Chapter 5

"The Rector is embarrassed, his wife appalled. The Doctor's 'lady,' much as she longs for one's guineas, tries to stop him even from attending one's dying bed. The Squire, though secretly interested to fervour, is of course a respectable man. He is a 'stay' to country morality, and his wife is a pair of stays. The neighbours respond in their dozens to the _mot d'ordre_, and there one is _plantee_, like a lonely white moon encircled by a halo of angry fire. Dear acquaintance, I've tried it. Egypt--Omaha--anything would be better. What are you eating? Have one of these little cakes. They really are good. I ordered them specially for you and our small festivity."

She was smiling as she handed him the plate.

"I should think Egypt would be better!" exclaimed Nigel, with a strength and a vehemence that contrasted almost startlingly with her light, half-laughing tone. "Why don't you go there? Why don't you try the free life?"

"Live among the tribes, like Lady Hester Stanhope in the Lebanon? I'm afraid I could never train myself to wear a turban. Besides, Egypt is fearfully civilized now. Every one goes there. I should be cut all up the Nile."

The brutality of her frankness startled and almost pained him. For a moment, in it he seemed to discern a lack of taste.

"You are right," she said; and suddenly the lightness died away altogether from her voice. "But how is one not to get blunted? And even long ago I always hated pretence. Women are generally pretending. And they are wise. I have never been wise. If I were wise, I should not let you see my lonely, stupid, undignified situation."

Suddenly she turned so that the light from the window fell full upon her, and lifted her veil up over the brim of her hat.

"Nor my face, upon which, of course, must be written all sorts of worries and sorrows. But I couldn't pretend at eighteen, nor can I at thirty-eight. No wonder so many men--the kind of men you meet at your club, at the Marlborough, or the Bachelors', or the Travellers'--call me an 'ass of a woman.' I am an ass of a woman, a little--little--ass."

In saying the very last words all the severity slipped away out of her voice, and as she smiled again and moved her head, emphasizing humorously her own reproach to herself, she looked almost a girl.

"The 'little' applies to my mind, of course, not to my body; or perhaps I ought to say to my soul, instead of to my body."

"No, 'little' would be the wrong adjective for your soul," Nigel said.

Mrs. Chepstow looked touched, and turned once more away from the light, after Nigel had noticed that she looked touched.

"Have you seen your friend, Doctor Isaacson, to-day?" she said, seeming to make an effort in changing the conversation. "I like that man, though usually I dislike Jews because of their love for money. I like him, and somehow I feel as if he had liked me the other night, as if he had felt kindly towards me."

"Isaacson is a splendid fellow. I haven't seen him again. He has been called away by a case. We were to have ridden together this morning, but he sent to say it was impossible. He has gone into the country."

"Will he be away long?"

"I don't know. I hope not. I want him here badly."

"Oh?"

"I mean that he's congenial to me in many ways, and that congenial spirits are rare."

"You must have troops of friends. You are a man's man."

"I don't know. What is a man's man?"

"A man like you."

"And a woman's man?" he asked, drawing his chair a little towards her.

"Every man's man is a woman's man."

"You say you cannot pretend. Cannot you flatter?"

"I can pretend to that extent, and sometimes do. But why should I flatter you? I don't believe you care a bit about it. You love a kindly truth. Who doesn't? I've just told you a kindly truth."

"I should like to tell you some kindly truths," he said.

"I'm afraid there are not many you, or any one else, could tell. I dare say there are one or two, though, for I believe there is in every one of us a little bit--almost infinitesimal, perhaps--of ineradicable good, a tiny flame which no amount of drenching can ever extinguish."

"I know it."

"Oh, but it does want cherishing--cherishing--cherishing all the time, the tiny flame of ineradicable good."

She took his cup quickly, and began to pour out some more tea for him, like one ashamed of an outburst and striving to cover it up by action.

"Bring Doctor Isaacson to see me one day--if he'll come," she said, in a changed, cool voice, the non-committal voice of the trained woman of the world.

