Chapter 6

She must miss any one who occasionally stepped in to break her solitude. Sometimes he had wondered at this solitude's completeness. He wondered again now. Everybody had their friends, their intimates, whether delightful or preposterous. Who were hers? Of course the average woman had "dropped" her long ago. But there are other women in London besides the average woman. There are brilliant women of Bohemia, there are clever women even belonging to society who "take their own way," and know precisely whom they choose, whoever interests or attracts them. And--there are friends, faithful through changes, misfortunes, even disasters. Where were Mrs. Chepstow's? He did not dare to ask.

He recalled his first visit to her, not with any maudlin sentimentality, but with a quiet earnestness: the empty room looking to the river, the open piano and the music upon it, the few roses, and the books. He recalled "The Scarlet Letter" bound in white, and her partial quotation from the Bible in explanation of its binding. Abruptly she had stopped, perhaps suddenly conscious of the application to herself. At tea she had said of the cakes that were so good, "I ordered them specially for you and our little festivity." There was a great simplicity in the words, and in her voice when she had said them. In her loneliness, a cup of tea drunk with him was a "festivity." He imagined her sitting alone in that room in August, when the town is parched, dried up, and half deserted. How would she pass her days?

He compared his life with hers, or rather with a life he imagined as hers. And never before had he realized the brightness, even the brilliance, of his life, with its multitudinous changes and activities, its work--the glorious sweating with the brown labourers in the sand flats at the edge of the Fayyum--its sport, its friendships, its strenuous and its quiet hours, so dearly valued because they were rather rare. It was a good life. It was almost a grand life. London now, Scotland presently; then the late autumn, the train, the sight of the sea, the cry of the siren, the throbbing of the engines, and presently--Egypt! And then the winter of sunshine, and the songs of his workmen, his smiling fellahin, and the reclaiming of the desert.

The reclaiming of the desert!

Nigel was alone in his bedroom in the Savoy. It was late at night. He was in pajamas, smoking a cigar by the open window. He looked down to the red carpet on which his bare feet were set in their red babouches, and suddenly he realized the beauty of what he was doing in the Fayyum. He had never really thought of it before in this way--of the reclaiming of the desert; but now that he did think of it, he was glad, and his heart bounded, looking forward in affection to the winter.

And her winter? What would that be like?

What an immense difference one honest, believing, and therefore inspiring affection must make in a lonely life! Only one--that is enough. And the desert is reclaimed.

He saw the brakes of sugar-cane waving, the tall doura swaying in the breeze, where only the sands had been. And his brown cheeks glowed, as a hot wave of blood went through them.

Progress! He loved to think of it. It was his passion. That grand old Watts's picture, with its glow, its sacred glow of colour, in which was genius! Each one must do his part.

And in that great hotel, how many were working consciously for the cause?

Excitement woke in him. He thought of the rows and rows of numbered doors in the huge building, and within, beyond each number, a mind to think, a heart to feel, a soul to prompt, a body to act. And beyond his number--himself! What was he doing? What was he going to do? He got up and walked about his room, still smoking his cigar. His babouches shuffled over the carpet. He kicked them off, and went on walking, with bare, brown feet. Often in the Fayyum he had gone barefoot, like his labourers. What was he going to do to help on the slow turning of the mighty wheel of progress? He must not be a mere talker, a mere raver about grand things, while accomplishing nothing to bring them about. He despised those windy talkers who never act. He must not be one of them. That night, when he sat down "to have it out" with himself, he had done so for his own sake. He had been an egoist, had been thinking, perhaps not solely but certainly chiefly, of himself. But in these lonely moments men are generally essentially themselves. Nigel was not essentially an egoist. And soon himself had been almost forgotten. He had been thinking far more of Mrs. Chepstow than of himself. And now he thought of her again in connection with this turning of the great wheel of progress. At first he thought of her alone in this connection, then of her and of himself.

It is difficult to do anything quite alone, anything wholly worth the doing. That was what he was thinking. Nearly always some other intrudes, blessedly intrudes, to give conscious, or unconscious, help. A man puts his shoulder to the wheel, and in front of him he sees another shoulder. And the sight gives him courage.

