Chapter 4

"I think feeling enters into the matter. Often one gets an immediate impression, before one knows anything about the facts of a life. The facts may seem to give that impression the lie. But is it wrong? I think very often not. I remember once I heard a woman, and a clever woman, say of a man whom she knew intimately, 'They accuse him of such and such an act. Well, if I saw him commit it, I would not believe he had done it!' Absurd, you will say. And yet is it so absurd? In front of the real man may there not be a false man, is there not often a false man, like a mask over a face? And doesn't the false man do things that the real man condemns? I would often rather judge with my heart than with my eyes, Isaacson--yes, I would. That woman said a fine thing when she said that, and she was not absurd, though every one who heard her laughed at her. When one gets what one calls an impression, one's heart is speaking, is saying, 'This is the truth.' And I believe the heart, without reasoning, knows what the truth is."

"And if two people get diametrically different impressions of the same person? What then? That sometimes happens, you know."

"I don't believe you and I could ever get diametrically different impressions of a person," said Armine, looking at Mrs. Chepstow; "and to-night I can't bother myself about the rest of the world."

"Don't you think hearts can be stupid as well as heads? I do. I think people can be muddle-hearted as well as muddle-headed."

As the Doctor spoke, it seemed to flash upon him that he was passing a judgment upon his friend--this man whom he admired, whom he almost loved.

"I should always trust my heart," said Armine. "But I very often mistrust my head. Won't you have any more champagne?"

"No, thank you."

"What do you say to our joining Mrs. Chepstow? It must be awfully dull for her, supping all alone. We might go and speak to her. If she doesn't ask us to sit down, we can go into the hall and have a cigar."

"Very well."

There was neither alacrity nor reluctance in Meyer Isaacson's voice, but if there had been, Armine would probably not have noticed it. When he was intent on a thing, he saw little but that one thing. Now he paid the bill, tipped the waiter, and got up.

"Come along," he said, "and I will introduce you."

He put his hand for an instant on his friend's arm.

"Clear your mind of prejudice, Isaacson," he said, in a low voice. "You are too good and too clever to be one of the prejudiced crowd. Let your first impression be a true one."

As the doctor went with his friend to Mrs. Chepstow's table, he did not tell him that first impression had been already formed in the consulting-room of the house in Cleveland Square.

V

"Mrs. Chepstow!"

At the sound of Nigel Armine's voice Mrs. Chepstow started slightly, like a person recalled abruptly from a reverie, looked up, and smiled.

"You are here! I'm all alone. But I was hungry, so I had to brave the rabble."

"I want to introduce a friend to you. May I?"

"Of course."

Armine moved, and Doctor Isaacson stood by Mrs. Chepstow.

"Doctor Meyer Isaacson, Mrs. Chepstow."

The Doctor scarcely knew whether he had expected Mrs. Chepstow to recognize him, or whether he had anticipated what actually happened--her slight bow and murmured "I'm delighted to meet you." But he did know that he was not really surprised at her treatment of him as an entire stranger. And he was glad that he had said nothing to Armine of her visit to Cleveland Square.

"Aren't you going to sit down and talk to me for a little?" Mrs. Chepstow said. "I'm all alone and horribly dull."

"May we?"

Armine drew up a chair.

"Sit on my other side, Doctor Isaacson. I've heard a great deal about you. You've made perfect cures of most of my enemies."

There was not the least trace of consciousness in her manner, not the faintest suspicion of embarrassment in her look, and, as he sat down, the Doctor found himself admiring the delicate perfection of her deceit, as he had sometimes admired a subtle _nuance_ in the performance of some great French actress.

"You ought to hate me then," he said.

"Why? If I don't hate them?"

"Don't you hate your enemies?" asked Armine.

"No; that's a weakness in me. I never could and never shall. Something silly inside of me invariably finds excuses for people, whatever they are or do. I'm always saying to myself, 'They don't understand. If they really knew all the circumstances, they wouldn't hate me. Perhaps they'd even pity me.' Absurd! A mistake! I know that. Such feelings stand in the way of success, because they prevent one striking out in one's own defence. And if one doesn't strike out for oneself, nobody will strike out for one."

