not be able to afford)
- she was conscious of a grace in the trifling, all the more precious
- because of these little earthly things midway between the empyrean and the
- abyss which they respectively inhabited. In the deeply human love of each
- was a touch of the fantastic. To Jimmie she was the Princess of
- Wonderland, the rare Lady of Dreams; to Norma he appeared little less than
- a god.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was talking one evening with Connie Deering in a somewhat exalted
- strain of her own unworthiness and Jimmie's condescension, when the little
- lady broke into an unwonted expression of impatience.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear child, every foolish woman is a valet to her hero. You would like
- to clean his boots, wouldn't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Connie,” cried Norma, alarmed, “whatever is the matter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think you two had better get married as quickly as possible. It is
- getting on one's nerves.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma stiffened. “I am sorry—” she began.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie interrupted her. “Don't be silly. There's nothing for you to be
- sorry about.” She brightened and laughed, realising the construction Norma
- had put upon her words. “I am only advising you for your good. I had half
- an hour's solitary imprisonment with Theodore Weever this afternoon. He
- always takes it out of me. It's like having a bath with an electric eel.
- He called this afternoon to get news of you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of me?” asked Norma serenely, settling herself in the depths of her
- chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is like an eel,” Connie exclaimed with a shiver. “He's the
- coldest-blooded thing I've ever come across. I told you about the dinner
- at the Carlton, did n't I? It appears that he reckoned on my doing just
- what I rushed off to do. It makes me so angry!” she cried with feminine
- emphasis on the last word. “Of course he did n't tell me so brutally—he
- has a horrid snake-like method of insinuation. He had counted on my
- getting at the truth which he had guessed and so stopping the marriage.
- 'I'm a true prophet,' he said. 'I knew that marriage would never come
- off.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So he told me,” said Norma. “Do you know, there must be some goodness in
- him to have perceived the goodness in Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe he's a disembodied spirit without either goodness or badness—a
- sort of non-moral monster.” Connie was given to hyperbole in her likes and
- dislikes. She continued her tale. He had come to ask her advice. Now that
- Miss Hardacre was free, did Mrs. Deering think he might press his suit
- with advantage? His stay in Europe was drawing to a close. He would like
- to take back with him to New York either Miss Hardacre or a definite
- refusal.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'You certainly cannot take back Miss Hardacre,' I said, 'because she is
- going to marry Jimmie Padgate.' I thought this would annihilate him. But
- do you think he moved a muscle? Not he.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did he say?” asked Norma, lazily amused.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'This is getting somewhat monotonous,'” replied Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma laughed. “Nothing else?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He began to talk about theatres. He has the most disconcerting way of
- changing the conversation. But on leaving he sent his congratulations to
- you, and said that you were always to remember that you were the wife
- specially designed for him by Providence.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You dear thing,” said Norma, “and did that get on your nerves?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Would n't it get on yours?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma shook her head. “I have n't any nerves for things to get on. People
- don't have nerves when they're happy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And are you happy, really, really happy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am deliciously happy,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- She went to bed laughing at the discomfiture of Weever and the remoteness
- of him and of the days last summer when she first met him among the
- Monzies' disreputable crowd. He belonged to a former state of existence.
- Jimmie's portrait, which had been put for two or three reasons in her
- bedroom, caught her attention. She looked at it with a dreamy smile for a
- long time, and then turned to the glass. Made curiously happy by what she
- saw there, she kissed her fingers to the portrait.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is the better prophet,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Connie's advice as to the desirability of a speedy marriage remained
- in her mind. Jimmie with characteristic diffidence had not yet suggested
- definite arrangements. She was gifted with so much insight as to apprehend
- the reasons for his lack of initiative. His very worship of her, his
- overwhelming sense of goddess-conferred boon in her every smile and
- condescension, precluded the asking of favours. So far it was she who had
- arranged their daily life. It was she who had established the custom of
- the studio visits, and she had taken off her hat and had inaugurated the
- comedy of the domestic felicities of her own accord. She treasured this
- worship in her heart as a priceless thing, all the more exquisite because
- it lay by the side of the knowledge of her own unworthiness. The sacrifice
- of maidenly modesty in proposing instead of coyly yielding was at once a
- delicious penance for hypocritical assumption of superiority, and a salve
- to her pride as a beautiful and desirable woman. It was with a glorious
- sureness of relation, therefore, that she asked him the next day if he had
- thought of a date for their marriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is no reason for a long engagement that I can see,” she added, with
- a blush which she felt, and was tremulously happy at feeling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was waiting for you to say, dear,” he replied, his arm around her. “I
- dared not ask.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She laughed the deep laugh of a woman's happiness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knew you would say that,” she murmured. “Let it be some time next
- month.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXVI—EARTH AGAIN
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>NE day Norma
- received a polite intimation from her bankers that her account was
- overdrawn. This had happened before but on previous occasions she had
- obtained from her father an advance on her allowance and the unpleasant
- void at the bank had been filled. Now she realised with dismay that the
- allowance had been cut off, and that no money could come into her
- possession until the payment of the half-yearly dividend from the concern
- in which her small private fortune was invested. She looked in her purse
- and found five shillings. On this she would have to live for three weeks.
- Her money was in the hands of trustees, wisely tied up by the worldly aunt
- from whom she had inherited it, so that she could not touch the capital.
- While she was contemplating the absurdity of the position, the maid
- brought up a parcel from a draper's on which there was three and eleven
- pence halfpenny to pay. She surrendered four of her shillings, and
- disconsolately regarded the miserable one that remained. The position had
- grown even more preposterous. She actually needed money. She had not even
- the amount of a cab-fare to Friary Grove. She would not have it for three
- weeks.
- </p>
- <p>
- Preposterous or not, the fact was plain, and demanded serious
- consideration. She would have to borrow. The repayment of the loan and the
- overdraft would reduce the half-yearly dividend. A goodly part of the
- remainder would be required to meet an outstanding milliners' bill, not
- included in the bridal trousseau for which her father was to pay. The sum
- in simple arithmetic frightened her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am poverty-stricken,” she said to Connie, to whom she confided her
- difficulties.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie blotted the cheque that was to provide for immediate wants, and
- laughed sympathetically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll have to learn to be economical, dear. I believe it's quite easy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You mean I must go in omnibuses and things?” said Norma, vaguely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And not order so many hats and gowns.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see,” said Norma, folding up the cheque.