The thought of strenuous activity made him think of Mrs. Chepstow's almost absolute inactivity. He saw her sitting, always sitting, in her room, while life flowed on outside. He saw her pale face. That her face was carefully made pale by art did not occur to him. And then again he thought of Mrs. Browning and of the mountain peaks.

What was he going to do?

He made a strong mental effort, as he would have expressed it, to "get himself in hand." Now, then, he must think it out. And he must "hold up" his enthusiasm, and just be calm and reasonable, and even calculating.

He thought of the girl whom he had loved long ago and who had died. Since her death he had put aside love as a passion. Now and then--not often--a sort of travesty of love had come to him, the spectre of the real. It is difficult for a young, strong man in the pride of his life never to have any dealing either with love or with its spectre. But Isaacson was right. Nigel's life had been much purer than are most men's lives. Often he had fought against himself, and his own natural inclination, because of his great respect for love. Not always had he conquered. But the fights had strengthened the muscles of his will, and each fall had shown him more clearly the sadness, almost the horror, imprinted on the haggard features of the spectre of the real.

Mrs. Chepstow for years had been looking upon, had been living with, that spectre, if what was said of her was true.

And Nigel did not deceive himself on this point. He did not sentimentally exalt a courtesan into an angel, as boys so often do. Mrs. Chepstow had certainly lived very wrongly, in a way to excite disgust, perhaps, as well as pity. Yet within her were delicacy, simplicity, the pride of breeding, even a curious reserve. She had still a love of fine things. She cared for things ethereal. He thought of his first visit to her, the open piano, "Proficiscere, anima Christiana," "The Scarlet Letter," and her quotation. What had she been thinking while she played Elgar's curiously unearthly music, while she read Hawthorne's pitiful book? She had been using art, no doubt, as so many use it, as a means of escape from life. And her escape had been not into filth or violence, not into the salons of wit, or into the salons where secrets are unveiled, but into the airy spaces with the angel, into the forest with Hester and little Pearl.

Why could they not continue friends?

His body spoke in answer, and he laid the blame for the answer entirely on himself. He condemned himself at that moment, was angry with himself, cursed himself. And he cursed himself, not because he was morbid, but because he was healthy-minded, and believed that his evil inclinations had been aroused by his knowledge of Mrs. Chepstow's past. And that fact was a beast, was something to be stamped on. He would never allow himself comfortably to be that sort of man. Yet he was, it seemed, enough that sort of man to make friendship with Mrs. Chepstow difficult, perhaps impossible. If love had led him to such an inclination, he would, being no prude, have understood it as a perfectly natural and perfectly healthy thing. But he did not love Mrs. Chepstow. He would never love, really love, again. For years he had said that to himself, and had believed it. He said it again now. And even if he could renew that strange power, to love, he could not love a woman who was not pure. He felt certain of that. He thought of the dead girl and of Mrs. Chepstow. But to-night he could not recall the dead girl's figure, face, look, exactly. Mrs. Chepstow's he could, of course, recall. He had seen her that very day. And the girl he had loved had been dead for many years. She lived in his memory now rather as a symbol of purity and beauty than as a human being.

Mrs. Chepstow, of course, would never find a man sincerely to love her now.

And yet why not! Suddenly Nigel checked himself, as he generally did when he found himself swiftly subscribing to the general opinion of the great mass of men. Why not? The shoulder to the wheel; it was nearly always the shoulder of love--love of an idea, love of a woman, love of humanity, love of work, love of God. All the men he knew, or very nearly all, would laugh at the idea of Mrs. Chepstow being sincerely loved. But the fact that they would laugh could have no effect on a manly heart or a manly spirit.

He felt almost angry with her for the loneliness and the immobility which pained his chivalry and struck at his sense of pity. If he could think of her as going away, too, as wandering, in Switzerland, in Italy, in some lovely place, he would feel all right. But always he saw her seated in that room, alone, deserted, playing the piano, reading, with no prospect of company, of change. Mrs. Chepstow had acted her part well. She had stamped a lonely image upon the retina of Nigel's imagination.