He felt that the real woman had for an instant risen to the surface, and had sunk again into the depths of her; that she was almost ashamed of this real, good woman. And he longed to tell her so, to say to her, "Don't be ashamed. Let me see the real woman, the good woman. That is the woman I seek when I am near you." But he did not dare to strike a blow on her reserve.

"I will bring Isaacson," he said, quietly. "I want him to know you really. Why are you smiling?"

"But--I am not smiling!"

Nor was she; and, seeing her quiet gravity and wonder, he was surprised that he had imagined it.

"I must tell you," she said, "that though I took such a fancy to Doctor Isaacson, I don't think he is like you; I don't think he is a psychologist."

"You think me a psychologist?" said Nigel, in very honest surprise.

"Yes, and I'll tell you why, if you'll promise not to be offended."

"Please--please do."

"I think one reads character as much with the eyes of the heart as with the eyes of the brain. You use two pairs of eyes in your reading. But I am not sure that Doctor Isaacson does."

"Why did you ask me not to be offended? You meant to put it differently. And you would have been right. Isaacson is a brilliant man, and I am not. But he has as much heart as I, although he has so much more brain than I. And the stronger each is, the better for a man."

"But the brain--oh, it has such a tendency to overshadow, to browbeat the heart. In its strength it so often grows arrogant. The _juste milieu_--I think you have it. Be content, and never let your brain cry out for more, lest your heart should have to put up with less."

"You think too well of me," he said; "much too well."

She leaned forward over the tea-table and looked at him closely, with the peculiar scrutiny of one so strongly concentrated upon the matter in hand as to be absolutely unself-conscious.

"I wonder if I do," she said; and he felt as if she were trying to drag the very heart out of him and to see how it was beating. "I wonder if I do."

She relaxed her muscles, which had been tense, and leaned back, letting her right hand, which for a moment had grasped the edge of the table, drop down on to her lap.

"It may be so. I do think well of you. That is certain. And I'm afraid I think very often badly of men. And yet I do try to judge fairly, and not only to put on the black cap because of my own unfortunate experiences. There are such splendid men--but there are such utter brutes. You must know that. And yet I doubt if a man ever knows how good, or how bad, another man can be. Perhaps one must be a woman thoroughly to know a man--man, the beast and the angel."

"I dare say that is true."

He spoke almost with conviction. For all the time he had been with her he had been companioned by a strange, unusual feeling of being understood, of having the better part of him rightly appraised, and even too greatly appreciated. And this feeling had warmed his mind and heart almost as a generous wine warms the body.

"I'm sure it is true."

He put down his cup. Suddenly there had come to him the desire to go away, to be alone. He saw the curtains moving gently by the windows, and heard the distant, softened sound of the voices and the traffic of the city. And he thought of the river, and the sunset, and the barges swinging on the hurrying tide, and of the multitudes of eddies in the water. Like those eddies were the thoughts within his mind, the feelings within his heart. Were they not being driven onwards by the current of time, onwards towards the spacious sea of action? Abruptly his heart was invaded by a longing for largeness, a longing that was essential in his nature, but that sometimes lay quiescent, for largeness of view, such as the Bedouin has upon the desert that he loves and he belongs to; largeness of emotion, largeness of action. Largeness was manliness--largeness of thinking and largeness of living. Not the drawing-room of the world, but the desert of the world, with its exquisite oases, was the right place for a man. Yet here he was in a drawing-room. At this moment he longed to go out from it. But he longed also to catch this woman by the hand and draw her out with him. And he remembered how Browning, the poet, had loved a woman who lay always in a shrouded room, too ill to look on the sunshine or breathe the wide airs of the world; and how he carried her away and took her to the peaks of the Apennines. The mere thought of such a change in a life was like a cry of joy.

"What is it?" said Mrs. Chepstow, surprised at the sudden radiance in Nigel's face, seeing before her for the first time a man she could not read, but a man whose physique now forcibly appealed to her--seemed to become splendid under some inward influence, as a half-naked athlete's does when he slowly fills his lungs, clenches his fists, and hardens all his muscles. "What is it?"