"I don't think that's quite true," Armine said.

"Oh, yes, it is. If you're pugnacious, people think you're plucky, and they're ready to stand up for you. Whereas, if you forgive easily, you're not easily forgiven."

"If that is so," Armine said, "why don't you change your tactics?"

As he said this, he glanced at Isaacson, and the Doctor understood that he was seeking to display to his friend what he believed to be this woman's character.

"Simply because I can't. I am what I am. I can't change myself, and I can't act in defiance of the little interior voice. I often try to, for I don't pretend in the least to be virtuous; but I have to give in. I know it's weakness. I know the world would laugh at it. But--_que voulez-vous?_--some of us are the slaves of our souls."

The last sentence seemed almost to be blurted out, so honestly was it said. But instantly, as if regretting a sincere indiscretion, she added:

"Doctor Isaacson, what an idiot you must think me!"

"Why, Mrs. Chepstow?"

"For saying that. You, of course, think we are the slaves of our bodies."

"I certainly do not think you an idiot," he could not help saying, with significance.

"Isaacson is not an ordinary doctor," said Armine. "You needn't be afraid of him."

"I don't think I'm afraid of anybody, but one doesn't want to make oneself absurd. And I believe I often am absurd in rating the body too low. What a conversation!" she added, smiling. "But, as I was all alone in the crowd, I was thinking of all sorts of things. A crowd makes one think tremendously, if one is quite alone. It stimulates the brain, I suppose. So I was thinking a lot of rubbish over my solitary meal."

She looked at the two men apologetically.

"_La femme pense_," she said, and she shrugged her shoulders.

Armine drew his chair a little nearer to her, and this action suddenly made Doctor Isaacson realize the power that still dwelt in this woman, the power to govern certain types of men.

"And the man acts," completed Armine.

"And the woman acts, too, and better than the man," the Doctor thought to himself.

Again his admiration was stirred, this time by the sledge-hammer boldness of Mrs. Chepstow, by her complete though so secret defiance of himself.

"But what were you thinking about?" Armine continued, earnestly. "I noticed how preoccupied you were even when you came into the room."

"Did you? I was thinking about a conversation I had this afternoon. Oddly enough"--she turned slowly towards Meyer Isaacson--"it was with a doctor."

"Indeed?" he said, looking her full in the face.

"Yes."

She turned away, and once more spoke to Armine.

"I went this afternoon to a doctor, Mr. Armine, to consult him about a friend of mine who is ill and obstinate, and we had a most extraordinary talk about the soul and the body. A sort of fight it was. He thought me a typical silly woman. I'm sure of that."

"Why?"

"Because I suppose I took a sentimental view of our subject. We women always instinctively take the sentimental view, you know. My doctor was severely scientific and frightfully sceptical. He thought me an absurd visionary."

"And what did you think him?"

"I'm afraid I thought him a crass materialist. He had doctored the body until he was able to believe only in the body. He referred everything back to the body. Every emotion, according to him, was only caused by the terminal of a nerve vibrating in a cell contained in the grey matter of the brain. I dare say he thinks the most passionate love could be operated for. And as to any one having an immortal soul--well, I did dare, being naturally fearless, just to mention the possibility of my possessing such a thing. But I was really sorry afterwards."

"Tell us why."

"Because it brought upon me such an avalanche of scorn and arguments. I didn't much mind the scorn, but the arguments bored me."

"Did they convince you?"

"Mr. Armine! Now, did you ever know a woman convinced of anything by argument?"

He laughed.

"Then you still believe that you have an immortal soul?"

"More, far more, than ever."

She was laughing, too. But, quite suddenly, the laughter died out of her, and she said, with an earnest face:

"I wouldn't let any one--any one--take some of my beliefs from me."

The tone of her voice was almost fierce in its abrupt doggedness.

"I must have some coffee," she added, with a complete change of tone. "I sleep horribly badly, and that's why I take coffee. Mere perversity! Three black coffees, waiter."

"Not for me!" said Meyer Isaacson.