He was still walking about his room in bare feet. But his cigar had gone out, though it was still between his lips. The hour was very late. He heard a distant clock strike two. And just after he had listened to its chime, followed by other chimes in near and distant places of the city, the night idea of a strong and young man came to him.

If he could not be friends with Mrs. Chepstow, could he be--the other thing to her!

He put up his hand to his lips, took away the cigar, and flung it out of the window violently. And this physical violence was the echo of his mental violence. She might allow such a thing. Often, if half of what was said of her was true, she had entered into a similar relation with other men. He would not believe that "often." He put it differently. She had certainly entered into a similar relation with some men--perhaps with two or three, multiplied by scandal--in the past. Would she enter into it with him, if he asked her? And would he ever ask her?

He threw himself down again in his arm-chair, and stared at his bare feet planted firmly on the floor. But he saw, not his feet, but the ugly spectre of love, that hideous, damnable ghost, that most pretentious of all pretensions. She had lived with the ghost till she had become pale like a ghost. In the picture of "Progress," which he loved, there was a glow, a glory of light, raying out to a far horizon. It would be putting a shoulder to the wheel to set a glow in the cheeks of a woman, not a glow of shame but of joy. And to be--and then Nigel used to himself that expression of the laughing men in the clubs--"a bad last!" No, that sort of thing was intolerable.

Suddenly the ghost faded away, and he saw his brown feet. They made him think at once of the sun, of work, of the good, real, glowing life.

No, no; none of those intolerable beastlinesses for him. That thought, that imagination, it was utterly, finally done with. He drew a long breath, and stretched up his arms, till the loose sleeves of his night-suit fell down, exposing the strong, brown limbs. And as he had looked at his feet, he looked at them, then felt them, thumped them, and rejoiced in the glory of health. But the health of mind and heart was essential to the complete health of the body. He felt suddenly strong--strong for more than one, as surely a man should be--strong for himself, and his woman, for her who belongs to him, who trusts him, who has blotted out--it comes to that with a woman who loves--all other men for him.

Was he really condemned to an eternal solitude because of the girl who had died so many years ago? For his life was a solitude, as every loveless life is, however brilliant and strenuous. He realized that, and there came to him a thought that was natural and selfish. It was this: How good it must be to be exclusively loved by a woman, and how a woman, whom men and the world have abandoned, must love the man who comes, like a knight through the forest, and carries her away, and takes her into his life, and gives her back self-respect, and a place among women, and, above all, the feeling that of all feelings a woman holds dearest, "Somebody wants me." It must be good to be loved as such a woman would love. His generosity, which instinctively went out to abandoned things, walked hand in hand with man's eternal, indestructible selfishness that night, as he thought of Mrs. Chepstow for the first time as married again to some man who cared not for the world's opinion, or who cared for it so much as to revel in defying it.

How would she love such a man?

He began to wonder about that part of her nature dedicated to, designed for, love.

With him she was always perfectly simple, and seemed extremely frank. But he felt now that in her simplicity she had always been reserved, almost strangely reserved for such a woman. Perhaps that reserve had been her answer to his plainly shown respect. Just because of her position, he had been even more respectful to her than he was to other women, following in this a dictate of his temperament. What would she be like in the unreserve of a great love?

And now a fire was kindled in Nigel, and began to burn up fiercely. He felt, very consciously and definitely, the fascination of this woman. Of course, he had always been more or less subject to it. Isaacson had known that when he saw Nigel draw his chair nearer to hers at the supper-table in the Savoy. But he had been subject to it without ever saying to himself, "I am in subjection." He had never supposed that he was in subjection. The abrupt consciousness of how it was with him excited him tremendously. After the long interval of years, was he to feel again the powerful fever, and for a woman how different from the woman he had loved? She stood, in her young purity, at one end of the chain of years, and Mrs. Chepstow--did she really stand at the other?