But he did not tell her. He could not tell her. And he got up to go away. As he passed the piano, he looked again at the score of "The Dream of Gerontius."

"Are you fond of that?" he asked her.

"What? Oh--'Gerontius'"

She let her eyes rest for a brief instant on his face.

"I love it. It carries me away--as the soul is carried away by the angel. 'This child of clay to me was given'--do you remember?"

"Yes."

He bade her good-bye. The last thing he looked at in her room was "The Scarlet Letter," bound in white, lying upon her table. And he glanced from it to her before he went out and shut the door.

Just outside in the corridor he met a neatly dressed French girl, whose eyes were very red. She had evidently been crying long and bitterly. She carried over her arm the skirt of a gown, and she went into the room which communicated with Mrs. Chepstow's sitting-room.

"Poor girl!" thought Nigel. "I wonder what's the matter with her."

He went on down the corridor to the lift, descended, and made his way to the Thames Embankment.

When the door shut behind him, Mrs. Chepstow remained standing for a minute near the piano, waiting, like one expectant of a departing guest's return. But Nigel did not come back to say any forgotten, final word. Presently she realized that she was safely alone, and she went to the piano, sat down, and struck the chords which supported the notes on which the priest dismissed the soul. But she only played them for a moment. Then, taking the music off the stand and throwing it on the floor, she began to play a Spanish dance, lascivious, alluring, as full of the body as the music of Elgar is full of the soul. And she played it very well, as well, almost, as a hot-blooded girl of Seville could have danced it. As she drew near the end, she heard a sound in the adjoining room, and she stopped abruptly and called out:

"Henriette!"

There was no reply.

"Henriette!" Mrs. Chepstow called again.

The door of the bedroom opened, and the French girl with red eyes appeared.

"Why don't you answer when I speak to you? How long have you been there?"

"Two or three minutes, madame," said the girl, in a low voice.

"Did you meet any one in the corridor?"

"Yes, madame, a gentleman."

"Coming from here?"

"Yes, madame."

"Did he see you?"

"Naturally, madame."

"I mean--to notice you?"

"I think he did, madame."

"And did he see you go into my room--with those eyes?"

"Yes, madame."

An angry frown contracted Mrs. Chepstow's forehead, and her face suddenly became hard and looked almost old.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "If there is a stupid thing to be done, you are sure to--Go away! go away!"

The maid retreated quickly, and shut the door.

"Idiot!" Mrs. Chepstow muttered.

She knew the value of a last impression.

She went out on to her balcony and looked down to the Embankment, idly watching the traffic, the people walking by.

Although she did not know it, Nigel was among them. He was strolling by the river. He was looking at the sunset. And he was thinking of the poet Browning, and of the woman whom love took from the shrouded chamber and set on the mountain peaks.

VII

Although Nigel Armine was an enthusiast, and what many people called an "original," he was also a man of the world. He knew the trend of the world's opinion, he realized clearly how the world regarded any actions that were not worldly. The fact that often he did not care did not mean that he did not know. He was no ignorant citizen, and in his acquaintance with Mrs. Chepstow his worldly knowledge did not forsake him. Clearly he understood how the average London man--the man he met at his clubs, at Ranelagh, at Hurlingham--would sum up any friendship between Mrs. Chepstow and himself.

"Mrs. Chepstow's hooked poor old Armine!"

Something like that would be the verdict.

Were they friends? Could they ever be friends?

Nigel had met Mrs. Chepstow by chance in the vestibule of the Savoy. He had been with a racing man whom he scarcely knew, but who happened to know her well. This man had introduced them to each other carelessly, and hurried away to "square things up with his bookie." Thus casually and crudely their acquaintance was begun. How was it to continue? Or--was it to continue?

Nigel was a strong man in the flower of his life. He was not a saint. And he was beginning to wonder. And Isaacson, who was again in town, was beginning to wonder, too.