- </p>
- <p>
- With money again in her pocket, she felt lighter of heart, but she knew
- that she had stepped for a moment out of fairyland into the grey world of
- reality. The first experience was unpleasant. It left a haunting dread
- which made her cling closer to Jimmie in the embrace of their next
- meeting. It was a relief to get back into the Garden of Enchantment and
- leave sordid things outside. Wilfully she kept the conversation from
- serious discussion of their marriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- When next she had occasion to go to the studio, she remembered the
- necessity of economy, and took the St. John's Wood omnibus. As a general
- rule the travellers between Baker Street station and the Swiss Cottage are
- of a superior class, being mostly the well-to-do residents in the
- neighbourhood and their visitors; but, by an unlucky chance, this
- particular omnibus was crowded, and Norma found herself wedged between a
- labouring man redolent of stale beer and bad tobacco, and a fat Jewish
- lady highly flavoured with musk. A youth getting out awkwardly knocked her
- hat awry with his elbow. It began to rain—a smart April shower. The
- wet umbrella of a new arrival dripped on her dress while he stood waiting
- for a place to be made for him opposite. The omnibus stopped at a
- shelterless corner, the nearest point to Friary Grove. She descended to
- pitiless rain and streaming pavements and a five minutes' walk, for all of
- which her umbrella and shoes were inadequate. She vowed miserably a
- life-long detestation of omnibuses. She would never enter one again. Cabs
- were the only possible conveyances for people who could not afford to keep
- their carriage. She fought down the dread that she might not be able to
- afford cabs. The Almighty, who had obviously intended her to drive in
- cabs, would certainly see that His intentions were carried out.
- </p>
- <p>
- She arrived at the studio, wet, bedraggled, and angry; but Jimmie's
- exaggerated concern disarmed her. It could not have been less had she
- wandered for miles and been drenched to the skin and chilled to the bone.
- He sent Aline to fetch her daintiest slippers to replace the damp shoes,
- established the storm-driven sufferer in the big leathern armchair with
- cushions at her back and hassocks at her feet, made a roaring fire and
- insisted on her swallowing cherry brandy, a bottle of which he kept in the
- house in case of illness. In the unwonted luxury of being loved and petted
- and foolishly fussed over, Norma again forgot her troubles. Jimmie
- consoled the specific grievance by saying magniloquently that omnibuses
- were the engines of the devil and vehicles of the wrath to come. With a
- drugged economic conscience she went home in a cab. But the conscience
- awoke later, somewhat suffering, and she recognised that her exasperated
- vow had been vain. Jimmie was a poor man. She recalled to mind his words
- on the night of their engagement, and apprehended their significance. The
- trivial incident of the omnibus was a key. The abandonment of cabs and
- carriages meant the surrender of countless luxuries that went therewith.
- Her own two hundred a year would not greatly raise the scale of living.
- She was to be a poor man's wife; would have to wear cheap dresses, eat
- plain food, keep household books in which pennies were accounted for; hers
- would be the humdrum existence of the less prosperous middle class. The
- first pang of doubt frightened her for a while and left her ashamed. Noble
- revolt followed. Had she not renounced the pomps and vanities of a world
- which she scorned? Had not this wonderful baptism of love brought New
- Birth? She had been reborn, a braver, purer woman; she had been initiated
- into life's deeper mysteries; her soul had been filled with joy. Of what
- count were externals?
- </p>
- <p>
- The next evening Connie Deering gave a small dinner-party in honour of the
- two engagements. Old Colonel Pawley, charged under pain of her perpetual
- displeasure not to reveal the secret of Norma's whereabouts, was invited
- to balance the sexes. He was delighted to hear of Norma's romantic
- marriage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can still present the fan,” he said, rubbing his soft palms together;
- “but I'm afraid I shall have to write a fresh set of verses.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had better give Norma a cookery-book,” laughed Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have a beautiful one of my own in manuscript which no publisher will
- take up,” sighed Colonel Pawley.
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, who had been wont to speak with drastic contempt of the amiable old
- warrior, welcomed him so cordially that he was confused. He was not
- accustomed to exuberant demonstrations of friendship from the beautiful
- Miss Hardacre. At dinner, sitting next her, he enjoyed himself enormously.
- Instead of freezing his geniality with sarcastic remarks, she lured him on
- to the gossip in which his heart delighted. When Connie rallied her,
- later, on her flirtation with the old man, she laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Remember I've been a prisoner here. He's one of the familiar faces from
- outside.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Although jestingly, she had spoken with her usual frankness, and her
- confession was more deeply significant than she was aware at the time. She
- had welcomed Colonel Pawley not for what he was, but for what he
- represented. As soon as she was alone she realised the moral lapse, and
- rebuked herself severely. She was sentimental enough to hang by a ribbon
- around her neck the simple engagement ring which Jimmie had given her, and
- to sleep with it as a talisman against evil thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- She spent the following evening at the studio, heroically enduring the
- discomforts of the detested omnibus. When she descended she drew a breath
- of relief, but felt the glow that comes from virtuous achievement. Jimmie
- was informed of this practice in the art of economy. He regarded her
- wistfully. There were times when he too fought with doubts,—not of
- her loyalty, but of his own honesty in bringing her down into his humble
- sphere. Even now, accustomed as he was to the adored sight of her there,
- he could not but note the contrast between herself and her surroundings.
- She brought with her in every detail of her person, in every detail of her
- dress, in every detail of her manner, an atmosphere of a dainty, luxurious
- life pathetically incongruous with the shabby little house. He had not
- even the wherewithal to call in decorators and upholsterers and make the
- little house less shabby. So when she spoke of practising economy, he
- looked at her wistfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your eyes are open, dear, are n't they?” he said. “You really do realise
- what a sacrifice you are making in marrying me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By not marrying you,” she replied, “I should have gained the world and
- lost my own soul. Now I am doing the reverse.”'
- </p>
- <p>
- He kissed her finger-tips lover-wise. “I am afraid I must be the devil's
- advocate, and say that the loss and gain need not be so absolutely
- differentiated. I want you to be happy. My God! I want you to be happy,”
- he burst out with sudden passion, “and if you found that things were
- infinitely worse than what you had expected, that you had married me in
- awful ignorance—”
- </p>
- <p>
- She covered his lips with the palm of her hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't go on. You pain me. You make me despise myself. I have counted the
- cost, such as it is. Did I not tell you from the first that I would go
- with you in rags and barefoot through the world? Could woman say more?
- Don't you believe me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I believe you,” he replied, bowing his head. “You are a
- great-hearted woman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She unfastened her hat, skewered it through with the pins, and gave it him
- to put down.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I remember my Solomon,” she said, trying to laugh lightly, for there had
- been a faint but disconcerting sense of effort in her protestation.
