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THE PEST

by

W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE

Author of “The Talking Master,” “Egomet,” etc., and
Part Author of “The Fruit of the Tree”







[Illustration]

New York
C. H. Doscher & Co.
1909

Copyright,  1909,  by
C. H. Doscher & Co.




The Pest



                               CHAPTER I


PAVEMENTS and roadway slippery with greasy, black mud; atmosphere yellow
with evil-tasting vapor; a November afternoon in London; evening drawing
on, fog closing down.

George Maddison, tall, erect, dark, walked slowly along, his eyes, ever
ready to seize upon any striking effect of color, noting the curious
mingling of lights: the dull yellow overhead, the chilly beams of the
street lamps, the glow and warmth from the shop windows. Few of the
faces he saw were cheerful, almost all wearing that expression of
discontent which such dreary circumstances bring to even the most
hardened and experienced Cockneys. For his own part he was well pleased,
having heard that morning of his election as an Associate of the Royal
Academy, a fact that gratified him not as adding anything to his repute,
but as being a compliment to the school of young painters of which he
was the acknowledged leader and ornament: impressionists whose
impressions showed the world to be beautiful; idealists who had the
imagination to see that the ideal is but the better part of the real.

Maddison paused before a highly lighted picture-dealer’s window,
glancing with amusement at the conventional prettiness there displayed;
then, turning his back upon it, he looked across the street, debating
whether he should cross over and have some tea at the famous pastry
cook’s. A tall, slight figure of a woman, neatly dressed in black,
caught his attention. Obviously, she too was hesitating over the same
question. In spite of the simplicity and quiet fashion of her black
gown, her air was elegant; her head nicely poised; her shoulders well
held; the lines of her figure graceful, lithe and seductive. Though he
could not see her face he felt certain that she was interesting and
attractive, if not beautiful; also, there was a something wistful and
forlorn about her that appealed to him. Warily stepping through the
slippery mud, he crossed over and stood behind her for a moment, marking
the graceful tendrils of red-gold hair that clustered round the nape of
her neck and the delicate shape and coloring of her ears. As she turned
to move away, she came full face to him, instant recognition springing
into her eyes.

“George—!” she exclaimed.

“Miss Lewis!”

There was immediate and evident constraint on each side, as though the
sudden meeting were half-welcome, half-embarrassing.

“Were you going in to tea here?” he asked. “I was. Let me come with you?
It’s an age since we met. It’s horrid and damp out here.”

“It is,” she replied, slightly shivering. “Yes, I should like a cup of
tea.”

They went through the heavy swing doors, opened for them by a diminutive
boy in buttons, into the long, highly decorated, dimly lighted, discreet
tea room, which lacked its usual crowd. A few couples, in one case two
young men, occupied the cozy corners, to one of the more remote of which
Maddison led the way, and settled himself and his companion in the
comfortable armchairs. He ordered tea and cakes of the pretty,
black-eyed waitress, dainty and demure in the uniform of deep, dull red.

“You sigh as if you were tired, Miss Lewis, and glad to rest?” he said,
trying in the dim light to study her expression.

“I am tired and I am glad to rest. It’s very cozy in here. I’ve never
been here before.”

She laid her hand upon the arm of the chair next to him and he noticed
that she wore a wedding ring.

“I called you Miss Lewis. I see——?”

“Yes—I’m married. I don’t suppose you remember much about Larchstone—I
recognized you before you did me; I saw you across the road. But just
possibly you do remember our curate, Mr. Squire—you used to laugh at
him. I’m Mrs. Squire. He’s still a curate, but not any longer in the
country. We live at Kennington; what a world of difference one letter
makes! Kennington—Kensington. Have you ever been in Kennington?”

Maddison remembered Edward Squire distinctly: a tall, gaunt enthusiast,
clumsy in mind and in body. He leaned back in his chair as a whirl of
recollections rushed across his mind: the red-roofed, old-fashioned
village of Larchstone; the old-world rector and his daughter, a pretty
slip of a country girl, who had grown into—Mrs. Squire. He remembered
the summer weeks he had spent there, painting in the famous woodlands,
and the half-jesting, half-serious love he had made to the rector’s
daughter. Since then until this afternoon he had not met her, though the
memory of her face, with the searching eyes, had come to him now and
again.

She watched him as he dreamed. He had changed very little; how
distinctly she had always remembered him; the swarthy, narrow face
framed in heavy black hair, the deep-set black eyes, the thin nose, the
trim pointed beard and mustache hiding the sensual mouth, the tall,
well-knit figure. Far more vividly than he did she recall those summer
months; in her life they had been an outstanding event, an episode
merely in his.

“Do you still take three lumps of sugar?” she asked, as she poured out
the tea.

“You remember that? Yes, still three, thanks.”

“You see, I hadn’t very much to remember in those days.”

“It’s five years ago—” he hesitated.

“Five this last summer, and a good many things have happened since then.
My father’s dead—three years ago—and I’m a good young curate’s wife.
And you? But I needn’t ask; the newspapers have told me all about you.
Are you still full of enthusiasms?”

“I suppose so. I think so, only they’re crystallizing into practices. As
we grow older the brain grows stiff, and we’re not so ready to go
climbing mountains to achieve impossible heights.”

“You’ve climbed pretty high. A step higher to-day—A.R.A. Fame, success
and money, that’s a fairly high mountain to have climbed—at least it
looks so to me.”

The forlorn tone of her voice confirmed the impression his first sight
of her had made upon him. He looked at her keenly as she sat there with
her eyes fixed upon her tea which she was stirring slowly. She had
become a very lovely woman and a poor curate’s wife.

“Lonely?” he asked almost unintentionally.

“Did I say lonely?” she asked looking quickly at him. “We were talking
in metaphors. I suppose that way of talking was invented by some one who
didn’t want to blurt out ugly truths.”

“Or who fancied that commonplace ideas become uncommon when divorced
from commonplace words.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it, sitting here, chatting like old friends—after
all this time? You didn’t answer my question: have you ever been in
Kennington?”

“I go down to the Oval now and then to watch the cricket; that’s all I
know about Kennington.”

“And that’s nothing. You might as well judge West Kensington by an
Earl’s Court exhibition, or a woman’s nature by her face. I think it
would do you good to see more of Kennington. I can believe that to
anyone who has lived there any other place on earth would seem heaven.”

“Heaven?”

“Even the other place would be an improvement.”

“You’re rather hard on Kennington, aren’t you?”

“It’s very hard on _me_! It stifles me. I come up to town—you see, I
speak of coming up to town—every now and then, just to escape from the
horrible atmosphere. There; just to breathe freely for a bit, to look at
the shops, to see faces with some thoughts in them, to escape
from—Kennington.”

“And do you escape?”

“Not altogether. The atmosphere there is saturating.”

“Does your husband like it?”

“He doesn’t know anything about it. Souls to save and bodies to feed,
that’s his simple want in life. There are plenty of both in our
neighborhood. I suppose you wouldn’t come down to see us?”

“If I may——?”

“You may,” she answered, laughing softly, almost to herself, and he
noticed how her smile lit up her whole face for the moment. “You’ll seem
so queer down there.”

“Why?”

“Just think—but no, you couldn’t realize what I’m laughing at; you’ve
never been in Kennington, and—even more likely—have never seen
yourself as I see you.”

Resisting the temptation to ask her in what light she saw him, he in
turn laughed as he looked down into the provocative face turned toward
him.

“You’re getting better,” he said.

“Yes, thanks; the tea has done me good, and the meeting with you.”

She spoke quite frankly.

“I’m glad,” he answered, “and glad I was lucky enough to meet you.”

“What a pretty, empty phrase,” she said, with a little sigh and a droop
of the corners of her mouth. “Sayings like that are the threepenny bits
of conversation; they’re not worth sixpence, but they’re better than
coppers. Now, I must be off.”

“It’s quite early.”

“Yes, for you. But for me—Kennington and high tea; but you know neither
of them.”

“You’ve asked me to come——”

“Not to high tea. Come some afternoon or evening. Drop me a post card so
that we shall be sure to be in. My husband will be so glad to see you
again.”

“And you?”

“I _have_ seen you again.”

“Very well, I’ll drop you a line of warning. And how are you going
home?”

“By a clever and cheap combination of penny bus and halfpenny tram. Now,
good-by, and thank you.”

They lingered a moment in the shop entrance, warmth and coziness behind,
the darkness and the thickening fog before.

“I don’t like you’re going alone. The fog’s getting very thick.”

“Please don’t worry about me; if the tram can’t get along I shall walk.
Good-by, and, again, thank you.”

Nodding in a friendly manner, she walked quickly away, leaving him
irresolute. But he soon determined to follow her.

“You really must let me see you home,” he said, as he caught up with
her; “it’s going to be bad.”

“So am I, and insist on having my own way. Don’t spoil it for me. I
don’t often have my own way with anything or anybody.”

Again she walked quickly away into the darkness.




                               CHAPTER II


ACACIA GROVE, Kennington, was once upon a time, and not so many years
ago, the home of snug citizens, who loved to dwell on the borderland of
town and country. It is a wide road of two-storied houses, all alike:
three windows to the top floor; on the ground floor, two windows and a
hall door, painted green and approached by three steep steps; a front
garden, generally laid out in gravel with a circular bed of sooty shrubs
in the center and a narrow border of straggling flowers along each side,
spike-headed railings separating the garden from the pavement. Few of
the gates are there that do not creak shrilly, calling aloud for oil. In
one of these houses, distinguished only from its neighbors by its
number, lodged the Reverend Edward Squire, occupying the front “parlor,”
a small den at the back of the same, and the front bedroom and dressing
room on the upper floor. The furniture throughout was plain,
inoffensive, somber, entirely unhomelike; faded green curtains with
yellow fringe hung at the parlor windows, by one of which Marian sat in
the gloaming two days after her meeting with Maddison. The fire shed a
flickering light over the room and on the weary face of her husband, who
lay back asleep in a heavy horsehair armchair. She glanced at him now
and then, each time comparing his commonplace features with those of
George Maddison, her meeting with whom had stirred tumult in her already
mutinous blood.

Rousing himself at length, Squire looked at his watch.

“Half-past four! I must be off, Marian. Don’t you find it dismal sitting
there in the dark?”

“You can dream in the dark.”

“Dream?” he said, standing up and stretching his lanky limbs, stamping
his heavy feet as though cold. “Don’t you dream too much, dear? I wish
parish work had more interest for you; there is so much to do, and——”

“I don’t do much!” she broke in sharply.

“I wasn’t going to say that. Wouldn’t it make life brighter for you if
you spent more time in brightening it for others? However, I mustn’t
stop to talk now. There’s a meeting of the Boot Club at a quarter to
five, and several things after that. I can’t get back till about
half-past six: will that be too late for tea?”

He stood beside her, feeling clumsily helpless to express his sympathy
with her evident discontent, and unable to help her.

“No, I don’t mind what time,” she answered, turning her back toward him,
and looking out at the dreary prospect of leafless trees and dim gas
lamps.

He stooped to kiss her, but she pushed him away.

“Don’t be silly, Edward; everyone can see into the room. If you don’t
go, you’ll be late.”

With a sigh he turned away and went out.

For months past hatred of her home life had been growing in her, and it
had been intensified, brought to fever heat, by her meeting with
Maddison. His prosperity had emphasized the dunness of her own career.
Why had he ever made love to her, giving her a glimpse of brightness,
and then left her to be driven by circumstances to accept her husband’s
dogged love, to accept this life of struggle, to accept this daily round
of distasteful tasks and hateful duties? In the country days she had
accepted without energy to protest against the routine work of a
clergyman’s daughter; but here in London, her blood had caught afire,
the devil of revolt was astir, her whole heart and soul rebelled against
the wasting of her youth and beauty. In the old home there had been none
with whom to compare herself; but in town hundreds of women, with
smaller gifts of body and mind than her own, led a full and joyous life.
She raged to think that she should bloom and fade, never knowing the
glory of living.

She rose slowly, let the heavy venetian blind run down with a crash,
drew the curtains close, and lit the gas. She stood before the glass
over the mantelpiece, looking at her reflection. Then with growing
disgust she turned and glanced round the meager room. In a basket was a
pile of accumulated mending waiting for her; on the small writing
table—above which hung a crucifix—several account books, which would
have to be made up this evening. She stood there, tall, fair, throbbing
with rebellion, longing to escape. Again the question that she had so
often asked herself during the last two days came to her: was it
possible that George Maddison would offer to free her? He had nearly, if
not quite, loved her once; were there any means by which she could lure
him to her again?

A sharp knock at the house door startled but did not interest her, the
caller doubtless being for Edward, and his visitors did not amuse her.
Her conjecture was wrong. The neat little maid servant, who feared her
master and adored his wife, opened the parlor door, stammering out—

“A gentleman wants to know if you’re at home, mum. He wants to see
_you_, mum.”

“Are you sure he wanted to see _me_?”

“Yes, I do, if I may,” said Maddison, appearing in the doorway; “or are
you not ‘at home’?”

“Of course I’m at home; we don’t indulge even in conventional fibs in
Kennington. Do come in; I’m so glad to see you. I didn’t think you’d
really come.”

“Why not?” he asked, shaking hands with her. “Could I resist such a
persuasive description as you gave me? It was so alluring that I walked
the whole way, and, upon my word, I declare you have done the
neighborhood an injustice. I’ve been in worse.”

“Very likely it’s my fault.”

They sat at either side of the fire for some little while silent; he
noting the room, and furtively examining her face as she stared into the
fire. He could see the tears that hovered in the corners of her eyes.

“Your fault?” he said at length. “You look fagged; you want a change.”

“A change!” she exclaimed, laughing hardly.

She stood up, leaned her arm upon the mantelpiece, and looked down at
him.

“A change! You don’t know the irony of what you’ve said, Mr. Maddison. A
change! Do you realize that each day drags along just the same as the
days before have been, and the days after will be? Never a shadow of a
change! And so all the life is being crushed out of me. If I’d only
known; but what’s the good of talking this way, and why on earth should
I trouble you with my worries?”

She was a splendid rebel and Maddison’s pulse stirred with sympathy and
attraction. She looked to him like some fine, wild animal, caged, eating
out her heart for freedom.

“I almost wish I hadn’t met you the other day,” she continued. “I know
that sounds rude; what I mean is, it’s bad enough to be here, but it
makes it worse, ever so much worse, to realize what I’ve not got.”

“I wish I could help you,” he said.

She sat down again and again looked into the fire, which she stirred
into a roaring blaze.

“It would have been better had I stopped on in the country; I was only
half alive there. I just vegetated. Edward, my husband, had what he
thought was a ‘call’ to come up and work among the poor in London, so he
brought me here. I wonder do you know the kind of man he is?”

“I can guess.”

“He’s good, because he never has any temptation to be anything else.
He’s content, and works, eats, drinks, sleeps; he tries to be kind and
sympathetic, and—nearly drives me mad. Don’t you think it strange,” she
asked, looking at him eagerly, “that I should be talking to you like
this? I must—must talk to some one.”

“I’m glad you look on me as a friend. I wish I could help you.”

“You are helping me by letting me talk to you. I wonder do you
understand a bit of what’s the matter? Can _you_ understand? You’ve
always been free, and could make your life for yourself. I’m strong, but
I mayn’t even try to use my strength. I hate all this cant about women’s
rights; every woman can have her rights if she only dares to take them.
But we’re all bred up to be dependent cowards. Now, I suppose you’re
shocked?”

“Why? I think I understand what you mean—what you feel. Does—your
husband know?”

“He? He couldn’t understand! He would try to, and would advise me to go
out and work here with him. I did do some work with him, but it only
sickened me. And the people he works with! Gossiping, chattering,
self-important humbugs. So now I sit all day with my hands in my lap and
cry like a baby for a moon I _could_ have if I dared take it. I’m
young—and—what’s the use of not saying it?—pretty, and——”

She clenched her hands on the arms of her chair and set her teeth
firmly. The fire shed a warm glow over the handsome, alluring face; he
watched her with admiration. A picture ready to his hand. The dull,
stupid room; the woman, splendidly rebellious. What was she going to
make of her future?

“I’m going to ask you to help _me_!” he exclaimed. “Let me paint your
portrait; not an ordinary portrait. The subject has been in my head for
a long time, but I’ve never been able to grasp it until just a moment
ago. I shall call it ‘The Rebel.’ Will you come up two or three times a
week to my studio and sit for me?”

“Shall I?” she answered, looking doubtfully at him—“shall I? And then
when it’s over, come back here—_here_!”

He had his thoughts and she had hers, but neither expressed them or
guessed the other’s.

“It would only make me more angry with things,” she said; “no, you
_don’t_ understand me a bit. It must be all—or nothing. A sweet to-day
and bread-and-butter every other day? No, no. Understand? It has been so
bad with me that I stood on Westminster Bridge the other night after I
left you, and looked at the water; I am such a coward that I came home
to this.”

“So—you won’t help me to paint my picture?”

“I’ll think about it, and let you know. When shall I come?”

Maddison took out his engagement book and turned over the pages.

“You have to find time between one engagement and another,” she said,
watching him; “I’m free every day.”

“To-day’s Tuesday; would Thursday, eleven, suit you? We could go and
have lunch somewhere afterwards.”

“I can’t decide. Will you leave it open? I’ll just come, if I’m coming,
and, if I don’t come, it will mean I’d rather you didn’t come here
again.”

“I won’t worry about that. I’ll just hope you will come. Now, I must be
going. Good-by, and—again—I wish I could help you.”

As Maddison drove home, he was in doubt as to what course he should
pursue in this adventure so suddenly thrown his way. Marian greatly
attracted him, both by her beauty and her brains, but he did not as yet
feel disposed to face the scandal that must come if he took her away
from her husband, should she care to come to him, and should he care to
ask her. He felt certain that if he saw much more of her he would fall
under her fascination, yet, weakly, he had given her this invitation
rather than run the risk of not meeting her frequently, rather than have
to meet her in the dismal surroundings of her home.

During the last few years he had drilled himself into not yielding to
his every impulse. When he had first met her the desire bred in him by
her country comeliness had almost led him into marrying her; its renewal
urged him strongly to ask her to be his mistress. He believed that she
would yield. What would be the outcome of such a course? She was
evidently trembling on the brink of revolt, undecided whether or not to
dare all. Should he tempt her? There could be no question as to her
beauty, which was of a type that had always appealed to him. Tall,
lithe, well-proportioned; elegant in face and figure—how lovely she
would look daintily dressed! No mere animal, but a woman.

Between now and Thursday he must decide with regard to her.

Then the fear shot into his mind that perhaps she would not come.


                 *        *        *        *        *

When he had left the room, Marian sat down again by the fire, her face
lit up by a smile of complete satisfaction.

She was not trembling on the brink of revolt. When she had met him that
foggy afternoon she had been so, but only because she felt helpless. Now
succor had come. She felt certain that she could win Maddison to her
will, that she would be able to use him as the stepping-stone to the
luxury and power for which she lusted. He had almost loved her in the
old days, he nearly loved her now after these two brief meetings; at any
rate he was sorry for her. She would tempt him and he would fall.

Again she looked at herself in the mirror; she was made to conquer. This
man, and others, should be hers. She held the two most powerful of
weapons, beauty and heartlessness, and would use both without scruple.

She laughed as she thought of her upbringing in the little country
village, of her ever having believed that she could live content as a
curate’s wife. Whence came this unruliness in her blood? She could
understand the discontent with the physical conditions of her life, but
her desires went far beyond that. It was not merely for love and luxury
that she longed, but for power—power over the body and mind of men of
power.

Maddison would not satisfy all her cravings; but he could take her away
out into the world, and there she knew she could win.

She had in her the confidence of a conqueror.




                              CHAPTER III


ON Thursday morning Maddison waited impatiently for Marian, though he
never for a moment doubted but that she would come.

Absence from her had made her influence the stronger; each hour the
recollection of her face had grown more clear—the droop of the eyelids,
their sudden lifting and the keen, searching look of her eyes; the
dainty poise of her head, the masses of red-gold hair, the little mouth
with its moist, tempting lips; the tall figure, the clean, determined
movements.

He paced up and down the studio waiting for her.

Many pretty women had sat to him there, some of whom had tempted him and
to a few of whom he had fallen willing captive for a time. But Marian
held him by a stronger spell; it was not merely her beauty that called
so, imperatively to him. She was a complete woman, body and brain, and
to touch her heart, to win it, to keep it, to be able to hurt it—that
he must do.

But she did not come and the hour was past. Was she fooling him, luring
him on? He could not credit that; he had watched her keenly and it had
seemed to him that she was ready to rebel but did not dare revolt, and
that it remained for him to decide whether or not she should attain her
freedom. To him this world was a delightful dwelling place, in which
wise men gained all of pleasure upon which they could lay hands. To make
her his own would bring him complete satisfaction, at any rate for a
time. As for the future, only fools toted up bills that might have to be
paid. There was one cost, however, which he would have to pay, the
thought of which had at first given him pause. Doubtless Squire would
sue for a divorce, and, though the case would be undefended,
nevertheless it would cause considerable scandal. Afterwards, would she
ask him to marry her? That he would not do, for it was a part of his
creed that a woman who has left one man had best be left free to desert
the next.

As he waited impatiently, the question came to him more forcibly than it
had done before: did Marian care for him? Their two meetings had been
brief, and there had been no hint of love making. He thought that she
was desperate enough to grasp at any hand held out to her, that she
would be easy to win. The idea of the picture had suggested itself
opportunely, and he had seized on it as a convenient and plausible
excuse for their meetings. He fancied that she would accept the chance
eagerly, yet she had not seemed to do so, had hesitated, and now—he
laughed angrily at the state of irritated disappointment into which he
was working himself.

Perhaps she had been delayed, or detained at the last moment. Probably
she would write, or maybe come up in the afternoon to explain.

He had arranged to lunch in the studio, luckily, so would not be out if
she did arrive later. He looked at the pretty white table, which stood
so daintily in the broad alcove before the wide hearth, with the quaint
colored glasses and old silver. How delicious she would look against the
dark oak of the fireplace!

A ring at the door!

The housekeeper announced “Mr. Mortimer,” and Maddison fumed that he had
forgotten to say that he expected a sitter, and was not to be disturbed.

“Well, George,” said Mortimer, putting up his eyeglass as he walked into
the room. “I’m extra busy at the office, so it’s jollier than ever to
come up and waste an hour with you. It’s no fun lounging when there’s no
reason why you should not do so. Ah! you were expecting some one—me, of
course!”

He glanced at the luncheon table, quizzically. He was short, sturdy,
with a somewhat bullet-shaped head, covered—though thin at top—with
crisp, curly black hair. His features were Oriental in cast, with a
tendency toward coarseness, and his voice somewhat thick and heavy.

He sat down on the steps that led up to the broad, deep bow window,
laying down his glossy hat and natty stick on the rug beside him.

“I had meant to stay at least half an hour, and possibly to carry you
off to lunch, but——”

“But you think I don’t want you,” answered Maddison, laughing. “I don’t
think I shall mind much. I was expecting an old friend, whom I met the
other day for the first time for years. She’s going to sit for me——”

“My dear fellow, why explain? Who would suspect you of being foolish
enough to lunch alone when good company was procurable? I notice you say
you _were_ expecting?”

“Mrs. Squire was to have been here at eleven; then two hours’ work, then
lunch. It’s now half-past twelve——”

“Did you fix any time for lunch?”

“Have a cigarette and don’t be cynical. You forget that pose don’t pay
with me. How people would laugh if they found you out! Not a cynical old
bachelor, but just as romantic and soft hearted as man could be.”

“They won’t laugh, because they never will know. Even if you told them,
they’d not believe you. Is it a portrait or a picture you’re starting
out on?”

“Picture. I won’t talk about it, though. As you know, I can’t talk about
my ideas; they must just boil over, and then, if possible, or as far as
possible, I get them on canvas. What a painter I should be if only I
could make facts of all my fancies. There’s the blank canvas, and in my
mind the picture. I wonder will you ever see it?”

“I wonder are you as impressionable as you used to be? And—it’s a
beastly word, but there is no other—and as romantic as you still appear
to be? As far as I know, you’ve never really been in love, George:
perhaps it’s better that way for a painter or a poet, never to feel very
deeply. He should understand deep feelings, but never experience them.
What do you think?”

“I don’t think about art. Art’s in us, and comes out as well as it can.
That’s all there is to it. There’s only one rule of art: don’t lie,
don’t make up things; and if you can hit on a new truth, or can tell an
old truth perfectly, you’re a genius. That’s all.”

“What are you?”

“How can I know?”

“You’re not in love, George?”

“What the deuce makes you say that? Who said I was?”

“Nobody. But I thought you were at first—with Mrs. What’s-her-name, who
should have been here. But you can’t be, or not badly, or you would not
have talked ‘shop’ so enthusiastically.”

“That’s no proof. I don’t think I could ever love a woman as much as I
do my work. I can’t believe that, if ever I had to choose between my
work and a woman, I should choose the woman.”

“Touch wood, old chap, touch wood; though even that powerful magic won’t
make you safe. Just wait till ‘she’ comes along, and then, Lord preserve
you! You—I can see you just mad for a woman.”

“You’re wrong. No woman I’ve ever seen has made me forget myself.”

“No woman—yet. That doesn’t insure the future.”

“No; but I haven’t any fears.”

“That’s what I used to say, once upon a time.”

“And——?”

“I’ve grown older and wiser. But that’s a story too stupid and too
common to be worth telling. You—you’re capable of sacrificing
everything for a woman, for _the_ woman; and, after all, it’s the only
thing worth making sacrifices for. Venus is the only goddess worth
worshipers.”

“You romantic old cynic!”

“Cynic! I wonder how that ever came to be a term of reproach? A cynic’s
simply a man who has learned that impulses should be restrained by
reason. Most men find that wisdom when their impulses have ceased to be
temptations. Good Lord! George, I came up here to lounge, and you
mislead me into talking art and philosophy. The least compensation you
can offer me is—lunch. I’m hungry.”

Mortimer went off after luncheon, and Maddison was once more free to
study the problem that faced him. Mortimer’s belief that he could ever
be induced to throw all else aside for the love of a woman had amused
him and instilled into him a spirit of dare-deviltry, of intense desire
to make hot love to Marian, for whom his longing grew keener and
keener—just to prove that he could play with fire without burning his
fingers.

Wonder at her not coming to him was now being supplanted by anxiety lest
some accident should have befallen her.

If he walked down to Kennington he would not be there until after three
o’clock, not too early an hour for a call in so unfashionable a
neighborhood.

He walked slowly, surprised at the keenness of the anxiety he was now
enduring. Had Marian, already, after two brief meetings, become so much
to him that the fear of any hurt having come to her filled him with
rage? How clearly he conjured up his last sight of her, as she stood
back to the fire, whose light glinted through her hair. How graceful and
gracious she had looked. Yes, he feared love unfulfilled, not love
unrequited.

The gate creaked dismally as he pushed it open. He walked quickly up the
gravel path, looking sharply up at the parlor window, through which in
the dusk he could see the firelight dancing on the ceiling.

“Mrs. Squire was not in. Would he wait?” said the little maid.

Curiously the chance that she might not be in had not occurred to him,
and he drew his breath sharply at the news.

“Is she likely to be in soon?”

“I dunno—shall I ask master?”

He told her not to trouble and turned away. He could not run the risk of
having to face Squire, bearing in mind the errand on which he had come.

Apparently nothing unusual had occurred. Why had she not kept her
appointment? Or, if unable to do so, why had she not written or
telegraphed to him? Had it meant so little to her that she had forgotten
it?

The best thing for him to do was to put the matter on one side, to wait
awhile, to watch. Perhaps she had written and the letter had been
delayed.

He walked some little distance before he could obtain a cab, and so,
home.

There came no letter.




                               CHAPTER IV


THAT afternoon Marian had gone out, thinking it possible Maddison might
call, and she was pleased to hear on her return that he had done so. He
was anxious then: waiting makes the heart grow fonder.

But it had not occurred to her that he might stalemate her by adopting
similar tactics to her own. Several days went by and he neither made any
appearance nor gave any sign, so that she began to fear that she
possessed either little or no influence over him.

If he failed her she could think of no means by which she could effect
her escape from the life which she so loathed. Merely to leave her
husband would be cutting herself off from the security of respectability
without gaining any compensating advantages. To go to Maddison would be
different; through him she would make friends and acquaintances, whom
she did not doubt she could use to her advantage.

In the country the growth of her mind had been stunted, though, on the
other hand, to those years of fresh air and simple life she owed her
superb health. Her education had been scanty, with the one exception of
music—singing and the pianoforte having been taught her by the church
organist, an enthusiastic old bachelor of small means but of fine taste
and accomplishment. She was not an expert performer; she had not a voice
which could be coined into guineas; but to her own accompaniment she
sang with feeling and effect simple ballads, sometimes those of her own
countryside. Of literature and art she knew little and was content in
her ignorance. Innate good taste enabled her to dress to advantage. In
conversation she had the knack of making such use of the small knowledge
she possessed as to hide deficiencies. With curious acuteness and
minuteness she had taken stock of her capabilities and defects,
realizing fully that on the whole she was well equipped for the world of
adventure.

Two rules she had laid down for herself; never to lose control over her
emotions and always to remember that the most powerful woman is she who
seems most weak. She understood clearly that her chief handicap was lack
of experience, but she believed that in a woman instinct takes the place
of knowledge. She would feel her way carefully, step by step, watching
and probing, but the first step and the most difficult was to free
herself and to obtain a footing in the greater world. She had almost
despaired of ever doing this, when so unexpectedly she had met with
Maddison. She had watched his career with interest and with admiration
of its brilliant and rapid success, and now she upbraided herself
because it had never entered into her calculations that she might be
able to utilize him in the attaining of her ambitions. She ought to have
remembered how near to loving her he had once been.

So far, in her dealings with him, she did not think that she had made
any error. She had shown no interest in him, which she believed was the
best way to pique him into feeling interest in her. She had talked of
herself, had told him enough to enable him to see clearly how
dissatisfied she was with her present lot. She now felt that all that
remained for her to do was to persuade him that she was worth winning,
not merely for her beauty, but because she could add to the
attractiveness and pleasure of his life. She, however, did not know
anything of his way of life, and did not even know whether any other
woman held the place she wished to obtain for herself.

He had vaguely said that he was willing to help her; he had shown
anxiety by at once calling when she had failed to go to him; but, since
then, silence. The next move was left to her, and with all her care she
might make a false one. She knew that he was emotional, and conjectured
that, once roused, no scruple of conventional morality would be a
hindrance to him in achieving his desire.

If she were to approach him again now, without any reasonable excuse for
doing so, she feared that she might fail to gain his help, and such a
failure would mean lasting defeat. There was no means that she could
think of by which she could bring him to her. To wait indefinitely was
not only dangerous but repugnant to her daily intensifying longing for
escape from her present life. So far, she had considered only two of the
three factors in the case—herself and Maddison. It remained to be
proved whether or not she could work her will by the instrumentality of
her husband.

She knew his intense devotion to her, but that, great as it was, it
weighed nothing against his sense of right and wrong. She did not hold
the first place in his life: that was given to his work. Love, health,
comfort, success—all were nothing in the scales against duty. Further,
even if he were willing to give up all for her, he could neither help
her ambitions nor satisfy her longings, the chief of which, indeed, was
to be free from him.

More than once he had spoken to her almost sternly of her idleness and
unwillingness to assist him. Was it not possible in this connection to
bring about some breach between them? In some indefinite way she felt a
desire to quarrel with him. At this very time he was constantly urging
her to join the small band of women who, under his guidance, were
laboring to bring something of decency and comfort into the lives of the
wretched dwellers in some notorious slum property in the parish. She
steadfastly refused. It was not work which she could or would do.

When this thought came to her, she was engaged upon some accounts, which
he had asked her to have complete for an important meeting in the
evening.

She closed the books almost untouched, feeling fairly confident that
this remissness would lead to remonstrance on his part, which she could
make an excuse for defiance.

Coming home late in the afternoon, Squire found her, as often he had
done of late, sitting idly in the dusk by the window, looking out at the
dreary prospect. The fire had sunk low, and the glowing coals shed but a
dim light over the room.

He was tired, physically and mentally, and a stir of anger came to him
to find her sitting there thus, knowing that she knew that he considered
this idleness wrong.

He sat down heavily in the worn armchair, and began to unlace his boots;
his feet would be rested by an hour or so of slippers.

“I’m very tired,” he said; but she made no answer.

“How have you got on with the accounts?” he asked after a pause. “I
suppose they were all right?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t touched them.”

“Not touched them!” he exclaimed, aghast, and turning sharply to her.
“Not touched them! You—knew they must be ready for to-night!”

“Yes, I knew.”

She stood up, let the blinds down, pulled to the curtains viciously, and
then went over to the chimney-piece for the matches. She struck a light
and turned up the gas, which blazed up into a shrieking flame, and, in
turning it low, she turned it out. She lit the gas again, and then stood
leaning against the table, watching his face of amazement.

“I don’t understand,” he said, looking at her with puzzled eyes. “You
knew they must be done, and you haven’t touched them? You’re not ill?”