"You must, for once. I hate doing things alone. There is no pleasure in anything unless some one shares it. At least"--she looked at Armine--"that is what every woman thinks."

"Then how unhappy lots of women must be," he said.

"The lonely women. Ah! no man will ever know how unhappy."

There was a moment of silence. Something in the sound of Mrs. Chepstow's voice as she said the last words almost compelled a silence.

For the first time since he had been with her that night Meyer Isaacson felt that perhaps he had caught a glimpse of her true self, had drawn near to the essential woman.

The waiter brought their coffee, and Mrs. Chepstow added, with a little laugh:

"Even a meal eaten alone is no pleasure to a woman. To-night, till you came to take pity upon me, I should have been far happier with 'something on a tray' in my own room. But now I feel quite convivial. Isn't the coffee here good?"

Suddenly she looked cheerful, almost gay. Happiness seemed to blossom within her.

"Never mind if you lie awake for once, Doctor Isaacson," she continued, looking across at him. "You will have done a good action; you will have cheered up a human being who had been feeling down on her luck. That talk I had with a doctor had depressed me most horribly, although I told myself that I didn't believe a word he said."

Meyer Isaacson sipped his coffee and said nothing.

"I think one of the wickedest things one can do in the world is to try to take any comforting and genuine belief away from the believer," said Armine, with energy.

"Would you leave people even in their errors?" said the Doctor. "Suppose, for instance, you saw some one--some friend--believing in a person whom you knew to be unworthy, would you make no effort to enlighten him?"

He spoke very quietly--almost carelessly. Mrs. Chepstow fixed her big blue eyes on him and for a moment forgot her coffee.

"Perhaps I should. But you know my theory."

"Oh--to be sure!"

Meyer Isaacson smiled. Mrs. Chepstow looked from one man to the other quickly.

"What theory? Don't make me feel an outsider," she said.

"Mr. Armine thinks--may I, Armine?"

"Of course."

"Thinks that belief in the goodness, the genuineness of people helps them to become good, genuine, so that the unworthy might be made eventually worthy by a trust at first misplaced."

"Mr. Armine is--" She checked herself. "It is a pity the world isn't full of Mr. Armines," she said, softly.

Armine flushed, almost boyishly.

"I wish my doctor knew you, Mr. Armine. If you create by believing, I'm sure he destroys by disbelieving."

As she said the last words, her eyes met Meyer Isaacson's, and he saw in them, or thought he saw, a defiance that was threatening.

The lights winked. Mrs. Chepstow got up.

"They're going to turn us out. Let us anticipate them--by going. It's so dreadful to be turned out. It makes me feel like Eve at the critical moment of her career."

She led the way from the big room. As she passed among the tables, every man, and almost every woman, turned to stare at her as children stare at a show. She seemed quite unconscious of the attention she attracted. But when she bade good night to the two friends in the hall, she said:

"Aren't people horrible sometimes? They seem to think one is--" She checked herself. "I'm a fool!" she said. "Good night. Thank you both for coming. It has done me good."

"Don't mind those brutes!" Armine almost whispered to her, as he held her hand for a moment. "Don't think of them. Think of--the others."

She looked at him in silence, nodded, and went quietly away.

Directly she had gone Meyer Isaacson said to his friend:

"Well, good night, Armine. I am glad you're back. Let us see something of each other."

"Don't go yet. Come to my sitting-room and have a smoke."

"Better not. I have to be up early. I ride at half-past seven."

"I'll ride with you, then."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"But have you got any horses up?"

"No; I'll hire from Simonds. Don't wait for me, but look out for me in the Row. Good night, old chap."

As they grasped hands for a moment, he added:

"Wasn't I right?"

"Right?"

"About her--Mrs. Chepstow? She may have been driven into the Devil's hands, but don't you see, don't you feel, the good in her, struggling up, longing for an opportunity to proclaim itself, to take the reins of her life and guide her to calm, to happiness, to peace? I pity that woman, Isaacson; I pity her."

"Pity her if you like," the Doctor said, with a strong emphasis, on the first word, "but--"

He hesitated. Something in his friend's face stopped him from saying more, told him that perhaps it would be much wiser to say nothing more. Opposition drives some natures blindly forward. Such natures should not be opposed.