During the season the Doctor was very busy. Many Americans and foreigners desired to consult him. He adhered to his rule, and never admitted a patient to his house after half-past five had struck, yet his work was seldom over before the hour of seven. He could not see Nigel often, because he could not see any one often; but he had seen him more than once, more than once he had heard gossip about him, and he realized, partly through knowledge, and partly through instinct, his situation with Mrs. Chepstow. Nigel longed to be frank with Isaacson, yet told him very little, held back by some strange reserve, subtly inculcated, perhaps, by the woman. Other men told Isaacson far too much, drawing evil inferences with the happy laughter of the beast and not of the angel.

And the Doctor drew his own conclusion.

From the very first, he had realized that the acquaintance between this socially ruined, no longer young, yet still fascinating woman, and this young, enthusiastic man would be no slight, ephemeral thing. The woman had willed it otherwise. And perhaps the almost ungovernable root-qualities of Nigel had willed it otherwise, too, although he did not know that. Enthusiasm plies a whip that starts steeds in a mad gallop it is not easy to arrest. Even the vigorous force that started them may be unable to pull them up.

Where exactly was Nigel going?

Smiling and sneering men in the clubs said, to a crude liaison. They said more. They said the liaison was a fact, and marvelled that a fellow like Armine should be willing to be "a bad last." Isaacson knew the untruth of this gossip. There was no liaison. But would there ever be one? Did Mrs. Chepstow intend that there should be one? Or had her intention from the beginning been quite otherwise?

Isaacson did not know in detail what Nigel's past had been. He imagined it, from the man's point of view, to have been unusually pure. But he did not suppose it stainless. His keen eyes of a physician read the ardour of Nigel's temperament. He made no mistake about his man. Nigel ought to have married. That he had never done so was due to a sorrow in early life, the death of a girl whom he had loved. Isaacson knew nothing of this, and sometimes he had wondered why no woman captured this nature so full of impulse and of sympathy, so full of just those qualities which make good women happy. If Mrs. Chepstow should capture it, the irony of life would be in flood.

Would she win the love as well as the pity and the chivalry of Nigel, which she already had? Would she awaken the flesh of this man as well as the spirit, and through spirit and flesh would she attain his soul?

And then?

Isaacson's sincerity was sorely tested by his friendship at this period. Original though he was, and full of the sensitive nature's distaste for marching with the mob, he was ranged with the mob against Nigel in this affair of Mrs. Chepstow. Yet Nigel claimed him as an ally, a kindred spirit. He was not explicit, but in their fugitive intercourse he was perpetually implying. It was "You and I," and the rest of the world shut out. Pity was working within him, chivalry was working, the generosity of his soul, but also its fighting obstinacy. There was something in Nigel which loved to have its back against the wall. He wanted to put Isaacson into the same pugnacious position, facing the overwhelming odds. But the overwhelming odds were on the same side as the Doctor. On the whole, Isaacson was not sorry that he had so few hours to spare. For he did not know what to do. Professional secrecy debarred him from telling Nigel what Mrs. Chepstow had said of herself. What others said of her would never set Nigel against her, but would always incline him towards her.

So far Mrs. Chepstow and he were acquaintances. But already the moment had come when Nigel was beginning to want of her more than mere acquaintanceship, and, because of this driving want of more, to ask himself whether he should require less. His knowledge of the world might, or might not, have told him that with Mrs. Chepstow an unembarrassed friendship would be difficult. That would have been theory. Practice already taught him that the difficulty would probably prove insurmountable even by his enthusiasm and courage. Were they friends? Could they ever be friends?

Even while he asked himself the question, a voice within him answered, "No."

Women who have led certain lives lose the faculty for friendship, if they ever possessed it. Events have taught them, what instinct seems to teach many women, to look on men as more physical even than they are. And such women show their outlook perpetually, in word, in look, in action, and in the indefinable _nuances_ of manner which make a person's atmosphere. This outlook affects men, both shames them and excites them, acting on god and brute. Neither shamed god nor brute with lifted head is in the mood for friendship.