“No, quite well. It’s just this, Edward, this life is killing me; you
must change it. I’ve done my best to stand it, but I can’t go on with it
any longer.”

“Change it—change it! How can we change it, even if it was right to?”

“Right! Right! Right!” she repeated fiercely. “Who made _you_ the judge
of what is right for _me_? You’re my husband, but that doesn’t make you
my judge. You live your own life, and I must live mine; and this life
you try to make me lead is not mine. Stop!—listen to me first. You’re
so blinded with self-satisfaction, so obstinately sure that you’re
right, that you’ve forgotten all about me. I’ve become just a mere item
in your existence, a part of yourself. You’ve forgotten that I’ve a
self, or you couldn’t really believe that this life would satisfy me.
I’m young. Am I to have no fun in life? No amusements, no gayety, no
pleasure, no friends? Am I to go on living here, seeing nobody worth
seeing, going nowhere, just drudging along in this dismal hole?”

She stopped, panting, and he broke in——

“I can’t listen to you, Marian. Do you understand what you’re saying?”

“Yes, yes,” she interrupted, “I understand; it’s you who can’t. Can’t?
Won’t—won’t! I sometimes wonder if you’re a man or a mere machine?”

“If you knew how much you are hurting me, Marian, you’d know how much of
a man I am. Don’t you think I’ve seen how discontented you are, but you
wouldn’t take my advice; you wouldn’t try to do what I know would make
you happy. You’re—you’re so selfish; you criticise everything by
whether it brings happiness to you. You have everything that I have, and
could share everything with me, and be quite content and happy. But you
do nothing; you keep outside my life and won’t let me help you.”

“I’ve heard all this before! What’s the use of preaching to me? Keep
your sermons for those who agree with you. You’ve talked like this at me
till I’m sick of hearing you.”

“Why not do as I ask you—work?”

“Why should I work?” she asked fiercely.

“Is it really you, Marian? I thought you so different.”

“I was different when you married me; I was a baby then, an ignorant
fool of a girl. I’ve grown into a woman, but you haven’t noticed it.”

“A woman has more heart——”

“Copy-book platitudes won’t help us.”

“Don’t you love me?” he asked, straining eagerly toward her for the
reply.

“No. I never did.”

“You never loved me?” he stammered, standing up and leaning heavily on
the back of the chair. “You said you did—why did you marry me?”

“I suppose I thought I loved you—because I was lonely, poor; because I
didn’t understand what love was; because I didn’t love anyone else;
because I didn’t know any other man. If we’d gone on living down there
in the country, I daresay I should have gone on vegetating. But you
dragged me up here, and I’ve woken up. You said I was selfish. What
about you? You knew what you were bringing me to and never stopped to
think whether it would be good for me, this dull, stupid life, with
nothing to care for, nothing to hope for, nothing to do.”

“You never really loved me? Oh, my God, why am I punished like this?”

He dropped his arms helplessly, standing before her, looking at her
bewildered, as though struggling to shake himself free from some
oppressive dream.

“Selfish again,” she said. “Your punishment! What about mine? You’ve
often preached that there is no real happiness in life but to do your
duty. Haven’t you done yours?”

“I can’t have.... What can I do?”

“Free me from this existence. Go away from here; somewhere there is
life——”

“You know I can’t leave my work.”

“Others can do it.”

“If we all said that? You know I can’t leave my appointed work.”

Marian sat down and beat with her clenched fists upon the table.

“Can’t you see anyone’s life but your own?” she exclaimed fiercely. “You
make me loathe you when you talk that way. Can’t you be a bit practical?
Don’t you understand that things can’t go on like this? That you’re
killing me? You’ve no pluck; I believe you’d be quite content to live
all your life in these dingy lodgings. You say you love me——”

“I do—I do——”

“And won’t do a thing to make me happy! We can’t go on living together
like this. Can we? Don’t you see we can’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“That something must be done to change it.”

“Wait, wait, let me think!” he said, tramping about the room; “let me
think, let me think. No, Marian, I can’t go away; I must stop here and
go on with my work. You see, dear, you’ve never really tried my way; if
you worked hard all day like I do you’d have no time to be unhappy.”

“Why should I _work_?”

“Why shouldn’t you? That’s what we all have to do. And there’s so much
work. You don’t know, I didn’t like to tell you, how it handicaps me,
people knowing that you do nothing to help me. How can I urge them on
when my wife does nothing? Then—what is it you want?”

“If I told you, oh! I know what you’d say. The same old sermons—the
things I do want wouldn’t make me happy, the things I don’t would.
You’ve made up your mind what I ought to do and you _are_ so certain
you’re right.”

“It’s not what _I_ think——”

“Yes, yes, it _is_ what you think; what others believe is right when you
agree with them. I don’t agree with you. Your beliefs don’t make me
happy.”

He sat down opposite her and began idly tracing with his finger the
pattern on the shabby green cloth. She waited, wondering what he would
say. So far there had been little more than a repetition of previous
scenes between them. At last, after what seemed to her an interminable
silence, he said—

“Don’t you see how you are breaking my heart? I believed you loved me.
You deceived me. Then—do you think my work is easy to me? Don’t you
know I would like to give you everything you want? But I can’t leave my
work, and you—you do nothing to help me.”

“How can I when I think you’re all wrong?”

“Wrong in what way?”

“In everything. You preach about a merciful, just God! Is there any
mercy or justice in allowing people to be born to live the life you are
working to save them from? Nonsense!”

“Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Quite well.”

“It’s blasphemy”—he stood up, looking down on her with the light of
fanaticism in his eyes—“blasphemy! Pray to God you may be forgiven for
it. Do you ever pray—truly?”

“What’s the use? I’ve prayed for what I want and can’t go on believing
when I don’t get it. Of course you’ll tell me I pray for what wouldn’t
be good for me! Praying doesn’t alter things, so what’s the use of it?”

“It’s because you don’t believe.”

“Yes, that’s religion all over!—Argue in a way that would be simply
idiotic if you applied it to real life.”

“Marian! Marian!” he said, leaning across the table toward her, “God
help you!”

“Soon, I hope,” she answered, turning away with a gesture of disgust.

He sprang up, but bit his lip, stopping the rush of words that came to
his tongue. She looked up at him, laughing bitterly.

“Will you ever realize that our marriage was a mistake? We weren’t made
for one another, that’s all about it. And we’re so poor we can’t afford
to separate.”

“Separate!”

“What’s the use of stopping together? I tell you I _can’t_ go on with
this life; you must change it; you must.”

“I can’t. Marian, won’t you try once more?”

“No, I won’t. I’ve one life to live and I won’t be driven into wasting
it. I’m young, full of life; you’ve often told me I’m beautiful, and you
want me to go on living here and sharing your miserable work. I won’t.
You must make a change.”

“I can’t,” he repeated doggedly. “You know I can’t. Not even you can
tempt me to do that. I’ve listened to what you said, horrible as much of
it was. I’ve felt hopeless about you for some time; you were so out of
touch with me, you were becoming a stranger to me. I’ve asked you to try
my way once more. I’ve often asked things of you. I begin to think I’ve
been weak. I’ve tried to make you my true comrade and I’ve failed. Now,
I must—must—make a change.” There was a tone in his voice that
compelled her to stand up face to face with him. “I must make a change.
Instead of our ruling our house together——”

“House! Lodgings!”

“_I_ will be its master. I blame myself for not having been so sooner.
Your life and salvation were intrusted to me and I should not have let
my love for you interfere and tempt me to make life easy for you. Life
is not easy and you must face it. Remember, I’m God’s minister.”

“So you say. You never give me a chance of forgetting it, with your
continual preaching. So, now you can’t bend me, you’ll break me?”

“I must try to teach you that God must be obeyed.”

“How do you know His commands? But it’s no good talking this way any
more. I shall leave you to-morrow”—her voice trembled, half with fear,
half with defiant anger as she repeated—“I shall leave you to-morrow.”

“Leave me?”

“Leave you.”

“Where are you going?”

“What does that matter to you? You think divorce sinful, so my future
address doesn’t concern you.”

She walked quickly out of the room, leaving him dazed.

For some moments he seemed scarcely conscious, scarcely able to breathe.
Then, slowly, heavily, he kneeled down at the table, and, burying his
face in his hands, prayed for forgiveness, the while he shook with
sobbing and his heart ached.




                               CHAPTER V


MARIAN locked herself into the bedroom and sat down before the glass,
laughing at her flushed, angry face. She was too astute to try to cajole
herself into believing that Edward had really done or said anything to
justify her leaving him. But in her present mood it pleased her to
behave like a spoiled child. When Edward knocked at the door, asking for
admission, she did not answer. She laughed again as she listened to his
heavy, weary footfall going down the stairs. He would have to work out
the accounts for himself; she had done with them.

She pulled out from beneath the bed her old-fashioned leather trunk and
began to pack such clothes as she meant to take with her.

He sat down wearily to the books, checking them mechanically, while his
mind was almost numb. He had never hesitated in his faith; it was not in
him to do so; but never before had he felt so helpless. Prayer had
brought softness to his anger, but as yet there was no light on the dark
path ahead.

Before he left the house he went upstairs again, but, as before,
obtained no answer to his knocking. From sheer habit he wrapped himself
up closely, and, taking the books, went out.

Marian heard the door shut behind him, and knew that it closed on her
married life.


                 *        *        *        *        *

This same day Maddison worked until the light failed, early in the
afternoon, and then stood before the fire in the darkening studio,
undetermined.

Marian’s intrusion into his life had rendered him dissatisfied, made him
at one moment feverishly anxious for activity, at another full of
longing for solitude and silence. As it chanced, the first was his
present mood, but he had no engagement and did not know where to go or
what to do.

It was only four o’clock. He could pay a visit to one or other of the
many friends who would meet him with quick welcome, but this prosaic
prospect did not allure him, nor did an afternoon of gossip or argument
at the club.

It occurred to him to go and see Marian, but he resisted the insistent
temptation. She had thrown him over without a word, either not wanting
to see him, or wishing him to woo her; both pride and wisdom told him
that he had best leave the next move to her. But if she made no move?
Were there not other women equally desirable! Another Marian?

The ringing of the telephone bell broke in on his thoughts. The call was
from Mortimer.

“Hullo! Is that you, George?”

“Yes.”

“I’m laid up with a sprained ankle. Can you come round for a chat? I’ve
no woman for you—only tea.”

“All right.”

“At once?”

“Yes.”

A hansom bore him down quickly to the Adelphi, where Mortimer lived in a
snug set of chambers overlooking the river. Maddison found him stretched
out on the sofa before the fire, reading a prettily-bound,
daintily-illustrated, wittily-written volume of French essays on
cookery.

“Good man!” he exclaimed. “Come round to the fire. I’ve had a most lucky
accident which will prevent me being able to go to the office this
abominable weather and will get me out of several engagements I don’t
want to keep.”

“You know you love going out!”

“No, I don’t. And as a matter of fact I don’t go out much. I used to,
but I’m growing up. For one thing, people are so stupidly flippant; at
best flippancy doesn’t sit well on English shoulders. You see I’m lucky:
I’m an Englishman with foreign parents and a Jew for a grandfather. Do
you mind ringing the bell?”

The servant brought in the tea table, which he set down beside the sofa;
a bright, copper kettle was put on one trivet and a dish of hot cakes on
the other.

“You old maid!” said Maddison, laughing, as he watched the trim
preparations.

“That’s a compliment. An old maid is usually delightful. She has the
ripeness of years without the rottenness of experience. And she’s free
to do what she likes.”

“Because she hasn’t been able to do what every woman likes best; so she
has to put up with the details of life.”

“Are there any details in life?” Mortimer asked.

“Yes; most important things are details.”

“I suppose you would call tea-making a detail? Three and a half minutes
exactly. I hope you always drink China tea, George!”

“I never thought about it.”

“An unhappy old age is before the man who does not consider the tea he
drinks? No doubt you are Vandal enough to take sugar? Art and
sensibility of palate seldom go together. By the way, West’s back from
his honeymoon. I had a line from him this morning. What a beggar he is
for writing! He gets through more work in a day than the average man
does in a week, and still has time to be married and write letters. He
wants me to go down for a week-end.”

“What’s she like?”

“You saw her at the wedding.”

“Saw her. I know what she looks like—an empty-headed plaything. But you
know her well, don’t you?”

“No man ever knows a woman.”

“Don’t be platitudinous.”

“I can’t always be lying. She—I really don’t know. I used to think her
a devilish little flirt; in fact she was; but women do change so after
they’re married. Besides, I may have been quite wrong, quite. Everyone
else thought her just a simple little maiden—who _knows_?”

“And after all, it doesn’t really much matter. But it will take a clever
woman to manage West. If she is just a doll he’ll soon grow tired of
her—as he has of other dolls, whom he didn’t need to marry.”

“That’s so. We shall see. I like West. He’s such a delightful contrast
to myself. How have you been jogging along? Anything new? Is the picture
getting itself upon canvas?”

“Not begun!” answered Maddison, putting down his cup and lighting a
cigarette.

“Refractory model, or what?”

“Just can’t get a start, that’s all. I can see it in my mind’s eye,
Horatio, but—” he broke off abruptly.

They chatted on about matters indifferent, but Maddison, feeling out of
tune with his companion, went away with an unwonted consciousness that
he was out of tune with his life.

He lingered for a few minutes on the Terrace, looking at the picture
spread before him: the blackness of the gardens below; the lamps on the
Embankment and of the passing cabs and carriages; the dim mystery of the
river; the black line of the railway bridge with its green and red
lights; over all, the gloom and glamour of London.

Then he walked up Adam Street and so on along the noisy Strand to
Charing Cross. As he walked, unconsciously directing his steps homeward,
there came over him that intense feeling of loneliness that must fall at
times upon any man who lives alone in London. He longed for some one,
some woman, to whom he could go, with whom he could stay, in whom he
could confide, from whom he could obtain the satisfying sympathy which
only a woman can give to a man. There never had been one who had in any
reality shared his life; he had never before suffered from the lack of
such a one. But now he was hungry for intimate, human companionship and
there was no one from whom he could obtain it. His thoughts turned to
Marian. He realized that he did not know anything of her nature; she
attracted him physically; she interested him. It did not appear
unreasonable that a woman of her temperament should rebel against the
circumstances of her dull, insipid life, but he wondered if it were
solely against that existence that she was revolting, or was she one of
those women who rebel against all restraint? Was she simply a
man-hunter? A woman who lusted for pleasure, excitement, change for
change’s sake? How greatly she had altered from the simple country girl
she had been when he knew her first.

Or had she qualities in her which would enable her to become devoted to
one man, to be happy with him? To be his comrade and ally? He must not
permit sensual impulses to overthrow his reason. He must not allow
Marian to become part of his life, only to find that he was not part of
hers.

It is a long walk from the Strand to St. John’s Wood, and it was
considerably after seven when he slipped his latchkey into the door and
went into the dark studio, turning up the light as he entered. Still the
sense of loneliness held him; the room, despite all its luxuriousness,
appeared comfortless.

He sat down and stirred the fire into a flame; sat there, smoking and
thinking.

Strength had gone out of him. During the last few days his work had
failed to satisfy him: it had been labored and dull. He had never before
suffered in this way. Painting had hitherto been the supreme thing in
his life, but now a woman’s face was always flitting between him and the
canvas. If she were with him, would it still be so? Or would she
strengthen and inspire him? It was the uncertainty that disturbed him;
to have and to hold her, then to find that she injured and did not aid
him—that would hurt, but the wound would quickly heal, he felt sure. It
would be wiser, then, to act promptly, to put an end to this state of
doubt.

Supposing she rejected him? Probably she had not come to him because she
did not care whether she met him again or did not. Or—it might be—she
wished so dearly to see him that she could not bring herself to come to
him.

He drove down to Acacia Grove.

As he strode up the crunching gravel path he saw that the parlor was in
darkness, or else the curtains were very closely drawn.

If her husband were with her his visit would be in vain, save that it
would show her that he was anxious to see her. His hand trembled as he
knocked, and he waited anxiously for the maid’s approach.

“Is Mrs. Squire at home?”

“No, sir. She’s just gone away, sir, in a keb, with her boxes. She was
a-goin’ on a wisit, she said.”

“Where to?”

“I dunno.”

He hurried away, shocked, angry. What silly trick was fate playing on
him? He must write, cautiously, perhaps to find that she was gone out of
his reach.

What an unutterably dreary part of the town was this in which he found
himself pursuing the more or less romantic! Dingy vice and dreary
respectability inextricably mingled, punctuated by blazing public
houses. He hurried through the continuous stream of wayfarers, wondering
if any of them knew the meaning of love. It startled him to find how
intense had grown his longing for Marian, whom he thought at first he
held in his hand, but who now eluded him so persistently.

A man passed him, walking rapidly in the opposite direction. Despite the
dim light, he recognized Edward Squire. Then the thought came to him
that perhaps Marian had come face to face with the great act of
rebellion and had found her courage fail, had fled for safety. He did
not believe that she would find safety; once her thirst for the fullness
of life had been excited she would quench it. If he did not win her some
other man would. He wanted her and would not leave anything undone to
possess her.

Again and again the echo of her voice rang in his ears as he hurried
along; again her face appealed to him. How glorious it would be to
loosen her red-gold hair around her shoulders, to hold her close to him,
looking deep into her eyes, his lips on hers; she and he alone.




                               CHAPTER VI


BOTH in situation and in itself, Stone’s Hotel is respectable and dull.
Desperately so, Marian found it, as she stood looking out of the drawing
room window on the sunlit, colorless street. She was alone.

It was an Early Victorian room; heavy, dingy red curtains hung down
starkly before the window from a heavy, gilded cornice. The carpet also
was dingy red, with faded roses of huge proportions displayed thereon;
the walls were covered with dirty gold-and-white paper, chastened by
oleographs in clumsy gold frames; over the mantelpiece there was a
fly-blown, gilt-framed mirror; the furniture was upholstered in
well-worn red velvet, and over the backs of the chairs and sofa were
draped dirty white crochet antimacassars; in the center stood a huge
round table covered with a green and black cloth and adorned with a
careful selection of assorted hotel guides and photograph albums, among
which a stray Tauchnitz volume looked sadly out of place; over the whole
lay the blight of dust and dreariness.

Marian had dressed carefully in black, the single touch of color being a
gold brooch at her neck.

She turned, with a gesture of impatience, away from the empty street to
the empty room, and sat down by the fire, the one spot of warmth and
brightness.

Her brows knit as she thought over the situation in which she had placed
herself. She was ready to cross the Rubicon; had gone so far that return
was unthinkable. It now depended upon Maddison whether her first fight
would be a victory or a disastrous defeat. But she felt stronger now
that she was free, and determinedly put aside all thought of what would
face her if she failed to win.

The sharp pulling up of a hansom and the ringing of the house-bell made
her listen eagerly. The subdued maidservant threw open the door and
Maddison came in.

“It is so good of you to come!” Marian said, rising and holding out her
hand. “I hope you didn’t mind my writing to you, but I’ve—no one else.”

The weariness and despondency in her voice and attitude hurt him.

“Of course I don’t mind—why on earth should I? Is—what’s happened?”

She sat down again, her back to the light, and he took the chair on the
opposite side of the hearth. He could not see her face very distinctly
in the dull room, but this very dimness gave an added charm to her
beauty. She did not answer his question immediately, though her lips
parted as if she were anxious but unable to speak.

“Now you’re here,” she said at last, “I’m frightened. I’d no right to
ask you to come, but—I’d no one else, and I’m——”

Tears came into her eyes, rolling slowly down her cheeks. Then she
covered her face with her hands, watching him very keenly between her
fingers.

He rose quickly and came over to her, resting his hand upon the back of
her chair and only by an effort restraining himself from catching her in
his arms.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “so sorry, and so glad you did send for me.
Don’t—don’t cry.”

“I’m so helpless!” she sobbed.

She dropped her hands on her lap disconsolately; he took them in his, as
he stooped over her.

“Come, come, you’re not helpless,” he said, “because you’re not alone.
Tell me, what has happened?”

She drew her hands slowly from his, as she answered—

“You must forgive me—crying; I’m not often so silly, but I couldn’t
help it. If you hadn’t come, I don’t know what I should have done.
Please sit down again and I’ll tell you.”

She paused as though she were trying how best to begin her story.

“I’ve left home. Left it altogether. I couldn’t stay there any
longer. I tried hard to get used to things, but they got worse and
worse. Then yesterday afternoon Edward was wild with me because I
couldn’t—_couldn’t_ help him in his work. I broke out and—there was a
regular scene between us. We quarreled—and—I came away here—what am I
to do?”

“Why here?”

“It’s the only place I know. My father brought me here years ago; it
wasn’t like this then, or didn’t seem so.”

“Have you no plans at all?” he asked.

“No, none. I must earn a living somehow. I’ve no money, and no friends,
except you, and I’ve no right to bother you. I suppose you think I’m mad
to run away like this—but the life there—it wasn’t life—it was
killing me.

“I don’t set up to judge people; don’t talk like that. The first thing
is—you mustn’t stop in this dingy hole.”

“Where else can I go?”

“We must hunt up some decent rooms somewhere. This place would kill
you.”

“Decent rooms—with a decent rent! You forget I’m a working woman. The
first thing to do is to find a way to earn my living.”

He hesitated for a moment; was she playing with him, or talking in
innocent earnestness?

“What about your husband?” he asked abruptly.

“Edward? I left a letter for him, telling him I had gone away and
that—nothing on earth would persuade me to go back.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Her hands clinched as she answered: “Nothing could ever persuade me to
go back to him. What would be the use of it? To begin it all over again?
There would be no change; he couldn’t change, and I couldn’t—not as he
would want me to. He’ll be miserable at first, but soon he’ll be all the
better for my being away. He never loved me really; it’s only his work
he loves.”

“Won’t he search for you?”

“I dare say. But he’d only preach again if he found me.”

“Did you—did you—care for him?”

“Love him? I thought I did when I married him, and didn’t know what he
was. I was a girl then and knew nothing. Gradually I came to hate him. I
couldn’t help it; you don’t know how heartlessly cruel a _good_ man can
be—they’re so utterly selfish. But don’t let’s waste time on what has
been. When I shut the door there last night, I shut it on the past.
Now—what am I to do now? Can you help me? Do you know of any work I
could do? Or how I could get it?”

“Let me think,” he said, walking slowly up and down the room. “Why—why
did you not keep your promise to come and see me at my studio?”

“I—can’t tell you.”

“Can’t tell me?” he said, surprised.

“No; please don’t ask me. I could make up an excuse—lie to you, but—I
shouldn’t like to tell you even the most innocent fib. So please don’t
ask. All I can tell you,” she said, looking up at him as he stood beside
her, “is that I had a very good reason.”

Their eyes met fully, and she dropped hers quickly and turned away.

“I went down to see you last night—just after you had left,” he said.
“I—well, I wanted you to help me.”

“To help you? How could I help you?”

“We’re a helpless couple,” he answered, laughing nervously. Then he drew
up a chair close to hers, so that he could see her face. “Yes, you can
help me, and it’s just possible I can help you. You remember when I came
down to see you that afternoon, and you told me something about your
life and how—bad it was for you. I’ve never forgotten what you told me.
It’s made me a good deal unhappy.”

“I don’t know why I told you,” she said doubtfully; “I suppose because
you were the only person I knew who I thought could understand. I didn’t
mean to worry you.”

“I’m very glad you did tell me. But something you _did_ worried me very
much—your not coming to see me. It made me angry at first and then
miserable, especially as you didn’t write to say why you hadn’t been
able to come.”

“I tried to write but I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t? What do you mean?” he asked keenly.

“Just, I couldn’t. Don’t ask me any more.”

“You _couldn’t_ come to see me—you _couldn’t_ write to me? I don’t
understand.”

“I—can’t explain. But—you were telling me about yourself?”

“You care to hear?”

“Of course I do.”

“When I went down to see you last night it seemed as if it would be so
easy; now, somehow I can’t say what I want.”

“Is it something I can do for you?”

“Yes—yes—look here, come down to the studio now. I’ll start that
picture, and while I work you can talk. Then we’ll lunch there, and talk
some more and see if we can’t put things a bit straight. Will you come?”

Little as he had said, his manner had conveyed an assurance to her that
she would quickly gain her object, and it required all her
self-restraint to enable her to conceal her relief and triumph. She did
not reply to him immediately, looking into the fire as though she were
thinking over what he had said, in reality waiting until she felt sure
of her voice and eyes. The conversation of the last few minutes had
shown him to be her captive and that the life she had been dreaming of
was now about to become a reality.

She stood up as she answered him——

“I’ll come; it will do me good. You’ve been awfully kind to me.”

While waiting for her, he paced quickly up and down the room. All
hesitation and all doubt had vanished; his pulse beat quickly; he longed
to be away with her: to see her seated before him, the rebel whom he
hoped to tame. Yet with this certainty there mixed a last remnant of
reason: before he gave himself he must be sure that she was his. He
could not bring himself seriously to mistrust her, but he realized that
he was holding out a rescuing hand to a lonely, desperate, possibly
cunning woman. She might clutch at it in helplessness; he longed that
she should clasp it in love.

Though the drive was long it seemed only too short to him. She scarcely
spoke at all, but looked straight ahead, wistfully, as it seemed to him,
as though she were watching a world of men and women in which she only
was sad. He, too, was silent, content to look at her, noting every
beauty of her face, the graceful carriage of her head, the evanescent
loveliness of her hair.

“Here we are!” he exclaimed, as he led the way into the studio. “Shan’t
I just make a nuisance of myself! You’ll have to sit still, though you
can talk. I can listen while I work.”

“What a lovely room!” she said, looking round at the deep archway before
the carved oak fireplace; the opposite arch, the recess with the daïs
and the wide expanse of latticed windows with the clear lights above;
the parqueted floor, strewn with rugs and skins; the carved chairs and
the luxurious settee—the display of somber, costly, beautiful things.
“What a lovely room! I couldn’t work in a room like this—but then I’ve
never found a room in which I could work, since I left the country.”

She threw off her wraps and flung them with her hat—recklessly—on a
couch, and then stood warming her hands at the fire.

“I don’t think you were made for working,” he said, standing close
beside her, looking down upon her as she bent to the blaze, which shed a
warmth of crimson over her face. “You were meant to help others to
work.”

“You?”

“Ever so much, I fancy.”

“Tell me what I’m to do, and I’ll try.”

He brought over to the fireside an old-fashioned, plain wooden chair,
with high, stiff back and broad, flat arms.

“There—sit there—straight up—I shan’t keep you like that for long at
a stretch; grip the ends of the arms slightly—and look into the fire;
look like you did, as far as you can, that afternoon when I called you
the rebel.”

She took the position he directed, while he sat down on a stool at a
little distance and began to sketch rapidly upon a block on his knee.

“I want to rough it out,” he said, as he tore off a sheet of the paper
and flung it on the floor, “until I’ve caught the pose, and then I’ll
start to get it on a canvas.”

At first he worked quickly, the while she watched him with keen
interest. She knew that if she had aroused deep emotion in him, he could
not continue this make-believe of absorption in his work, could not long
keep up this semblance of looking upon her simply as a model.

It was partly hatred of the surroundings in which he had found her this
morning, partly fear of precipitancy that induced him to act as he was
doing. If he spoke too soon he might not only lose her, but lose
also—he loved her too sincerely not to dread it—the opportunity of
helping her in her distress. But strive strongly as he could he was
unable to concentrate his mind upon the work. Every time he looked at
her and found her gaze fixed upon him it called for all his powers of
control to keep him from throwing discretion aside at once and for all.

“You’re watching me,” he said with a touch of impatience that troubled
her; “look at the fire, please.”

“I’m afraid you bully your sitters,” she replied, doing as he bade her.
“I’m _so_ tired of being told to do things. There are such lots of
things I should like to do—but nobody ever told me to do any of them.”

“What things? May I know?”

“You’ll only laugh at me. They’re the kind of things that a woman with
nothing a year and not much hope of earning anything much has to do
without and had better not even think about.” She spoke slowly,
wondering which of her ambitions it would be discreet to name to him. “I
should like a lot of friends, clever people who can talk and be jolly
and make me jolly too, if I haven’t forgotten how to be; and pretty
rooms. I should like to read and to see pictures, and to go to the
opera—and I want sympathy—and—and——”

As she broke off there was a catch in her voice that routed the remains
of his discretion. He threw away his pencil and went quickly over to
her, standing beside her chair.

“Look up at me,” he said eagerly. “What else do you want?
Sympathy—and—what else?”

Instead of looking up at him, she turned away, clasping her hands in her
lap.

“Look up at me,” he repeated. “Why don’t you?”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t again! Is it—is it for the same reason that you didn’t come
here; didn’t write me? Tell me!”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to guess—but I daren’t, for if my guess was wrong, you’d
never forgive me. But—I’ll risk it. I can’t wait any longer. It’s
because you care more for me than you care for a mere friend. If that’s
it, it’ll be all right and you shall have all your wishes.”

He noticed the quick heaving of her bosom and believed that it was love
for him that stirred her.

“It’s just this: I love you, Marian, and if you’ll trust me I’ll do all
I can to make you happy. Let me try.”

The revulsion from doubt to certainty was too great for her strength,
and she burst into hysterical sobs as she hid her face in her hands.

“Marian, Marian,” he said, kneeling beside her, “just tell me—do you
love me? Tell me, do you? Do you?”

At the moment she almost felt that she did love him.

“Tell me—do you?”

“You really love me?” she asked, turning her tear-stained face to him.

“Really love you?” he exclaimed, seizing her hands and covering them
with eager kisses. “What’s the use of telling you? Let me prove it.”




                              CHAPTER VII


EVEN in winter time the Manor House at Chelmhurst is a cheerful abode;
the garden is no mere waste of promises kept and made; the two great
yew-trees on the lawn behind the house by their spacious graciousness
prevent any sense of void, nobly supported as they are by the splendid
laurel hedges and the evergreen shrubberies. The long, low house, with
warm red-brick walls, tiled roofs, haphazard gables and chimney-stacks,
strikes rich and cozy to the eye. Behind the garden, barely divided from
it by light iron railings, lies a broad meadow, with a pond and a
confining belt of elms. Before the house, clearly seen over the low
wall, stretches the gorse-clad common with its graceful clumps of
ash-trees.

Thin wraiths of country mist strayed about the common, hanging in the
tall trees that surround it on almost all sides, and there was a bitter
winter sting in the air, as Philip West and Fred Mortimer drove up from
the station one afternoon late in November.

With his long, lanky limbs, thick shock of black hair, which he had a
habit of tossing from his forehead, dark blue eyes, which at times
appeared to be the abode of dreams, but on occasion flashed with
abundant energy, his thin, almost cadaverous face, West contrasted
markedly with his companion. As ever, he was smoking a cigar, which he
fidgeted between his thin fingers when it was not cocked up at the
corner of his mouth.

“I’m sorry Maddison could not come down; I find him a refreshing
contrast to my restless self,” West said. “Besides I should like him to
meet Alice Lane. She’s the sort of woman you don’t meet half a dozen
times in a life. I wonder how they’d get on together.”

“Are you matchmaking for others, now you’ve made your own match?”

“Not a bit, Fred. That’s the one line of business I shouldn’t care to
tackle. It’d do him a deuced lot of good to get married to the right
woman.”

“I fancy he fancies other men have generally married the right
woman—for him. Which is convenient, and does not land him in lifelong
responsibilities. There are so many right men and so few right women.”

“Don’t agree with you a bit. The average man rubs along all right with
the average woman. It’s when you get a man above or below the average
that the trouble begins.”

Mortimer wondered if his companion were thinking of his own recent
marriage. Strikingly beautiful he knew Mrs. West to be, and in a quaint,
childish way, fascinating. But that would not suffice West for long. He
had tired of similar charms often enough already.

The victoria swung briskly in through the gate on to the short drive,
and before it had pulled up West leaped out and sprang up on to the
veranda to greet his wife.

“You see, Fred,” he said, laughing—“you see we haven’t forgotten our
honeymoon ways yet. We haven’t arrived at the silly stage when we’re
ashamed of people knowing we’re fond of one another. You’ve met Fred
before, Agatha; make the best you can of him, and let him do exactly
what he likes, or he’ll never come again.”

A pretty blush lingered on her cheeks as she held out her hand to
Mortimer in welcome.

“I try to keep him in order, Mr. Mortimer, but he’s just a great big
baby—at home, at any rate.”

It was she who looked a child; her figure was girlish, supple and
delicate, shown to perfection by the clinging soft silk gown; her face,
too, was girlish, tender in every contour, set in a frame of unruly
golden hair, the hazel eyes alone giving it distinction. Neither husband
nor wife made any attempt to conceal their admiration of and affection
for each other, and Mortimer could but question how long West, man of
the world, would rest satisfied with the constant companionship of such
a woman. Perhaps, however, she was exactly the helpmeet he needed, one
who would catch him away from the serious work of life.

The chief characteristic of the interior of the Manor House is the long,
low hall into which the front door opens directly; cozy, comfortable,
half drawing room, half billiard room, the Wests used it constantly,
Mrs. West working there in the morning and receiving visitors there in
the afternoon; in the evenings the house-party assembling there before
dinner and after.