He seemed to see these two looking at each other across the space that was set by Time, and for a moment his face contracted. But he had changed while traversing that space. Then he was an eager boy, in the joy of his bounding youth. Now he was a vigorous man. And during the interval that separated boy from man had come up in him his strong love of humanity, his passion for the development of the good that lies everywhere, like the ore in gold-bearing earth. That love had perhaps been given to him to combine the two loves, the altruistic love, and the love for a woman bringing its quick return.

The two faces of women surely softened as they gazed now upon each other.

Such loves in combination might crown his life with splendour. Nigel thought that, with the enthusiasm which was his birthright, which set him so often apart from other men. And, moving beneath such a splendour, how absolutely he could defy the world's opinion! Its laughter would be music, its sneering word only the signal to a smile.

But--he must think--he must think--

He sprang up, pulled up his loose sleeves to his shoulders, tucked them together, and with bared arms leaned out to the night, holding his hands against his cheeks.

VIII

Mrs. Chepstow had said to Nigel, "Bring Doctor Isaacson--if he'll come." He had never gone, though Nigel had told him of her words, had told him more than once. Without seeming deliberately to avoid the visit, he had deliberately avoided it. He never had an hour to spare in the day, and Nigel knew it. But he might have gone on a Sunday. It happened that, at present, on Sundays he was always out of town.

He had said to himself, "_Cui bono?_"

He had the sensitive nature's dislike of mingling intimately in the affairs of others, and moreover he felt instinctively that if he tried to play a true friend's part to Nigel, he might lose Nigel as a friend. His clear insight would be antagonistic to Nigel's blind enthusiasm, his calm worldly knowledge would seem only frigid cruelty to Nigel's generosity and eagerness in pity. And, besides, Isaacson had a strong personal repulsion from Mrs. Chepstow, a repulsion almost physical.

The part of him that was Jewish understood the part of her that was greedy far too well. And he disliked, while he secretly acknowledged, his own Jewishness. He seldom showed this dislike, even subtly, to the world and never showed it crudely, as do many of Jewish blood, by a strange and hideous anti-Semitism. But it was always alive within him, always in conflict with something belonging to his nature's artistic side, a world-feeling to which race-feeling seemed stupid and very small. The triumphs of art aroused this world-feeling within him, and in his love of art he believed that he touched his highest point. As Isaacson's mental unconventionality put him _en rapport_ with Nigel, his Jewishness, very differently, put him _en rapport_ with her. There is a communion of repulsion as well as a communion of affection. Isaacson knew that Mrs. Chepstow and he could be linked by their dislike. His instinct was to avoid her, not to let this link be formed. Subsequent circumstances made him ask himself whether men do not often call things towards them with the voices of their fears.

The season was waning fast, was nearly at an end, when one night, very late, Nigel called in Cleveland Square. Isaacson had just come back from dining with the Dean of Waynfleet when the bell rang. He feared a professional summons, and was relieved when a sleepy servant asked if he would see Mr. Armine. They met in a small, upstairs room where Isaacson sat at night, a room lined with books, cosy, but perhaps a little oppressive. As Nigel came in quickly with a light coat over his arm and a crush hat in his hand, a clock on the mantel piece struck one.

"I caught sight of you just now in St. James's Street in your motor, or I wouldn't have come so late," Nigel said. "Were you going straight to bed? Tell me the truth. If you were, I'll be off."

"I don't think I was. I've been dining out, and should have had to read something. That's why you kept your coat?"

"To demonstrate my good intention. Well!"

He put the coat and hat on a chair.

"Will you have anything?"

"No, thanks."

Nigel sat down in an arm-chair.

"I've seen so little of you, Isaacson. And I'm going away to-morrow."

"You've had enough of it?"

"More than enough."

Isaacson was sitting by a table on which lay a number of books. Now and then he touched one with his long and sallow fingers, lifted its cover, then let it drop mechanically.

"You are coming back in the autumn?"

"For some days, in passing through. I'm going to Egypt again."

"I envy you--I envy you."