- “'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred
- there with.' Besides, you forget another important matter. I am now a
- homeless, penniless outcast. I am not sacrificing anything. It is very
- kind of you to offer to take me in and shelter me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “These are sophistries,” said Jimmie, with a laugh. “You gave up all on my
- account.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I am really penniless,” she said, ignoring his argument. “<i>Anch' io
- son pittore</i>. I too have felt the pinch of poverty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She revealed her financial position—the overdraft at the bank, the
- shilling between herself and starvation. Were it not for Connie, she would
- have to sing in the streets. She alluded thoughtlessly, with her class's
- notions as to the value of money, to her “miserable two hundred a year.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Two hundred a year!” cried Jimmie. “Why, that's a fortune!”
- </p>
- <p>
- His tone struck a sudden chill through her. He genuinely regarded the
- paltry sum as untold riches. She struggled desperately down to his point
- of view.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps it may come in useful for us,” she said lamely.
-</p>
- <p>
-“I should think
- it will! Why did n't you tell me before?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you never thought I might have a little of my own?” she asked with a
- touch of her old hardness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Jimmie. “Of course not.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't see any 'of course' in the matter. The ordinary man would have
- speculated—it would have been natural—almost common-sense.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie threw up his hands deprecatingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been too much dazzled by the glorious gift of yourself to think of
- anything else you might bring. I am an impossible creature, as you will
- find out. I ought to have considered the practical side.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh! I am very glad you did n't!” she exclaimed. “Heaven forbid you should
- have the mercenary ideas of the average man. It is beautiful to have
- thought of me only.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid I was thinking of myself, my dear,” said he. “I must get out
- of the way of it, and think of the two of us. Now let us be severely
- business-like. You have taken a load off my mind. There are a thousand
- things you can surround yourself with that I imagined you would lack.” He
- took her two hands and swung them backwards and forwards. “Now I shan't
- regard myself as such a criminal in asking you to marry me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think two hundred a year a fortune, Jimmie?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts perhaps not—but everything is
- relative.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Everything?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her heart spoke suddenly, demanding relief. Their eyes met.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, dear,” he said. “One thing at least is absolute.” An interlude of
- conviction succeeded doubt. She felt that she had never loved him so much
- as at that moment. It was more with the quickly lit passion of the
- awakened woman than with the ardour of a girl that she clasped her hands
- round his head and drew it down to their kiss. She had an awful need of
- the assurance of the absolute.
- </p>
- <p>
- It nerved her to face a discussion on ways and means with Aline, whom
- Jimmie at her request summoned from demure sewing in her little
- drawing-room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are right,” she had said, referring to his former remark. “We ought
- to be severely business-like. I must begin to learn things. You don't know
- how hopelessly ignorant I am.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline came down to give the first lesson in elementary housekeeping. She
- brought with her a pile of little black books which she spread out at the
- end of the long table. The two girls sat side by side. Jimmie hovered
- about them for a while, but was soon dismissed by Aline to a distant part
- of the studio, where, having nothing wherewith to occupy himself, he
- proceeded to make a charcoal sketch of the two intent faces.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline, proud at being able to display her housewifely knowledge before
- appreciative eyes, opened her books, and expounded them with a charming
- business air. These were the receipts for the last twelve months; these
- the general disbursements. They were balanced to a halfpenny.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course anything I can't account for, I put down to the item 'Jimmie,'”
- she said naively. “He <i>will</i> go to the money-drawer and help himself
- without letting me know. Is n't it tiresome of him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma smiled absently, wrinkling her brows over the unfamiliar figures.
- She had no grasp of the relation the amounts of the various items bore to
- one another, but they all seemed exceedingly small.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose it's necessary to make up this annual balance?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course. Otherwise you would n't know how much you could apportion to
- each item. Jimmie says it's nonsense to keep books; but if you listen to
- Jimmie, you 'll have the brokers in in a month.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Brokers?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline laughed at her perplexed look. “Yes, to seize the furniture in
- payment of debt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The main financial facts having been stated, Aline came to detail. These
- were the weekly books from the various tradesmen. She showed a typical
- week's expenditure.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about the fishmonger?” asked Norma, noting an obvious omission.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fish is too expensive to have regularly,” Aline explained, “and so I
- don't have an account. When I buy any, I pay for it at once, in the shop.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When <i>you</i> buy it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, yes. You'll find it much better to go and choose things for yourself
- than let them call for orders. Then you can get exactly what you want,
- instead of what suits the tradesman's convenience. You see, I go to the
- butcher and look round, and say 'I want a piece of that joint,' and of
- course he does as he's told. It seems horrid to any one not accustomed to
- it to go into a butcher's shop, I know; but really it's not unpleasant,
- and it's quite amusing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But why should n't your housekeeper do the marketing?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, she does sometimes,” Aline admitted; “but Hannah is n't a good buyer.
- She can't <i>judge</i> meat and things, you know, and she is apt to be
- wasteful over vegetables.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't bring the—the meat and things—home with you in a
- basket, do you?” asked Norma, with a nervous laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie, interested in his sketch, had not listened to the conversation,
- which had been carried on in a low tone. The last words, however, pitched
- higher, caught his ear. He jumped to his feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Norma carry home meat in a basket! Good God! What on earth has the child
- been telling you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never said anything of the kind, Jimmie,” cried Aline, indignantly.
- “You needn't bring home anything unless you like; our tradesmen are most
- obliging.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma pushed back her chair from the table and rose and again laughed
- nervously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am afraid I can't learn all the science of domestic economy in one
- lesson. I must do it by degrees.” She passed her hand across her forehead.
- “I'm not used to figures, you see.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie looked reproachfully at Aline. “Those horrid little black books!”