“Here we are!” exclaimed West to a tall, graceful woman, who sat reading
by the roaring fire. “Here’s Mortimer, and here’s me, so now you have
some one to entertain or be entertained by, instead of reading all the
time while Agatha insists on spooning with me.”

Mortimer considered himself quick at seeing whether a new acquaintance
would prove to his liking, and immediately decided that there was not
much chance of there being any real goodwill between Alice Lane and
himself. She was not of a type that appealed to him; too sedate, too
cool; stately, well-proportioned, almost robust, with a breezy, blunt,
direct manner of speech, gesture and look.

“Why are you so late?” Mrs. West asked. “We waited lunch ever so long
for you, and now it is almost tea time.”

“It’s partly my fault because I was so busy; partly the fog’s.”

“Chiefly his fault,” said Mortimer; “he kept me waiting in his room for
two solid hours. Gave me _The Times_ and a lot of cigars to keep me
quiet.”

“You must be famished. Poor things! I’ll ring for tea at once. How can
you be so naughty, Phil?”

“If you pull my hair like that I shall kiss you, and you know how that
disgusts Alice. I _should_ like to see her in love with some emotional
young man like me——”

“Young!” exclaimed Mrs. West, with a merry laugh. “Young! Dark, thin and
forty, you mean!”

“Like myself,” he continued, ignoring the interruption. “I wonder
whether he would thaw her or she freeze him?”

“Don’t mind him, Alice.”

“I don’t. He’ll grow up some day.”

“There, Mrs. West,” he said, striking an attitude of triumph; “you see,
this sensible young woman realizes that I am young. Profit by her
example.”

Darkness was closing in, but Mrs. West protested that it would be far
more pleasant to sit, chat and drink tea by the firelight than to have
the lamp brought in.

“What a quaint quartette we are!” said West. “I, sedate and elderly;
Alice, sedate and quite young; Agatha, the child; and Fred—well, all
cynics are old.”

“_Are_ you a cynic?” asked Mrs. West, handing him his cup.

“What do you mean by a cynic?”

“I always think cynics are—disagreeable and——”

“_And_ you ask me if I am one!”

“Had you then, Aggie!” laughed her husband.

“I don’t care a bit. Mr. Mortimer knows I didn’t mean anything nasty.
I’m always saying shocking things, and no one minds a bit.”

“Any more than when a kitten scratches,” said West.

“A kitten’s scratches hurt, and mine don’t. It’s mean of you to sit the
other side of Alice, so that I can’t pull your hair. We have her here,
Mr. Mortimer, to keep us good, and to make her better.”

“Aggie trying to make epigrams! What next! Heaven defend the poor man
whose wife makes epigrams.”

Quite mistakenly, Mortimer counted himself an onlooker at life,
delighting to sound the characters of his friends and when possible, to
understand their doings. This night, as he lay awake, his thoughts dwelt
upon the company of three with whom he had passed the evening. He had
known Philip West for years, and considered him a strong, determined,
pushing man. From small beginnings inherited from an uncle he had built
up vast Stores known over London, indeed all the world over, thanks to
skillful and persistent advertising. He was a man of considerable
culture and refinement, one who, so Mortimer believed, would look for
much in his wife, for much more, at any rate, than he would obtain from
any pretty, overgrown schoolgirl. Agatha certainly was beautiful and her
baby ways charming, but were they not likely soon to pall upon such a
man as West? There was a further point: was she not simply a
fair-weather mate? Would he not find her hopelessly wanting in any time
of stress and storm? Could she shake herself free from her love of
dress, luxury and excitement? Mortimer felt sorry for her; she was
lovable, but helpless. To see her suffer would be as bad as to watch the
pain of a pretty pet animal.

The third of the trio—Alice Lane? Mortimer tried to set aside his
innate distaste for her and his suspicion that she despised him as a
trifler, endeavoring to judge her justly. He had watched her closely,
and had discovered that she in turn was closely watching West and his
wife. She was obviously on intimate terms with Philip and apparently was
entirely trusted by Agatha, but Mortimer had learned to mistrust the
continued harmony of such a trio. A wrong note was sure to be sounded
sooner or later. If Agatha failed or palled upon him, West would
certainly turn to some other woman. If he held out his hand to Alice
Lane, would she take it? Mortimer thought not, for he recognized that
there was a great deal that was noble in her. But, then, she might hold
that it was a noble part to help, in defiance of the world’s opinion,
the man she loved. That she did love West he had so far seen no cause to
believe, but he fancied that more than once when Agatha and her husband
had indulged in open display of their affection she had shrunk back with
some stronger emotion than mere distaste.

To Mortimer this openly displayed fondness was amusing and even
grateful; it pleased him to meet a couple in their position whose
refinement had not blunted their impulses. He felt himself old beside
them, sighing as he thought that such innocuous sweets were insipid to
him.

With that sigh he closed his eyes and fell asleep, leaving the future to
expound itself.

Billiards and conversation helped the Sunday hours to pass rapidly,
until at length Mortimer found himself late at night sitting alone with
West.

“One more cigar and one more whisky,” said the latter, suiting the
action to the word.

“Oh, yes, I know what that means. I grant you’ll probably be content
with the one drink—but—several cigars. How do you manage it?”

“Manage what?”

“To burn the candle at both ends without burning out?”

“I don’t do it. I’ve several candles and I burn each at one end only.
Work all day and rest down here.”

“Rest! You’d go mad if you ever tried to do it. You’re always at
something, and as for sleep, it doesn’t seem to matter how little you
have of it. You eat and drink everything you shouldn’t——”

“But I don’t worry. That’s my secret. I never let anything or anybody
worry me. I sacked one of my head men the other day because he was
developing a habit of trying to worry me.”

“Never worry! Lucky devil!”

“I’ve never done so. I’ve just worked straight ahead for what I wanted.
I never stopped to consider whether I was a saint or a sinner, a beauty
or a beast. What’s the good? We _are_ what we _are_, that’s all.
And—I’ll have what I want if I can get it, but I shan’t worry if I
don’t get it—that’s all.”

“Again, lucky man.”

“You, Fred, you—your delight in life is to weigh in delicate scales one
thing against another, and then choose by applying certain rules which
you fancy you obey. But you don’t obey them, not you. No man could.
We’re all creatures of impulse. Reason is only useful for getting us out
of scrapes which are the result of our own or others’ mistakes. Why
should I _worry_? I’ve got everything I want; money, power, a
comfortable house, a pretty wife. Good Lord, what would be the use of
deliberately shoving a fly into my own honey?”

“Yours is a fair-weather philosophy.”

“It’s brought me through a good many hours of foul weather. You know
something about business, though your father—luckily for you—knows
more. You know I’ve not built up my business without nearly running on
rocks sometimes. Last year it was almost a toss-up whether I came a
colossal smash or not.”

“Last year!”

“Last year.”

“But last year——”

“Oh, yes,” West broke in, “I know what you’re going to say. Last year I
gave ten thousand pounds to a Royal charity fund. People said I did it
to buy a knighthood. I did it to set my credit above suspicion. It saved
me.”

“I’ve never heard you talk about business before.”

“Very likely not. I don’t often talk ‘shop.’ Does it bore you?”

“No, I like hearing men talk shop.”

“I wish I had been married then,” West said, lying back on the sofa and
watching the smoke from his cigar as it drifted across to the fire. “A
business man ought to have a home that keeps him—so to speak—out of
his office.”

“And a wife to share his anxieties?”

“H’m—I don’t know that. Perhaps it would help.”

He knocked the ash off his cigar, got up and began pacing slowly up and
down the long room.

“That’s just the difference between us, Fred. You’d weigh the woman you
thought of marrying in those silly scales of yours, and if you found her
short weight in any particular would fight shy. I’ve human impulses and
follow them. When they get me into a mess I get out of it as well as I
can. You spend so much of time in avoiding messes that you’ll never get
into anything else.”

“I don’t seem to have many impulses left.”

“Rats! You don’t know anything about yourself—you analytical gents
never do. Or else, which I suspect is more true, you don’t want anyone
else to know you have just ordinary, human impulses. I believe you’re a
sentimental old humbug. Come to bed.”




                              CHAPTER VIII


MARIAN understood that if her bargain with Maddison was to last, it must
be made satisfying to him as well as to herself. She did not think that
because the first skirmish had been won the remainder of the campaign
would be easy and necessarily victorious. She rejoiced in having won her
freedom from the shackles of matrimony, but did not overlook the fact
that her foothold in her new world was precarious, and that a single
false step might bring her to trouble far worse than that from which she
had escaped.

Inexperience was her chief weakness. Intuition, impulse and insight she
possessed in high degree, but these alone would not suffice her, would
not enable her to make her new position unassailable. It was certain,
once the first rush of pleasurable emotion was over, that Maddison would
begin to weigh the consequences of what he had done, that he would
question whether stress of circumstances had not driven him to act
foolishly in tying himself so closely to her. He would study her keenly
to find out whether she was really charming or only appeared so to him.
The woman desired is so often more desirable than the woman won. It must
be her unremitting task never to disappoint him in any way, and in this
the chief difficulty would be to know where to draw the line between the
utter submission to his will which might lead to rapid satiation and the
making it difficult for him to gain his every point without feeling that
he was not being given all that he was paying for. She must make her
hold upon him so tight that there would be no chance of his easily
loosening it before she herself might desire to be free. She determined
that no avoidable rashness or haste should endanger the future.

Maddison acted as she expected. After the first outburst of passion he
was strongly impelled to draw back, to survey critically the situation
into which he had been drawn almost against his will, and certainly
against his better judgment, and to ask himself repeatedly if there
could be any continued content for him in this liaison.

He settled Marian in a pretty flat not far from his studio, and the
first test to which he put her was to watch carefully her taste in the
decorating and furnishing of her new home.

“I want everything to be just what you like,” she said to him, as they
surveyed the bare, unpapered rooms. “It is so lovely to start with
everything to do and not to have to put up with what other people have
put up. Everything must be just what you like, George.”

He laughed.

“What _I_ like?—What _you_ like.”

“Perhaps we shall both like the same things! Though it’s cheeky of me to
imagine that my taste could be as good as yours. I don’t think I shall
want anything you will consider dreadful, but you must teach me what are
the best things. Only, do let everything be pretty and quiet—and not
too many things. And don’t let’s go to one shop and get everything
there; I’d much rather do it bit by bit. I want a home—our home—not a
gimcrack shop or a ready-made bandbox as if I were a new hat—a real
_home_.”

She spoke the word almost sadly, and turning away from him, went across
the room and looked out of the window at the canal, the noisy road, the
vast vistas of houses and the dun-colored sky. Her tone touched him, as
she had hoped it would; there rushed in on him a sudden realization that
he had taken into his keeping a human soul, a lonely soul that had
called to him for help.

“Don’t think I’m ungrateful—talking like this,” she said, going back to
him and laying her hands on his shoulders; “but—I do love you so much,
and I do want to be what you want me to be—so that you will go on
loving me. Teach me. You’re so strong and I’m so weak. You’re able to do
so much for me and I can do so little for you. I’ll try hard to make you
so happy that you’ll—never be sorry.”

He took her face between his hands, looking into her deep, eager eyes,
then drew her close to him, kissing her again and again, eagerly,
passionately. She lay passive in his arms, her head on his shoulder.
Then forced herself quick apart.

“Don’t, don’t, George! We mustn’t be too happy—it can’t last.”

“Can’t it? Why not? We’ll just see. But at any rate we must try to be
comfortable as well as happy. And for comfort, more than bare walls and
boards are needed.”

“The Nest,” as Marian called the little flat, was quickly put into
habitable order, though in accordance with her wish only essentials were
bought _en bloc_ and details were left over for gradual treatment. It
was a cozy nest: a tiny drawing room where the prevailing colors were
gold and green: a brown and red dining room; the bedroom a bower of blue
and white; a neat entrance hall, which Maddison had fitted up with dark
wainscoting which he had bought from an old farmhouse.

Meanwhile Marian stayed at an hotel, spending long hours every day with
Maddison, at his studio or shopping with him; watching the progress made
at “The Nest”; dining with him every night at various restaurants,
reveling in her luxurious freedom. But he soon tired of this vagabondish
life, which had not any novelty for him, and she discreetly made
pretense of sharing his desire for quiet and of rejoicing with him when
the day came for her installation in her new domain.

It was with a sense almost of nervousness that he dressed on the first
evening that she was to be his hostess. The night was dark though the
sky was full of stars; the air was keen and frosty. As he walked along,
the feeling of shyness grew stronger; it was almost as if he had been a
lover going forth to woo. How great a part of his life Marian had
become! It was not merely her beauty that he loved: there was so much of
refinement and, as he believed, such utter sincerity in her, that she
had caught firm hold of him. He must not hurt her by word or look or
deed.

The drawing room was empty when he entered it, and he glanced
impatiently at the clock, thinking that women are always late. He
stepped across toward her bedroom, but again the sense of shyness took
hold on him; he stopped. There seemed to him now to be something gross
about such familiarity. Then the door opened and Marian came quietly in,
radiantly lovely in a soft, clinging gown of dull crimson and
flame-color, a red chrysanthemum in her hair; a bright flush on her
cheeks, a look of glad welcome in her eyes.

“Isn’t it nice, George?” she said, taking his hands in her own and
looking up merrily. “_Our_ little nest. I’ve been exploring it all day,
as though I didn’t know everything in it; trying all the chairs,
strumming on the piano, tasting everything as it were—and doesn’t it
taste sweet? Thank you—thank you—thank you——!”

He held her face close to his; the scent of her hair, the warmth of her
breath intoxicated him as he kissed her and pressed her close.

“You do love me, really love me, George?”

He kissed her again.

“I do, my dear, I do. You’re a witch. I often thought I should never
love any woman really, though I very nearly loved you when you were a
little country girl. Then you come along and just wind yourself into my
life and make me forget everything except you.”

“Everything except me,” she repeated dreamily, “and I forget everything
except you. I feel just like Cinderella must have done when she met the
prince, only this is all real, real, all real. Now, come along; you’re a
man, and—dinner is ready. Come, give me your arm and lead your hostess
in.”

The dining table was plainly but daintily furnished; pretty flowers,
simple china, cheap green German glass, a homely dinner, light Rhine
wine, red and white, good coffee, mellow liqueurs. There was nothing to
remind him of the garish restaurant life they had been leading, no touch
of meretriciousness or hint of sham.

When the servant left them, Marian drew her chair close to his, filled
his glass and her own.

“Have you no toast to propose?” she asked.

“Yes, but no wine in the world is good enough to drink it in, dear.
You—_you_!”

“I’ve a better toast—and it’s the wish, not the wine, that counts—We.
We!”

“You’re right! We! Though I should be nothing without you. We!”

They clinked glasses and drank.

“How nice and quiet it is here!” she said. “Just you and I, and all the
rest of the world shut out. I wonder——”

“What?”

“Should we have been as happy if you had quite loved me then?”

“We were different then.”

“Yes, how different!” said Marian; “I at any rate. I daresay you haven’t
changed much. You were grown-up then, but I was merely a child. I don’t
know that I am very much more now, am I?”

She laughed lightly as she spoke, and glanced at him; then laughed again
as she leaned back in her chair and nibbled a _marron glacé_.

“A child!” she went on. “Am I anything more than a mere grown-up child?
I don’t think I can be much more. I don’t want to really grow up. Just a
Cinderella, whom you found sitting among the ashes. I’d never met a
prince before, so—I let you carry me off in your fairy hansom. So—they
lived happily ever afterward. I wonder, did they?”

She leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her
folded hands.

“What a way to talk on our first night here! What nonsense!”

“It’s nice to talk nonsense sometimes.”

“Yes, but only jolly nonsense. I’ll tell you something that will make
you laugh. Do you know—I felt quite—nervous coming here to-night.”

“Quite right. Any man going to dine with a lovely lady should feel
nervous.”

“I was rather glad I felt that way,” he continued. “I don’t want——”

“What don’t you want?”

“It’s rather awkward to say. I’ll tell you another time. Let’s talk
about something else.”

“To-night—anything you like and only what you like,” she answered,
curious, however, to know what he had in his mind.

“Now I’m going to be serious,” she went on after a moment’s pause; “I
want to say something straight out. I know what people think of me; I
know that I can only have a part of your life, that is, if you’re going
to be happy. I don’t want you to give up anything for me, or any of your
friends. Don’t think I’m a baby and will cry if I can’t always have what
I’d love to have always. We can never be anything more to each other; we
can’t marry—Edward won’t let us: he thinks divorce wicked. You
understand? And now—come along into the next room; I’ll graciously
permit you to smoke. It’s nice and cozy there. You sit in the corner of
the sofa—poke the fire first—and I’ll snuggle up against you.”


                 *        *        *        *        *

He woke toward dawn, the late winter dawn, when gray light was furtively
peeping through the curtains. She lay with her cheek on the pillow, her
hair straying over in gorgeous cords. He watched the gentle rise and
fall of the lace upon her bosom, the beating pulse in a blue vein. He
wondered at her loveliness; he marveled at his love for her.

She stirred; slowly opened her eyes; smiled at him; then slipped her arm
round his neck and drew his head down upon her shoulder.

For the moment she was self-forgetful.




                               CHAPTER IX


THE picture made good progress, Maddison working at it with his whole
heart. As her nature blossomed out before him, her joy in pleasure, he
realized clearly and more clearly how unbearable must have been her life
with Squire. His passion for her quickly settled down into an absorbing
love; his power and reason soon returned to him; he knew that he had
bought a beautiful and expensive toy; how long he could keep it, how
long he would care to keep it, he did not ask. Sufficient for the day
was the delight thereof.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked one morning, as she sat by the
studio fire while he painted.

“About you.”

“What about me?”

“I was thinking—I often think—that I am keeping you a great deal from
your friends. You’re with me almost every evening, and except when
you’ve a sitter I’m with you almost every day. I don’t want to be a tie,
a drag on you.”

“Don’t you know I’m happy that way?”

“Yes, George, I do. But it doesn’t do to try one’s happiness too hard.

“I won’t. Trust me. It’s partly accident that I’ve been nowhere lately,
partly my habit. People used to ask me everywhere, but gave it up when
they found I didn’t go anywhere. There are just a few houses always open
to me, and a few pals come along here whenever they choose. I used to
have jolly little informal suppers on Sundays last winter. We must start
them again. A few men and women——”

“But—” she interrupted, raising her eyebrows and expressing by a motion
of her hands that the women would consider her taboo.

“Oh, not that sort of woman, Marian. Good sorts, who believe that the
world was made for men and women, not men and women for the world. We’ll
send a line round to some of them: ‘Suppers begin again Sunday next.
Come whenever you don’t want to go anywhere else.’ Everything’s put on
the table and we wait on ourselves. Fred—Fred Mortimer—you’ll like
him—is a dandy man with the chafing-dish, and when he comes we indulge
in extravagant luxuries.”

“You’re quite sure about me?”

“Of course I am. Quite sure and quite proud. It’ll be awfully jolly
having a hostess. Hullo! I wonder who this can be—don’t move.”

The door opened and the servant announced Mr. Philip West.

“I beg your pardon——”

Marian rose.

“Mrs. Squire,” said Maddison, “let me introduce Mr. Philip West. Mrs.
Squire is helping me to paint a picture.”

“Helping!” she exclaimed. “I’m the fly on the wheel.”

West examined the picture and Marian critically.

“Have you a name for it?” he asked.

“Yes. ‘The Rebel.’”

“It’s good,” he said slowly, “very good; it’ll be the biggest thing
you’ve done. May I commission it? I’d like to have it”—he looked
straight at Marian as he spoke. “That reminds me why I came here this
morning. If you’ve time and inclination—I know what a particular cuss
you are—I should be glad if you’d paint my wife’s portrait. I should
think she might suit you. You remember her?”

“I am a particular cuss,” Maddison answered, smiling grimly at the
remembrance of various commissions rejected. “Have you said anything to
Mrs. West?”

“No.”

“Then don’t, till I know whether I can paint her or not.”

“Too late, coward, too late. She suggested it herself, and sent me here
to bear her—commands. You and she may settle it as you like. She’s
lunching at the Carlton with me—I wanted you to come, if you’re not
engaged.”

“Engaged, no; but I’m in the mood for work. Are you dining in town?”

“We weren’t, but we will, if you’ll join us. I know there’s no
persuading you to leave your work when you begin to talk about moods.
Settled—dinner then?”

“Yes, when? Where?”

“The Carlton will do. Eight. Good-by. Good-by, Mrs. Squire. I used to
know a parson of that name down in Kennington—an enthusiast——”

“My husband.”

“Really? Lucky man. Good-by.”

Maddison went with him to the front door, and when he returned found
Marian standing before the canvas.

“Yes! I’m a rebel!” she exclaimed. “My husband! Do you know, George, I’d
clean forgotten all about him; absolutely. All that life is just like a
dream, and I’m awake now. Even when you called me Mrs. Squire it did not
recall him to me. Yes, I’m a rebel! But they don’t call you rebels, do
they, when you’ve revolted successfully? Why didn’t you go to lunch?”

He slipped his arm round her waist as he answered——

“I didn’t like rushing off from you, so I told an artistic lie. I don’t
want to go to the dinner, but West’s a goodish fellow, and was wise
enough to buy my pictures when no one else would. So I’m a bit in his
debt.”

“Who is he?”

“He is _the_ West. ‘If you want to get the best—go West,’ you know.”

“Oh, West’s Stores. He’s a millionaire, isn’t he?”

“Awfully, horribly, disgustingly rich. But he doesn’t do as much harm
with his money as most rich men. He hasn’t bought pictures wholesale, or
built a gimcrack mansion in Park Lane. He gave tons of money once to a
royal hobby and then refused a knighthood. When I congratulated him, he
laughed and said it was good advertising. I believe he dabbles in
politics; he’s a socialist—only rich men can afford to be—and talks
about running the Empire on business lines. It’ll take a greater man
than even he to make politicians capable of any business transaction,
except buying votes with promissory notes. Chiefly notes blown on their
own trumpets.”

“There must be something fascinating about politics. I should love to
rule men!”

“Isn’t one enough?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length and looking
into her eyes.

“One like you—yes.”

As she sat alone that night, lazily smoking by the fireside, the thought
of Philip West was greatly in her mind. His strange, dark blue eyes had
looked at her searchingly and she had felt that behind them was power.
Had she any chance of knowing more of him?

She was tiring already of the luxurious sameness of her life. Maddison
was kind, thoughtful, attentive, and a sufficiently entertaining
comrade, but she desired more than that. To rule one man did not satisfy
her.

The odds seemed against her meeting West again, especially as he was
married. Maddison would doubtless tell her what the wife was like, and
it was rather upon her than upon West himself that the success of
Marian’s vague ambition depended. To win West in any circumstances would
doubtless be difficult; to win him from his wife would be a triumph.

Maddison came in late and threw himself full length upon the hearth-rug,
a favorite position of his when tired.

“Had a stupid evening?” she asked, sitting down beside him, and brushing
the straggling hair from his forehead.

“Fearful. I hate those big hotels at any time, but it was more than
usually deadly to-night.”

“I thought you liked Mr. West?”

“Oh, he’d have been all right alone; but his wife is an empty
chatterbox, insipidly pretty, and he adores her in a fatuous way. How
men of sense can—well, I suppose reason doesn’t count in such matters.”

“So you are not going to paint her?”

“Not for worlds. I should turn out a chocolate box cover. I must have a
soul as well as a body. They were just a couple of honeymooners.
Disgusting.”

“It’s always disgusting to see other people in love.”

“Perhaps that has something to do with it. He’s simply lost his reason
for a while; he’ll grow sane again some day, soon probably, and then,
likely enough, she’ll cry her eyes out for a day or two, and then will
be quite happy for the rest of her unnatural life with her jewels and
dresses. She’s just a material little doll.”

“It must have been stupid—no one else?”

“Only another woman, a tall, sedate person; I didn’t quite understand
her.”

“Then you weren’t altogether bored?”

“She was too much of a puzzle. Either intensely dull, or dangerously
clever. At any rate, if I were Mrs. West I would not often have Miss
Lane by my side. I rather fancy she’s a woman a man might love
absolutely. And when West gets sick of his wife—Lord, what silly gossip
I’m talking. Do be a dear and make me a cup of chocolate; you know how,
and then we’ll talk about something more interesting than the Wests.”

When she came back with the steaming cup, she found him fast asleep. She
stood looking down on him, lithe, slender, well-formed, the neatly
trimmed beard, the heavy black hair, the long, delicate hands. She
wondered if she would grow to hate him. She believed that she could not
long keep from disliking intensely, or at any rate despising, a weak
man. He had been too easy a conquest, unable to withstand the subtle
flattery of a woman’s weakness and call for help.

He stirred uneasily as she watched him; then slowly opened his eyes.

“What a dull dog I am!” he exclaimed, springing up. “Why don’t you tell
me so?”

“Because I don’t think so. You’re tired, and you mustn’t think I only
care for you when you are doing something to amuse me.”

She sat down on the sofa, motioning to him to sit beside her, and while
he sipped the chocolate, she went on:

“You’re like all other men in one way. You fancy women are silly,
restless things, who either aren’t worth amusing or must be amused
always. If I’m only a child, just fit to be played with, what good can I
be to you? There are lots of pretty toys in the world. I thought you
thought better of me.”

“So I do, goose. Don’t fish for compliments, though I will pay you one
upon your chocolate. Is it too late for a song?”

“No, not for a quiet one.”

“Then turn out the lights and sing, will you?”

Her fingers ran almost aimlessly over the keys before she began to play,
softly, the melody of an old country song—a haunting, melancholy air.
Then she sang quietly, with a touch of tears in her voice, a simple
ballad of a country maid and her false lover. When it was ended her
hands dropped listlessly and there came over her a sudden gust of hatred
of this mumming—this making believe to love a man who was a mere tool
in her hands. But, until the work was complete, the tool must not be
thrown aside.

“There are few people who sing like you, Marian; very few I care to
hear. They’re mostly musical boxes, absolutely soulless. You—you sing a
jolly song and people feel jolly; a sad one—and make me sad. How do you
do it? What an inane question! As if you knew. There’s nothing in life
worth having except emotions.”

“What about painting?”

“Art? All art is the expression of emotions—that’s the beginning and
the finish of it, has been and ever shall be till the world’s end. Don’t
turn up the light. The glow of the fire is quite enough to chat by.”

“What emotions do you feel when you’re painting ‘The Rebel’?”

“Disappointment. I see your face at the tip of my brush, but every touch
I give is wrong—wrong.”

“I like it—Mr. West liked it.”

“Yes, but neither of you know what I mean it to be, or how far I am from
expressing my meaning. It’s little better than a dolly anecdote daub.
I’ve a good mind to paint Mrs. West after all; it would be fun.”

“How?”

“Why, this way. I’d just paint her absolutely true to life, show her
empty soul peeping out of her dolly eyes. And everybody would say: ‘What
a sweet, innocent face!’ Innocent! How many women are innocent because
they’re impotent even to desire to be wicked.”

“Then paint her, and we’ll enjoy the joke.”

“But I can’t let West pay me for it. I’ll make it a belated wedding
present.”

Marian made no comment, but marveled at the quixotry of man.




                               CHAPTER X


MADDISON being engaged to lunch and tea on the following Sunday—the
first of those on which he expected his suppers to commence
again—Marian was left to herself the whole day, spending it in lounging
discontent.

The gilt was wearing off the prize she had won, and each day she grew
more impatient for change. It was not in her to wish that she were
otherwise gifted and that she could rest content with present
conditions. She desired more than she possessed, spent no effort in
endeavoring to drill herself into being satisfied with what she had, but
kicked against the pricks.

Of Maddison’s friends she had met only Mortimer and West. She was to all
intents alone in London with Maddison.

She was free to act, eager to do so, but as yet she had found no outlet
for her energy or ambition. Also, she was not a little lonely; whenever,
as on this day, Maddison was not with her, she was thrown back on
herself. At times even, it seemed to her as if she had only freed
herself from the active and pressing annoyances of the past, and that in
reality she was no more free now than then. She had but flown from one
cage to another, and was again beating her wings against the bars in
angry endeavor to escape for a stronger and farther flight.

After luncheon she sat down before the fire, trying to read a volume of
Rossetti that Maddison had given her. The rhyme jingled through her head
but made no impression, and conveyed neither sense nor beauty. Throwing
the book aside on the floor, she lighted a cigarette and lay back
dreamily in the soft, deep chair. The cigarette finished, she closed her
eyes and soon fell asleep.

She awoke with a start and a shudder; the fire was nearly out, the room
was chilly, the afternoon was quickly closing in. She shivered,
wondering what sound it was that had aroused her. The maid came in,
turning on the electric light as she entered, followed by a tall,
elegantly-dressed woman.

“Mrs. Harding,” the maid announced.

Marian struggled out of the deep chair and looked inquiringly at the
stranger.

“No, you don’t know me,” said Mrs. Harding; “I’ll tell you who I am in a
minute. I’m afraid I woke you out of a snooze? So sorry. It’s almost the
only thing one can do on such a beastly afternoon—sleep and drink—and
both are stupid by yourself. So I thought I’d trot downstairs and see if
you were blue too.”

A vague recollection came to Marian of having passed Mrs. Harding on the
stairs once or twice.

“Won’t you sit down?” she said. “I’ll ring and have the fire made up,
and it must be tea time.”

She was anxious to learn the real meaning of this intrusion. Any
diversion was welcome.

“You’re jolly snug here,” Mrs. Harding remarked, after a survey of the
room while the maid had stirred up the fire and set the tea table ready.
“Mine are rather frowsy, but then my old man’s a bit of a screw. You’ve
had better luck than me. Hope it’ll last. That’s the worst of the jolly
ones, they get tired so quickly, and if you hold the reins tight they
simply kick up and bolt. _I_ know.”

As it dawned upon her what was the character—or rather the want of
it—of her visitor, Marian examined her face more critically. The woman
was insolently handsome; masses of blue-black hair set off to perfection
the almost dead-white of her face; the forehead was low and broad, the
eyes dark and deep-set under heavy brows; the mouth large and sensuous,
showing, when open, a perfect row of teeth; the chin alone was weak. She
was expensively dressed, her tight-fitting tailor-made gown showing to
advantage the bold outline of the figure.

“Now the girl’s gone we can chat cozily,” continued the visitor. “I
never talk before my maid, because I don’t want her to talk over me and
my doings with—say yours. I’d rather tell you myself what I want you to
know. You’re not so careful. Your maid talks to mine, mine to me, so
indirectly you’ve told me a good deal about yourself.”

“I’m much obliged to you,” Marian said quietly; “Anne shall leave
to-morrow.”

“I thought it only pally to tell you, but I shouldn’t sack her—they’re
all the same. I don’t let mine know more than I can help, though that’s
more than safe if I annoyed her and she told the old ’un about—the
others. You must have a pretty lonely time of it?”

“It’s a rest to be alone sometimes.”

At first Marian had felt inclined to be angry at this woman having
thrust herself upon her, but curiosity succeeded. She had never spoken
to one of her class before—of her own class, it flashed upon her—and
to do so might prove interesting, possibly also instructive.

“Rest? Oh, yes, I suppose so, but I hate resting. That’s the worst of
being kept by an old josser, he neither gives you any fun himself nor
gives you much chance of getting any with anyone else. But I don’t do so
badly. The certainty of it is the decent part of it. Thank God, he goes
away sometimes, and then I just make up for lost time, _don’t_ I! Your
George——”

“My——!”

“That’s his name, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“He’s all right, just enough and not too much, I should say. You’re only
a beginner, and don’t know yet what we have to put up with and what we
become. Oh! We’re a lively lot, some of us, regular devils. I steer
clear of them as much as I can, but one must talk to a woman sometimes.
At least I must. I hope you don’t mind my coming in this way?”

“Not a bit. Another cup of tea?”

“No, thanks, but if I could have a B. and S. I’d not say ‘No.’”

Marian rang and bade the maid bring the necessaries.

“I liked the look of you,” Mrs. Harding continued, “and it’s pleasant to
have a friendly neighbor; it’s a nuisance to be always going out. It’s a
sickening life sometimes, but I wouldn’t change it for any other. Not to
be a duchess! I did try to settle down once with a man who wanted to
marry me, but it nearly drove me crazy. The love of it’s in my blood.
Yours, too, from the look of you. There’s plenty of fun too. You meet
good sorts as well as bad, and take my tip, when you meet a good sort,
treat him well. It’s funny our living here; I believe everyone else in
the house is straight. Judging by their looks, they can’t have had much
temptation to be otherwise. Their wedding rings ain’t make-believe like
ours. A cigarette? Thanks: This is brandy! Jolly good,” she said,
tasting it; “it’d be a sin to put water in that. Here’s luck!”

She drank the brandy neat, with evident relish.

“What are you going to do to-night? Care to come out with me and dine
somewhere?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I should like to, but I’m engaged to supper.”

“Lucky girl, I ain’t. My old man went off all of a sudden and left me in
the lurch. If I’d known he was going I’d have fixed up some fun, but he
didn’t tell me till after breakfast this morning. He’s just cussed
sometimes, and never let’s on when he will be away. Well, I must trust
to luck. Come some other night; and do come up to see me—he don’t mind
feminine friends.”