Mrs. Chepstow had this instinctive outlook on male creation, and not even her delicate gifts as a _comedienne_ could entirely disguise it.

At last Nigel reached a crisis of restlessness and uncertainty, which warned him that he must drift and delay no longer, but make up his mind quite definitely what course he was going to take. He was not a man who could live comfortably in indecision. He hated it, indeed, as an attribute of weakness.

He must "have it out" with himself.

It was now July. The season would soon be over. And his acquaintance with Mrs. Chepstow? Would that be over too? It might come to an end quite naturally. He would go into the country, presently to Scotland for the shooting. And she--where would she go? This question set him thinking, as often in these last days--thinking about her loneliness, a condition exaggerated and underlined by her to make an impression on him. She did not seem to dwell upon it. She was far too clever for that. But somehow it was always cropping up. When he paid her a visit, she was scarcely ever out. And if she was in, she was invariably alone. Sometimes she wore a hat and said she had just come in. Sometimes, when he left her, she would say she was going out. But always the impression created was of a very lonely woman, with no engagements and apparently no friends, who passed the long summer days in solitude, playing--generally "Gerontius"--upon the little rosewood piano, or reading "The Scarlet Letter," or some sad or high-minded book. There was no pose apparent in all this. Indeed, sometimes Mrs. Chepstow seemed slightly confused, almost ashamed, at being so unoccupied, so unclaimed by any society or any bright engagements. And more than once Nigel suspected her of telling him white lies when she spoke of dining out with "people" in the evening, or of joining a "party" for the play. For he noticed that when she made such statements it was generally after some remark, some little incident, which had indicated his pity. And he divined the pride of a well-bred woman stirring within her, the desire to conceal or to make the least of her unfortunate situation. Far from posing to gain his pity, he believed her to be "playing up," if possible, to avoid it. And this belief, not unnaturally, rendered it far more keen. So he fell in with her intention.

Once or twice when, in mental colloquies, he played, as he supposed, the part of the ordinary man of the world arguing out the question with the impulsive, chivalrous man, he said, and insisted strongly, that a woman such as Mrs. Chepstow, justifiably famous for beauty and scandalously famous for very different reasons, if she sought to deceive--and of course the man of the world thought such women compact of deception--would try to increase her attraction by representing herself as courted, desired, feted, run after by men. Such women always did that. Never would she wish it to be known that she was undesired, that she was abandoned. Men want what other men want. But who wants the unwanted? The fact that Mrs. Chepstow allowed him to see and to realize her solitude, so simply and so completely, proved to Nigel her almost unwise unworldliness. The man of the world, so sceptical, was convinced. And as to the enthusiast--he bowed down.

Nigel made the mistake of judging Mrs. Chepstow's capacity by the measure of his own shrewdness, which in such a direction was not great. What seemed the inevitable procedure of such a woman to Nigel's amount of worldly cleverness, seemed the procedure to be avoided to Mrs. Chepstow's amount of the same blessing. She seldom took the obvious route in deception, as Isaacson had realized almost from the first moment when he knew her. She paid people the compliment of crediting them with astuteness, and thought it advisable to be not only more clever than they were stupid, but more clever than they were clever.

And so Nigel's pity grew; and now, when he was "having it out" with himself, he felt that when the season was over Mrs. Chepstow must miss him, not because she had picked him out as a man specially attractive to her, but simply because he had brought the human element into a very lonely life. In their last conversation he had spoken of the end of the season, of the exodus that would follow it.

"Oh--yes, of course," she had said, rather vaguely.

"Where are you going?"

She had sat for a moment in silence, and he had believed he followed the movement of her thought. He had felt certain that she was considering whether she would tell him a lie, recount some happy plan invented at the moment to deceive him. Feeling this certainty, he had looked at her, and his eyes had asked her to tell him the truth. And he had believed that she yielded to them, when at length she said:

"I haven't any special plans. I dare say I shall stay on quietly here."

She had not given him an opportunity of making a rejoinder, but had at once turned the conversation to some quite different topic. And again he had divined pride working busily within her.

She must miss him.