- he exclaimed. “They are enough to give any one a headache. For heaven's
- sake, have nothing to do with them, dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the brokers will come in,” said Norma, with an uncertain catch in her
- voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They are Aline's pet hobgoblins,” laughed Jimmie. “My dear child,”
- pointing to the books, “please take those depressing records of wasted
- hours away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When they were alone, he said to Norma very tenderly, “I am afraid my
- little girl has frightened you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She started at the keenness of his perception and flushed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—not frightened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She is so proud of the way she runs her little kingdom here,” he said;
- “so proud to show you how it is done. You must forgive her. She is only a
- child, my dearest, and forgets that these household delights of hers may
- come as shocks to you. I shall not allow you to have these worries that
- she loves to concern her head about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then who will have them?” she asked, with her hand on the lapel of his
- jacket. “You? That would be absurd. If I am your wife, I must keep your
- house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear,” said Jimmie, kissing her, “if we love each other, there will be
- no possibility of worries. I believe in God in a sort of way, and He has
- not given you to me to curse and wither your life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You could only bless and sanctify it,” she murmured.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not I, dear; but our love.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Soothed, she raised a smiling face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But still, I'll have to keep house. Do you think I would let you go to
- the butcher's? What would Aline say if you made such a proposal?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She would peremptorily forbid him to take my orders,” he replied,
- laughing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sure I should,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was growing late. She glanced at the wheezy tilted old Dutch clock in
- the corner, and spoke of departure. She reflected for a moment on the
- means of home-getting. To her lowered spirits the omnibus loomed like a
- lumbering torture-chamber. The consolation of a cab seemed cowardice. An
- inspiration occurred to her. She would walk; perhaps he would accompany
- her to Bryanston Square. He was enraptured at the suggestion. But could
- she manage the distance?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should like to try. I am a good walker—and when we are outside,”
- she added softly, “we can talk a little of other matters.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a mild spring night, and the quiet stars shone benignantly upon
- them as they walked arm in arm, and talked of “other matters.” As she had
- needed a little while before the assurance of the absolute, so now she
- craved the spirituality of the man himself, the inner light of faith in
- the world's beauty, the sweetness, the courage—all that indefinable
- something in him which raised him, and could alone raise her, above the
- terrifying things of earth. She clung to his arm in a pathos of yearning
- for him to lead her upward and teach her the things of the spirit. Only
- thus lay her salvation.
- </p>
- <p>
- He, clean, simple soul, lost in the splendour of their love, expounding,
- as it chanced, his guileless philosophy of life and his somewhat
- childishly pagan religious convictions, was far from suspecting the battle
- into which he was being called to champion the side of righteousness. He
- went to sleep that night the most blissfully happy of men. Norma lay
- awake, a miserable woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXVII—A DINNER OF HERBS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>HE loved him. Of
- that there was no doubt. To her he was the man of men. The half angel,
- half fool of her original conception had melted into an heroic figure
- capable of infinite tendernesses. The lingering barbaric woman in her
- thrilled at the memory of him contemptuously facing death before the
- madman's revolver. Her higher nature was awed at the perfect heroism of
- his sacrifice. She knelt at his feet, recognising the loftier soul. Sex
- was stirred to the depths when his arms were about her and his kiss was on
- her lips. In lighter relations he was the perfect companion. For all her
- vacillation, let that be remembered: she loved him. All of her that was
- worth the giving he had in its plenitude.
- </p>
- <p>
- The days which followed her initiation into domestic economy were days of
- alternating fear and shame and scornful resolution. She lost grip of
- herself. The proud beauty curving a contumelious lip at the puppet show of
- life was a creature of the past. Set the proudest and most self-sufficing
- of women naked in what assembly you please, and she will crouch, helpless,
- paralysed, in the furthest corner. Some such denudation of the moral woman
- had occurred in the case of Norma Hardacre. The old garments were stripped
- from her. She was bewildered, terrified, no longer endowed with
- personality.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sometimes despising herself and resolved to perform her manifest duty, she
- sought other lessons from Aline. They ended invariably in dismay. Once she
- learned that Jimmie had never had a banking account. The money was kept in
- a drawer of which Jimmie and Aline had each a key. On occasions the drawer
- had been empty. Another lesson taught her that certain shops in the
- neighbourhood were to be avoided as being too expensive; that cream was
- regarded as a luxury, and asparagus as an impossible extravagance. Every
- new fact in the economy of a poor household caused her to shiver with
- apprehension. All was so trivial, so contemptibly unimportant, and yet it
- grew to be a sordid barrier baffling her love. She loathed the base
- weakness of her nature. It was degrading to feel such repulsion.
- </p>
- <p>
- One evening Connie Deering was going to a Foreign Office reception, and
- came down an enchanting vision in a new gown from Paquin and exhibited
- herself to Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think it's rather a success. Don't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma assented somewhat listlessly, but to please her friend inspected the
- creation and listened to her chatter. She was feeling lonely and
- dispirited. At Aline's entreaty she had persuaded Jimmie to go with Tony
- Merewether to the Langham Sketch Club, thus showing himself, for the first
- time since the scandal, among his old associates. For her altruism she
- paid the penalty of a dull evening. Their visits to each other were her
- sole occupation now, all that was left in life to interest her. In moments
- of solitude she began to feel the appalling narrowness of the circle in
- which she was caged. Reading tired instead of refreshing her. She had been
- accustomed to men and women rather than to books, to the sight of many
- faces, to the constant change of scene. When she speculated on employment
- for future solitary hours, she thought ruefully of recuffing shirts.
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie apologised for leaving her, hoped she would manage to amuse
- herself. Norma, who had made strenuous efforts to hide the traces of
- tumult, returned a smiling answer. Connie, quite deceived, put an arm
- round her waist and said suddenly in her bright, teasing way:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now don't you wish you were coming too?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, staggered at the point-blank question, was mistress enough of
- herself to observe the decencies of reply, but when Connie had gone, she
- sat down on the sofa and stared in front of her. She did wish she were
- going with Connie. She had been wishing vaguely, half-consciously all the
- evening. Now the wish was the pain of craving. It came upon her like the
- craving of the alcoholic subject for drink—this sudden longing for
- the glitter, the excitement, the whirl of the life she had renounced. Her
- indictment of it seemed unreal, the confused memory of a brain-sick mood.
- It was her world. She had not cut herself free. All the fibres of her body
- seemed to be rooted in it, and she was being drawn thither by irresistible
- desire. The many, many people, the diamonds, the brilliance, the flattery,
- the envy, the very atmosphere heavy with many perfumes—she saw and
- felt it all; panted for it, yearned for it. That never, never again would
- she take up her birthright was impossible. That she should stand
- forevermore in the humble street outside the gates of that dazzling,
- wonderful, kaleidoscopic world was unthinkable.
- </p>
- <p>
- She remembered her talk with Morland at the Duchess of Wiltshire's
- reception at the end of the last season, her shiver at the idea of a life
- of poverty; was it a premonition? She remembered the blessed sense of
- security when she had looked round the splendid scene and felt that she
- and it were indissoluble parts of the same scheme of things. A crust and
- heel of cheese as Jimmie's wife had crossed her mind then as a grotesque
- fantasy; the air of that brilliant gathering was the breath of her being.