“I’d like to come.”

“By the way, my dear, while I think of it, you’ll do well to look about
you before he leaves you in the lurch. Funny thing, a year or two ago I
used to see a good deal of Georgie. He don’t stick to anyone long. He
soon got tired of me and I wasn’t too much cut up about it; he’s too
finicky for my taste. I shall never forget his face when he found me a
bit fuzzy-wuzzy with fizzy wine one night. I always called him old blue
ribbon after that.”

She laughed quietly, a deep, low, melodious note. Then she got up and
walked about the room, looking at the pictures and ornaments.

“I must say he’s fixed you up as if you’d caught his fancy strong. He
only took a furnished place for me. But don’t put all your trust in any
man’s pocket. Do you play?” she asked, sitting down to the piano. “Here
goes for a hymn.”

She played a catchy air and then sang the first verse and chorus of a
drinking song that then held the ear of the town.

“But there, I’ll be off, my dear. Georgie might catch me here and not
approve. I shan’t come to see you again till you’ve been to see me. I’ve
a sort of idea we shall be pals, I want one badly. I can put you up to a
wrinkle or two; I’ve one or two to spare,” she said, looking at her
reflection in the glass. “Oh, don’t worry to ring, I’ll let myself out.
I’m never proud, except when it pays me to be so. Good night; be good
and you won’t be happy.”

There was a frank _bonhomie_ about the woman that attracted Marian.
Their aims were different, perhaps, but their methods seemed much the
same. Moreover, it seemed not unlikely that she might prove helpful, and
that in some matters and on some occasions she might be a useful
adviser. Further, there was a growing lawlessness in Marian’s blood that
made her thirst sometimes to taste degradation, and this woman could
lead her to it.

It was now nearly six o’clock. She had promised Maddison to go round
early to the studio. She wished now that she had been free to accept
Mrs. Harding’s invitation, and made up her mind to do so some night
soon, if it could be safely arranged.

The housekeeper opened the door to her, and told her that a gentleman
was waiting in the studio to see Mr. Maddison. Marian nodded and went
in, expecting to find Mortimer or one of the other men who had been
summoned. The big room was dimly lit. She shut the door behind her and
went toward the fireplace, in a chair by which a man was sitting with
his back toward her.

He rose at the sound of her approach. It was her husband.

“Marian!”

She stood stock-still as he came quickly toward her, with his hands
outstretched.

But the eager joy in his eyes was met by anger in hers.

“How dare you come here?” she asked. “Keep away from me. Don’t touch
me!”

He stopped, bewildered.

“How did you know I was here?” she went on.

“I didn’t know. I’ve searched and searched for you, walked the streets
in the hope of catching a glimpse of you. Then Ellis told me he had seen
you with Mr. Maddison, so I came straight here, thinking he would
perhaps know your address. But I can hardly speak—I’m so glad.”

“You’d better go back and sit down again. I’ve something to say to you.
You—don’t understand.”

The tone of her voice chilled him as if an icy finger had been laid upon
his heart, but he did not move.

“What is it?”

She went past him over to the fireplace, and stood there looking at the
glowing logs. So he knew really nothing! Should she tell him everything?
She quickly decided not to do so unless driven to it. Turning round
sharply to him, she said:

“You don’t understand. I left you because I didn’t want to see you
again. Coming after me like this won’t make any difference, won’t do a
bit of good. I’ve left you and I won’t come back. You’d better forget me
as quickly as you can.”

“I can’t, I can’t,” he repeated. “I _can’t_. And why should I? I want
you to forgive me. I did try to be good to you, but I must have failed
miserably to have driven you away from me. I’ve been thinking over what
you said about my being selfish. Come back. Try me once more. Won’t
you?”

“No. I won’t. I can’t. You don’t understand. I _hate_ you. I hate
everything you think and do. We’re utterly different.”

With a gesture of helpless despair he turned away and began to pace up
and down.

She could not help pitying him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but it can’t be helped. It was a stupid mistake
our marrying—but I didn’t know myself then. You don’t know me now. It
would be a worse mistake, though, for me to come back.”

“God help me. I’ve thought of nothing but you since you went away. Is
there nothing I can do?—nothing I can say?”

“Nothing. Nothing,” she broke in vehemently. “Nothing, I tell you. Why
can’t you believe me? It’s no use talking about it. You’d better go.”

He stood looking at her, but could read in her eyes only stubborn
defiance. For the first time he noticed the new brightness in her beauty
and the richness of her dress.

“Where are you?” he asked; “what are you doing?”

“I’m quite happy, or rather should be if only you’d leave me alone,” was
the answer.

But he persisted, there coming suddenly into his mind a suspicion of the
truth.

“Why are you here? The servant must have told you Maddison was out,
and—you came in as if you were at home.”

“I won’t answer any more questions. I told you you’d better go.”

“You needn’t answer. I know. I can see it in your face. You’re this
man’s mistress. You—come to this. But it’s not too late. Come away,
with me—we’ll go away—anywhere, far away——”

“Oh! why don’t you _go_?” she interrupted, stamping her foot, and
clenching her hands as if she would have liked to strike him. “I _am_
his mistress. Now, go.”

“Not without you——”

“You must. You’re simply making a fool of yourself. I’m alive and free
now—do you think you can get me back? Save as many other souls as you
can, but let me do as I like with mine. Haven’t you any pride? I’m
through and through what you call a _bad_ woman. I’m wicked because I
enjoy being wicked. Even if I tired of it, I’d not come back to you.”

She rang the bell, and before he could find his speech the servant came
in.

“This gentleman has left a message with me for Mr. Maddison,” Marian
said; then bowing coldly to Edward, added: “Good night.”

The servant held the door open.

Squire hesitated, and then let his eyes drop before hers and slowly went
out.

When she heard the outer door shut, she sat down and began slowly to
pull off her long gloves. He might come back, even to-night. She knew
how persistent he could be and felt sure he would not leave any effort
untried to take her away from the life she was leading, even if he could
not persuade her to return to him.

She folded the gloves mechanically and laid them on the table beside
her. Then took off her hat and sank back in the chair, her hands
gripping the arms tightly.

The position seemed impossible, and she was angry that she had not
foreseen and provided for it. Either something must be done to prevent
her husband coming here again, or she must only meet Maddison elsewhere.
Was not this last the solution? If she only saw him at her flat—or
elsewhere—anywhere but here—it would free her sufficiently from him to
allow of her pursuing other ends and other pleasures, while she could
hold him to her sufficiently closely and for a sufficient length of time
to obtain all she required from him.

Then the thought struck her that Edward would probably be waiting
outside and might waylay Maddison and make a scene. This must be
avoided. The only chance of leading him away, if indeed he were waiting,
was for her to leave; he would follow her. She hastily made ready and
went out.

She looked cautiously up and down the dimly lit street, but could not
see him. She walked quickly, and as she turned into the main
thoroughfare, glanced back and saw that he was following her. She
hastened on, sure that he would keep her in sight. An empty hansom cab
came along; she got in, bidding the driver go to Piccadilly Circus.

No thought of the agony Squire was enduring came into her mind. She was
angry, excited, possessed by a spirit of malicious mischief. A bend in
the road enabled her to look back: there was no other vehicle in sight.
She pushed open the trap door above her head, told the driver that she
had forgotten something, and bade him drive to the studio. Then she
opened the lamp that was behind her, blew out the light, and then
huddled as closely as possible into the corner nearest that side of the
road along which Squire would most likely come.

She looked eagerly, and soon passed him, walking slowly, bent and bowed.

When she reached the studio Maddison was there.

“What’s up?” he said. “You rush in, I hear, have an interview with a
mysterious stranger, rush away and rush back again. But give me a kiss
before you answer. Now, sit on my knee and ’fess.”

“George, my husband’s been here.”

“The devil!”

“The devil would have been easier to manage; he doesn’t want to save
souls.”

She then told him most but not all of what had taken place.

“It _is_ awkward. Do you think he’ll come again?”

“Sure to, that’s the trouble. Nothing I can say—or you—will stop him.
You don’t know what he is. We’re safe for to-night, so you needn’t worry
about that, but what can we do? There mustn’t be a row, for your sake.
Hullo! there’s somebody, and not a thing ready.”

“All the better—all the more like a picnic. It’s Fred. Come along, we
appoint you chef. Marian shall be kitchen maid. I’ll lay the table.”




                               CHAPTER XI


MADDISON was not surprised at a visit from Squire early the next
morning; and if not armed he was at any rate forewarned.

He offered him a chair and a cigarette, both of which were curtly
refused.

“As you will,” Maddison said, seemingly careless and supercilious, but
in reality closely watching his opponent’s face. “I hope you will not
mind my both sitting and smoking; both are conducive to comfort, and
what’s life without comfort?”

“It will be better,” Squire said, shuffling awkwardly, “to talk simply
and without any remarks which are likely to be offensive. You know why
I’ve come?”

“Unless you tell me I shall never know. This visit seems as useless as
it is unpleasant. I can’t think what you have to say which wouldn’t be
better unsaid.”

“No, I suppose you cannot. I suppose we look at almost everything from a
different standpoint. I’ve come to say——”

“You are presuming, Mr. Squire, that I am willing to listen to you.”

“Naturally. You allowed your servant to show me in.”

“I beg your pardon, you’re _quite_ right. But I do wish you’d sit down;
it makes me feel so awkward to see you standing up.”

“I saw Marian last night,” Squire said, taking no notice of Maddison’s
remark; “I suppose she told you.”

“Yes. The meeting annoyed her very much. It was natural for you to
assume that I let you in because I was willing to listen to you. As a
matter of fact, it was because I must absolutely refuse to do so. But,
unless _you_ refuse to hear me, I’ve just this much to tell you. The
lady you mentioned is living under my care, and I will protect her
against annoyance. If you have any communication to make I will send you
my solicitor’s name and address. Now—you’d better go.”

“Even if she were not my wife, I’ve a right to do all I can to rescue
her from a life of sin.”

“Please don’t platitudinize to me.”

Squire reddened with anger and clenched his fists: recourse to brute
force suggests itself instinctively to the fighter who is mentally
weaker than his opponent.

“What right have you to say that?” he asked vehemently, “what right? I
believe what I say and do my best to act up to my beliefs.”

“Then live in charity, with all men, even with a sinner and a publican
like me, and judge not that ye be not judged. I don’t shove my beliefs
on you. You live in such an unpractical world that you do not realize
the stupidity of forcing yourself upon me. I’ve really no more to say.
The law gives you your remedy, but it won’t assist you to trespass here
or to force yourself upon your wife. Good morning.”

Squire realized that he was helpless against Maddison; denunciation
would achieve no good end; it would be equally useless to base an appeal
upon grounds of morality. But for Marian’s sake he was ready to humble
himself in a last endeavor.

“As man to man——”

“Oh, my dear sir!” Maddison exclaimed, “don’t talk that way. If you
tried to knock me down I could understand, if not respect, you. In these
affairs men don’t argue, they act, according to the law of nature or
preferably of man. Don’t let us indulge in a vulgar, unprofitable brawl.
Good morning.”

“Then I’ll go to her. Give me her address.”

“Certainly not. She does not wish you to know it.”

“Then I’ll watch.”

“As you please. But remember, you’ve no right to persecute her; though
many husbands think otherwise—that is not one of the privileges of
matrimony.”

Squire checked an angry retort and then abruptly went out.

Maddison spoke truly when he said that to him comfort was one of the
saving graces of life, indeed to him it was almost the only one. This
entry of Squire upon the scene and this turning a comedy into a domestic
drama vexed and annoyed him. It had not occurred to him that any man
would act so unconventionally as Squire had done. Marian had told him
that her husband would not divorce her, looking as he did upon marriage
as a sacramental bond which no man had a right to break; so Maddison had
thought that there might be an appeal to Marian if Squire discovered her
whereabouts, an angry scene very likely and then peace. But it had not
entered into his calculations that Squire would be so persistent; this
type of man was new and unknown to him, of a kind that he did not
understand how best to tackle. To discuss the situation with Marian
would be distasteful; there remained only Mortimer to whom he could
speak frankly, relying upon the good common sense of any advice he might
obtain from him.

At this hour of the morning Mortimer should be at his office, and there
Maddison rang him up.

“Is Mr. Mortimer in?”

“Which one?” was the brusque reply.

“Mr. Frederick.”

“Don’t know. Who is it?”

“Tell him Mr. Maddison wants to speak to him for a minute.”

“Hold the line.”

Mortimer gladly accepted Maddison’s invitation to lunch.

“But why on earth come down to this dreary part of town?” he asked.
“Don’t deprive me of a lovely excuse for leaving here early and coming
back late—if at all. Meet me outside the Palace, and I’ll take you to a
tidy little French restaurant I’ve just discovered and haven’t yet found
out. One o’clock—all right!”

Both were punctual, and Mortimer guided his friend through several small
and unsavory streets to a narrow court at the far end of which was
situated the humble restaurant bearing the high-sounding name La Palais.

“It’s not much to look at,” he said, as they went in through the swing
door, “like an ugly woman with a pretty wit. _Bon jour_, Madame.”

Madame, a stout, jolly-looking woman, greeted Mortimer cordially, and
nodded genially to his companion.

“Now, Madame, I’ve brought a friend with me and I’ve told him—well,
I’ve told him the truth about you. So don’t shatter my entirely
undeserved reputation for veracity. We’ll have this snug corner and
leave the menu to you. You know the kind of thing I like.”

The room was long and low; clean, neat, with little attempt at
decoration; the walls covered with plain, dark gray paper, the electric
light pendants severely simple; flowering shrubs stood upon the pay desk
near the entrance, and similar plants or cut flowers upon the tables.

“I can’t make out how this place pays,” said Mortimer, “there are never
more than a handful of people here. I suppose it will suddenly become
popular and then rapidly deteriorate. That’s the history of all these
places. Meanwhile let us rejoice. We’ll have some Chianti, but will not
drink it neat as do the barbarians, but judiciously tempered with
Polly.”

Lunch finished, coffee and cigars produced, Mortimer announced that he
was ready to talk seriously.

“What’s up?” he asked. “You shall have all the advice I can give and I
shan’t be in the least hurt if you don’t follow any of it. Your mind’s
sure to be made up already and you simply ask for advice in the hope
that my view will be your view.”

“No, I don’t, Fred. Not such an ass. I’m in a bad corner and I’m damned
if I know how to get out of it. I don’t know whether you know that Mrs.
Squire has a husband?”

“I didn’t. I imagined the prefix to be entirely ceremonial.”

“He’s a parson.”

“The devil!”

“Worse, a saint. He doesn’t believe in divorce and is obstinately
determined to persecute Marian. He says he won’t leave a stone unturned
to save her. Please laugh. There’s a comic side to it, I know, but it’s
turned away from me.”

“I know the type. I’ve met one or two of them,” said Mortimer,
reflectively watching the smoke of his cigar; “I bet he’ll give you a
deuced lot of trouble. Unreasonable people are most difficult to deal
with, they never know how unreasonable they are. And a man who doesn’t
play according to the rules—But, tell me all about it.”

Maddison told him all that he knew of Squire and of Marian’s and his own
meetings with him.

“Beastly awkward!” was Mortimer’s comment.

“You can pretty well guess I’m stumped,” said Maddison. “I don’t know
what’s best to do.”

“Excuse my asking, I must know all the facts of the case: you don’t want
to break off with Mrs. Squire?”

“No!”

“All right! Don’t blaze up, we’re talking politics, not poetry. It’s not
one of those cases in which you can sit still and let fate play your
cards. The man will stick at nothing. Eventually he must meet her again,
even if she doesn’t come to your place. He’ll haunt you. Perhaps catch
you together in some public place and kick up—the saints’ own delight.”

“Yes, yes, I can see all that. I know what I’ve got to face—but I don’t
want to face it.”

“I was mentally marking time. If I knew what to suggest I would have
told you at once. Let’s be practical; there are three parties to the
business: you—she—he. The question is how to avoid you and she, or, at
any rate, you, being brought into contact with him. Could you both go
away for a while?”

“Easily.”

“In a time you and she would be safe. What would he do? Hunt after
you—find that you had left town——”

“That’s all very well, but we can’t stay away forever.”

“Forever!” murmured Mortimer, gazing sadly up at the ceiling. “Easy!
Easy! Leaving out of the question the possibility of your tiring of
her—he can’t spend the rest of his life chasing after you. Even if he
could, he wouldn’t. You don’t know the man as well as I do, although
I’ve never met him. It’s love—fleshly love—as well as duty that’s
urging him on now. Duty will regain the upper hand, and he’ll argue that
he has no right to leave undone the work that is _merely_ duty, in order
to pursue duty _plus_ personal interest. He’s actively engaged in trying
to save one particularly attractive soul now; he’ll soon swerve round
and work again on the multitude. As far as his wife is concerned, he’ll
fall back upon the masterly inactivity of prayer. I may be quite wrong,
but unless you can hit upon a better plan, I don’t see that you can do
better than—hook it. I have spoken.”

“I’ve still got the cottage down at Rottingdean; we could run down for a
month.”

“Where the stormy winds do blow! Poor, dear lady.”

“I can’t work in a racket.”

“Well, it’s as easy to leave as to go there. Three o’clock! by Jove, I
must get back. I’ve some letters to sign, and I’m going down to West’s
for dinner. She tells me you’re going to paint her portrait.”

“She tells the truth—although she draws upon her imagination. West
suggested my doing so, but I haven’t agreed yet.”

“Have you met Miss Lane?”

“Once, at dinner.”

“She’s worth studying. Worth painting too.”

“Oh!”

“Not I. I don’t even like her. A man never falls in love with a woman he
studies, but with the woman who studies him. I _must_ be off. See you
again soon. Let me hear from you if you run away.”

As he walked homeward, Maddison pondered over the problem, oblivious of
people and places. Squire’s intrusion into his life had brought home to
him that Marian and the joy of life were one for him. He had entered
into this intrigue to a certain extent deliberately, but had not
contemplated the possibility of Marian’s attraction for him becoming
anything stronger than a mere physical appeal to his sensuous nature. He
had always believed that art was the only impulse in his life, that in
all else he was governed by his reason. He did not drink too much,
because reason and experience told him that after a certain point wine
became a tasteless stimulant. He did not permit any woman entirely to
captivate him. Experience and reason—so he thought—taught him that
women were like wine.

But Marian had won a place in his life that no other woman had ever
approached. For a moment, the night before, Squire’s attack had made him
think that a temporary separation between himself and Marian might be
necessary, and the mere notion had struck him with a chill, sick fear.
Everything in his life belonged to her. All that he attempted or
accomplished in his daily round or in his work centered on her; she was
his motive power. Another matter had recently come home to him; he had
never been extravagant, but had always lived fairly up to his means. His
support of Marian had made heavy demand, not only upon his income but
upon the small amount he had saved, and he was now face to face with the
necessity of adding largely to his earnings.

He had never condescended to force his art, never painted for money
alone. Inspiration, not necessity, had been the mother of his invention.
Even in the painting of portraits he had held himself entirely free to
refuse any commission that was not entirely to his taste. Now, however,
he was no longer free; he must paint for money or curtail his
expenditure. To do the latter would mean depriving Marian of certain
pleasures and luxuries, the doing of which would be abhorrent to him.
Not for an instant did it occur to him to question Marian’s loyalty;
could he offer her only a cottage and country fare that would suffice
her. When she first came to him, he believed that his chief claim upon
her was that he offered her freedom. But he now felt assured that as his
love for her had grown deeper and deeper so had hers for him.

Therefore for more reasons than one, the idea of a country retreat
appealed to him strongly. While there he would be altogether with
Marian; he could at the same time work strenuously, he could live
inexpensively.

When he reached the flat he learned that Marian had gone out, but would
be home to tea, and he decided to wait for her return.

Smoking cigarette after cigarette, he paced up and down, from room to
room. Every detail seemed to bear the impress of her personality. He
stopped more than once before the pastel on the easel by the drawing
room window. He pulled back the curtain as far as it would go so as to
let in the full strength of the waning light. Striking as was the
likeness, he felt that he had failed to catch the whole charm of her
face; the beauty was there, but not the pleading fascination. He tried
to imagine how much he would suffer if she were to die. Drops of
perspiration broke out upon his forehead as he realized overwhelmingly
that perhaps he might have overestimated her love for him, and that
perhaps she would one day again take her freedom. The thought of it was
agony. He stood before the picture wrought into a tumult of emotion. She
came in, stood beside him unheard, until she spoke:

“What a loyal lover! When he can’t worship the original——”

“I do worship you,” he exclaimed, turning fiercely, seizing her hands
and crushing them between his own. “I do, that’s the only word for it,
that’s the very truth. Look at me—straight—you’re everything to me;
what am I to you?”

“You’re hurting my hand——”

“_I_ hurting you!” he said, loosening his hold, “and I am ready to do
anything to save you one moment’s pain. You haven’t answered me; am I
everything to you?”

“Do you need to ask?” she answered, looking boldly back at him, so that
as he gazed into her eyes, he seemed to see deep into her soul. “I never
asked you. You show me how much you love me, and I’ve tried to show you.
I suppose”—she faltered and turned away—“I suppose I’ve failed.”

“You’re right, Marian,” he said, catching her in his arms, turning her
face to him, and kissing her passionately again and again; “but I do
like to hear you say it. Would you like it if I never _told_ you how
much I love you?”

“No, no, dear, of course I shouldn’t. Somehow it’s not my way to _say_
it; I’ll try to sometimes, but don’t make me do so now. Let me say it
when it comes to my lips.”

“All right, dearie, you’re right.”

“Now, come along. We’ll have tea. I felt sure you were coming to-day, so
I ran out to get some of those cakes you liked so much.”

It was a fancy of his that she should always make the tea herself. The
room was growing dark. She looked very graceful, tenderly delicate, as
she knelt on the hearth-rug, the firelight playing hide-and-seek in her
hair and the folds of her dress. Her eyes looked dreamy as she stared
into the blaze, waiting for the kettle to boil up, which she had set on
the fire, too impatient to wait for the spirit-lamp to do its work.

It was not until she had settled herself cozily into the deep armchair
that he broke the silence.

“How would you like to spend a month or so down at Rottingdean? I’ve got
a small cottage there; very comfortable, very lonely and very quiet.”

The unexpected question startled her. The proposal upset all her
schemes, and the call for an immediate reply tried her skill.

“What made you think of it?” she asked, temporizing.

“Well, I thought it might be—pleasanter, if we kept out of sight for a
while.”

“Oh, I see! I see! Do you like the idea?”

“I rather do. I’d like anywhere with you; best of all, anywhere, we
should always be together.”

“Until——”

“Until what?”

“Until you’re tired of me.”

He did not answer, and she went over to him and sat down at his feet,
her head resting on his knee. It was preferable to her to sit so, her
face hidden from him; eyes are traitors oftentimes.

“Always together,” she went on, “how good that would be for me; for me.
But, George, I don’t think it would be good for us both.”

“You mean what?”

“Why this, dear. The woman depends upon the man, always wants him near
her if not actually with her. Men, I think, are different; they only
depend upon us sometimes, and then they come to us.”

“Then you don’t know what I know, dear. You’ve taught me to depend upon
you—always, altogether, all day long. While I was waiting for you just
now, I was mad because the thought entered my head that perhaps you did
not really love me very much, after all.”

“What a silly thought! But I’m glad it hurt you; isn’t that horrid of
me?”

He leaned down and kissed her upturned face.

“Well,” he said, “what about Rottingdean?”

“George—before I tell you what I think—tell me right out, what put the
notion into your head? You think we should be safer there than here?”

“Why, of course——”

“I don’t agree with you. Your being there is sure to get into the papers
one way or another. He will see it there, or some dear, kind friend will
tell him, and he’d come down.”

“It’s funny we didn’t think of that!”

“We?” she asked quickly. “Who’s we?”

“Why, I—er—met Mortimer. He’s often done my thinking for me, so I
chatted my difficulty over with him.”

“Two great, clever men of the world, and one, wee, little foolish idea!
Why didn’t you come and talk it over with me?”

“Somehow—I didn’t like to.”

“Well, let’s forget clever Mr. Fred. Don’t you agree with me, it
wouldn’t do?”

“Ye-es, I do. We could go abroad?”

“That would only make his journey after us longer. He’s a saint, which
means one part of lunacy to nine parts of obstinacy. It’s this
pig-headedness that makes them martyrs. Who was it said that a ‘martyr
is a persecutor who has got the worst of it?’ Edward will persecute me
until I give in, or he dies.”

“He shan’t!” Maddison interjected angrily.

“Oh, no, he _shan’t_ indeed,” she continued, laughing, “because—I won’t
let him. Now, while you two wise men of the West End have been talking,
I’ve been thinking. Part of your plan fits in with mine. You must go
away——”

“Not without you!”

“If not without me, you may as well stay here. Don’t you want me to be
happy?”

“Of course I do. That’s the only want I have.”

“Then you must make me unhappy for a little while, so that I may be
quite happy by and by. If you go down to Rottingdean alone, I’ll manage
that Edward shall hear of it. He’ll watch you, find out that I’m not
with you, and leave you alone. I’ll stay here; I shan’t bother to hide
away; I don’t mind if he does find me out, and come to see me. I don’t
think he’ll do it twice. Besides, obstinate as he is, he must have some
pride somewhere, and some other woman may catch hold of him: I never
believed the story St. Anthony told. And there’s this hope too: he may
begin to think he’s neglecting his real work in hunting after me.”

“That’s what Mortimer thought.”

“Did he? Now—don’t you see that my way is the better?”

“It doesn’t make any difference. I won’t leave you.”

“Don’t you know I hate the mere thought of it? But, George, I won’t
sacrifice the future to the present, as you’re so ready to do. It isn’t
as if you were going millions of miles away. You can easily run up to
town every now and then—you needn’t go near the studio, just stop here
a night or two. I can run down to Brighton. You mustn’t be obstinate.”

“I shall hate it.”

“So shall I!” she exclaimed, jumping up, “so shall I. But it’s the best
way. Do you love me so little, George, that you don’t know that I’m only
thinking of how we can be happiest in the end? We must buy the future at
the expense of the present.”

Then, sitting on his knees, she took his face between her warm hands,
looked into his eyes, slowly put her lips to his, slowly kissed him.

“You witch!” he said. “You always have your own way!”

“How untrue! But, George,” she added quickly, laying her head on his
shoulder, “don’t misunderstand me, _don’t_. I want you, want you always,
and I shall be miserable while you are away. I shall just count the
days. But you’ll come up to see me and I’ll come down to see you; it
might be worse. And how lovely it’ll be when you come back.”

Maddison was dining out that night, and she made him resist the sudden
temptation to telegraph to his hostess, pleading illness as an excuse
for not keeping his engagement. They talked on until at the last he was
compelled to hurry off, the leave-taking abruptly ended by her
laughingly pushing him out.

Then she danced back to the drawing room, overjoyed that fate had played
so well into her hands, offering her the opportunity for which she had
been longing, of being free upon occasion to go whither she liked and to
do what she willed.

“If only all men were as easy to fool!” she thought; “perhaps they are,
when one knows them and they don’t know us.”

She picked up her hat which she had flung on the sofa, and pinned it on
quickly. Then she went out, closing the hall door quietly behind her,
but instead of going down, ran upstairs to the top floor, where Ethel
Harding lived, as she said, nearer heaven in this world than she was
likely to be in the next.

“Hullo, it’s you!” she said, answering herself to Marian’s ring. “Come
along in. The girl’s out and I’m all alone and lonely.”

She led the way into a small sitting room, comfortably but somewhat
gaudily furnished and decorated; a bright fire burned in the small
grate; an incandescent gas light glared on each side of the overmantel;
on the round table in the center were a dilapidated flower in a crimson
pot; an ash tray, full to overflowing with cigarette ends and ashes;
and, on a dirty cheap Japanese tray, a half-empty siphon of soda water,
a bottle of brandy three parts full, and a tumbler.

“I’m in an awful mess, I always am!” Mrs. Harding exclaimed, as she
picked a newspaper and a novel out of an armchair and flung them on the
sofa. “There, do sit down. Look at me too, but this old tea gown is
comfy. I hope you’ve had your tea?—Eh?”

“Just finished it.”

“Good, for there isn’t a drop of hot water ready. I’m not much of a tea
fighter myself—a B. and S. is more in my line. Have one? No? Well,
smoke anyway. Here’s a new sort the old man brought along: they’re not
bad; they’re like him, not bad but might be better. Though I mustn’t
grumble at him now, for he just ran up to give me these and to say he’s
off for a week.”

“Is he? Then I’m in luck, for I’m alone too. Can’t we go out and dine
somewhere?”

“Why, yes. We’ll go to the Inferno, as I call it; we’re sure to meet
some pals; at least I shall, and I’ll introduce them if you like.”

“Of course I should. I haven’t been there for an age, and I do want some
fun.”

“Getting tired of Georgie? He is a bit serious.”

“Well, I think I shall appreciate him all the more if I don’t see too
much of him.”

“And he’ll like you all the longer if he don’t see too much of you. That
sounds jolly rude, don’t it? But men are all alike in some things, and
one of them is that they’re always singing ‘When _other_ lips.’ And just
you beware when they begin to protest that they can’t get on without
you: that’s always a sign of the beginning of the end to my mind.
Right-oh! Have a B. and S.? No—well, daresay you’re right. I’ll have
one more and then I’ll dress and we’ll be off. The Inferno’s crammed
always and I hate sitting at a table with other people, unless I’m one
and _he_ the other,” she added, laughing.

There was something bold and free about the figure of the woman as she
stood beside the table with her hand raised to put the glass to her
mouth, the clinging folds of the slight tea gown showing clearly the
outline of her stalwart figure, her broad shoulders and shapely breasts.
Marian felt slight and fragile by comparison.

Something of the difference between them had evidently struck Mrs.
Harding at the same moment, for she said as she put down the empty
glass:

“We make a good couple, we shall never interfere with each other’s game.
I suppose you’re just about as tall as me, but you’re slight and I’m
big—quite big enough; I’m black and you’re golden. Are you going to
change? I shouldn’t if I were you—that’s right—we can chat while I get
on my togs. Where’s Georgie off to?”

“Only dining out.”

“Oh! Coming along later on?”

“I expect so.”

“What a nuisance; you’ll have to be back early, and I was counting on
having some fun and perhaps bringing a couple of boys home with us.
Well, you must make the best of a short time and hope for better luck.”

Marian made no response, though she was disappointed and wished that she
were free for adventure, any that would break the dull monotony of her
present way of living. The license of this woman’s life made hers by
comparison all the more strait.

Pausing for a minute at her flat to put on her furs, Marian and her new
friend went down.

“Shall we bump it in a motor, or go comfy in a hansom?”

“Whichever you like,” Marian answered. “I’ve not much choice, but I feel
rather ‘hansomy’ this evening, don’t you?”

“I always do. I was born with the itch of spending. The only thing that
I shall do cheap will be my funeral, and I don’t worry about that.
Here’s one, with a horse that don’t show too many of his ribs. Jump in
and I’ll climb sedately after—not that there’s anyone about who’d
admire my tootsies if I did show ’em and a trifle more.”

Comparatively early as they were, the big grill room was nearly full,
and they had to content themselves with a small table in a far corner,
where, however, they could see, even if not much seen.

“It does make me laugh,” said Mrs. Harding, as she rolled back her
gloves, “to see the calm cheek of some fellows. See that bald-headed old
Jew just over there? That’s his wife with him. Last night he was sitting
at the same table with Florrie Kemp. You don’t know her?”

“No.”

“She’s a devil. Drinks like a fish. Now what are we going to eat and
drink?”

For a short while Marian seemed out of tune with the scene and with her
comrade, but the heat of the room, the swirl of the music and the buzz
of voices, the rich food and the wine warmed her, and she fell in with
the spirit of her companion.

“Hullo! There’s Nosey Geraldstein staring at you as if he’d like to eat
you. He hates me, so let’s have him over. He’s mean as Moses, and it’ll
be fun to make him pay the bill and then say ‘Good night’! He’s coming!
He’s the ugliest man in London and—always gets any girl he wants. So,
look out for yourself. Hullo, Sydney, you tried to look the other way;
yes, you may join us, if you promise to behave nicely. Let me introduce
you to Mrs. Squire.”

Marian thought that the description of Geraldstein as the ugliest man in
town was, at any rate, no gross exaggeration; his heavy, dark face,
black and lusterless eyes, lusterless, lank, black hair, and gross,
prominent chin, were far from prepossessing. To her surprise his voice
was soft, pleasant and refined; she almost laughed, it was so
unexpected: a voice that to a handsome man would have been an added
attraction, came as if contrary to the course of nature from one so
grotesquely, almost bestially, ugly.

“I never look for anyone here,” he said. “If a friend sees me and says,
‘Hail, fellow,’ all right, but in a crowd I’m lost. This is a nice,
secluded haven of refuge you’ve found, and it’s very good of you to let
me share it.”

“These are his ‘just-introduced-to-a-stranger’ manners, Marian. Sydney’s
got more soft soap at his command than all the washerwomen in London.”