"I pity Mrs. Chepstow, too," he concluded. "Poor woman!"

And in saying that he spoke the truth. But his pity for her was not of the kind that is akin to love.

The black coffee Mrs. Chepstow had persuaded Meyer Isaacson to take kept him awake that night. Like some evil potion, it banished sleep and peopled the night with a rushing crowd of thoughts. Presently he did not even try to sleep. He gave himself to the crowd with a sort of half-angry joy.

In the afternoon he had been secretly puzzled by Mrs. Chepstow. He had wondered what under-reason she had for seeking an interview with him. Now he surely knew that reason. Unless he was wrong, unless he misunderstood her completely, she had come to make a curiously audacious _coup_. She had seen Nigel Armine, she had read his strange nature rightly; she had divined that in him there was a man who, unlike most men, instinctively loved to go against the stream, who instinctively turned towards that which most men turned from. She had seen in him the born espouser of lost causes.

She was a lost cause. Armine was her opportunity.

Armine had talked to her four days ago of Meyer Isaacson. The Doctor guessed how, knowing the generous enthusiasm of his friend. And she, a clever woman, made distrustful by misfortune, had come to Cleveland Square, led by feminine instinct, to spy out this land of which she had heard so much. The Doctor's sensation of being examined, while he sat with Mrs. Chepstow in his consulting-room, had been well-founded. The patient had been reading the Doctor, swiftly, accurately. And she had acted promptly upon the knowledge of him so rapidly acquired. She had "given herself away" to him; she had shown herself to him as she was. Why? To shut his mouth in the future. The revelation, such as it was, had been made to him as a physician, under the guise of described symptoms. She had told him the exact truth of herself in his consulting-room, in order that he might not tell others--tell Nigel Armine--what that truth was.

Her complete reliance upon her own capacity for reading character surprised and almost delighted the Doctor. For there was something within him which loved strength and audacity, which could appreciate them artistically at their full value. She had given a further and a fuller illustration of her audacity that evening in the restaurant.

Now, in the night, he could see her white face, the look in her brilliant eyes above the painted shadows, as she told to Nigel the series of lies about the interview in Cleveland Square, putting herself in the Doctor's place, him in her own. She had enjoyed doing that, enjoyed it intellectually. And she had forced the Doctor to dance to her piping. He had been obliged to join her in her deceit--almost to back her up in it.

He knew now why she had been alone at her table, why she had advertised her ill success in the life she had chosen, her present abandonment by men. This had been done to strike at Armine's peculiar temperament. It was a very clever stroke.

But it was a burning of her boats.

Meyer Isaacson frowned in the night.

A woman like Mrs. Chepstow does not burn her boats for nothing. How much did she expect to gain by that sacrifice of improper pride, a pride almost dearer than life to a woman of her type? The _quid pro quo_--what was it to be?

He feared for Nigel, as he lay awake while the night drew on towards dawn.

VI

Mrs. Chepstow's sitting-room at the Savoy was decorated with pink and green in pale hues which suited well her present scheme of colour. In it there was a little rosewood piano. Upon that piano's music-desk, on the following day, stood a copy of Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius," open at the following words:

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo! Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul! Go from this world!"

Scattered about the room were _The Nineteenth Century and After_, _The Quarterly Review_, the _Times_, and several books; among them Goethe's "Faust," Maspero's "Manual of Egyptian Archaeology," "A Companion to Greek Studies," Guy de Maupassant's "Fort Comme la Mort," D'Annunzio's "Trionfo della Morte," and Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter." There was also a volume of Emerson's "Essays." In a little basket under the writing-table lay the last number of _The Winning Post_, carefully destroyed. There were a few pink roses in a vase. In a cage some canary-birds were singing. The furniture had been pulled about by a clever hand until the room had lost something of its look of a room in a smart hotel. The windows were wide open on to the balcony. They dominated the Thames Embankment, and a light breeze from the water stirred the white and green curtains that framed them.

Into this pretty and peacefully cheerful chamber Nigel Armine was shown by a waiter at five o'clock precisely, and left with the promise that Mrs. Chepstow should be informed of his arrival.