- </p>
- <p>
- But now the grotesque fancy was to be the reality; the other was to become
- the shadow of a dream. No yearning or panting could restore it. The
- impossible was the inevitable. The unthinkable was the commonplace. She
- had made her choice deliberately, irrevocably. She had lost the whole
- world to gain her own soul. In the despair of her mood she questioned the
- worth of the sacrifice. The finality of the choice oppressed her. If at
- this eleventh hour she could still have the opportunity of the heroic—if
- still the gates of the world were open to her, she would have had a
- stimulus to continued nobility. The world and the passionate love for the
- perfect man—which would she choose? Her exaltation would still have
- swept her to the greater choice. Of, this she was desperately aware. But
- the gates were shut. She had already chosen. The heroic moment had gone.
- The acceptance of conditions was now mere uninspired duty. She gave way to
- unreason.
- </p>
- <p>
- “O God! Why cannot I have both—my own love and my own life?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The tears she shed calmed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next day she felt ill from the strain, paying the highly bred woman's
- penalty of nervous break-down. Connie Deering noted the circles beneath
- her eyes and the pinched nostrils. Norma casually mentioned a night's
- neuralgia. It would pass off during the day. She refused to be doctored.
- She would pay a visit to Jimmie before lunch. The fresh air would do her
- good.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The fresh air and Jimmie,” laughed her friend. “You are the most
- beautifully in love young woman I have ever met.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma started on her visit, walking fast. At Baker Street station it began
- to rain. She took the penitential omnibus; but her thoughts were too
- anxious to concern themselves with its discomforts. Besides, it was almost
- empty. The night had brought counsel. She would go to Jimmie and be her
- true self, frank and unsparing. With a touch of her old scorn she had
- resolved to confess unreservedly all the meanness and cowardice of which
- she had of late been guilty. She would bare to him the soon spotted soul
- and crave his cleansing. He would understand, pardon, and purify. Perhaps,
- when he knew all, he would be able to devise some new scheme of existence.
- At any rate, she would no longer receive his kisses with a lie in her
- heart. She loved him too ardently. He should know what she was, what were
- her needs, her limitations. The meeting would be a crisis in their lives.
- Out of it would come reconstruction on some unshakable basis. Up to a
- certain point she reasoned; beyond it, the pathetic unreason of a woman
- drifted rudderless.
- </p>
- <p>
- It had stopped raining when she left the omnibus and started on the short
- walk from the corner to Friary Grove. At the familiar gate her heart
- already seemed lighter; she opened it, mounted the front steps, and rang.
- The middle-aged servant, minus cap and with thin untidy hair, in a soiled
- print dress, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow exposing red coarse arms,
- was the first shock to Norma when the door opened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Both the Master and Miss Aline are out, Miss,” said Hannah, with a
- good-natured smile. “He has gone into town on business, and Miss Aline,
- went out a little while ago with her young man. But they'll be back for
- lunch. Won't you come in and wait, Miss?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma, vaguely resenting the familiar address of the servant and her
- slatternly appearance, hesitated for a moment before deciding to enter.
- Hannah showed her into the drawing-room and retired. It was a small dark
- room looking on to the back. Part of it had been cut off when the house
- had been altered, so as to construct the studio staircase, which contained
- one of the original windows. Norma felt strangely ill at ease in the room.
- The prim, cheap furniture, the threadbare carpet, the flimsy girlish
- contrivances at decoration, gave the place an air of shabby gentility. The
- gilt mirror was starred with spots and had a crack across the corner. Some
- of Jimmie's socks and underwear lay on the table for mending. They were
- much darned, and fresh holes could not fail to meet the eye that rested
- but momentarily on the pile. To mend these would in the future be her
- duty. She took up an undervest shrinkingly and shook it out; then folded
- it again and closed her eyes.... She could not wait there: the gloom
- depressed her. The studio would be brighter and more familiar. She went
- downstairs. Nothing in the room she knew so well was changed, yet it
- seemed to wear a different aspect. The homely charm had vanished. Here,
- too, shabbiness and poverty stared at her. The morning light streaming
- through the great high window showed pitilessly the cracks and stains and
- missing buttons of the old leathern suite, and the ragged holes in the
- squares of old carpet laid upon the boards. It was a mere bleak workshop,
- not a room for human habitation. The pictures on the walls and easels
- ceased to possess decorative or even intimate value. The large picture of
- the faun that had exercised so great an influence upon her had been
- despatched to its purchaser, and in its place was a hopeless gap.
- </p>
- <p>
- She sat down in her accustomed chair, and once more strove to realise the
- future. There would be children who would need her care. On herself would
- all the sordid burdens fall. She saw herself a soured woman, worn with the
- struggle to make ends meet, working with her hands at menial tasks. The
- joy of Life! She laughed mirthlessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- She rose, walked restlessly about the studio, longing for Jimmie to come
- and exorcise the devils that possessed her. A little sharp cry of distress
- escaped her lips. The place echoed like a vault, and she felt awfully
- alone. In her nervous tension she could bear it no longer. She went up the
- stairs again into the bare hall. On the pegs hung two or three discoloured
- hats and an old coat. Scarce knowing whither she went, she entered the
- dining-room. Luncheon had been laid. A freak of destiny had reproduced the
- meal of which Morland had spoken at Wiltshire House and of which last
- night had revived the memory: a scrag end of cold boiled mutton, blackened
- and shapeless, with the hard suet round about it; a dried-up heel of
- yellow American cheese; the half of a cottage loaf. The table-cloth—it
- was Friday—was stained with a week's meals. It was coarse in
- texture, old and thin and darned. The enamel on the plates was cracked,
- the hundred tiny fissures showing up dark brown. The plate on the forks
- had worn off in places, disclosing the yellowish metal beneath. The
- tumblers were thick and common, of glass scarcely transparent. She stared
- helplessly at the table. Never in her life had she seen such preparations
- for a meal. To the woman always daintily fed, daintily environed, it
- seemed squalor unspeakable.