“But not enough to cleanse the reputations of some of my friends,” said
Geraldstein. “Why drink Burgundy? It’s a dull, stupid wine. There are
only three wines worth drinking: Rhine wine when I want to be inspired;
claret when I want to be stimulated; and champagne when I want to
remember the days when we were all young and innocent. So—shall we have
a bottle of—fizzy wine?”

“It’d take several bottles to make you forget yourself,” said Mrs.
Harding, who had flushed uneasily under his open sneer.

“Ah, Ethel, you’ll never make a conversationalist; you should learn to
give and never take. Here’s Francis—I call all waiters Francis, it
reminds me of the Boar’s Head—he’s one of my tame waiters. It pays to
have a tame waiter everywhere.”

The time went by quickly, Geraldstein exerting himself to please Marian,
who for her part enjoyed herself thoroughly. The good talk, the good
wine and good food, the atmosphere of gayety, the sense of freedom,
intoxicated her senses, and Geraldstein congratulated himself that he
had thought it worth while suffering Ethel Harding for the sake of an
introduction to the pretty woman with her. He wondered who she could be
and what—evidently not an ordinary woman of the town.

The wine heated Marian, who usually drank sparingly, calling a splendid
glow to her cheeks and brilliancy to her eyes; many of the men there
envied Geraldstein. She listened to his gay chatter and to Ethel
Harding’s coarser talk, joining in gayly herself, not caring what she
said, uttering every quip and innuendo that came to her lips, and taking
the meaning of his delicately-veiled impudences with laughter and
railing rejoinders. A woman to go mad about for a time at any rate,
thought Geraldstein. But a peculiarly broad remark of Mrs. Harding’s
grated on her, and chilled her spirit. She suddenly realized that
Geraldstein was examining her points as he would those of a horse or a
dog the purchase of which he was considering. She seemed to hear the
chink of his gold as he bid for her favors, and the thought sickened
her. She could understand the drunkenness of indiscriminate passion or
the joy of purchasing power by the pretense of passion, but cold-blooded
bargaining with coins disgusted her.

It was now past ten o’clock, and she made the hour an excuse for moving.

“Don’t let me break up the party; you’re in no hurry, Ethel!” she said,
using the Christian name as Mrs. Harding had used hers, “but I must be
off.”

“Off?” said Geraldstein. “What a pity! It’s quite early.”

“Yes, quite early,” Marian answered. “I like being quite early. You
settle the bill, Ethel, and I’ll square up with you to-morrow.”

“You’ll let me see you into a cab?” Geraldstein protested.

“No, thanks. I can look after myself quite well.”

Geraldstein did not press the point, and Marian went away alone.




                              CHAPTER XII


IT was on one of those warm, sunshiny mornings with which Londoners are
sometimes startled in mid January that Maddison drove down to Victoria
Station _en route_ for Brighton. So glorious was the weather that,
despite his heartache at parting with Marian, he found himself looking
forward eagerly to his holiday by the sea.

The platform was crowded, and having run himself rather close for time,
he found there would be difficulty in securing a comfortable seat. As he
made his way along through the din and hubbub a hand was laid heavily on
his shoulder and turning round sharply he faced Philip West.

“Hullo, Maddison, off to Brighton? Come along with us, I’ve got a
compartment—lots of room, and the missis and Miss Lane. Mrs. West’s not
been up to much lately, and the doctor says ‘Brighton.’ Might be worse;
some pokey, invalidy place down in the South. I can manage to amuse
myself in Brighton, and it’s convenient for town anyway.”

“Nothing much the matter, I hope?”

“Oh, nothing at all, probably; translated into brutal truth, the doctor
said she ate too many sweets and nonsense and too little food. Run
down.”

Maddison thought West’s manner rather callous, and wondered what Marian
would feel if he ever came to speak so lightly of her. Was West already
finding out the emptiness of his house of love?

Mrs. West greeted Maddison effusively, and Miss Lane did so quietly; a
minute later they were rushing along Southward Ho!

“What brings you out of town, Maddison?” West asked.

“Work. I’ve got some work I want to do and don’t seem to settle down to
it in town.”

“But is Brighton any better for work?” Mrs. West said, as she snuggled
down into her corner and drew her furs closely round her. Maddison
thought she looked all the prettier for her frailty.

“I’m not going to Brighton,” he answered; “I’ve got a cottage over at
Rottingdean, two rooms and a kitchen. I’m going to settle down there for
a bit.”

“How nice! We can run over in the motor, and you can begin my portrait
right away. Will you?”

West laughed, hoping that the direct question would embarrass Maddison,
who replied promptly:

“That will do splendidly, if you’re stopping long enough.”

“We _will_ stop long enough. I’m so glad to have an excuse for not going
back too soon. The country’s stupid in the winter and Brighton’s jolly,
although Philip did try to grumble about coming.”

“‘Try’ is the word,” rejoined West, biting the end of his cigar; “try!
When you get married, Maddison, you’ll remember that little word ‘try.’”

“Don’t be naughty, Philip,” said Mrs. West, pouting. “You know you
always have your own way, except about grumbling. Life’s too short for
grumbling, isn’t it, Mr. Maddison?”

“Much. Your husband as a business man ought to know better than to waste
his time.”

“What a prosaic view to take!” Mrs. West answered. “He ought to leave
business behind him in the office and just waste his time when he’s at
home. But all men are prosaic, I think.”

“And all women are—?” asked West.

“Just what you like to make them,” his wife replied. “That’s the worst
of it—what _we_ are depends on what _you_ are.”

“What do you say to such views, Alice?” West said, appealing to Miss
Lane, who was looking out of the window at the miles of dreary suburbs
flying by.

“Nothing!” she answered. “You know I never theorize about things. What’s
the use of it?”

“Practical, steady, unemotional Alice!” laughed Mrs. West; but Maddison
knew better, for he caught a glimpse of a look of contemptuous scorn
before Miss Lane turned away again to the window.

“Where are you going to put up?” Maddison asked.

“At the Metropole, it’s amusing,” answered Mrs. West. “You must come in
and dine with us.”

“Maddison hates big hotels,” said West.

“Big anything,” interjected Maddison, “except when Nature provides them.
Most of men’s big things are vulgar failures. London, for example, you
needn’t go farther.”

“Is a bad example,” rejoined West. “That example won’t prove your point:
just the opposite. On the whole, London is a success; it’s the most
comfortable, most luxurious and most beautiful city in the world.”

“And the most comfortless, most squalid, and most ugly,” said Maddison.
“That’s where London is such a dismal failure; she’s just like a horse
with an uncertain temper: one moment an angel, the next a devil.”

“Or you can put it another way and draw another conclusion; London has
just that charm which belongs to a woman—you’re never quite certain of
her—at least if she’s worth bothering about. It may be a scratch, it
may be a kiss.”

“I don’t like your talking that way, Phil,” said Mrs. West; “you know
you don’t mean it.”

“It’d be too stupid if we only said what we meant; most of us mean such
commonplaces.”

Mrs. West picked up a magazine, and neither of the men feeling inclined
to talk, the conversation dropped.

West was glad of Maddison’s company and pleased that he was to be a
neighbor. The portrait-painting would occupy some of that time which
Agatha found weighing so heavy on her hands, and would relieve him from
being always called upon to lighten her burden and to listen to her
complaints. He had been accustomed for years past to have his own way
with those around him, and the women with whom he had chiefly mixed had
been those who must please to live. Now and again he had felt the need
for a settled home and had vaguely contemplated matrimony. But the idea
had not crystallized until last spring he had met Agatha, who seemed to
offer him all that he wanted in a wife—good looks, good temper, good
nature. The love-making had been quick and strong; the engagement brief.
Now, a few months after their marriage, he was beginning to understand
the nature of his acquisition wholly he thought, forgetting that a man
has never yet entirely understood a woman any more than any woman has
entirely understood a man. We set out to judge others by their motives,
which we hope to trace from their actions, but half of what we do in
life is purposeless, merely impulsive, and the other half unintentional.
It was West’s dangerous pride to feel convinced that he owned the gift
of seeing into the hearts and souls of men and women. He had come to the
conclusion that good looks were all his wife’s endowment, and that the
good nature would not stand against the test of self-sacrifice in any
degree however small, and that the good temper was not proof against
disappointment and contradiction. Once or twice lately she had asked him
for extravagances which he told her he considered unnecessary, which
when she pressed him he said he could not afford, his means not being
limitless. He did not add that at the moment it would have been more
correct to say that his income was by no means so large as the world
believed it to be, one or two speculations having turned out
considerable losses. He was not embarrassed as yet, but the next few
months would be full of anxiety, with another brilliant success or a
startling failure at the end of them. He had never before felt any
desire to share his business worries with anyone, had never, in fact,
had anyone with whom he was tempted to do so, but now to a certain
degree it irritated him to know that if he had desired to confide in
Agatha it would lead to no good result; the mere fact that she was not
his helpmeet made him wish for such an one.

Maddison parted with the Wests at Brighton Station, and having confided
his luggage and paraphernalia to the carrier who had driven in to meet
him, set forth on foot for Rottingdean. The air was crisper, fresher
here than it had been in London, and as he strode along the broad
pathway on the edge of the cliff, drinking in the salt breeze, he felt
that he would have been perfectly content had only Marian been by his
side.

Then his thoughts turned to the Wests. The man was strong and could take
care of himself, but he was sorry for Agatha. There was to him something
pathetic in her foolish, pretty helplessness, the pathos that there is
in a dumb beast’s futile efforts to understand a world that is beyond
his ken. He knew now that he could paint her portrait, not in the
jeering spirit he had intended, but so that he would show in the pretty
face the struggling of a soul unborn. Would it ever see the light of
life? Perhaps better not, he thought; souls suffer more keenly than mere
clay.

He paused when he had left the houses some way behind, and looked out
over the white-flecked sea, boundless, apparently, save for the distant
bank of mist that crept treacherously along; away to the right the dun
cloud of smoke over the town; behind him the rolling downs; to the left,
Rottingdean, nestling down in its cradle; and before him the
white-flecked sea. No living being in sight, yet thousands so near. He
felt lonely, and there swept over him a passionate longing for Marian,
to have her standing with her hand in his, looking out with him over the
white-flecked sea; they two together, what would it matter then if there
were no other living soul in the world? It took all his will to master
his impulse to retrace his steps, and to go straight back to town. Could
he endure the staying down here? Could he wait even the few days he had
promised to remain before going up to see her? Where was she at this
moment? What was she doing? Was she, perhaps, thinking of him?

He remembered so well the building of the cottage—how clearly its white
walls stood out against the green background of the downs, and how
pleasantly the months had slipped away when he stayed there the last
summer; he almost dreaded now to go on and to cross its threshold; it
would be so dreary and so empty.

With a half laugh, he shook himself free from these oppressive thoughts,
and hurried along down the chalky road into the village, where many
homely acquaintances greeted him warmly, expressing surprise at his
visiting them at such a time of the year.

Mrs. Witchout, who “did” for him, stood on the doorstep ready to greet
him. She was an abnormally tall, abnormally thin, abnormally
pinched-faced and red-nosed woman, which beacon was a libel upon her
teetotal principles and practice.

“The fire’s burnin’ nicerly, and your luggidge’s all piled upinaheap,”
said Mrs. Witchout, in her piping voice, which came startlingly as would
the note of a penny whistle from a lengthy organ pipe. “I didn’t like to
sort it out not knowin’-whatswhat.”

Mrs. Witchout’s most remarkable gift was a breathless way of running two
or three words into one, which was not only astonishing but often
perplexing.

“That’s all right, Mrs. Witchout. How are you?”

“I’m myself, which comes to the same as sayin’ I’m middlin’; w’en I
ain’t got a cold in the ’ead I’m sure to have a blister on my ’eel, but
I managesterfergitit by not thinkin’ abart myself. Ain’t you ’ungry,
sir? I do ’ope so. I’ve got two sich nice chops, pertaties, cabidgeanda
cheese.”

“Hungry! I should say I am! The walk across the cliffs is better than
any pick-me-up in the world. So on with the chops and out with the
cheese.”

The north end of the cottage was occupied by one large room, lit by a
long lattice window and a skylight above; a passage ran from the front
door right through to the back, and on the south there were two floors,
the lower half kitchen, half sitting room, the upper a bedroom reached
by a narrow stair from the passage. A snug nest Maddison had thought it,
but despite the bright fires in studio and kitchen and Mrs. Witchout’s
warm welcome, there was a sense of desolateness about the place that
hurt him. He carried his portmanteau up to the bedroom, unstrapped it,
then sat down on the edge of the bed and looked out of the open window,
through which the breeze came cool and crisp. There lay the sea, spread
out like a great, gray drugget, and in the distance the gathering fog.
It _was_ dreary.

“Chopson the table!” Mrs. Witchout called up the stairs.
“Wat’llyoudrink? Beer?”

“Beer will do A1!”

Again Maddison tried to shake himself free of his oppression, and ran
down the stairs.

“You’re a brick, Mrs. Witchout: chops and cheese and beer! Here goes!”

Mrs. Witchout tucked her hands under her apron and looked on approvingly
as he set to vigorously.

“Brick!” she said meditatively. “Now I wonders could you explain
w’ytheycall pussons ‘bricks’? It’s meant a complimentapparently, but I
don’t see ’ow: bricks bein’ ’ardandangular, which I ’ope I ain’t either.
Perhaps it alludes to being full baked. Wot do you think, sir?”

“I think it’s a very interesting question and that this is excellent
beer. I hope it doesn’t ruin your reputation as a teetotaler your
purchasing beer?”

“It’s a poor sort of repitation as wouldn’t stand a dozen of bassordered
forsomeoneelse. Not that people don’t talk when they’ve got no reason
for to do so. If people only opened their mouths when there was
somethin’ worth comin’ out to come out most folks would go aboutwi’
their mouths shut. We didn’t expect you down afore the springtime
anyway, but I keeps everything ready, as you toldmeto, and pleasant nice
work it is lookin’ arter ’m. Stoppin’ long, sir?”

“A month or so, if you don’t get too tired of me.”

Mrs. Witchout smiled broadly, as who should say that the impossible had
been mentioned.

After lunch, leaving Mrs. Witchout to wash up and set things tidy and
ready for tea, Maddison devoted his energies to unpacking and putting
everything in order. He took “The Rebel” from its packing-case, and set
it up on an easel, and sat down before it. It was a good picture and he
knew it, but he knew also how much better he had meant it to be. In the
waning afternoon light the unfinished portions scarcely showed; there
sat Marian, the rebel, the queen of rebels, bright, beautiful—his, “The
Rebel!” Should he paint a companion picture?—Marian sitting by the
fireside—here in his cottage studio—the light of love in her eyes. He
looked across at the empty chair, a fellow of one that she often sat in
at home—there she was visible, to his mind’s eye, sitting there,
gracious and lovely—his and his only.




                              CHAPTER XIII


THE next morning all trace of mist on the distant sea had vanished, but
though the sun shone splendidly, the air still bit shrewdly. West rose
with the spirit of discontent in him, breakfasted early and alone, then
set out to walk to Rottingdean. Maddison, palette in hand, answered the
knock at the door.

“Hullo! The early bird does the work,” said West. “May I come in and
talk while you paint?”

“Come along. You’re a fairly early bird too. There are cigars and
cigarettes over there, and an unopened bottle of whisky and a siphon in
the locker by the window.”

West took a cigar, and then wandered aimlessly about the room, while
Maddison worked at “The Rebel.”

“Ah! _My_ picture!” exclaimed West, looking over his shoulder. “It’s the
best thing you’ve ever done, Maddison. Won’t the critics fight over it.
You hit on a thundering good model for it.”

“Your picture! I didn’t promise to let you have it. I’m doubtful if I
shall sell it at all.”

“Oh!” said West, with a queer intonation, “I didn’t know you ever felt
that way about your work. I thought you laughed at art for art’s sake,
and all that damned nonsense, and preached that the laborer is worthy of
his hire—eh?”

“As a rule. But—somehow this has got hold of me.”

“Or—the pretty model—eh? Well, I envy you; you’re a lucky devil.
What’s the poor curate say? Or is he guilty of the ignorance which is
bliss?”

Maddison bit his lips; this raillery which before would have amused him,
now made him angry. He felt that the best way to put an end to it would
be to speak outright and to show that he did not like West’s tone.

“Her husband does know. The facts are just these, West. Mrs. Squire has
left her husband; it was a far from happy marriage. He’s High Church or
something and won’t give her a divorce. So—we have to make the best of
it. I think it right you should know exactly how matters stand, as she
may, in fact, will, be coming down here, and your wife may chance to
meet her with me.”

“Oh, Agatha isn’t a prig. Nor is Alice.”

“Alice?”

“Miss Lane.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot that was her Christian name. So now you understand
why I may not wish to part with this picture. If anyone has it it shall
be you, if you don’t change your mind.”

“Change my mind! It’s not a thing I used often to do, but I seem always
to be at it now. I meant to go up to town this morning, but didn’t. If
I’d intended to come here, ten to one I should have run up to town. I’m
too young to be growing old, but I feel deuced old all the same, at
times.”

He was again strolling vaguely about the room, now pausing to look at a
sketch, now glancing out of the window at the undulating stretch of
green down.

“You look just as young as the first day I met you,” he continued;
“haven’t changed a hair. I suppose it’s care that kills men as well as
cats. There’s more real care in a successful career than in a failure. A
small shopkeeper can’t lose much, and doesn’t run many risks. Now
I—why, good Lord! I may go bust—sky high—any day. Big business is all
a big gamble, the margin between a huge profit and a huge loss is so
small—a puff of wind, and over you go on the money side. Now
you—you’re above fate now; you’re known; competition can never touch
you; the speculation is entirely on the part of those who buy your
pictures. In a hundred years they may be worth thousands or nothing.
Yes, you’re a lucky devil.”

“Luck. Do you believe in luck?”

“Luck? It’s the only real thing in the world. It rules the world!
Believe in it? Of course I do. I shouldn’t ever have been anything more
than a small shopkeeper if I hadn’t been lucky. I inherited a tiny
corner shop in a back street; fate—or the Metropolitan Board of
Works—decided to drive a new thoroughfare past my place. Wasn’t that
luck? Isn’t marriage all a matter of luck? What man can know anything at
all about his wife, until she is his wife and free to show him her real
self? Luck! I never trust the man who sneers at luck and talks about the
reward of honest labor; he’s a liar or a fool, both equally bad to deal
with in business.”

“I don’t believe in luck. Which am I, knave or fool?”

“Oh, you’re an artist, and the artistic temperament covers a multitude
of eccentricities.”

The hooting of a motor-horn drew him to the window again, from which a
glimpse of the road could be seen.

“Hullo! Here’s Alice and Agatha, early birds too. But she’s come to
bully you into starting the portrait. Are you going to do it?”

“Yes. Why not?”

He put down his palette, took the picture off the easel and set it in a
corner with its face to the wall, and then went out to welcome his
guests, followed by West.

“Oh, Mr. Maddison, I do hope you don’t mind my having come,” said Mrs.
West, leaning from the car, and holding out her small, daintily gloved
hand. “May I come in? I want to talk business.”

“Delighted, Mrs. West. Good morning, Miss Lane.”

“I guessed you’d come here, Phil,” Mrs. West went on, as Maddison helped
her to alight, “but you’re not to stay. You take Alice for a spin and
then come back for us. Perhaps Mr. Maddison will come back to lunch with
us?”

Maddison accepted the invitation, and West climbed into the car.

Mrs. West and Maddison watched them till a turn in the road put them out
of sight.

“Now, Mr. Maddison, do take me into your studio. I want you to tell me,
seriously, will you paint my portrait? Phil tells me I should look on it
as a great compliment if you do. I like compliments, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, everyone does; even when I know they are undeserved;
it’s pleasant to be able to please people, and only people who are
pleased pay compliments worth having.”

“What a jolly room!” Mrs. West exclaimed, as she sat down and looked
round critically. “There doesn’t seem to be anything really unusual
about it, except the swords and daggery things on the wall, but it looks
quite different to other studios. Now, will you paint my portrait, Mr.
Maddison?”

“I will, with pleasure, if you’ll let me paint it my own way. I always
make that condition.”

“I want to be painted just as I am. I don’t want to be flattered: I
really mean that.”

“I’m glad you do, for—that’s my way. Please sit straight up in that
chair, and look at me, so—yes, that’s it. I shan’t keep you in that
pose long at a time, and I shan’t do much this morning, just rough in
the head and figure if I can—if I’m in the mood. I never know whether I
am or not till I begin to work.”

“May I talk?”

“Not for a few minutes—just look straight at me—so.”

For some ten minutes he worked rapidly and surely, pausing every now and
again to examine her face intently. Only in the eyes lay anything of
character, and from them looked out, so he thought, not only the
struggling soul he expected to see, but a rebellious discontent.

“Now you can do what you like for a time, Mrs. West, and talk to me if
you’ll be so good—but you mustn’t expect me to answer much—I’ll go on
working.”

She did not, however, leave the chair, but relaxing her upright
attitude, sank back, and watched him steadily.

“Have you known Phil long, Mr. Maddison?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes, off and on, for years.”

“Has he changed much since you first knew him?”

“No, I don’t think so. He was always much the same.”

“He seems to me to have changed a lot since—we were married. Or perhaps
I knew nothing of him then—and am only getting to know him now. I
suppose everybody knows all about me the minute they meet me. I know you
won’t want to answer—but isn’t that so?”

“It’s a common mistake to think that one can know much about anyone
until one has known them intimately a long time—and then the
much—isn’t much. I’ve sometimes thought—at least I used to do so—that
I had put all a sitter’s character upon my canvas, but now I know
better. The face tells everything, if only one can read all its lines.”

“I wonder what you read in my face?”

“What I think I see there, I shall try to paint—and then, why, then, no
one may be able to see in my painting what I have tried to put there.”

“Not even I?”

“Probably you least of all.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I do fancy I don’t know much about myself. I used
to think everybody liked me—” she hesitated and then turned toward the
window, keeping silent for a time.

“I suppose you look at people’s faces in quite a different way to what
other people do, Mr. Maddison?” she said after a while.

“At any rate I think I do. If a face seems to have a story to tell, I
like to read it. But most faces are masks to empty heads.”

She again kept silent, then stood up.

“May I come and see how you’re getting on?”

“Not yet, please—I’d rather you waited until I’ve finished; I can’t
work if I’m watched.”

She wandered aimlessly about the room, her thoughts evidently intent
upon something of which she desired but hesitated to speak.

“Is Alice Lane’s face a mask to an empty head?” she asked suddenly,
looking at him keenly.

The question startled him, and he hesitated how he should answer it,
making absorption in his work his excuse for not immediately replying.

“Miss Lane’s—eh? Oh—no, I should say she has a very decided
character.”

“A strong character, you mean?”

“Ye-es—you might put it that way.”

“She loves my husband.”

“Mrs. West!”

“Oh, of course that’s an extraordinary thing for me to say to anybody,
especially to you, who I don’t really know. But I must speak to someone,
and I’ve no relations and no real friend—unless you’ll be one.”

Maddison left the easel, and went across the room to where she was
standing by the window.

“Mrs. West, take my advice: don’t tell me any more, and don’t ask me
anything. I—don’t see how—I know that I can’t help you——”

“You won’t help me?” she asked, disappointment in her tone. “You won’t?
I—thought you would.”

“Not won’t—_can’t_.”

“How can you tell? I’ve not really told you anything yet.”

“You’ve told me enough for me to be able, more or less, to guess the
rest—and I’m sure that there is only one person in the world that can
really help you—you must help yourself.”

“That’s so easy to say. I don’t know how. I don’t know how.”

She sank down upon the window seat, burying her face in her hands, and
sobbing in a quiet, childish fashion. Intense pity for this helpless,
weak woman touched him, but he knew that her only real chance of
salvation in this world was for her to find herself through suffering,
and that if she continued to depend upon any other for support, she
would never be strong enough to stand alone. He did not speak until she
raised her face, and her sobbing had almost died away.

“Of course you will think me very hard-hearted and brutal, Mrs. West,”
he said, “but I must risk that. If things are going wrong, you must help
yourself. The only thing I can do is to tell you that from what I know
of your husband, he would love his wife to be as strong and
self-dependent as himself. Now, please go back to your chair, and sit as
you were at first.”

His heart was full of sympathy for the weak, little woman, so pretty, so
vain, so helpless. There was little chance, he felt sure, that she would
ever develop into strength, or that she would retain her husband’s
affection, if Alice Lane—quiet, determined, and very passionate as he
believed her to be—were bent on winning it. West’s restless manner and
talk had shown that something was amiss. The old story—the vessel of
porcelain and the vessel of iron. She a joy to him so long as she
continued to amuse and please, but thrown aside broken, when her charm
had gone. Maddison had foreseen some such event as this, but had not
thought that she would suffer greatly, or at any rate, for a length of
time, taking her to be one who would be content with luxuries and pretty
things. But he realized now that there was a depth of affection in her,
childish perhaps, but none the less deep, which might lead to tragedy,
if West turned her out of his life. But he knew that he was helpless to
assist: West was masterful and ruthless; the pity of it was that he had
been so blind as not to see that this simple child could not long
content him.

He scarcely dared look at the pitiable face that he must truly reproduce
upon his canvas. Could he allow anyone save herself to see this portrait
of an unhappy woman?

Then it occurred to him that perhaps he was unduly apprehensive; that
after all, his first surmise might be correct, and that when she had
ceased to cry for her lost toy, she would dry her eyes and be happy with
something more costly and less valuable than human love. At any rate,
there was no aid that he could render; the tragedy, or the comedy, must
play itself out, with himself among the spectators.

Before he had released her, the other two returned.

“Come along,” shouted West; “it’s getting late. We won’t come in.”

As they were leaving the studio, Mrs. West held out her hand to
Maddison, saying:

“Thank you. You said you couldn’t help me—but you have.”




                              CHAPTER XIV


PROBABLY Maddison alone knew that Mortimer was not the empty-hearted
cynic that he wished the world to believe him to be. Mortimer’s terrible
handicap was that his character was for the most part a compound of
tender-heartedness and shyness. A jeer, a jest at his expense, a snub, a
misunderstanding, a rebuff of proffered sympathy cut him to the quick,
and he had gradually schooled himself into presenting to his friends,
even to those with whom he was intimate, an exterior of callous
carelessness, not realizing that while by so doing he would save himself
from much pain, he would inevitably also deprive himself of some of the
highest joys a man can experience. A true-hearted woman’s love would
have rescued him from his error, but the woman he had loved had sold
herself to a Jew for diamonds and a house in Park Lane. Living so
self-centered as he did, or rather so self-contained, Mortimer’s friends
were few, while his acquaintances were innumerable. The one he knew best
was George Maddison, to whom he was attached, and attached not so much
because he found in him any true comradeship, but because he felt for
him a certain pity. He knew how much there was of splendor in Maddison’s
nature and he knew equally well how much there was of weakness. He
looked upon him as a fair-weather sailor, a man who delighted to rove
over sunlit, peaceful seas, who loved to listen to the voices of the
sirens and who, if caught by Circe’s enchantments, might sink down among
the beasts. Indeed, he counted him very much as a brilliant, passionate,
wayward child. So far Maddison had met with no storms, the wind had
always been fair, the sun unclouded, the sirens more attracted by him
than he by them, but this attachment, this passion for Marian,
frightened Mortimer. An absorbing love for a good woman might have been
Maddison’s salvation, but Marian was utterly bad in his estimation, and
he could not perceive ahead anything save misery. That Marian would not
rest content with Maddison’s love and protection he was assured; already
she might be playing false to him; when Maddison discovered—as discover
one day he must—that he had adored and sacrificed himself to a false
goddess, what would be the outcome? If Maddison had been strong, the
stinging lesson might prove a purifying trial; but—Maddison being weak
in all save his art and his passion, what could possibly be the upshot
but tragedy? The greater the hold she gained upon him the greater the
disaster. It delighted Mortimer that Maddison had left town; at any rate
he would not constantly be under Marian’s spell; he might find that
Marian was not, as he thought, entirely necessary to his happiness;
absence might enable him to see in her faults to which the unbroken
charm of her presence blinded him; he might gradually shake himself
free, gradually waken from dreams of heaven to the realities of common
sense. This was only a hope, however, and Mortimer felt impelled to do
anything that in him lay to enable Maddison to regain his freedom.
Things were bad, and the lapse of time might, of course, make them worse
instead of better. Cruel as would be the cure, the best and surest way
to liberate Maddison would be to open his eyes to Marian’s real
character. For her Mortimer had no sympathy or pity; she was merely one
more of those mortal pests born to kill men, body, heart and soul.
Maddison was worth saving from her poisonous influence. It was not as a
prude that Mortimer judged the matter. He enjoyed to the full the
pleasures of the world and of the flesh, but Marian was a devouring
devil. “Religion must have been invented by women,” he once said, “for
the devil is always represented as a man.”

The single point was this: Maddison firmly believed that Marian loved
him; that belief must be shattered; he must be shown, with proof and
above doubt, that Marian loved herself only and cared for Maddison
simply because he had enabled her to shake herself free from her
husband, and had provided her with money and pleasure. Marian so far had
been very guarded in her conduct, but Mortimer judged that there were
two temptations, to one of which she would succumb, if not to both: a
love of power, and a quickly growing, and in the end probably
overwhelming, desire for gross pleasures. She was now alone; probably
eagerly searching for temptation. The matter was simple; she must be
watched.

So the day of Maddison’s leaving for Brighton, Mortimer went to see his
solicitor, who could probably, he thought, tell him to whom it would be
best to apply for the work he wished done.

“You want some one watched, carefully and discreetly. Man or woman?”
asked the placid, well-groomed man of law, who looked more of a
prosperous city merchant than an astute, busy lawyer.

“Does that make any difference?” asked Mortimer.

“A great deal. Set a thief to catch a thief—a man to catch a man—a
woman to catch a woman.”

“Well, it’s a woman.”

“H’m,” said the lawyer, meditatively looking at his client. “What kind
of woman? You mustn’t mind my asking all these questions. I can’t help
you if I don’t know something of the circumstances.”

“The fact is,” said Mortimer, “I’m interfering in a business that has
nothing to do with me. A friend of mine is entangled with a woman whom
_he believes_ to be sincerely fond of him. _I believe_ her to be a
thoroughly reckless, bad woman. I want to know.”

“I see. I think Davis will be the best man for you to go to. Mention my
name. Here’s his address.”

“But you said a woman?”

“Yes—Davis will get you one. I should not tell Davis _anything_ more
than that you want this woman watched and to learn exactly what she
does, where she goes, whom she meets, and so on.”

“Very well. Thank you.”

Mortimer was surprised at the address: Henry William Davis—Pall Mall
East; still more surprised when he was asked to wait in a cozily
furnished sitting room, which had every appearance of being occupied by
an ordinary man about town; still more surprised by the entrance of a
slim man of middle height, quietly but fashionably dressed, fair-haired
and blue-eyed.

“You asked to see me? I’m Mr. Davis. The servant gave me your name as
Mortimer. You discreetly did not trust me with your card.”

“My name is Mortimer. Mr. John Battersea—my solicitor—advised me to
obtain your—help—but—” Mortimer looked doubtfully at Davis, and then
round the room, with its elaborate grate and overmantel, the white wood
dado, the monochrome olive-green walls, the heavy green plush curtains,
the admirable etchings and engravings, the few pieces of choice silver
and china.

“Not exactly the kind of man or room you expected to see, Mr. Mortimer?
Well, please sit down; you may be sure Battersea would not have sent you
to the wrong place. Won’t you have a cigarette? There are matches beside
you. Now—to business. You needn’t tell me who you are, I know you well
by sight and reputation. Well?”

He spoke in a slow, soft voice, which was not in any way weak, but on
the contrary impressed the hearer with the conviction that he was a man
of quiet, firm determination.

“My business is very simple, and I was told you could get it carried out
for me. I want a woman watched; I want to know what she does, where she
goes and with whom—in fact all you can find out about her.”

“That’s simple enough. What kind of woman? Respectable, or apparently
so, or disreputable?”

“Disreputable, I believe. Her name’s Marian Squire; she’s living apart
from her husband; there’s her address.”

“Very well. I’ll have her watched and report to you daily or weekly, as
you prefer. That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“And as I said, very simple. Do you merely wish for information? Or for
evidence as well? I mean, will the case be likely to appear in court?”

“No. I merely want trustworthy information for my own use,” Mortimer
answered.

“Very well. I can promise to obtain it for you. You want me to tell you
all I can find out about this woman. That’s the long and short of it.
Nothing more? Then—good morning.”

For a few minutes after Mortimer had gone, Mr. Davis stood before the
fire, quietly smoking his cigarette. Then he rang the bell and told the
sedate manservant to ring for a special messenger. He sat down at a
small writing table standing by the window and scribbled a note which he
folded with deliberation and then put into a thick envelope which he
carefully sealed and addressed to Mrs. Ethel Harding.


                 *        *        *        *        *

Maddison had persuaded Marian to breakfast with him at the studio on the
morning of his departure. They had not heard or seen anything more of
her husband, and Maddison had more than once hinted his doubts as to
there being any need for the separation, suggesting that she should go
with him to Rottingdean. The mere thought of this had irritated Marian
beyond endurance, though she concealed her feeling from him, only urging
that no real change had taken place in the circumstances which had
caused them to decide upon their plan, and she felt grateful to Mortimer
when she heard that his advice and opinion accorded with hers.