As he looked at Nigel's Northern fairness, and thought of his own darkness, it seemed to him that he should be going to the sun, Nigel remaining in the lands where the light is pale. Perhaps a somewhat similar thought occurred to Nigel, for he said:

"You ought to go there some day. You'd be in your right place there. Have you ever been?"

"Never. I've often wanted to go."

"Why don't you go?"

Isaacson's mind asked that question, and his Jewishness replied. He made money in London. Every day he spent out of London was a loss of so much money.

"Some day," Nigel continued, "you must take a holiday and see Egypt."

"This winter?" said Isaacson.

He lifted the cover of a book. His dark, shining, almost too intelligent eyes looked at Nigel, and looked away.

"Not this winter," he added, quietly.

"But--why not this winter?"

Nigel spoke with a slight embarrassment.

"I couldn't get away. I have too much work. You'll be in the Fayyum?"

Nigel was staring at the Oriental carpet. His strong hands lay palm downwards on the arms of his chair, pressing them hard.

"I shall go there," he replied.

"And live under the tent? I met a man last night who knows you, an Egyptian army man on leave, Verreker. He told me you were reclaiming quite a lot of desert."

"I should like to reclaim far more than I ever can. It's a good task."

"Hard work?"

"Deuced hard. That's why I like it."

"I know; man's love of taming the proud spirit."

"Is it that? I don't think I bother much about what prompts me to a thing. But--I say, Isaacson, sometimes it seems to me that you have a devilish long sight into things, an almost uncanny long sight."

He leaned forward.

"But in you I don't mind it."

"I don't say I acknowledge it. But why should you mind it in any one?"

Nigel quoted some words of Mrs. Chepstow, but Isaacson did not know he quoted.

"Hasn't the brain a tendency to overshadow, to brow-beat the heart?" he said. "Isn't it often arrogant in its strength?"

"One must let both have an innings," said Isaacson, smiling at the slang which suited him so little and suited Nigel so well.

"Yes, and I believe you do. That's why--but to go on with what we were saying. You've got a long sight into things. Now, living generally, as you do, here in London, don't you think that men and women living in crowds often get off the line of truth and kindness? Don't you think that being all together, backed up, as it were, by each other--as a soldier is by his regiment when going into battle--they often become hard, brutal, almost get the blood-lust into them at times?"

Isaacson did not reply for a moment.

"Perhaps sometimes they do," he answered at last.

"And don't you think they require sacrifices?"

"Do you mean human sacrifices?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps--sometimes."

"Why have you never been to call on Mrs. Chepstow?"

Again the sallow fingers began to play with the book-covers, passing from one to another, but always slowly and gently.

"I haven't much time for seeing any one, except my patients, and the people I meet in society."

"And of course you never meet Mrs. Chepstow in society."

"Well--no, one doesn't."

"She would have liked a visit from you, and she's very much alone."

"Is she?"

"Are you stopping on much longer in London?"

"Till the twelfth or fifteenth of August."

"She is stopping on, too."

"Mrs. Chepstow! In the dog-days!"

"She doesn't seem to have anywhere special to go to."

"Oh!"

Isaacson opened a book, and laid his hand upon a page. It happened to be a book on poisons and their treatment. He smoothed the page down mechanically and kept his hand there.

"I say, Isaacson, you couldn't have the blood-lust?"

"I hope not. I think not."

"I believe you hate it as I do, hate and loathe it with all your soul. But I've always felt that you think for yourself, and don't care a rap what the world is thinking. I've looked in to-night to say good-bye, and to ask you, if you can get the time, just to give an eye to--to Mrs. Chepstow now and again. I know she would value a visit from you, and she really is infernally lonely. If you go, she won't bore you. She's a clever woman, and cares for things you care for. Will you look in on her now and then?"

Isaacson lifted his hand from the book.

"I will call upon her," he said.

"Good!"

"But are you sure she wishes it?"

"Quite sure--for she told me so."

The simplicity of this answer made Isaacson's mind smile and something else in him sigh.