- </p>
- <p>
- She shrank back into the hall, pressed her hands to her eyes, looked
- round, as if to search for some refuge. The stairs met her eye. She had
- never seen what lay above the ground floor—except once, on the
- memorable evening when Aline had fainted. Suddenly madness seized her—an
- insane craving to spy out the whole nakedness of the house. The worn
- stair-carpet ended at the first landing. Then bare boards. The door of the
- bathroom was wide open. She peeked in. The ceiling was blackened with gas;
- the bath cracked and stained; the appointments as bare as those in a
- workhouse. Her glance fell upon a battered tin dish holding an
- uncompromising cube of yellow soap with hard sharp edges. She withdrew her
- head and shut the door hurriedly. Another door stood ajar. She pushed it
- open and entered. It was the front bedroom—inhabited by Jimmie. The
- thought that it would be her own, which a fortnight before might have
- clothed her in delicious confusion, chilled her to the bone. Bare boards
- again; a strip of oil-cloth by the narrow cheap iron bedstead; a painted
- deal table with a little mirror and the humblest of toilette equipments
- laid upon it; a painted deal chest of drawers with white handles; a
- painted deal wash-stand; a great triangular bit broken out of the mouth of
- the ewer.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was poverty—grinding, sordid, squalid poverty. From the one
- dishevelled, slatternly, middle-aged servant to the cheap paper peeling
- off the wall in the bedrooms, all she had seen was poverty. The gathering
- terror of it burst like a thunderstorm above her head. Her courage failed
- her utterly. Like a creature distracted, she rushed downstairs and fled
- from the house. She walked homewards with an instinctive sense of
- direction. Afterwards she had little memory of the portion of the road she
- traversed on foot. She moved in a shuddering nightmare. All the love in
- the world could not shed a glamour over the nakedness of the existence
- that had now been revealed to her in its entire crudity. She could not
- face it. Other women of gentle birth had forsaken all and followed the men
- they loved; they had loved peasants and had led great-heartedly the
- peasant's life. They had qualities of soul that she lacked. Hideously
- base, despicably cowardly she knew herself to be. It was her nature. She
- could not alter. The world of graceful living was her world. In the other
- she would die. He had warned her. The gipsy faith in Providence had made
- him regard as a jest what would be to her a sordid shift, an intolerable
- ugliness, stripping life of its beauty. The passion-flower could not
- thrive in the hedge with the dog-rose. It was true—mercilessly true.
- The craving of last night awoke afresh, imperiously insistent. She walked
- blindly, tripped, and nearly fell. A subconscious self hailed a passing
- hansom and gave the address.
- </p>
- <p>
- What would become of her she knew not. She thought wildly of suicide as
- the only possible escape. From her own world she was outcast. Its gates
- were barred with gold and opened but to golden keys. She was penniless. In
- this other world she would die. Love could not prevent her starving on its
- diet of herbs. She clung to life, to the stalled ox, and recked little of
- the hatred; but at the banquet she no longer had a seat. She had said she
- would follow him in rags and barefoot over the earth. She had not fingered
- the rags when she had made the senseless vow; she had not tried her tender
- feet on the stones. She could have shrieked with terror at the prospect.
- There was no way out but death.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Garden of Enchantment faded from her mind like a forgotten dream. The
- sweet Arcadian make-believe alone rose up in ironical mockery, a scathing
- memory which seemed to flay the living heart of her. She sat huddled
- together in a corner of the cab, tortured and desperate. On either hand
- hung the doom of death. In the one case it would be lingering: the soul
- would die first; the man she loved would be tied to a living corpse; she
- would be a devastating curse to him instead of a blessing. In the other
- she could leave him in the fulness of their unsullied love. The years that
- the locust hath eaten would not stretch an impassable waste between them.
- In his sorrow there would be the imperishable sense of beauty. And for
- herself the quick end were better.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was aroused to consciousness of external things by a husky voice
- addressing her from somewhere above her head. The cab had stopped at
- Connie's house in Bryanston Square. She descended, handed to the man the
- first coin in her purse that her fingers happened to grasp. He looked at
- it, said that he was sorry he had not change for a sovereign. She waved
- her hand vaguely, deaf to his words. The cabman, with a clear conscience,
- whipped up his horse smartly and drove off.
- </p>
- <p>
- A figure on the doorstep raised his hat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How delightful of you to arrive at the very moment, Miss Hardacre! I am
- summoned back to America. I sail to-morrow. I was calling on the chance of
- being able to bid you good-bye.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Norma collected her scattered wits and recognised Theodore Weever. She
- looked at him full in the eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her lips were parted; her breath came fast. He stretched out his hand to
- press the electric button, so as to gain admittance to the house. She
- touched his arm, restraining his action, and still stared at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wait,” she said at last. “I have something to say to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am honoured,” he replied in his imperturbable way.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you found your decorative wife, Mr. Weever?”
- </p>
- <p>
- A sudden light shone lambently in his pale, expressionless blue eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Am I to understand that I can find her on Mrs. Deering's doorstep?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you look hard enough,” said Norma.
- </p>
- <p>
- He took her hand and shook it with the air of a man concluding a bargain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I felt sure of it,” he said. “I intended from the first to marry you. I
- shall ever be your most devoted servant.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I make one condition,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Name it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't enter this house, and I sail with you to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What train shall I catch and from what station shall I start?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The ten o'clock from Waterloo.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She rang the bell.
- </p>
- <p>
- “May I trouble you to book my passage?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It will be my happiness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Au revoir</i>,” she said, holding out her hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- He raised his hat and walked away briskly. The door opened, and Norma
- entered the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- Chapter XXVIII—THE WORD OF ALINE
- </h2>
- <h3>
- |WHAT she wrote to him is no great matter.
- </h3>
- <p>
- Her letter, which he opened on coming down to breakfast the next morning,
- filled many pages. It was a rhapsody of passionate love and
- self-abasement, with frantic appeals for forgiveness. In its cowardice
- there was something horribly piteous. Jimmie read it beneath the high
- north window of the studio, his back turned towards Aline, who was seated
- at the breakfast-table at the other end. For a long, long while he stood
- there, quite still, holding the letter in his hand. Aline, in wonder,
- stole up quietly and touched his arm. When he turned, she saw that his
- face was ashen-grey, like a dead man's.
- </p>
- <p>
- The shock left its mark upon him. Physically it accomplished the work of
- ten years, wiping the youth from his face and setting in its stead the
- seal of middle age. It is common enough for grief or illness to lay its
- hand on the face of a woman no longer young and shrivel up her beauty like
- a leaf and set her free, old and withered. But with a man, who has no such
- beauty to be marred, the case is rare.
- </p>
- <p>
- For a week he remained silent. The two women who loved him waited in
- patience until the time should come for their comforting to be of use.