The delight with which she saw Maddison’s luggage-laden cab turn the
corner of the street soon gave way, as she walked homeward, to a sense
of inability as to how she could best make use of her new liberty.
Pleasure at any cost was her first aim and requirement. In addition to
Mortimer she had casually met a few of Maddison’s more Bohemian friends,
but she neither desired nor dared approach them. Mortimer was wealthy,
but it would be too risky, she counted, to ask him for anything, though
anything he cared to offer she was prepared to accept. Then there was
“Nosey” Geraldstein, who, Ethel Harding told her, was most anxious to
know her, but she did not like him, and she had not yet plumbed that
depth of callousness which makes a woman readily render herself to any
man who will purchase her material pleasures; she could not yet content
herself with the mere prose of lust; she still asked for some remnant of
poetry, however ragged. There remained Ethel Harding.

Passing by her own door, she went on up to her friend’s, where her knock
was answered by the maid, who said that Mrs. Harding was not yet up. But
the door of the bedroom standing ajar, Marian’s inquiry had been heard,
and Mrs. Harding called out:

“Come along in, Marian. I’m lazy and having breakfast in bed. Come in.”

Marian went into the stuffy room, which was dimly lighted, the curtain
being only half drawn from the window.

“Find a chair, my dear; throw those things on to the floor. My head’s
aching like the devil. I had a wild night of it. Have something? I tried
a cup of tea, but it tasted like sand and water, so I’m indulging in a
B. and S. Have one?”

“No, thanks, I couldn’t!” Marian answered, laughing apologetically.

“Couldn’t? Well, I used to say that once upon a time,” Mrs. Harding
replied; then stretching out her shapely, strong arms and yawning
desperately: “That’s the worst of taking a bit too much; one feels dead
beat, but can’t sleep a twopenny wink; and you dream and toss about, and
your mouth and tongue get so dry that they feel as if they were cracking
all over. But the first drop in the morning pulls one together a bit. It
makes a lot of difference what’s the lotion. Never get squiffy on phiz,
my dear, it’s poison. Stick to brandy, it doesn’t hang about so much. So
Master George is off to the country and you’ve got a holiday! What are
you going to do with it?”

“That’s just what I don’t know. I’m running down to Brighton in a few
days, but I don’t want to go to sleep till then. I came up to see if you
could suggest anything. Are you free to-night? Couldn’t we go somewhere
together?”

“Lots of places if you have any coppers. I’m cleaned out. My old man’s
away, I’ve spent all he left me, so I’ll hunt for rhino while you hunt
for fun; sometimes you can manage to haul in both, but it’s generally
the stupid beasts who have the cash. Never mind, we’ll trust to luck,
and if none turns up you shall liquidate the bill. Now I’m going to turn
you out; just pull the curtains to, like a dear, and I’ll indulge in
some more beauty sleep. I’ll look you up about tea-time, and we can talk
over the plan of campaign. Ta-ta!”




                               CHAPTER XV


THE days passed slowly and disagreeably for Maddison, the monotony
broken only by Mrs. West’s sittings.

He worked occasionally at “The Rebel,” but dared not touch the face or
hands. Marian’s absence, however, served to increase her influence over
him greatly; he longed with painful intensity to return to her; he wrote
long letters to her daily, and chafed at the brevity of her replies,
though he had not any fault to find with their tenor; she wrote
affectionately, warmly, sending messages of love and again and again
expressing the delight with which she was looking forward to seeing him
again.

It had not heretofore been Maddison’s habit of mind to weigh the wisdom
of any of his acts, or to analyze any of his emotions. He had been
frankly pagan, the joy of life was his while it was his with little if
any alloy of pain or doubt; questions of present action or future
conduct had not occurred to him. His emotions with regard to women had
not been deep; they were a beautiful provision of nature for adding
beauty to an already beautiful world; their voices, their graces, their
loveliness, their caresses had charmed him, but had never absorbed him;
not one of them had ever attained to any influence over him until his
renewed friendship with Marian. In fact, nature had been his real
mistress; when last at Rottingdean, for many weeks together he had led
practically the life of a hermit, working in the studio and rambling far
and wide across the country or along the coast. It was absolute joy to
him to lie on his back, watching the panorama of the sky; to stand on
the edge of the cliff, looking out over the sea, noting its subtle
changes of color. Everything in nature, big or little, was lovable to
him; the vast glory of a blood-red sunset; the minute perfection of a
weed; the tumult and splendid power of a storm-smitten sea; the dewdrops
upon a spraying fern; the cold, clear tones of sunrise or the trembling
mystery of midday heat. No season came amiss to him: winter, spring,
summer, autumn, there was no sameness in nature, save that of
unadulterated beauty.

But he understood now that a change had come over him; between him and
nature had come one woman.

The weather was cold, with days of biting, searching east wind; he could
not saunter about the countryside, but would stride along at a great
pace. What was it that had come into the foreground of every picture
upon which his eyes rested? It seemed to him as if he were never alone
now—Marian was always with him, persistently whispering in his ear:
“You love me—you love me!” She had taken entire and sole possession of
him; round her centered his every desire, every hope, every ambition.

One bright morning he stood at the edge of the cliff, some little
distance from the village, the gentle murmur of a calm sea far below,
and in his ears that weird muttering of vagrant winds which comes before
the breaking of a tempest. He stood looking down on the rocks and
shingle far below, thinking of Marian, counting the number of hours that
remained to pass before her approaching visit, for it had been arranged
that she should come down soon for a few days. Suddenly the thought came
into his mind of the horror of her standing there beside him, of her
being giddy, of her reeling, and clutching at his arm, missing her hold,
falling down—down—a shapeless mass on the stones below. The horror of
it sickened him.

Why had this woman come into his life? She had given him a supreme joy,
the like of which he had never even dreamed of before; but might not
that joy be too dearly purchased with the price of the contingent agony
her love might bring him?

One evening he went down the village street, down through the gap to the
edge of the sea, where the tumbling waves were bursting with sullen roar
and crash upon the shingle. The storm that had raged all the day and the
previous night was dying away, slowly, as if reluctant; the wind blew in
fitful gusts; the clouds scurried across the moon, which shot down
intermittent beams upon the tossing waters. His life, he thought, had
hitherto been calm; but now a tempest raged within him, rising in
strength day by day, hour by hour, so that there was but one thing in
his being—love of Marian, that first, that last, that all in all. Away
from the thought of her and his passion for her he could never tear
himself; it was always with him. When he painted, there was her face
before him, dim but insistent. Something of her features seemed to creep
even into the portrait he was painting of Agatha West. When he read, the
words conveyed no thought, no sense to his mind; he was thinking of her,
wondering where she was and what she was doing, with whom if not alone.
She possessed him, heart, soul and body; he was all hers.

More than once a frenzy of jealousy had attacked him: did she truly love
him? Or was she just play-acting, fooling him, deceiving him, betraying
him, laughing at him and his blind love? The impulse came on him
strongly to go up to town, without warning her, and to watch—watch,
unseen. But he dared not; in such a case, he thought, ignorance would be
bliss compared with knowledge.

At last dawned the wished-for day on which Marian was to come. He had
lain tossing awake all the night. Hours yet remained to be gotten
through somehow before he could set out to walk to the station. After
breakfast at nine, he set about tidying the studio, filling the vases
with flowers, and setting “The Rebel” in a place of honor by the window.
Then in the sitting room he cleared up the litter of pipes and books,
and helped to decorate the table for luncheon.

At length he felt that he could linger no longer indoors, and started
out to walk slowly along the cliffs toward Brighton. There was no stir
in the air, the sea lay placid, the sun shone down as if with a promise
of spring. He went slowly along, his heart light as a lad’s when going
out to meet his first mistress. He knew how it would throb when he
caught sight of her face. Would hers do so likewise? He knew how words
would fail him, and how he would stammer out some stupid commonplace.
Would it be so with her? He knew how anxiously he would await the
train’s arrival, how eagerly he would scan the alighting passengers,
seeking her. Would it be the same with her? Would she look on with
indifference at one and another until her eyes met his? Then—would hers
light up with the fire of love?

He reached the station half an hour before the train was due, and paced
impatiently up and down through the throng, cursing the clock, the hands
of which seemed to stand still. The train at last came in; out of one of
the first compartments stepped Philip West, who caught hold of Maddison
as he rushed by.

“All right, old chap, don’t be in such a hurry. I’ve had a
fellow-passenger, who knows you and wants to speak to you.”

Maddison checked himself impatiently, yet afraid to show his anger at
the interruption. He shook West’s out-held hand; and then looked, and
there was Marian.

“I met Mrs. Squire at Victoria, and took charge of her as she was all
alone. I got her heaps of magazines and papers, and books, and—she did
nothing but—talk all the way down. I never knew before how near
Brighton is to London.”

Marian laughed merrily, returning the close pressure of Maddison’s eager
hand. How deliciously pretty she looked, he thought; how wildly
aggravating that West should be there.

“Now I’m off; I’ve no luggage to worry about,” said West. “Good-by, Mrs.
Squire, and thank you for a very pleasant journey. Good-by, Maddison,
see you soon.”

West strode off through the bustling crowd. Then everything vanished for
Maddison save Marian.

“My dear, my dear,” he said, taking her hand in his again. “My dear——”

The tears started into his eyes as he strove in vain to speak.

“My dear old boy! It’s jolly to be together again, isn’t it? Come along.
Take me out of this. We can’t talk here.”

Soon they were driving along through the brisk air, he seated opposite
her so that he might see her the better.

“It was luck meeting Mr. West, wasn’t it? He’d been up for the night,
and it was much nicer than traveling alone.”

“Bother West,” said Maddison. “He’s nothing. What about yourself? Tell
me all about yourself.”

“All? All? Where shall I begin. From the moment you went off?”

“Till this minute! A few days ago! It seems years to me. It was all I
could do to keep from rushing up to town to see you.”

“You know I missed you dreadfully,” she said, leaning forward and
resting her hand on his knee. “It was just as bad for me as for you. But
now we’re together, don’t let’s worry about what has been; I’ve come
down to be happy, dear, to be happy.”

“Look here. We shall be out of the town soon. If you’re not tired, let’s
get out and walk along the cliff. The fly can take the traps along.
Shall we?”

“It’d be jolly. I’ve been sitting all the morning. What a lovely day! it
was foggy and horrid in town.”

So intense was Maddison’s happiness that he was content to be silent, as
he walked along by her side, as was she, for she went in fear of letting
him see that her pleasure at the meeting was not so great as his.
Moreover, the journey with West had given her food for thought, and the
knowledge that he was staying at Brighton had altered altogether the
plans she had made. A day or two alone with Maddison was all that she
felt she could endure, but with West near by it might be foolish to
return to town so soon.

Suddenly Maddison stopped and took her eagerly by the hands; stood close
to her, looking down into her eyes.

“I wonder if you know what this meeting means to me, Marian? I thought I
knew how much you are to me, but I didn’t—not till I came down here and
was without you. You’re all the world to me, Marian, just all the world.
There’s nothing else in the world for me but you. Are you _glad_? Very
glad——?”

“Very glad!” she answered softly.

“I used to laugh at men who went mad after a woman; but I’m mad for you,
Marian; crazy as can be! And you—I wonder, have you suffered as much as
I have done? I hope _not_ for your sake, but I’m selfish, and really
hope that you have. Have you?”

“How can I tell, dear? I know—I missed you very much, ever so much.
But, oh, why, George, worry about that? Isn’t the present good enough to
make us forget all about it?”

“You’re right! By Jove, you’re right. Let’s get on—I want to have you
all alone—in my arms, and to hold you so tight that you can never slip
away again.”

“That’s all right!” she answered, laughing, “but I’m not a man with
seven-leagued legs, so unless you want to get there before me, don’t
rush along like that!”

He slackened his speed, and they went along, he thinking of her, and
stealing look after look at her. She was wondering if she would have the
skill and the strength to play her game so that he should not discover
that what was so earnest to him to her was only make-believe. She
consoled herself with the thought that perhaps did he love her less his
penetration would be more keen and that the very excess of his ardor
would make him blind. Nevertheless, there was great need for care upon
her part, which would indeed have been unendurable to her had she not
known that the visit was to be brief and that in a few days’ time she
would be back in town, free. She was consoled, too, by the remembrance
that West had asked permission to call upon her.

When they reached the cottage Mrs. Witchout stood in the doorway,
anxiety writ large upon her wrinkled face and her nose more than usually
rubicund.

“Good mornin’, ma’am,” she said. “I was beginnin’ to worrit about the
food. Cookin’s cookin’, I always says, and doin’ things to rags is
’nother thing. But you’re justin time, which is more than Mr. Maddison
usually is.”

“Mrs. Witchout keeps me in grand order, Marian, and if you want anything
while you’re here, don’t ask me for it—I’m not boss of the show.”

“That’s the way he always runs on; don’t take anynoticeofhim, I
don’t. Would you like to go up to your room? It’s upstairs—if youcancall
these stepladdery things stairs. This way, m’m.”

Mrs. Witchout led the way upstairs, Maddison holding Marian back a
minute to whisper to her:

“By the way, you’re my _sister_! I’ve had a bed made up in the studio
for myself. Don’t give the show away.”

Marian laughed as she ran up, and Maddison turned into the living room.
Everything was ready, the table neat, cozy and pretty, a covered dish
and the plates warming by the fire, which blazed up cheerily; the
lattice windows were thrown wide open and the sun streamed in warmly.

“You don’t look much alike,” said Mrs. Witchout, coming in. “If you
takes arter your father she must take arter her mother, and a ’andsome
couple they must ’ave been, I’m thinkin’.”

“Don’t try to flatter me, Mrs. Witchout,” Maddison answered, with a
laugh, as he sat down on the window seat, watching her picking up the
dish with the assistance of her apron. “It’s no use your coming over me
and you mustn’t spoil her with compliments, though the biggest would
have been to have told her that she is nearly as good-looking as I am.”

“Lawks!” was Mrs. Witchout’s comment.

“What a jolly little room!” exclaimed Marian, pausing in the doorway and
looking round. “And what flowers! And the windows, wide open, just as if
it was springtime. It feels like it.”

“Yes—and termorrer you’ll have east winds and wet to bring out yer
rheumattics, leastways my rheumattics, beggin’ pardon.”

“Come along; I’m sure you’re hungry, Marian, everybody always is here.
And Mrs. Witchout, you just be off! We’ll look after ourselves and won’t
make your life a burden to you.”

“I’ll go when I’m ready, Mr. Maddison, not afore.”

“There, Marian, what did I tell you? You see what you can do.”

“Don’t show him up my first day here, Mrs. Witchout; let him have his
way, _for once_!”

“For once! They always do say it’s your own fam’ly who knows least about
yer! For once! He always do ’ave it.”

So saying, Mrs. Witchout hustled from the room with a pretense of anger
that was transparent.

“At last!”

Maddison strode across the room, laid his hands on Marian’s shoulders,
holding her at arm’s length while he gazed at her. Then he drew her
close to him, feverishly kissing her again and again, kissing her lips,
her hair, her eyes.

“Haven’t you a kiss for me, Marian?”

Their lips met, and his heart beat as though it would burst.

“Oh, Marian, Marian, we must never part again!”

For the moment his passion overcame her, and she lay close in his arms,
panting, forgetful.




                              CHAPTER XVI


ALICE LANE walked quietly along the pier toward the sea, having left
West alone with his wife, who was suffering from one of her racking
headaches that formed the chief symptom of her illness. Sedate, tall,
well-proportioned, with ample movements and strong, straight, alert
gaze, more than one man turned to look after her as she went by,
thinking that this was a woman upon whom a man could rely for sufficient
help in time of trouble. But calm as was her outward seeming, her brain
was busied over the problem which had become the great question of her
life, and which she believed would soon have to be answered. She did not
think that West had guessed the secret of her love for him, the secret
which she had so jealously guarded, but she feared that Agatha had
discovered it, for she had noticed lately a coolness in her manner and a
watchfulness that was new. She had noticed, also, a distinct change in
West’s bearing toward his wife, for which she was puzzled to account.
She had all along felt that he would not be able to find abiding content
in the companionship of Agatha; that to win his lasting affection
something more was needed than mere prettiness and winsomeness, but the
change had come sooner than she had expected, and she fancied that
perhaps there might be some external influence at work, perhaps another
woman. Had Agatha contented West and made him happy, Alice Lane would
have suffered silently, have made no sign, would never have attempted to
win his love. But if Agatha had lost him, she felt free to take him if
she could gain him, no matter at what cost to herself. Her love for him
was unselfish, and if by any sacrifice she could achieve his welfare,
she would gladly make it.

Both Agatha and he pooh-poohed any suggestion on her part that her visit
to them must come to an end, but she had decided that it must do so, and
at once. She could no longer bear the strain of guarding her every
action, look and word for fear that either of them should see into her
heart. That she had some way betrayed herself to Agatha she was assured,
but she must keep her secret from Philip until such time as he should
have a secret to confide to her. Leave them then she must, returning to
town and the companionship of her brother.

She watched from the end of the pier the soft glitter of the sunshine
upon the broken water. She tried to puzzle out her future course, but
the way was not plain to her. There was this added to her concern, that
apart from the breaking up of his love for his wife, West was restless
and evidently worried by some business care. It hurt her to think of him
alone with his trouble, with no one who, even without understanding,
could give him nourishing sympathy. She would have sacrificed her soul
to have been free to link her arm in his and to offer to walk the
difficult way by his side, not supported by him, not supporting him, but
mutually confident, comrades, allies.

She was suddenly aware of some one standing close beside her, and
turning slowly found that West was watching her with evident amusement.
Taking his cigar out of his mouth, he said:

“A penny for your thoughts!”

“Not for sale,” she replied. “I did not know you were coming out.”

“Neither did I. But Aggy was—out of sorts,” he said slowly, “out of
sorts. So I sent her off to lie down and rest; and came along here at a
venture, knowing how fond you are of drinking in the fresh air. Not that
you seemed to be doing so just now in any great quantities, for your
mouth was close shut, and you looked as if you were wanting to fight
somebody. How do you feel for a sharp walk? Let’s go along to Hove and
back, it’ll brisk us up; at least I want brisking up. You never seem to
vary, like a weatherglass fixed at ‘set fair.’”

“Blessed are good appearances,” she said, tacitly accepting his
suggestion; “I fancy it’s best not to show your emotions; so few people
know how to sympathize. Most of them talk, and that’s the least part of
sympathy—at least I think so.”

“Do I show my emotions?”

“I can only guess whether you do or not. I might think I knew what you
were feeling, and I might be quite wrong.”

“What am I feeling now?”

“Glad to be out in the fresh air; glad to be moving; hoping by talking
to me to be able to forget for a while—your worries.”

“My worries?” he asked, looking at her keenly, and wondering why she
turned her face away and gazed steadily out at the sea. “My worries?
H’m. I don’t think much of you as a thought-reader; you might say that
to any busy man, who has had a hard day and most of a night working in
town.”

“Yes—but you don’t usually carry your business worries about with you,
as you have been doing lately.”

“Oh! Lately. Those quiet gray eyes of yours are keen. Well, it’s quite
true, I am unusually worried just now, and you’ll be surprised to hear
that I hate having to bear my worries alone. I used not to mind that
when I was alone. You see, Aggy doesn’t understand business; it isn’t
her line exactly——”

He stopped short, for it occurred to him that it was an awkward thing to
discuss his wife with another woman, however intimate a friend she might
be of them both.

“Besides,” he went on quickly, “it isn’t fair to worry her just now;
she’s seedy and out of sorts and wants cheering, not depressing.”

“Depressing?”

“Well, so it would be to tell her I’m worried, for she knows I don’t
fidget about trifles. I must go up to town again to-morrow and tackle a
lot of old fossils who are driving me to exasperation.”

“I suppose you’ll be going by the early train?”

“Yes—why?”

“If you could wait till a bit later—you might escort me.”

“Why, what are you running up for? Can’t I do it for you?”

“I’m running away altogether. Now, don’t interrupt. I must go; I told
you I was going, and you wouldn’t believe me. So now you must both
accept your fate and make the best of me at a distance.”

“I jolly well won’t. Your brother said I was to take care of you and how
the doose can I do that if you won’t stay with us? Besides, I must be
away a good deal at present, and Aggy will be lonely——”

“She has other friends. And—I don’t think Aggy is quite so fond of me
as she used to be.”

“Oh, nonsense. She’s not quite herself now; you mustn’t mind her when
she’s a bit off color.”

“That’s not why I’m going; I merely mentioned it to show that there was
less reason for my staying than you supposed. It’s very good and very
kind of you—of you both—to have had me with you so long, and not to
have got tired of my sober-sidedness. But don’t you know yet how
obstinate I am?”

“Obstinate? I should hardly put it that way. Firm, I should say. Yes,
I’ve observed it; you generally have your own way.”

“I didn’t mean that. And how can you tell? Perhaps I’m wise enough only
to let my wishes be known when I feel pretty sure of getting them, and
to bottle them up tight when I know they’re hopeless.”

They walked along some way in silence. Alice had become a habit, and to
learn that she was going to leave them made him realize that the absence
of her quiet influence would make a real change to him. His wife had
almost suddenly grown to be nothing to him but a burden which he had
taken up and which he must carry with as good an outward grace as he
could assume. He believed her emotions to be so shallow that she would
not long moan over his dead affection and that she would be reasonably
content so long as he could provide her with luxuries and amusement. But
now he was brought definitely face to face with the fact that he was
bound to a companion who was becoming every day more distasteful to him
and with whom he would have to spend many days alone. There are people
whose influence though strong is so quiet that we do not value them at
their true price until they are taken from us; such an one was Alice
Lane. Her suddenly announced departure showed plainly to West that she
had become almost a necessity to him; that she had helped often to
smooth away asperities and to cover over Agatha’s deficiencies, and that
she could give him that comradeship which he had learned the need of by
discovering his wife’s inability to give it to him.

Comradeship only, he believed, for he did not, in any usual sense of the
word, love her. She had become a quiet, steadying, soothing influence, a
mental support and sedative. It was not her strange, placid comeliness
that appealed to him; it was not the feminine in her: she was almost to
him what a man friend would be, save that, as a woman, he had to treat
her with respect, and with self-respect. She had not come between him
and his wife, but, on the contrary, by complementing her deficiencies,
had made her the longer endurable. He had grown accustomed during the
last few months to her companionship; he had not, indeed, talked much to
her, or in any degree sought her confidence, but her mere presence had
acted soothingly upon him; and to be with her had been restful and
pacifying. Her return to her brother’s house would practically mean that
she would go out of his life, except for occasional visits and meetings.
But he could think of no compelling reason that he could urge for her
staying longer with them, and, as she had accused him of being, he was
well aware of her firmness in carrying out any decision to which she had
come. He had been accustomed to having his own way with those around
him, but instead of irritating him, it added to his respect and
admiration for her, to find that what she thought right to do, she would
do, and that no persuasion of his could move or stay her.

“Tell me why you are going?” he asked, as they turned to go homeward,
and faced the eager wind. “And why you think that Aggy doesn’t care so
much for you as she used to do?”

“If I were a man I suppose I should be expected to give a reason for my
doings. But you see, I’m a mere woman, and of course act on impulse.”

“Not at all a mere woman. And much too clever, not to know that
generalizations are always untrue. I conclude that a man’s an ignorant
ass when he says that something or other is ‘just like a woman.’ Though
it is rather like a woman to avoid answering a question by making an
aimless remark. Why are you going home?”

“Why should I have stayed so long? Why shouldn’t I go away?
Why—why—lots of ‘whys.’”

“Don’t you enjoy being with us?”

“Of course I do,” she answered, no sign of the pain the question caused
her showing in her tone, though she ached to be able to tell him how
exquisite was the torture to which he was putting her. “Of course I do.
I _did_ think you knew that; you’re not the sort of man who needs to be
told everything every day.”

“Well, I won’t make use of an old friend’s privilege of worrying you.
But, look here, when’ll you come to see us again?”

“When Aggy asks me, if she doesn’t ask me too soon.”

The words sprang to her lips in such haste that she could not stay them.
She repented them bitterly, for she realized at once that they might
lead to disaster for Agatha, who might refuse to ask her again to visit
her; who might, rendered brave by jealousy, oppose her husband’s wish,
who might, in a moment of anger, give her reason for so doing, thereby
perhaps making an inevitable breach in her married happiness. But the
words being said, any attempt to withdraw them might stimulate dangerous
questioning on his part.

“When Aggy asks you!” he answered, throwing his head up and laughing
gayly. “Well, you may as well not go away at all, then. Does she know
you’re going to-morrow?”

“I told her yesterday.”

“Funny she didn’t tell me. What did _she_ say?”

“Asked me to stay.”

“There you are!”

She bit her lip and looked away from him, but he could see the
expression of trouble that was upon her face, and felt compunction at
having so over-eagerly pressed her.

“What an obstinate tease I am!” he said. “When I can’t have my own way,
I’ve a beastly habit of plugging away till I get it, quite forgetting
what it may cost the other chap to give it. What a clumsy boor you must
think me; I deserve to be kicked. I ought to know well enough that you
always have a real reason for what you do.”

She dared not reply, for fear her voice would betray her.

When they reached the hotel he went up to his wife’s room, hoping to
find her physically better, and less querulous for her rest. She was
lying on the bed, covered with a thick eider-down quilt, and turned
slowly to look at him as he came in tiptoe.

“I was just going to sleep, and now you’ve roused me up,” she
complained, and turned away again.

“I’m so sorry, dearie; it was clumsy of me,” he said, going round the
bed, and sitting down on the side. He took her hand, which she let lie
passively in his.

“Don’t feel any better?” he asked.

“My head’s not aching so much, at least not quite.”

“That’s fine. ‘Once on the mend, soon at an end.’”

“Where did you walk?”

“Just along the front with Alice, nearly to Hove. The wind’s jolly
cold.”

“Jolly? It’s horrid; Brighton’s horrid: too cold to go out, and the
hotel is so stuffy.”

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed it. But I do wish you would go out more. You
know what the doctor said—lots of fresh air.”

“But he didn’t tell me to go out when it was so cold it gave me
neuralgia all over my head.”

“Let me ring and we’ll have tea up here. It’ll cheer you up.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t always treat me like a child!” she said
pettishly; “so long as you give me pretty things or feed me with sweets
you think I’m happy.”

“Aren’t you happy, dear?”

“No, I’m not!” she answered sharply.

“Not?” he repeated, as he stood up and started to walk about the room.
“I thought you were, dear. What can I do? I’ve always tried my best to
give you what you wanted.”

“Please don’t walk about like that, you don’t know what a headache is.
You—don’t understand things.”

“Don’t I?” he asked, standing with his back to the fire; “then why not
try to teach me?”

“You always think you know everything, and are always right and that I’m
always wrong. But I’m right sometimes.”

“Why, Aggy, what on earth have I done to deserve such a slating?”

As she did not make any reply he went across to the bedside, and,
stooping down, kissed her, upon which she turned impatiently away.

“If you don’t want me to treat you as a child you shouldn’t behave like
one,” he said, and, after a moment’s hesitation, walked out of the room.




                              CHAPTER XVII


WHILE the sun was shining cheerily at Brighton the rain was pouring down
drearily in London, Acacia Grove looking its very worst under the leaden
sky; the roadway a sea of mud, the leafless branches of the trees
dripping and streaming, the evergreen shrubs in the scrubby gardens none
the less dirty for their washing; even the sharp rat-tat, rat-tat, of
the postman as he went from house to house sounding dismal, as if all
the letters he bore must announce death or disaster.

Squire had finished his frugal breakfast, and stood, newspaper in hand,
looking aimlessly out of the window. The trouble through which he was
passing had left no trace or mark upon his face, but there was a
restless misery in his eyes. Sighing heavily, he held up the paper and
glanced at it without purpose, almost unconsciously. “Sunshine at
Brighton” was the heading of an article down which his eye ran without
comprehension until Maddison’s name fixed his attention:—“Another
well-known face occasionally seen on the King’s Road is that of Mr.
George Maddison, the A.R.A., who is staying at his cottage at
Rottingdean.”

He crushed the paper angrily and threw it aside. They were at
Rottingdean, then; that was why his watch upon the studio had been vain.
They had gone away, trusting to his not being able to trace them.

Since his interview with Maddison, Squire’s life had been a restless
dream; every purpose had left him save one, the finding of Marian.
Despite the upshot of his last conversation with her, he still felt
confident that he could rescue her from the terrible life she was
leading. Hour after hour, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, he had
watched the studio in hopes of meeting her. He had seen Maddison several
times, but had avoided him; it was Marian with whom he desired to speak.
He had tried to track Maddison more than once, but one accident or
another had baffled him. Then Maddison appeared no more, and he had had
to wait upon “the skirts of happy chance,” and now fate had helped him.
Still he hesitated, for by several incidents it had been borne in upon
him that to save one soul he was neglecting many others intrusted to his
care—sinners, some of them, greater even than Marian. Could he feel
assured that he was pursuing the right course? That there was no element
of self in his eagerness to find Marian and to save her? Would he have
been so eager had she been a stranger to him? He was torn this way and
that by the doubts which assailed him.

In the efficacy of prayer he had absolute faith, and consternation had
assailed him when he found that prayer brought no relief to his agony or
solution of his difficulty. He had asked for guidance, and God had not
granted him any. Heretofore prayer had always brought him peace; not
realizing that he had never before been in distress or difficulty, it
shocked, then stunned him, that no response apparently was to be made to
his faithful pleading for assistance. It is said that the extreme terror
caused by an earthquake arises from the failure of the one last resort
of safety when all else is crumbling, by the trembling, the shattering
beneath the feet of the solid earth itself; when that fails no refuge is
left. It was thus with Squire now; misery might be his lot, but not
terror at any disaster or misfortune, for “God’s in His heaven, all’s
right with the world”—that had been his faith. But was God in His
heaven? He had raised his voice to heaven and had prayed for succor, but
there had been no answer: had God forgotten him? There was no sense of
rebellion or of protest in his heart, only piteous helplessness and
loneliness. His spiritual pride had died; humility had taken its place,
but mingled with it was an almost insane dread that unwittingly he had
sinned so heinously that God had cast him away. As he had knelt this
morning, words of prayer had refused to come. He had striven to say “Our
Father Which art in Heaven,” but his trembling lips had stumbled; in
agony he had buried his face in his hands and wept.

There was a friend whom more than once he had thought of consulting, but
a sense of shame had restrained him. Now in this crisis of his affairs,
he felt that no other course lay open to him, and that if it was in any
way possible he should act upon whatsoever advice should be given him.

He wrapped himself in his heavy mackintosh, pressed down his soft felt
hat closely, and set out to walk toward Dulwich through the wind and the
rain. The raw air at first chilled then stimulated him and he made his
way along rapidly. Gradually the ferment in his mind was allayed, and
when he arrived in sight of his friend’s house, he almost hesitated as
to going in; the physical exercise seemed to have cleared his mental
horizon. But the half-hesitation brought back the feeling of
helplessness from which he was trying to escape and he hurried on.

“Why, Edward! You! It’s an age since you came my way; I thought you’d
forgotten me. Give the girl your things—so—come along in here and warm
yourself by the fire. You don’t know how glad I am to see you.
But—you’re not looking well, though you’ve got a color.”

The speaker was a middle-aged, thin little woman, with a sharp face,
stamped deeply by the hand of pain, with deep-set, kindly gray eyes and
a mouth that seemed formed so as to be able to give utterance only to
words of kindness or of consolation.

She sat down opposite him.

“Aren’t you well, Edward?”

“Yes, yes, thank you, I’m quite well in body. I see—you haven’t heard?”

“Heard? Marian’s all well, I hope?”

He did not answer, and after a searching look at him, she went on:

“She’s not ill? If she is, why _didn’t_ you send for me, or come for
me?”

“No, no, no, it’s not that,” he broke in, vehemently; “it’s something
far worse than that. I scarcely know how to tell you. She’s—gone
away—away from me.”

“Gone away? What do you mean, Edward?”

“We weren’t happy together; at least, she wasn’t happy; she went away
and she’s living a life of sin with another man. Oh, what am I to do?”

“This is terrible. My poor boy, my poor boy.”

She went quietly over to him, and putting her arm round his shoulder,
drew his head gently to her. Then his pent-up suffering broke its bonds,
and he sobbed bitterly as he rested there, near that kind heart to which
no one in sorrow had ever appealed in vain.

“My poor boy, why didn’t you come to me sooner?—instead of fighting it
out all alone, though not alone, for I know you have faith in the great
Comforter.”

He held her hand tightly as he began, at first brokenly, to tell her all
that had happened. She knit her brows as she listened, and when he
ceased speaking, drew her hand gently from him, and drew back.

“What am I to do?” he repeated.

“Let me think a minute. But first, Edward, let us pray.”

They kneeled down side by side at the table, and she prayed simply,
uttering the petition of a helpless child to her Father, asking that
this sorely-tried man and herself, his weak friend, might be guided
rightly in all they should do and that the way might be made plain to
them. The words brought comfort to him.