When the door had closed behind the German waiter's back, Nigel stood for a moment looking around him. This was the first visit he had paid to Mrs. Chepstow. He sought for traces of her personality in this room in which she lived. He thought it looked unusually cosy for a room in an hotel, although he did not discover, as Isaacson would have discovered in a moment, that the furniture had been deftly disarranged. His eyes roved quickly: no photographs, no embroideries, one or two extra cushions, birds, a few perfect roses, a few beautifully bound books, the windows widely opened to let the air stream in. And there was an open piano! He went over to it and bent down.

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo! Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul! Go from this world!"

So she loved "Gerontius," that intimate musical expression of the wonder and the strangeness of the Soul! He did not remember he had told her that he loved it. He stood gazing at the score. The light wind came in from the river far down below, and the curtains made a faint sound as they moved. The canaries chirped intermittently. But Nigel heard the voice of a priest by the side of one who was dying. And as he looked at the chords supporting the notes on which the priest bade the soul of the man return to its Maker, he seemed to hear them, as he had heard them, played by a great orchestra; to feel the mysterious, the terrible, yet beautiful act of dissolution.

He started. He had launched himself into space with the soul. Now, abruptly, he was tethered to earth in the body. Had he not heard the murmur of a dress announcing the coming of its wearer? He looked towards the second door of the room, which opened probably into a bedroom. It was shut, and remained shut. He came away from the piano. What books was she fond of reading! Emerson--optimism in boxing-gloves; Maspero--she was interested, then, in things Egyptian. "Faust"--De Maupassant--D'Annunzio--Hawthorne, "The Scarlet Letter." He took this last book, which was small and bound in white, into his hand. He had known it once. He had read it long ago. Now he opened it, glanced quickly through its pages. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale--suddenly he remembered the story, the sin of the flesh, the scarlet letter that branded the sin upon the woman's breast while the man went unpunished.

And Mrs. Chepstow had it, bound in white.

"Are you judging my character by my books?"

A warm and careless voice spoke behind him. She had come in and was standing close to him, dressed in white, with a black hat, and holding a white parasol in her hand. In the sunshine she looked even fairer than by night. Her pale but gleaming hair was covered by a thin veil, which she kept down as she greeted Nigel.

"Not judging," he said, as he held her hand for a moment. "Guessing, perhaps, or guessing at."

"Which is it? 'The Scarlet Letter'! I got it a year ago. I read it. And when I had read it, I sent it to be bound in white."

"Why was that?"

"'Though your sin shall be as scarlet,'" she quoted.

He was silent, looking at her.

"Let us have tea."

As she spoke, she went, with her slow and careless walk which Isaacson had noticed, towards the fireplace, and touched the electric bell. Then she sat down on a sofa close to the cage of the canary-birds, and with her back to the light.

"I suppose you are fearfully busy with engagements," she continued, as he came to sit down near her. "Most people are, at this time of year. One ought to be truly grateful for even five minutes of anybody's time. I remember, ages ago, when I was one of the busy ones, I used to expect almost servile thankfulness for any little minute I doled out. How things change!"

She did not sigh, but laughed, and, without giving him time to speak, added:

"Which of my other books did you look at?"

"I saw you had Maspero."

"Oh, I got that simply because I had met you. It turned my mind towards Egypt, which I have never seen, although I've yachted all over the place. Last night, after we had said good night, I couldn't sleep; so I sat here and read Maspero for a while, and thought of your Egyptian life. I didn't mean to be impertinent. One has to think of something."

"Impertinent!"

Her tone, though light, had surely been coloured with apology.

"Well, people are so funny--now. I remember the time when lots of them were foolish in the opposite way. If I thought of them, they seemed to take it as an honour. But then I wasn't thirty-eight, and I was in society."

The German waiter came in with tea. When he had arranged it and gone out, Nigel said, with a certain diffidence:

"I wonder you don't live in the country."

"I know what you mean. But you're wrong. One feels even more out of it there."

She gave him his cup gently, with a movement that implied care for his comfort, almost a thoughtful, happy service.