- From the very first morning he let no change appear in his habits, but set
- his palette as usual and went on with the new picture that was nearing
- completion. In the afternoon he went for a walk. Aline, going down to the
- studio, happened to look at his morning's work. For a moment she was
- puzzled by what she saw, for she was familiar with his methods. Gradually
- the solution dawned upon her. He had been painting meaninglessly,
- incoherently, putting in splotches of colour that had no relation to the
- tone of the picture, crudely accentuating outlines, daubing here, there,
- and anywhere with an aimless brush. It was the work of a child or a
- drunken man. Aline cast herself on the model-platform and cried till she
- could cry no more. When he came back, he took a turpentine rag and
- obliterated the whole picture. For days he worked incessantly, trying in
- vain to repaint. Nothing would come right. The elementary technique of his
- art seemed to have left him. Aline strove to get him away. He resisted. He
- had to do his day's work, he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you're not well, dear,” she urged. “You will kill yourself if you go
- on like this.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've never heard of work killing a man,” he answered. Then after a pause,
- “No. It's not work that kills.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At last the sleep that had failed him returned, and he awoke one morning
- free from the daze in the brain against which he had been obstinately
- struggling. He rose and faced the world again with clear eyes. When Aline
- entered the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him painting at the
- unhappy picture with his accustomed sureness of touch. He leaned back and
- surveyed his handiwork.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's going to be magnificent, is n't it? What a blessing I wiped out the
- first attempt!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, this is ever so much better, Jimmie,” the girl replied, with tears
- very near her eyes. But her heart swelled with happy relief. The aching
- strain of the past week was over. She had dreaded break-down, illness, and
- permanent paralysis of his faculties. The man she knew and loved had
- seemed to be dead and his place taken by a vacant-eyed simulacrum. Now he
- had come to life again, and his first words sounded the eternal chord of
- hope and faith.
- </p>
- <p>
- From that day onwards he gave no sign of pain or preoccupation. Only the
- stamp of middle age upon his face betrayed the suffering through which he
- had passed. He concerned himself about Aline's marriage. Arrangements had
- been made for it to take place on the same day as that of their elders—a
- day, however, that Norma had never fixed. The recent catastrophe had
- caused its indefinite postponement. Aline declared herself to be in the
- same position as before, the responsibility of the beloved's welfare being
- again thrust upon her shoulders. She pleaded with her lover for delay, and
- young Merewether, disappointed though he was, acquiesced with good grace.
- At last Jimmie called them before him, and waving his old briar-root pipe,
- as he spoke, delivered his ultimatum.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear children,” said he, standing up before them, as they sat together
- on the rusty sofa, “you have the two greatest and most glorious things in
- a great and glorious world, youth and love. Don't despise the one and
- waste the other. Get all the beauty you can out of life and you'll shed it
- on other people. You'll shed it on me. That's why I want you to marry as
- soon as ever you are ready. You'll let me come and look at you sometimes,
- and if you are happy together, as God grant you will be, that will be my
- great happiness—the greatest I think that earth has in store for me.
- I have stood between you long enough—all that is over. I shall miss
- my little girl, Tony. I should be an inhuman monster if I didn't. But I
- should be a monster never before imagined by a disordered brain if I found
- any pleasure in having her here to look after me when she ought to be
- living her life in fulness. And that's the very end of the matter. I speak
- selfishly. I can't help it. I have a great longing for joy around me once
- more. Go upstairs and settle everything finally between you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When they had gone, he sighed. “Yes,” he said to himself, “a great longing
- for joy—and the sound of the steps of little children.” Then he
- laughed, calling himself a fool, and went on with his painting.
- </p>
- <p>
- A day or two afterwards Connie Deering, who had been a frequent visitor
- since Norma's flight, walked into the studio while Jimmie was working.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't let me disturb you. Please go on,” she cried in her bright, airy
- way. “If you don't, I'll disappear. I've only come for a gossip.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Jimmie drew a chair near the easel and resumed his brush. She
- congratulated him on the picture. It was shaping beautifully. She had been
- talking about it last night to Lord Hyston, who had promised to call at
- the studio to inspect it. Lord Hyston was a well-known buyer of modern
- work.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is stocking a castle in Wales, which he never goes near, with acres
- of paint,” she said encouragingly. “So I don't see why you should n't
- have a look in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is there a family ghost in the castle?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe there are two!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's a blessing,” said Jimmie. “Some one, at any rate, will look at the
- pictures.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She watched him in silence for a minute or two. Then she came to the
- important topic.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So the two children have made up their minds at last.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, they are to be married on the twenty-eighth of May.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor young things,” said Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why poor?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know,” she said 'with a sigh. “The subject of marriage always
- makes me sad nowadays. I am growing old and pessimistic.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are bewilderingly youthful,” replied Jimmie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know how old I am?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have forgotten how to do subtraction,” he said, thinking of his own
- age.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes. Of course you know. It's awful. And Aline is—what—seventeen?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eighteen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You'll be dreadfully lonely without her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lonely? Oh, no. I have my thoughts—and my memories.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked at him fleetingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should have thought you would wish to escape from memories, Jimmie.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “'The sorrow's crown of sorrows.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't believe in it,” he said, turning towards her. “What has been has
- been. A joy that once has been is imperishable. Remembering happier things
- is a sorrow's crown of consolation. Thank God! I have had them to
- remember.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think she is finding consolation in memories?” She spoke with
- sudden heat, for Norma's conduct had filled her heart with blazing
- indignation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope so,” said Jimmie dreamily, after a pause. “But she has not so many
- as I. She loved me deeply. She had her hour—but I had my day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I were you, I should want never to think of her again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not if you were I, my dear Connie,” he said gently. “If either of us was
- in the wrong, it was not she.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rubbish,” said Mrs. Deering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. It is the truth. She was made for kings' palaces and not for this
- sort of thing. I knew it was impossible from the first—but the joy
- and wonder of it all blinded my eyes. She gave me the immortal part of
- herself. It is mine for all eternity. I wrote to her a day or two ago—I
- was not able at first. I could not sleep, you know; something seemed to
- have gone wrong with my head.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You wrote to her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To tell her not to be unhappy for my sake.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you have forgiven her entirely?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Since our love is unchanged, how could I do otherwise?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But she has gone and thrown herself into the arms of another man—and
- such a man!” said Connie, brusquely. A quiver of pain passed over his
- face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Those are things of the flesh that the discipline of life teaches a man
- to subdue. I think I am man enough for that. The others are things of the
- spirit. If ever woman loved a man, she loved me. I thank God,” he added in
- a low voice, “that she realised the impossibility before we were married.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So do I; devoutly,” said Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would have made all the difference.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Precisely,” said Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She would have been chained hand and foot to an intolerable existence.
- She would have fretted and pined. Her life would have been an infinite
- burden. Heaven's mercy saved her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was n't looking at it from her point of view at all,” exclaimed Connie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hers is the only one from which one can look at it,” he answered gravely.