“Now, Edward,” she said, “I know you do not expect me to say anything
except exactly what I believe to be true. I did not often see you and
Marian together, but I sometimes wondered if in your own strength you
did not sometimes fail to make allowances for her weakness.”

“I’ve tried to see my own faults. I’ve no doubt I am much to blame. But
does the knowledge of that help me now? It would help me if I could
bring Marian back to me—but it’s not that which has made me come to you
for advice. What am I to _do_? Am I to go down to Rottingdean, see
Marian and make another appeal to her? And if I do and if I fail—am I
to try again and again? To do that means that I should be neglecting my
work. Don’t you see?”

He then went on to tell her, what he had not yet mentioned, of the
horrible terror that had struck him when he found that God, as he
believed, was deaf to his prayers.

“Now,” he said—“now you understand all. Can you help me?”

“I don’t know. One thing I know we must do if we are to help her. We
must try to forget all about you and to put ourselves in her place as
far as we can. Strangely enough, I fancy perhaps I can do that better
than you could. I know you better than you know yourself and so can
possibly see you more as she sees you; then I’m a woman and so, though I
don’t know half as much about her as you do, it’s more than likely that
I understand her a great deal better. You say she changed greatly, after
you had been some time in town, from what she had been in the country?”

“Yes, yes; she seemed to me to become utterly different.”

“Just so. But of course she didn’t change at all—she only found
herself. She had been simply an artificial, vicarage-bred girl; she
became a woman. She never did anything very wrong at the vicarage—there
wasn’t any temptation. In town she picked up some of the fruit of the
tree and began to nibble at it and found it sweet. She never really
loved you—I’m sorry, but I must hurt you if I’m to help you—it wasn’t
till she came up here that she realized that she was a woman; she had no
love for you, no interest in the life you set before her, no faith; she
is young, beautiful, full of life and energy and strong emotions—so far
all’s simple enough. But what further? Is she really wicked or only a
sinner? If she’s really through and through bad, I know no power on
earth can help her or save her. If she’s only a sinner she will save
herself. At any rate what _can_ you do or say that you haven’t tried?
She knows you love her and would forgive her—I don’t see, Edward, what
can be gained by your going down to Rottingdean. I daresay you think I’m
talking hardly, but I’m not. I’m only being practical, and there’s no
reason I’ve ever heard of why one shouldn’t be truly religious at the
same time. God doesn’t love fools.”

“Perhaps that’s why He doesn’t love me.”

She did not answer, but for a moment a smile hovered at the corners of
her mouth.

“You good people are so very difficult to help,” she went on; “you’re
always so utterly other-worldish that when you’ve got to worry out some
worldly trouble you don’t know what on earth to do, and that being the
case—pray for help, instead of for strength to help yourself. What to
do? It seems to me your way is plain: go back to your work; work hard;
work yourself sick if you like, and instead of praying so much for
yourself, pray more for her.”

He turned away from her, and looked out at the gray rain. She had spoken
almost sharply, but the soft tenderness in her eyes as she looked
pityingly at him betrayed that the sharpness lay only in the expression
of the comfort she had offered him.

“I feel that you are right,” he said, going back to her and holding out
his hands, into which she gave hers; “thank you. I’ll try.”




                             CHAPTER XVIII


THESE days were almost unalloyed joy to Maddison, and full of pleasure
to Marian, only checkered by the difficulty which she saw before her of
persuading him to allow her to return to town while he remained where he
was. The fear of Squire molesting them was now, she felt, an
insufficient excuse for their separation, not sufficient, at any rate,
to compel Maddison to forego his decision that he would not be parted
from her again. At any rate this motive alone was not strong enough, and
she searched in vain for some further argument to support it. Determined
she was to free herself partially from him, but she did not wish to
break entirely with him yet; indeed, he was essential to her still. She
would not run any risk she could avoid or foresee, but equally she would
not leave any effort untried to obtain her own way.

“The Rebel” was quickly completed, and he had no other work on hand.
Mrs. West had learned from her husband who this friend was, and
therefore accepted the excuse. But West himself came over one afternoon
in the motor car, and was told by Marian, who came to the door, that
Maddison had walked into Brighton, and that she was alone, nursing a
headache.

“I’m awfully sorry,” West said, thinking how extraordinarily pretty she
looked against the dark shadow behind her. “If it’s not a real bad one,
come for a spin in the car: the air will blow it out of you in no time.”

“I believe it would, but——”

“Oh, I know; never mind Maddison. Leave a note pinned up for him to tell
him where you’ve gone in case he’s back before we are. Now, do come; I’m
sure it will do you good.”

“It’s awfully kind of you. Very well. I must just run up for my hat and
coat. I shan’t be two minutes.”

“Two minutes! I’ll give you five!” adding to himself: “she’s worth
waiting for.”

West laughed at Marian’s coat, “which might,” he said, “keep a few flies
out,” and wrapped her in rugs, until little of her could be seen save
her face, peeping out beneath the natty fur hat which she had tied down
with a thick brown veil.

“By Jove, you look like Mother Christmas,” laughed West. “All snug?
Right! Forrard!”

“It’s glorious!” she said, as they sped along a short piece of broad,
level road. “I don’t wonder men go mad over it.”

“Don’t you ever go mad over things?”

“I? No, I don’t think so. I’ve never come across anything which tempted
me quite enough to make me go mad over it. Perhaps I was born hopelessly
sane. It must be rather nice to feel real mad sometimes.”

“Yes, it’s intoxicating, just that. Don’t be scared, I’m not going to do
it now anyway, but I sometimes feel horribly tempted to turn on full
speed, let her rip, put my hands in my pockets and see——”

“But then—you’d never be able to get intoxicated again. I prefer
something less final than that. A big business—to be at the head of
it—a sort of king—with every other king’s hand against me—that would
intoxicate me. If I were a man, I should like to be a speaker and make
thousands drunk with my words.”

“An actress?”

“Yes; that must be intoxicating too—just to play on an audience—but—I
can’t do any of these things, so I must content myself with watching
other people—getting intoxicated. You men have most of the good things
in the way of power.”

“Except power over ourselves. That belongs to you.”

“Does it? Perhaps to some of us. I haven’t got it—at least—I want to
persuade George to do something sensible and I can’t.”

“Perhaps he’s intoxicated?”

“He can’t afford to be every day. He’s not done a stroke of work since
I’ve come down here—or rather for the last two days, not touched Mrs.
West’s portrait, and won’t—I’m afraid—till I go away, and he won’t let
me go. I came down on condition that I only stayed three days; I’ve been
here five now. I daresay you think it queer my talking to you—but you
see I haven’t got any friends, and you’re George’s friend too. Couldn’t
you—couldn’t you—just give him a bit of advice?”

“Oh, lots, heaps, tons!” West replied, laughing; “and couldn’t he and
wouldn’t he refuse to take an ounce of it? Of course he would, even if
he didn’t tell me to go to the—to go to, forsooth!”

“Probably,” said Marian, smiling; “but you wouldn’t mind that, would
you? You needn’t go. Don’t you see, it’s this way: he might pay a little
more attention to _my_ advice if he found that you gave him just the
same.”

“Perhaps. But he’s got an obstinate little way of his own, has Master
George. Besides, do you really think that if you can’t get a thing from
him by yourself you’ll be able to do so with my help?”

“You’re so strong,” Marian said, in such a matter-of-fact tone of voice
that West laughed out loud, though this very tone flattered and pleased
him.

“I think I must stop the car, get out and bow to the ground in
gratitude,” he said. “It isn’t often a pretty woman pays a pretty
compliment in such a tone that there’s no doubting its genuineness.”

“Are men any better? I should hate to pay a man false compliments, but I
never expect him to do anything else. When a man thinks a woman pretty
he calls her lovely, and when she’s ugly he says she’s pretty,
and—we—oh, we’re just weak fools enough to love a pretty lie and to
hate an ugly truth.”

“Are you?” he asked bluntly.

“Present company always excepted.”

“Do you think so? When anyone says that I at once conclude that present
company was particularly meant. Yes, it’s wonderful what you can do with
soft-sawder, especially in business. Only you must be careful to deal
with each man as an individual: some like their compliments hot, some
cold, some spoken, some implied, some like to be taken for saints and
some for sinners. Here’s the whole art of big business in a
nutshell—‘play high, play low,’ high stakes and a low estimate of the
strength of human nature; every man has his price, though more often
than not it isn’t money.”

“You’re a cynic!”

“I don’t believe in labels; I try to flatter myself that I’m a practical
man of business, while all the time at the bottom of my heart, I know
that I’m what every man and woman really is—just a mere emotional
creature of impulse. Oh, yes, I’ve met those cold-blooded, calculating,
anæmic-looking men, but they’re just as impulsive, only they hoodwink
themselves by finding reasons for their impulse, and very often by the
time they’ve found them it’s too late to act on their impulse. Study
history; you won’t find any really big man who didn’t act on impulse at
all the important moments of his life; impulse unconsciously checked and
guided by the intuition which makes a man a genius.”

“How is it there are no great women, then? We’ve got impulses and
intuition.”

“The average woman has more intuition than the average man, but almost
all women are just average. Then you let your emotions run away with you
more often than we do, and you run away so far that you generally can’t
get back again.”

“That’s true. It comes back to what I said: men have most of the good
things.”

“We have to work hard to keep them. Then—it isn’t till we’re old and
worn out that we know what’s worth having; life’s a long chase after
knowledge, and when we’ve caught it up—if we ever do—we’ve no time
left to use it in.”

“But meantime you’ve thoroughly enjoyed the chase?”

“Yes, that’s true; by God, that’s true. If life was a certainty and not
the wild speculation it is—it wouldn’t be worth living.”

He stopped short, slowed down the pace of the car almost to a crawl, as
he turned and looked searchingly at her.

“You’re—what shall I call you?” he asked—“a witch or a fairy or what?
You’ve made me talk more than I’ve ever done to any woman, or man, for
the matter of that. There are so few people worth talking to.”

“Because there are so few who know how to listen.”

West greeted this retort with a shout of laughter.

“A hit!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I suppose that’s horribly true—you’re kind
enough not to have shown me how I bored you, and so—I’ve thoroughly
enjoyed myself.”

“It’s not that at all,” Marian retorted, putting a touch of anger into
her voice. “That’s rude of you; it’s calling me deliberately insincere
and also pointing out that what I’ve said might just as well have been
unsaid for all you heard or noticed it.”

“Mrs. Squire, ’pon my honor you’re taking things—seriously; you’re not
really angry——?”

“Yes, I am. I am. I was enjoying myself, and you suddenly—Please drive
on, quick, quick. You can’t talk if you go quick, and then shan’t _I_
bore _you_.”

“But really, Mrs. Squire, I——”

“Please drive on—quick!” Marian interrupted.

“She’s a masterful little devil,” West thought, as he obeyed her orders,
and he also decided that Maddison was a lucky devil. A woman who is
difficult to win or a man who has won is usually likened to the greatest
of the fallen angels. The devil has many unconscious admirers and there
are many who envy him.

West slowed down again when they were nearing home.

“There! Wasn’t I good?” he asked. “I obeyed orders like a lamb. Have you
forgiven me?”

“No, I haven’t,” Marian answered, with a catch in her voice as she went
on: “it’s not easy to forgive anyone who smashes up a pleasant time——”

“But, Mrs. Squire, really I didn’t do anything much——”

“Much! You said the wrong thing and it jarred; that’s all, but it’s a
good deal when you’re really enjoying yourself. Here we are home, and
there’s George. Don’t forget your promise, if you get a chance of
speaking to him.”

“But I didn’t promise——”

“Well, keep it all the same—just to show you’re sorry for what you’ve
done. I was going to thank you for the ride, but I shan’t now.”

Maddison helped Marian to alight, and welcomed West warmly.

“Go and put your box of tricks up at the garage and come back here to
tea? Good! Then we’ll expect you in a quarter of an hour at most; don’t
stop down there discussing motor mysteries.”

“I hope you didn’t think it horrid of me to go out for a run with Mr.
West; I thought the blow might do my head good.”

“And has it, sweetheart?” he asked, as he nestled her head against his
shoulder and kissed her. “I do hope it has. I hate you having any pain.”

“Yes, dear, it’s quite gone away—but—you asked Mr. West to tea and
there won’t be any for him if—you insist on going on in this way!”

She broke away from him, laughing merrily, and slammed the parlor door
and locked it in his face as he ran after her, calling to him:

“Cook won’t have you in her kitchen! I must attend to the kettle and not
to you for once!”

She took off her heavy coat and then set about preparing the tea things,
and as she busied herself with them, thought over the events of the
afternoon. She was certain that West was to be caught only by making him
feel that he was pursuer, not pursued; by no art of coquetry on her
part, but by a show of absolute indifference to him, which would lure
him to win her out of pride if not for love. Once she could rouse his
interest in her, she was confident the game would be in her own hands.
She was pleased at the way in which she had made the most of West’s
innocent speech, and made up her mind that merely pleasant friendliness
must be her attitude toward him, until he sought to make her change it,
and even then he must find anything further difficult to gain.

West was in the studio when she carried in the tray, and insisted on
taking it from her, while Maddison drew up a table to the fireside.
Cakes were set close to the blazing fire to keep hot. Maddison drew the
curtains and struck a match.

“Don’t light the lamps yet, George,” said Marian, “unless you and Mr.
West dislike blindman’s holiday. Stir up the fire and make a big blaze
and we’ll have tea by firelight; it’s much more cozy—and artistic too,
so there!”

The rough cottage fireplace, with old-fashioned blue tiles and broad
grate; the rich blaze; the dark background of the studio; Marian, her
red-gold hair gloriously lit by the dancing flames, graceful, lithe;
Maddison, with his dusky, refined face and his midnight eyes; West,
long, lank, angular, with his shock of dark hair and his eyes of deep
blue: the man of art, the man of the world, and the woman; each man
wishing that the other were absent.

“Now, Mr. West, open the door,” said Marian, after tea, as she put the
cups and saucers together on the tray. “Please open the door—I’m off to
wash up. I always wash up the tea things, because it secures a lecture
from Mrs. Witchout in the morning, which is always delightful. You and
George can talk high art and smoke.”

Maddison lit a pipe, while West contented himself with a cigarette.

“When you told me about yourself and Mrs. Squire, I naturally thought
you’d made a fool of yourself or been made a fool of, Maddison,” West
said, as he prowled about; “but you’re a lucky devil. She’s a clever,
interesting woman. No wonder she couldn’t stick to the curate—I wonder
how she ever came to marry him. Hullo! Here’s ‘The Rebel.’ Can’t see by
this jumpy light—is it finished?”

“Yes—as far as _I_ can finish it.”

“If you can’t, who can? Anything else on hand beside the portrait of the
missis?”

“No.”

“You’re getting lazy. You’re enjoying yourself too much. I must tell
Mrs. Squire to buck you up and make you work. Don’t forget, old chap,
that I want ‘The Rebel’ if you’ll let me have it. I don’t mind your
doing a replica for yourself, provided you never part with it. Think it
over. You haven’t much more than three months before you’ll have to send
in—I forgot you’re a blooming A.R.A.—but buck up, it don’t do to rest
on your oars nowadays, competition’s too keen and you must keep yourself
before the public if you don’t want to be forgotten.”

“That’s shop talk, West.”

“All the world’s a shop, my boy; always has been, always will be. Why,
even the socialist idea is to turn the country into a universal
provider. Don’t think it would help matters if poets and painters were
endowed by the State and hadn’t to work for a living. You can’t tell me
of any rich man—any man born rich—who has ever done any art work worth
talking about. If it weren’t for women and money the world would die of
inanition.”

“What rot you do talk sometimes, West; I suppose you find it a useful
habit in business; when a wise man can disguise himself as a foolish,
he’s sure to get on.”

“And the reverse also holds good, from which, logically, it must be
deduced that to appear other than you are is the first law of existence!
But as a matter of fact you know I’m not talking nonsense. If I were to
say to you: ‘I’ll give you an annuity of three thousand a year, on
condition that you give me all the pictures you paint, but you’ve only
to paint when you feel inspired to do so,’ why, my dear fellow, you know
as well as I do that your career would be over. Thank your lucky stars
you’ve got to work for your living. Well, I must be off, Aggy will
wonder what on earth’s become of me. She’s always expecting me to smash
myself. Do you think I may ‘walk into the parlor’ and say ‘good-by’
to—cook?”




                              CHAPTER XIX


HAD Maddison known that West’s advice had been inspired by Marian he
would have set it aside angrily, but in his ignorance he looked on it as
curiously coincidental with much of what she had said to him, when she
had urged upon him the necessity of their separating again. The fear of
Squire’s persecution had been thrust into the background, and he had
tried also to shake off the feeling that had gradually been growing upon
him, that his love for her was interfering detrimentally with his work.
“The Rebel” he believed, in fact he knew, to be the finest picture he
had yet painted, and the portrait of Mrs. West would, he believed, be
good; but beyond these two canvases he could not see. Marian seemed to
stand between him and his inspiration, upon which he had never before
called in vain, upon which, indeed, he had never before been compelled
to call, for it had always come unsummoned.

Many difficulties faced him. He could not bring himself to sell “The
Rebel,” even to West—it seemed like parting with Marian. The portrait
would bring him in a large sum, but not sufficient to meet the expense
of the coming year. His resources were low; he had always lived close up
to his income, saving scarcely anything, and that little had now been
drawn upon to the full. All this would not have mattered had he been
alone, with only himself to care for; though fond of luxury, he was not
a slave to it. But he had taken Marian into his charge, was responsible
for her well-being, not only now, but under compulsion of honor and love
not to leave her penniless if anything ill should chance to come to him.
The fact that faced him was that he must set to work at once, must work
rapidly and well. It was not essential that his pictures should be
exhibited at any of the spring shows—the dealers were always ready to
welcome and able to dispose of any work he could offer them.
Nevertheless time pressed, unless he borrowed upon work undone, so
mortgaging the future, of doing which he hated and feared the thought.

With Marian as model he could doubtless paint more than one picture, but
strive as he would he could think of no subject; it was Marian as Marian
who occupied him entirely, and to paint her portrait in this, that and
the other attitude would be not merely banal, but distasteful to him.
Further still, with her beside him, near him, within call, there seemed
to be no room in his life for any other desire than to be with her, just
to see her, to love her, to please her. On the other hand, if they
parted, did the experience of the short separation through which he had
gone hold out any promise of greater ability to work? Not much. But this
new separation would be different; it would be caused by the necessity
of work so that they might be together; the better, the quicker the
work, the shorter the separation; surely that great incentive would spur
him on to success? It was Marian alone whom he must consider. To go on
as he was meant being forced to ask her to make sacrifices, and that
idea he put behind him at once and finally. To go away for a while, with
only occasional meetings with her during the next few months, was her
own suggestion, based, indeed, upon other reasons than those upon which
he would act, and he appreciated what he believed to be the loving
unselfishness that inspired it, for to her, as to him, the parting and
the separation would be full of pain. But did not love for her demand of
him that he should pursue this course? After all, would not the
resultant reward be great? It seemed to him that it refined and purified
his love for Marian the making of this sacrifice for her sake. So far
his passion had been entirely selfish; he had thought so little of
herself and so much of himself; so much of what she gave him, so little
of what he gave her; so much of his future with her, so little of what
might come to her. It was hot passion at first, overwhelming passion for
a beautiful, desirable woman; this passion had not decreased, had not in
any way been satiated by possession, but added to it now was the other
part of love, which is as unselfish as passion is selfish. Her
happiness, her peace, her delight, how could he best secure them? It
shocked him at first when he tried to reduce this vague wish to
practicality, to find that the first thing he must do was to work for
money. There was no escaping from that—he must make money; he must
work. He could not work with her beside him—at least he could not do so
now; perhaps the time would come when he could not work apart from
her—perhaps that time had indeed come, though he did not know
it—perhaps—perhaps—; so round and round in this circle his thoughts
flew, and the one thing that came forth clear to him was that he must
agree to Marian returning to town and to his not seeing her for some
weeks.

He saw her off; stood looking after her, almost dazed, then turned away
like one blind, and walked slowly home to the empty studio and the empty
life.

Far different were Marian’s feelings on parting with him. His decision
had taken her by surprise, until he had put fairly before her the
reasons that were his motives. She had feigned willingness to share any
degree of poverty with him, well knowing that she did not risk anything
by so doing, but on the contrary fixed more firmly his determination to
ask her for no sacrifice. Of Squire they had not spoken. She was not so
inhuman as not to feel any touch of gratitude, or any spark of pity for
the man who loved her so truly and so unselfishly; she almost wished she
could have loved him; but being what she was, these emotions did not
make her for a moment hesitate to pursue the course she had mapped out
for herself. The love of power, which had once been her strongest
motive, was growing weaker day by day; the love of luxury and pleasure
growing in intensity; the world declining in its attractions; the flesh
and the devil in her increasing in their sway over her wishes and
actions. Philip West now attracted her chiefly as a rich man, only in
the second place because of the satisfaction it would be to reduce a
strong man to her command; Sydney Geraldstein appealed to all that was
basest in her. She had not seen West since he had driven her in his car,
but she knew that he would hear at once of her return to town, for
Maddison had decided to call on Mrs. West, in order to arrange for the
resumption of the sittings for the portrait. How soon would West come to
see her? Would he come at all?

She had taken the precaution of telegraphing the hour of return, so
found tea waiting ready for her, and the rooms looking very cozy. There
were a few letters, bills chiefly, which might wait, as she didn’t want
to bother Maddison with them just at once, and the dressmaker’s was for
a considerable sum. Also a note from Geraldstein asking her to dine with
him, curiously enough, this very evening; he would call for her at
half-past seven, if he did not hear to the contrary.

Should she accept? He had asked her once before, but she had refused,
chiefly because he appeared to be so assured that she would accept.
Something in his dogged sensuality appealed to her; of course,
acceptance would be taken by him, and must be meant by her, as the first
sign of capitulation on her part, though she had no intention whatever
of surrendering at once, if at all. The thought of West gave her pause.
Geraldstein would leave and forget her very quickly—variety was the
essence of his pleasures. West, if she secured him, might be a lifelong
friend—but—was not variety growing to be a fascination to her? West
was at Brighton—she would run the risk.

Geraldstein was shown into the drawing room, being told that Mrs. Squire
would not keep him waiting more than a few minutes. An incredulous smile
flitted across his heavy face, as he glanced impatiently at the clock,
which pointed exactly to the half hour.

“It’s lucky,” he thought, as he lit a cigarette, “that we want women for
pleasure, not for business. Time means nothing to them.”

He picked up the bills which Marian had left lying upon the mantelpiece,
and looked at them quizzically. Then he glanced at a photograph of
Maddison, and wondered how long the painter chap would be able to stand
the racket. After a moment’s hesitation, he folded up the dressmaker’s
account, and put it in his pocket. There was nothing else in the room
that had any interest for him, save that he glanced at the music on the
piano, and was surprised to find that it was not music-hall or musical
comedy songs. Most of these women were such coarse brutes; there was
something piquant and appetizing about Marian’s daintiness and culture.

She came quickly in, with a pretty plea for forgiveness.

“You’ve only kept me three minutes, but it seemed like an hour,” said
Geraldstein restraining himself by an effort from giving way to the
strong impulse to take her in his arms. “You’re evidently not an
epicure, or you would know what a crime it is to keep dinner even three
minutes late. However, with luck and a good horse we shall be in good
time. I’ve booked my pet corner table at Goldoni’s, my pet waiter,
ordered my pet dinner and my pet wine—all—in honor of you. Have you
ever been to Goldoni’s?”

“Never; I’ve only heard wonderful tales of it—fairy tales, I always
thought them.”

“Well, come along to fairyland.”

The few who can afford to dine at Goldoni’s seldom care to dine
elsewhere, or rather when they are elsewhere they sigh for Goldoni’s.
Marian was curious to see for herself what manner of place was this
famous restaurant, and was duly grateful to Geraldstein for taking her
there; she had feared that he might choose one of the less reputable
haunts of merriment by night, which in his company might have proved
distasteful.

Everything at Goldoni’s is refined except the company, which has but one
common virtue, money. Outwardly, however, even the most gross conduct
themselves there in seemly fashion. On one occasion only it had not been
so, and the peccant guest had been politely but firmly refused a table
when next he had desired to dine there. The warning had acted
efficaciously and at the same time had vastly enhanced the renown of the
place. With the exception that instead of one large there are many small
tables in the dining room the effect aimed at and achieved is that of a
wealthy private house; in fact, it is a private house in every way;
there is no sign above the ordinary hall door, sedate green with
ponderous brass knocker. Faultless footmen relieve the men of their
coats and hats, and then usher them into the fine reception room where
they wait for the ladies who are being attended by equally faultless
maidservants. The dining room is a long, finely proportioned room,
broken into halves by two graceful pillars; the fireplaces are
exquisitely designed—the whole indeed is an admirable example of Adam’s
best work. Along the top of the cornice, hidden from sight, runs a row
of electric lamps by which, reflected from the ceiling, a cool light is
shed on the apartment. The table appointments are perfectly simple, just
those of any rich and refined household, and the attendance is—silent.
For the cooking and the wines, “they are not perfection,” M. Goldoni
frankly admits, adding: “but we strive after it.”

Though Geraldstein was not personally acquainted with any of the other
diners, he knew many of them by sight and reputation.

“There—you see that thin little man over there, with the full-blown
wife and half-ripe daughters—that’s Markham, the American millionaire,
who has more money and less digestion than any man in the world. He
never eats anything but peptonized biscuit and drinks warm water.”

“Why does he come here, then?”

“To see and be seen. One of the girls—the least unripe—is engaged to
Lord Kent. That woman at the next table to us is a mystery; nobody seems
to know for certain who she is, whether she’s a Russian spy, or the
natural daughter of a Grand Duke—or both, or neither.”

Geraldstein chatted while Marian quietly but entirely enjoyed herself.
There was a spice in the knowledge that her companion admired her, and
that, boor as he was in many ways, he was sufficiently refined to
appreciate her and to like to see her in a worthy setting. Her costume
became her, was a perfect support to her beauty; the luxury around
pleased her; for the time being she was content, and she did not permit
any doubt of the future to depreciate the sure delights of the present.

The wine Geraldstein had chosen was one of those Bordeaux for which M.
Goldoni’s cellar is far famed; a mellow, tender wine, whose subtle
flavor passes like the vanishing of a dream, an innocent wine to the
taste, but insidious, full of the warmth and languor of the sunshine
that ripened the grapes from which it is crushed. Marian drank it
slowly, fully appreciative; it fired her blood, brought added color to
her cheeks and softness to her eyes. The subdued hum of conversation,
the quiet light, the silent waiters, the delicious flavor of the foods,
the wine—induced a gentle intoxication and a sense of unreality. She
scarcely heard half of what Geraldstein said to her. After a while he
too became almost silent, watching her with ever-increasing delight in
her beauty.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked by and by.

“Very much. Did you think I wasn’t because I didn’t talk? I am enjoying
myself—very much. I’d heard a lot about Goldoni’s, but it’s even better
than they said it was. Everything’s puffect, so are most of the people.
What a lovely woman that is—nearly opposite me—with the black hair and
eyes.”

“That’s the Duchess of Bermondsey and the Duke. They’re a regular young
Darby and Joan, always together and always looking happy.”

“Perhaps they are happy——”

“Why not? There are many varieties of happiness. I was amused looking
over a woman’s confession-book once, to find that no two of her friends
had—or confessed to having—exactly the same idea of happiness. I
wonder what yours is?”

She turned quickly to him, his question jarring on her present mood.

“I’m a woman and change my mind every five minutes.”

“But _now_,” he persisted. “If I could satisfy any wish you had—what
would you wish?”

“I don’t wish for anything—I’m quite content.”

“Quite content? That means you’re miserable. Life wouldn’t be worth
living if there wasn’t something left we want and can’t have. I always
seem to be wanting something. I shall look on it as a sign of old age
when I begin to be content. That’s the one drawback to this place—it’s
perfect. There’s only one perfection I’ve ever found that I wouldn’t
have altered.”

“What’s that?”

“You.”

“What an elaborately led-up-to compliment!” Marian said, laughing
consciously. “How often has it done duty? Do you pay it to everyone who
dines with you here?”

“Not—quite everyone,” replied Geraldstein, who behind his exterior
heaviness hid a diplomatic readiness, which was sometimes near akin to
wit. “No, I haven’t used it for a long time. Not since I met you.”

“Not since you met me?”

“No, for you’ve altered my standard of perfection.”

“That’s very nice, but perhaps that’s been said before too?”

“I don’t remember saying it to anyone else. But are you quite fair? If I
didn’t do homage you would think me a fool, and when I do you call me a
frivol. It’s not much of a choice for a fellow, is it? Ah! Happy
interlude! Coffee. Goldoni’s coffee, and Goldoni’s _fine champagne_, I
give you no choice. And a cigarette? It is allowed.”

Marian leaned back in her chair, supremely content; lazily happy, idly
watching the other diners, satisfied with herself, kindly disposed even
to her host.

“I hope you don’t mind my not having asked anyone else,” he said after a
while. “I knew how much more I should enjoy myself this way, and—I’m
nothing if not selfish. Have you enjoyed yourself?”

“Need you ask? Can’t you see?” she replied, looking at him with
half-closed eyes. “It seems like a dream—don’t wake me from it.”

“Don’t let us wake from it till—to-morrow.”




                               CHAPTER XX


THE next few days were to Marian days of tumult. Her abandonment of
herself to Geraldstein had wrought in her a far more serious and far
different change to that which had resulted from her leaving her husband
and going to live with Maddison. The latter loved her, Geraldstein did
not, indeed made no pretense of doing so, and her feeling toward him was
simply one of desire for physical excitement and abandon. With Maddison
it was, though of course she did not consciously argue it out as such,
an illegal marriage; with Geraldstein she stood merely on the footing of
a woman with a price. She now felt utterly adrift, floating upon the
ferocious stream of sensual pleasure, intoxicated with excitement, and,
as is always the case with every form of intoxication, the hours of
recovery, of struggling back to sobriety, were hours of pain,
half-regrets, half-formed resolutions toward future restraint, and of
deep depression and reaction.

She realized fully that she had sold herself to Geraldstein when she
received a letter from him inclosing her dressmaker’s bill receipted,
and an apology from him for having ventured without first asking her
permission, to take this care off her hands. Her first impulse was to be
indignantly angry; then with a half laugh, half shudder, she threw the
bill aside. As she had sold herself she would be foolish to reject any
portion of the price.

Very quickly all regret for what she had done, and for having committed
herself irretrievably to the life of a common woman, faded away. The
sensation of physical intoxication, of delight in the delirium of
yielding to every sensual impulse, was fresh and keen, and had not yet
lost anything of its savor. Momentary hesitations, indeed, came to her,
but arising solely from the fear that perhaps she might have jeopardized
her chances with West. She had not yet lost all ambition, though mere
love of pleasure was rapidly assuming imperious sway over her deeds and
thoughts.

Physical reaction and depression came to her now and again, as it must
come after all pleasures which are themselves entirely physical.
Lassitude, tiredness, irritability assailed her, and more and more
frequently she felt compelled to seek in stimulants an escape from
_ennui_ and weariness. She talked freely and with frank confidence to
Mrs. Harding, in whose companionship she no longer felt any restraint.
Hitherto this woman, with her outspoken brutality, had half amused, half
offended her; but now there was full community of aims and practice
between them; their lives were alike, so were their pleasures and their
longings.

She laughed with her over her dealings with Geraldstein and joked over
the gross deception she was practicing on Maddison. She canvassed with
her the schemes she had formed with regard to West, and the difficulty
and possibilities of accomplishing her aims. All this and more that she
observed for herself, Mrs. Harding reported fully to her employer Davis,
who in turn communicated it to Mortimer, who in turn kept his counsel,
believing it to be best to wait until a fitting opportunity arose for
opening Maddison’s eyes to the real character of the woman for whom he
was sacrificing so much of the present and perhaps all of the future.

Early one evening, about a week after the dinner at Goldoni’s, West
called upon Marian. Although it was only a little past six o’clock he
was in evening dress.

“I’m so glad to find you at home,” he said. “I’m all alone and have been
working like a nigger never does. I wonder will you take pity on me and
come and dine with me? We could go on to the theater or a music-hall
afterward, whatever you like best. I do hope you’re not already booked
up—and will take pity on a lonesome grass-widower.”

Marian had not hoped for any so early an opening as this, and felt that
she must be guarded in taking advantage of it. West, she felt assured,
was not a man who cared to buy his company cheaply.

“I should like it very much,” she answered. “I don’t often go
out—George doesn’t like my going about much while he’s away. But—I’m
sure he wouldn’t mind my dining with you. I’m a bit lonesome, too; it’s
rather dreary sometimes when he’s not here.”

“Well, let’s cheer each other up and be sociable. I got a regular scare
this afternoon; for the first time in my life I felt not young, and I’m
blowed if I’m going to grow old yet—not me. But work, work, work
and——”

He broke off without finishing his sentence and stared gloomily into the
fire.