- </p>
- <p>
- When she bade him good-bye some ten minutes later, she did not withdraw
- the hand which he held. Her forget-me-not eyes grew pleading, and her
- voice trembled a little.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish I could comfort you, Jimmie—not only now, but in the lonely
- years to come. But remember, dear, there is nothing on earth I would n't
- give you or do for you—nothing on earth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was not till long afterwards that he fully comprehended the meaning of
- her words; and then she herself prettily vouchsafed the interpretation.
- For immediate answer he kissed her on the cheek in the brotherly fashion
- in which he had kissed her twice before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What greater comfort,” said he, “can I have than to hear you say that? I
- am a truly enviable man, Connie. Love and affection are showered upon me
- in full measure. Life is very, very sweet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The next two or three weeks brought pleasant surprises which strengthened
- his conviction. One by one old friends sought him out, and, some heartily,
- others shamefacedly, extended to him the hand of brotherhood. His evening
- at the Langham Sketch Club had inaugurated the new order of things. The
- Frewen-Smiths, whose New Year party had marked the epoch between child and
- woman in Aline's life, invited the two outcasts to dinner, and pointedly
- signified that they were the honoured guests. Brother artists looked in
- casually on Sunday evenings. Their wives called upon Aline, offering
- congratulations and wedding-gifts. A lady whose portrait he had painted,
- and at whose house he had visited, commissioned him to paint the portraits
- of her two children. The ostracism had been removed. How this had been
- effected Jimmie could not conjecture; and Tony Merewether and Connie
- Deering, who were the persons primarily and independently responsible, did
- not enlighten him. By Aline's wedding-day all the old circle had gathered
- round him, and a whisper of the true story had been heard in Wiltshire
- House.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus the world began to smile upon him, as if to make amends for the
- anguish it could not remedy. He took the smile as a proof of the world's
- essential goodness. The great glory that for a day had made his life a
- blaze of splendour had faded; the sun in his heaven had been eternally
- eclipsed. But the lesser glory of the moon and stars remained undimmed;
- the tenderness of twilight lost no tone of its beauty. He stood unshaken
- in his faith, unchanged in himself—the strong, wise man looking upon
- the earth and the fulness thereof with the unclouded eyes of a child.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man whom he had most loved, the woman he had most worshipped, had each
- failed him, had each brought upon him bitter and abiding sorrow. They had
- passed like dead folks out of his daily life. Yet each retained in his
- heart the once inhabited chambers. They were dear ghosts. His incurable
- optimism in this wise brought about its consolation. For optimism involves
- courage of a serene quality. Aline, with her swift perception of him, had
- the opportunity of flashing this into an epigram. There was a little
- gathering in the studio, and the talk ran on personal bravery. Some one
- started the question: What would the perfectly brave man do if attacked
- unarmed by a man-eating tiger?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know what Jimmie would do,” she cried. “He would try to pat the beast
- on the head.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was laughter over the girl's unchallenged championship, but those
- who had ears to hear found the saying true.
- </p>
- <p>
- The night before the wedding the two sat up very late, spending their last
- hours together, and Aline sat like a child on Jimmie's knee and sobbed on
- his breast. The lover seemed a far-away abstraction, a malevolent force
- rather than a personality, that was tearing her away from the soil in
- which her life was rooted. Jimmie stroked her hair and spoke brave words.
- But he had not realised till then the wrench of parting. Till then,
- perhaps, neither had realised the strength of the bond between them. They
- were both fervent natures, who felt intensely, and their mutual affection
- had been a vital part of their lives. If bright and gallant youth had not
- flashed across the girl's path and, after the human way, had not caught
- her wondering maidenhood in strong young arms; if deeper and more tragic
- passion had not swept away the mature man, it is probable that this rare,
- pure love of theirs might have insensibly changed into the greater need
- one of the other, and the morrow's bells might have rung for these two.
- But as it was, no such impulse stirred their exquisite relationship. They
- were father and daughter without the barrier of paternity; brother and
- sister without the ties of consanguinity; lovers without the lovers'
- throb; intimate, passionate friends with the sweet and subtle magic of the
- sex's difference.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can't bear leaving you,” she moaned. “I can't bear leaving the dear
- beautiful life. I'll think of you every second of every minute of every
- hour sitting here all alone, alone. I don't want to go. If you say the
- word now, I'll remain and it shall be as it has been for ever and ever.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I shall miss you—terribly, my dear,” said he. “But I'll be the
- gainer in the end. You'll give me Tony as a sort of younger brother. I am
- getting to be an old man, darling—and soon I shall find the need of
- <i>les jeunes</i> in my painting life. You can't understand that yet. Tony
- will bring around me the younger generation with new enthusiasms and fresh
- impulses. It is to my very great good, dear. And if God gives you
- children, I'll be the only grandfather they'll ever have, poor things, and
- I'd like to have a child about me again. I have experience. I have washed
- your chubby face and hands, <i>moi qui vous parle</i>, and undressed you
- and put you to bed, my young lady who is about to be married.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Jimmie, I remember it—and I had to tell you how to do
- everything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems the day before yesterday,” said Jimmie. “<i>Eheu fugaces!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- The next day when she in her wedding-dress (a present from Connie Deering)
- walked down the aisle on her husband's arm and stole a shy glance at him,
- radiant, full of the promise and the pride of manhood, and met the glad
- love in his eyes, she forgot all else in the throbbing joy of her young
- life's completion. It was only afterwards when she was changing her dress,
- with Connie Deering's assistance, in her own little room, that she became
- again conscience-stricken.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You <i>will</i> look after Jimmie while I am away, <i>won't</i> you?” she
- asked tragically—they were going to the Isle of Wight for their
- honeymoon.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I would look after him altogether if he would let me,” said Connie, in an
- abrupt, emotional little outburst.
- </p>
- <p>
- Aline drew a quick breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Connie threw the simple travelling-hat, whose feathers she was daintily
- touching, upon the bed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you think I mean?” she laughed nervously. “I'm not an old woman.
- I'm as lonely as Jimmie will be—and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh!—-only I've found out that I love Jimmie as much as a silly
- woman can love anybody, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it—and
- you may be quite sure I'll see that no harm comes to him during your
- honeymoon, dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The ensuing conversation nearly caused the bride to miss her train. But no
- bride ever left her girlhood's room more luminously happy. On the
- threshold she turned and threw her arms round Connie Deering's neck.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll arrange it all when I come back,” she whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- And Aline kept her word.
- </p>
- <h3>
- THE END
- </h3>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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