“You old!” said Marian, laughing, “I can’t imagine you that. I thought
you were one of those men too full of energy ever to grow old. I expect
you’re tired.”

“I guess so, but I shall stay tired, unless I have something to stop my
stewing over business. I’ve had a tough fight for the last few days, but
I’ve downed a man who tried to down me; but he fought well and has tried
me. Young men ought to feel all the fresher after a fight.”

“Fight! It must be good to be a man and able to fight. A woman’s just an
onlooker—a silly, helpless onlooker. Oh! How I should love to be a man
and to fight! It’s sickening,” she exclaimed, pacing angrily up and down
the room, her fists clenched, her cheeks glowing, all for the moment
forgotten except the fiery ambition which had been smoldering and not
yet extinct. “It’s sickening to have one’s hands tied. A woman can’t
_do_ anything, she’s not allowed. She’s just a doll, an ugly doll or a
pretty doll, and she squeaks the words she’s expected to say.”

“You’re not like that, though,” West said, watching her with undisguised
admiration.

Here for the first time he was in contact with a woman both beautiful
and intellectually gifted. He envied Maddison, who, he felt assured,
could never call forth all that Marian could give a man. Maddison did
not deserve her, and if he could he would win her away from him. He
thought of his wife, the pretty doll; he looked at Marian. This was the
woman who could stir his pulse and who would spur him on to fight.

“You’re not like that,” he repeated; “you forget one thing. A man fights
for himself; a woman may not be able to do that, but she can make a man
fight for her as well as for himself. That’s the fight worth having.
Often and often, do you know, when I’ve scored heavily, I’ve just
dropped my hands and wondered what on earth I was working for. Ambition?
That’s not worth a damn. Money? I’ve got more now than I know how to
spend; I just spend it, risk it, for the sake of making more—a regular
wild gambler’s risk very often. But—well, be a good soul, pop on a
pretty frock and come along.”

“I’ll come. Would you like a drink? A B. and S., or anything—well, not
anything, for my cellar’s jolly low at present.”

“Not for me, thanks. Appetizers spoil my appetite, and I’ve a rattling
good one at the present moment. How long’ll you be—half an hour—or an
hour—eh?”

“Half an hour, really not more. I won’t keep you waiting.”

“Right. Well, I’ll be back in half an hour, sharp.”

“But won’t you wait here?”

“No, thanks; I’ll go for a stroll and a cigarette. _Au revoir._”

They were both punctual, in fact, Marian was waiting for him.

He held out a spray of green orchids.

“I went out to get you these—do wear them.”

She looked magnificent, he thought; a conqueror.

Under Maddison’s guidance she had cultivated her innate taste for
Oriental color and magnificence; gold and silver embroideries, touches
of brilliant flaming orange and scarlet seemed to defy, but in reality
enhanced, the splendid richness of her red-gold hair.

She stood before West in a strange greenish-blue cloak, with heavy gold
tassels and braid and with a hoodlike drapery of sable round her
shoulders. An antique Oriental silver comb, studded with green and blue
stones, held her hair.

“How strange,” he said, as she fastened the flowers in the corsage of
her amber gown, “how strange! If I’d known what you were going to put
on, I couldn’t have chosen the flowers better.”

“There’s one great pull you women have over us,” West said, as he looked
round the restaurant with its over-gorgeous gilding and its over-fed
crowd of men and women, “you can dress; men merely wear clothes. Just
look at all these silly black coats and blank white shirt fronts. What a
difference it would make if we weren’t afraid of colors and dressed for
effect!”

“It tempts women to wear what doesn’t suit them, though.”

“Either you’re not tempted, or you’re very clever and strong-minded.
Brave too—there are not many who could stand those colors you have, and
no one else I know who could wear them as if any other colors would be
wrong. You forget that among my many businesses I’m a man milliner. It’s
the most difficult job I’ve had to run that department. Men are easy
enough to content, no matter what they want to buy—clothes, cigars,
wine; they’ve no scope for choice, it’s just a question of good or bad;
but women—and dresses! My goodness! Now, I wonder if your taste in
dinners is—well, I was going to say as good as your taste in dress, but
what I really mean is—the same as mine. No soup; just fish, a bird and
a sweet and one wine?”

“I’m not going to give myself away. You’re my host; the guests don’t
choose but take. But I’ll tell you candidly afterward whether I’ve
enjoyed it or not. Unless you’d rather I’d say nice things whether I
mean them or not.”

He laughed.

“It’s difficult to know—difficult to choose between pretty insincerity
or candid—cold water.”

“I should have thought you would always choose candor.”

“Why?”

“A woman’s why; I’ve no reason, but I sort of feel it. Aren’t I right?”

“Do you really expect me to answer—candidly? To confess being fond of
being humbugged, or to tell a story and say I like candor always? Of
course I don’t; I like being made a fool of, so now you know and can act
accordingly.”

“I? You’ve handicapped me. It’s no fun being humbugged when you know it,
is it?”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said West, critically examining the _sole à
la Marguery_, which the waiter submitted for his inspection; “I fancy it
rather depends upon the humbugger. It’s funny in business to know a man
is trying to ‘do’ you, and to know that he doesn’t know you suspect him.
And—I think most men are rather pleasantly tickled when they find a
pretty woman who thinks it worth while getting round them. That’s where
you have a man; the greatest compliment you can pay a man is to flatter
him by trying to lay hold of him.”

“Doesn’t that depend upon the motive? A rich, ugly man must get rather
tired of being run after.”

“No, it’s one of the pleasant powers that money brings with it; there’s
compensation in thinking that the handsome poor fool longs in vain to
have what you can command.”

“You talk as if you were—” Marian broke off short.

“I _know_ you were going to say,” exclaimed West, laughing, “that I was
the rich, ugly man. You’re quite wrong,” he added, his eyes still
twinkling with fun; “I’m one of the exceptions: I’m rich, _and_ young
_and_ handsome. Don’t think me conceited, but I can’t bear mock
modesty.”

“And yet I’m sure you’re ready enough to call a woman conceited if she’s
pretty and shows that she knows it.”

“Not a bit; it’s part of the charm of a pretty woman that she cannot
hide her self-consciousness. Do you know I haven’t enjoyed a dinner so
much for ages.”

“They do cook well here.”

“Cook! Cook!” he answered, looking at her quizzically. “Do you really
think I referred to the food? Of course you don’t. You’re too sensible;
I can buy food of the best every day, but I’m sorry to say I—can’t have
you opposite me always. That’s very badly put, isn’t it? Never mind, a
compliment prettily paid is generally a stock one, trotted out on all
proper and some improper occasions; but joking apart, it is a treat to
meet with a woman who can keep up her own end in a game of conversation.
Especially if she’s——”

“I _know_ what you were going to say——”

“Then I needn’t say it. People are so desperately stupid, or if they’re
not then they’re so desperately in earnest. A clever woman who can
frivol is delightful.”

“So is a clever man.”

“Let’s drink our mutual admiration, then,” said West, looking at her
over his glass of sparkling Rhine wine; “let’s form a mutual admiration
society, strictly limited to two; the only rule being that we shall dine
together at suitable and short intervals. At present the club’s confined
to one member, myself; will you join it? And consider to-night the first
meeting—of many?”

“It would be very jolly. But I think you’d better wait till the evening
is over before you decide whether I’m a properly qualified member, don’t
you?”

“No—I don’t, and I guess that what you really mean is that you’re not
so sure about me. We’ll pass a new rule then at once: any member tired
of any other member is to confess candidly and to retire from the club.
Now you’re safe——”

“And—so are you.”

After due consultation with Marian and an evening paper, West had
telephoned for a box at the Empire, luckily securing one that had been
returned at the last moment, the house being otherwise full, it being
the first night of a new ballet. Marian was passionately fond of music
and sat behind the curtain of the box, feeling almost as if she were
alone in the vast, crowded theater, listening intently to the swinging
rhythms of the orchestra. West sat close beside her, watching her face
in the glow reflected from the brilliantly-lit stage. She looked
singularly lovely, her beauty soft and refined, a glow of quiet content
in her eyes; he noted the delicate molding of her arms and her tapering
fingers as she held up her opera glasses; he saw the gentle rise and
fall of the ruby star nestling in her bosom; she intoxicated him. He
old! No, young, young, young—an impassioned youth in love: his mistress
a goddess whom he scarce dared approach! Half unconsciously he laid his
hand on hers as it rested on her lap.

She drew it gently away.

“Don’t, please don’t. Please don’t spoil things.”

He did not speak for some time, while she apparently again became
absorbed in the _spectacle_.

“I suppose you’re very fond of Maddison?” he asked by and by.

“Fond of him? What a curious question to ask! Of course I am. Very.”

“Somehow—I thought you weren’t. I—hoped you weren’t.”

“I am.” Then turning full toward him, she said earnestly: “Why must you
spoil things by talking this way? What can you think of me?”

“Think of you? You make me afraid to tell you what I think of you.
I—won’t say anything more—I’ll be good.”

To a crash and uproar of applause the curtain fell and Marian quickly
rose.

“I don’t want to see anything more. That was beautiful. Will you put me
into a hansom?”

“Let’s go on to supper somewhere. We needn’t really have supper if
you’re not hungry. We can just pretend and have another chat.”

“I thought ours was a dining club,” Marian replied, smiling. “No, thank
you very much. I’ve had an awfully good time, but I’m tired.”

When she arrived home she was surprised to see that the dining room was
lit up, still more surprised to find Geraldstein ensconced there,
smoking a cigar, and a brandy and soda on the table beside him.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, turning round. “I believe I was half asleep. I
hope you don’t mind my having made myself at home?”

“I mind your being here at all,” Marian answered, angry at the thought
of what would have occurred if West had returned with her. “You
shouldn’t have come in when you found I wasn’t here.”

“My dear girl, what nonsense. Why not?”

“Because—I don’t like it.”

“You handsome little tyrant,” he said, laughing and lazily stretching
himself. “You look uncommonly like Cleopatra, but I can’t flatter myself
I’m an Antony. Don’t be cross.”

“I am cross. It’s late. Good night.”

“You’re alone, aren’t you?” he asked suspiciously.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t pretend to be young-missish. If you’re not alone, I won’t
leave you alone, that’s what I mean.”

The reply stung her as would a lash from a whip; he had a right to make
it, a right given to him by her—in that lay the sting. It was a mere
question of buying and selling now with her; and this man had bought and
demanded payment.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“It doesn’t concern you,” she replied fiercely. “I don’t belong to you.
Go away.”

“Go away! Don’t be rude, and don’t tempt me to be rude and remind you of
facts.”

“There is nothing to compel me to keep you here to-night. Will you go?”

He stood up, yawned, stretched his arms and then stood looking at her
insolently.

“You’re deuced pretty, as you know, and look splendid in those
clothes—but clothes cost money and money can’t be got for nothing.”

“You beast!”

“Beauty and the beast, capital!” Then he seized her by the wrists and
looked her up and down, as if she were something offered for sale of
which he was trying to appraise the value. “You little fool, you’re
young and pretty now, but in a few years you won’t be so proud. All
right. There are others in the market besides you, and they do pretend,
at any rate, to be glad to see me. But mind, she that will not when she
may. Well, I’m off. Ta-ta!”

She did not move until she heard the outer door shut behind him. He had
frightened her, and what was worse had driven home to her the fact that
she was for sale. For sale to any man who chose to buy—unless West
should rescue her.




                              CHAPTER XXI


IN the early days of their acquaintanceship Mrs. Harding had felt very
favorably disposed toward Marian, but gradually appreciation had given
place to envy, and liking had been displaced by dislike. She understood
that Marian was her superior not only in beauty, which she would have
forgiven, but in education and social standing, which deeply galled her.
She realized how badly she compared with Marian in conversation and the
amenities of life. At first she laughed, shrugged her sturdy shoulders,
consoling herself with the thought that after all men do not fall in
love with a tongue; but gradually, as she realized that pretty speech is
an excellent support to a pretty face, she began to hate Marian’s dainty
ways and facile talk. More than once, too, Marian had shown by some
little gesture or some uncontrolled look that Mrs. Harding’s coarse
coarseness annoyed and jarred upon her. The latter’s treachery also
filled her with the spite that so often comes to a mean spirit, who has
wronged another. It was not the first time that Davis had called on her
to spy upon a woman with whom she was upon terms of familiarity, but in
other cases the victims had always been those to whom she had not made
any pretense of real friendship and whose confidence she had not sought.
But Marian had trusted her, and the betrayal of this trust, combined
with jealousy, drove her for refuge from compunction to hatred and
malice.

A further point was this. Some of the practices to which Mrs. Harding
was addicted were obviously distasteful to Marian; it was a temptation
to her, therefore, to reduce Marian to her own level, and to this
temptation she now yielded. The episode with Geraldstein pleased her, as
a step in the direction to which she desired to drive Marian.

One of the practices which was at present abhorrent to Marian was
over-indulgence in drink. Once she had been spending the evening at a
rather noisy restaurant with Mrs. Harding; they had met there two young
fellows, of that age when women and wine are temptations all the more
deadly because the yielding to them is held in reprobation by those from
whose authority they have but recently been released. Marian was utterly
bored by the pointless and often indecent jests, and watched with
disgust the quantity of wine which her friend drank and its influence
upon her.

Mrs. Harding saw that she was being watched.

“Don’t mind her,” she said to the youth who sat beside Marian, pestering
her with his plain-spoken attentions. “She’s young and is afraid of
being jolly. Some night she’ll get a bottle of fizzy inside her, and’ll
be all over the place before she knows where she is. Once bitten, never
shy again. Drink up, Marian, it won’t hurt you. Let’s have another
bottle, boys.”

Marian left the party, her departure not meeting with any real protest,
and the next morning received a visit from Mrs. Harding, whose skin was
unwholesome to look at and her eyes blowzed and bloodshot.

“I suppose you’ll tell me it serves me right,” she said, “but my head’s
aching fit to split. I wouldn’t have come down, but I’ve run out of
brandy; don’t preach, dear, but just be good and give me a B. and S.”

For a week or so after the dinner with West, Marian’s life was very
quiet outwardly. Inwardly she lived tossed this way and that by a
turmoil of contrary desires. She realized with terror that she was
losing grip upon herself; that her physical emotions were daily growing
more and more imperious. When she had sundered herself from her old and
had plunged into this new life, she had fully counted on using her
bodily gifts to procure her the ends for which her soul thirsted. But
this life was different to what she had expected it to be, and now her
mental desires were rapidly growing weaker, and the lust of mere
pleasure and excitement was usurping their place.

Her visit to Maddison at Rottingdean and her friendship with West had
stayed for a while this degeneration, and now she had come to look upon
the latter as the one bulwark remaining between her and a life of
promiscuous debauchery.

The time, too, was approaching for her to go down to Rottingdean again,
and the thought of seeing Maddison was very distasteful. His letters
came regularly, full of love and devotion, telling how much he missed
her, how often he thought of her, how difficult he found it to stick to
his work, how dissatisfied he was with the result, and how he counted
the hours to the day when he should see her again. She wrote at less
length and less frequently than he did, and each time the effort was
more laborious to her. She was anxious that he should not discover her
discontent, still more that he should not obtain any inkling that he was
not as dear and as necessary to her as she was to him. Now and again
dread came to her when she thought of what might happen when she
dismissed him.

Her loneliness rendered all these thoughts the more distressing to her;
she was unable to escape from herself, and herself was the very worst
and most hurtful company that she could have.

Broken sleep, which quickly became night-long sleeplessness, was the
inevitable result.

One night she lay awake, restlessly shifting her position from time to
time; striving to rest her mind by fixing it upon matters of
indifference, but without success. Then of a sudden there swept down
upon her a terror that had often stricken her when a child, but from
which she had not suffered of recent years. What if this sleeplessness
should prove incurable and kill her? Or the beginning of a dangerous
illness? She turned cold and faint with the horror of the thought of
death. Not of the physical pain with which it might be accompanied, but
of the thing itself. She could not lie there any longer in the dark;
turning up the light brought no comfort, only rendering the idea of
death more real. She imagined herself lying there, a nurse in the room,
Maddison, perhaps, by her side. She knowing, they knowing, that Death
stood outside the door, his grisly knuckle sounding for the admission
that could not be denied. There was added an oppressive sense of being
alone; she refrained with difficulty from shrieking, just for the sake
of hearing some living response.

She recalled how once, soon after their marriage, her husband had
suffered from a long spell of sleeplessness, brought upon him by
over-work, and how she had told him again and again that if he would
only exert his will he could overcome his trouble. She remembered, too,
that the doctor had ordered him to set aside his teetotal scruples, and
drink each night before going to bed a glass of brandy and water, and
how much she had disliked the smell of the spirit.

She slipped out of bed, shivering, for the night was bitter cold, and
having wrapped herself in her dressing gown made her way to the dining
room. She poured out about a wineglassful of brandy into a tumbler,
added water, and drank it hastily. She shuddered as she put the glass
down, but the quick warmth of the liquor comforted her, running like
heat through her frame.

After a while she slept heavily, wakening late in the morning, parched
and unrefreshed. She was not hungry, but drank her tea eagerly, feeling
refreshed for a time.

The following night she placed the decanter of brandy and the water
carafe on the table by her bedside, and as soon as she became restless
had recourse to them. This time the spirit did not soothe but excited
her; wild, aimless thoughts chased one another rapidly, until it seemed
as if her brain would burst. She drank again, pouring out a larger
amount of the brandy than before; stupor, then restless slumber
resulting.

The thought of each approaching night came to be a terror by day. She
sat up late reading—reading until her eyes fell heavy with sleep. Then
to bed and to sleeplessness.

She saw no one; Geraldstein had dropped her; West did not come, and she
did not see anything of Mortimer. Mrs. Harding came in once or twice,
but her presence was an irritation.

Then came the appointed day for her going to Maddison, and, to her
surprise, it was with a sense almost of relief that she found herself in
the train, speeding away from London.

He met her at the station, and although he said little, she could not
but discern in his face the intense joy it was to him to see her again.
He looked tired and troubled; even the light of love that sprang into
his eyes as they rested on her did not dispel from them the curious look
that shows in them when a man is eagerly searching after that which he
cannot find. As it was raining they drove the whole way to the cottage,
not talking much as they went, he seemingly content to be quiet, holding
her hand tightly in his own.

Mrs. Witchout greeted Marian cordially.

“You don’t lookaswell, though, as when you went away,” she said
critically; “does she, Mr. Maddison? I do hear as rosy cheeks ain’t the
fashun in Lunnon. But, there, Lunnon fashuns ain’t the onlyonesworth
follering. Lunch is ready; Mr. Maddison says I ought to call it
luncheon, but I don’t see that it matters what you callthingso long as
peopleknows whatyermeans.”

“And how’s the work getting on?” Marian asked, as they went into the
studio.

“Lamely. Only hobbling. I’ve finished Mrs. West. What do _you_ think of
it?”

“What does she is more to the point?”

“No; what do you?”

Marian looked long at the portrait before she answered. It was evidently
very like the original, but there was something in the face that puzzled
her.

“You told me she was a doll!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, but I’ve discovered that dolls have hearts as well as sawdust in
them.”

“Oh!”

“Is that all you notice?”

“Ye-es, I think so,” she answered. “I like it.”

He laid his hands on her shoulders, and moved her so that the light fell
full upon her face; then scanned her features closely.

“I’m right,” he said, “right. Go and look in the glass there, then look
at the picture again, and see if _you_ don’t find something of yourself
reflected in what I meant to be a portrait of another woman.”

Marian looked closely again at the picture; it was true; as he said
there was a distinct semblance of herself, a fleeting likeness which it
was impossible to define, but unmistakable.

“You see, Marian, I’ve tried doing without you and I cannot; we must
never leave each other again—why should we? We love each other—you do
love me still, dear, don’t you?”

“Yes, George, of course I do.”

“Of course you do! That sounds so cold. It seems to me this way,” he
said, sitting down, drawing her on to his knee and resting his head
against her shoulder; “life’s so short, and there’s only one thing in it
worth having; your love’s just all to me. So why waste any of our time
by being apart? We can go away and live quite quietly somewhere, or live
here—it’s cheap enough; and if I only paint a picture a year we shall
be well off, even if they’re not my best,” he added, sighing and looking
at the portrait.

She did not answer him, but fondled his hair and pressed him close to
her, which she knew would speak to him more eloquently than any words
she could put together. Never before had she felt quite so helpless to
deal with this love of his, which had grown so much more intense than
she had counted upon its becoming. At any rate the time was not yet come
for her to show him anything of coldness, and her cool fingers ran
through his thick dark hair and he was comforted.

“I must put you into another picture; make myself immortal by painting
you always; you must be my Emma. What shall it be next? As a Bacchante?
Your eyes wild with excitement and your cheeks glowing like red roses?
Your lips just parted and your little teeth peeping out between? I
_could_ do it; by Jove, I will do it. We’ll begin to-morrow; we mustn’t
work to-day. That’s my mistake! I ought never to have tried to paint
without you as my model.”

“You’re forgetting me!” she said, an idea coming to her, which held out
promise of sufficient excuse for leaving him again soon.

“Forgetting you—do you think that I ever forget you for a single
moment? You know—I often used to think myself in love, but it never
lasted. Then I began to believe that love wasn’t very much after all,
and that people were fools or ignorant who said it was the only thing in
life worth having. You’ve taught me better, dear. But what did you mean
by saying I’d forgotten you?”

“You’ve—left me out of your plans!”

“Left you out? Why, you’re just everything!”

“Not quite. You couldn’t go on loving a woman who had no pride, could
you?”

“I could love you whatever you were.”

“But that’s not right, George. When I—came to you, you were a great
man, but not nearly so great as you were going to be. And now I have
spoiled all your future and you don’t seem to have any ambition left.
No,” she said, forcing herself away from him and with a gesture
forbidding him to follow her, “I’m _not_ going to spoil your life. If I
come between you and your work—I’ll—leave you.”

“Leave me!”

The agony in his voice startled her.

“Leave me!” he repeated, striding across to her and holding her fiercely
to him. “I think I’d kill you before I’d let you do that.”

“Don’t, George, don’t,” she gasped; “you’re frightening me.”

“I’m so sorry, love, but—why do you say such horrid things to me?”

“What I said was right. If I can’t help you with your work, George, I’ll
do this; if in a few days you can’t begin a picture without me in it,
can’t prove that you can work with me near you—I’ll go away and I’ll
stay away until you can tell me that I can come back safely to you.”

“So that’s your plan! But it will take two to carry it out, and I won’t
make the second. I simply _won’t_ let you go. So that’s settled.”

“You don’t want me to be happy? Is your love so selfish as all that?”

“So selfish!” he said, freeing her, dropping his arms, standing amazed.
“Selfish! Oh, my love, you’re right, right. It was damnably selfish; I
was just thinking of myself. But—are you happy when you’re not with
me?”

“You know I’m not, George. But—I’m so proud of you, and I should hate
myself if I knew I was standing in your way. I should be unhappy with
you then. Besides, dear, is—is——”

“Yes?”

“Is it right to love me like that? Love ought to help you, not harm
you.”

“Help me! It has helped me to understand what happiness is. I didn’t
know that before.”

“Well, George, you mustn’t kill my pride; keep me proud of you, proud of
having helped you, proud of myself. There, we’ll talk no more about it
now, and to-morrow, or the next day, you shall start another picture,
only I will not be your model.”

“But——”

“No! We’re not going to argue the first day we are together. Look, the
rain’s over and the sun’s trying to come out. I’ll run up and put on my
country boots and hat, and we’ll go for a walk over the downs.”




                              CHAPTER XXII


FOR the first time West hesitated in his dealing with a woman. Partly it
was that Marian puzzled as well as attracted him, partly it was that the
precipitancy of his marriage with Agatha and its failure gave him pause
before he took the step of trying to win Marian away from Maddison. He
admired her, but he was by no means sure that the admiration was mutual;
indeed part of her attraction for him was that she had not in any way,
so far as he could see, endeavored to bring him to her side. Hitherto
the women whom he had met had made little effort to conceal the fact
that his money rendered him a welcome suitor.

It was his custom every morning to walk in Hyde Park before going to
business; it was usually the only hour in the day which was not
interrupted and in which, therefore, he could think clearly. This mental
constitutional was broken up one day by meeting Alice Lane. They came
suddenly face to face at a sharp turning close by the Serpentine.

“You’re most unfashionably early!” he said, falling into step with her.

“I’m unfashionable in everything, I think. I didn’t know you were in
town.”

“Is that a kind of way of reminding me that I ought to have called? I’ve
been awfully busy.”

“How’s Agatha? Is she still at Brighton?”

“Yes. She’s much better and beginning to enjoy herself. What have you
been doing?”

“Just nothing.”

“I can’t believe that of you. You’d go crazy if you hadn’t something to
do.”

“Why, I stopped weeks with you and didn’t do a single thing the whole
time.”

“That’s true,” he admitted, laughing; “but you always manage to give the
impression of being busy. Like one of my men, whom I had to fire out the
other day—he was always awfully busy and didn’t get any work done.”

“I’ve no work to do.”

West felt curiously constrained; not that anything in her tone or manner
jarred upon him; she was frankly kind as she always was to him. He did
not feel that he had anything to say to her and small talk failed him.

They walked on for some little distance without speaking.

“My brother’s engaged to be married,” she said suddenly.

“Really! That’s good. I must write and congratulate him. But it’ll be a
nuisance for you, won’t it? I suppose it will be the customary ‘two’s
company.’”

“I shan’t try to make it anything else. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

“Fair to her! That’s like you; that’s you all over. I’d bet anything you
haven’t bothered to think about yourself. What a show up you good women
make of us men!”

“Don’t say things like that about me,” she answered, so fiercely that he
stared at her astonished, “_don’t_. It’s so utterly untrue. What on
earth does a man ever know about a woman? I’m hateful to myself, and I’d
be hateful to you if you knew me.”

“I’m sorry—something’s wrong and I’ve touched you on the raw; I’m
sorry. Not that I believe you a bit you’re worrying about something that
wouldn’t give me a twinge. I—suppose I can’t help you any way?”

“You—no, no, thanks.” She clenched her fingers tightly inside her muff.
“No one can help me and I can’t help myself.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “You’re such a good sort, I hate to see you
suffering; I’m afraid it’s something pretty bad.”

“I’d rather not talk about myself. Tell me about yourself. Don’t you
feel lonesome up here without Agatha?”

“Oh, we’re settling down into conventional married life. Quite pleased
to be together, but not inconsolable when we’re apart. Aggy’s growing up
and finding other amusements in life besides honeymooning.”

“And you?” she asked, not looking at him, but fixing her gaze straight
ahead.

“I? Didn’t I tell you I’m very busy?”

“And that’s all you care about?”

“I’m beginning to think so. It’s really the only game worth playing.
Now, here we are at Hyde Park corner. Shall I take a turn back with you
and be late at the office? Or be a good boy, remember that work’s first,
pleasure second?”

“Be a good boy,” she replied, holding out her hand.

She stood still, watching him as he strode rapidly away, and when he was
out of sight, still stood there, her lips tightly pressed together,
suppressing the cry of hopelessness that tried to force its way from her
heart.

West telegraphed later on in the morning to Marian, saying that he would
call in the evening on the chance that she would be free to dine with
him and go on to a theater afterward, and Marian on her arrival from
Brighton found the telegram awaiting her and welcomed it. Her stay at
Rottingdean had rested her, had done good to her physically, but had
sent her back thirsty for amusement. She had intended to write to West,
but good fortune had brought him to her uncalled.

She dressed herself with peculiar care, and was ready for him when he
arrived.

“By Jove, this is luck,” he said, “unless you’ve dressed to go out
somewhere else? Don’t tell me that and turn a lonely man out on a lonely
world.”

“No, I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself when I found your
wire here. I only came up from Brighton to-day.”

“You’ve been down there? Well, where shall we go?”

“Anywhere, only somewhere where there are lots of people. I went down
there for a change; I’ve come up here for a change.”

“Aren’t I change enough? There’s conceit! Here, slip on your cloak, and
we’ll discuss our destination in the cab as we go along.”

Marian had chosen to go to the Gaiety and West had telephoned to the
theater, being lucky enough to secure two good stalls. The first act was
well under way when they entered the darkened theater, slipping quietly
into their seats, amid the more or less skillfully disguised annoyance
of their neighbors.

When the curtain fell, Marian looked round the well-dressed house, with
its atmosphere of well-to-do-ness and good dinners. West noted the
graceful curves of the arm as she held up her opera-glasses, and when
she laid them down on her lap and turned to him, noticed, too, how
brightly her eyes shone and how well her flushed cheeks became her.

“You do love pleasure, _don’t_ you?” he said.

“I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes. But somebody told me the other day that I was getting old. Perhaps
that explains why I don’t seem able to let myself go as I used to do.”

“Doesn’t that depend a good deal upon who you are with?”

“Yes, I’ve been keeping dull company lately, chiefly my own.”

“That’s not a pretty compliment to me!”

“I said ‘lately,’ not to-night. I don’t think even a plaster saint could
be dull with you.”

“I can be dull with myself.”

“That may be; it takes flint and steel to strike a spark.”

“Which am I?”

“Does it matter—so long as the flame comes?”

He was looking vaguely round as he spoke to her, but suddenly his eyes
rested on Alice Lane sitting in a box with two other ladies and her
brother. She saw and recognized him at the same moment. He felt
uncomfortable; he did not mind who else saw him, but he would have
preferred not having been seen by her in Marian’s company; he knew that
she would understand the character of the woman he was with, even if she
did not already know her by sight and reputation. Though after all, why
should it worry him? Women did not seem to take any account of such
things nowadays. But it did annoy him, argue as he would, for he was
sure that Alice was not one of the many.

“Have you found some friends?” asked Marian, following the direction of
his eyes.

“Acquaintances. One always meets some one one knows here.”

The electric bells were ringing for the beginning of the next act, and
in the bustle made by men returning to their seats, and the striking up
of the orchestra, conversation dropped, though Marian scanned curiously
the calm, strong face of the woman in the box, who, instinct told her,
was the one who knew West.

He had made up his mind to put his fortune to the touch with Marian this
evening, feeling fairly certain from her manner toward him at dinner
that she liked him and would desert Maddison for him. He had decided to
take another flat for her, it not being his taste to keep his lady-bird
in a nest that another man had feathered. At any rate, no real harm
could come of the experiment; if she proved difficult or dull, a check
would cut him loose.

He watched the performance without interest. The sight of Alice Lane had
stirred something in him that had taken away his relish of Marian’s
company. He could not but compare the two. Alice so strong, so trusty,
such a good, true comrade. Marian pretty, bright, empty-hearted, ready
to sell herself to anyone who could assure her luxury and pleasure, or
even luxury alone. Then his thoughts ran on to his wife, a nonentity to
him. What a difference it would have made had he not married her, had he
really known Alice first, and been able to make her love him. There
would be no tiring of her, he knew. Or if Marian were Alice—there had
been such women, or scarcely exactly such, but rather women like Alice,
who counted the world’s opinion as nothing, and were ready and happy to
throw aside every other joy in life, in exchange for the men they loved.
But Alice was not like that, and did he love her? Of that he did not
feel so certain. He was very fond of her, but surely not in love, or he
would have missed her more than he had done. He felt rather that, if he
were free to love her, he could and would do so, would do so
passionately and forever. But she was not for him; it was sheer folly to
let his thoughts stray toward the impossible. The possible sat beside
him, and with that he must try to content himself; try to be content
with pretty make-believe instead of a beautiful reality.

He would wait, however, until to-morrow or the next day. Marian would
not run away, and perhaps would behave all the better for finding that
he was not easily caught.

So as they went out of the theater he said:

“I hope you won’t think me very rude not asking you to supper, but I’ve
an appointment at my club I must keep.”

“I think it’s awfully kind of you to have given me such a jolly
evening—that’s all I think.”

But he knew well enough from the dark look that she could not keep out
of her eyes, that she was disappointed and angry. It amused him, and
assured him that he had only to ask and she would give.

She clenched her teeth angrily as the hansom spun along homeward. She
had meant that he should ride by her side this night.




                             CHAPTER XXIII


THE next morning West walked as usual through the Park, and to his
surprise again met Alice Lane, who greeted him cordially.

“You offered me the chance of a talk with you yesterday,” she said
abruptly, “and I was rude enough to refuse. Will you give me another
chance?”

“Why, of course you know I will,” he answered, eyeing her keenly,
wondering if after all she were about to tell him that he could help her
in the difficulty created by her brother’s engagement; hoping, indeed,
that it was so.

He had walked home the night before, and had sat up late over the fire,
thinking the whole while about her. It had been borne in upon him that
in reality he did love her; not as he had loved other women from mere
physical attraction, but with a strong, deep affection that made her
necessary to him, as he now understood. So long as she did not care for
anyone else, so long as he could have her frequent companionship and
sympathy, he would, he hoped, be content. So far as anything else could
be, he had given a hostage to fortune; his wife stood between him and
the one woman who had raised his desires above mere sensuality.

“You were at the theater last night,” she said.

He laughed as he answered:

“So were you. I saw you and you saw me.”

“Yes, it was a stupid remark. I was going to say that I know who was the
woman with you.”

She spoke nervously, hesitatingly, in strong contrast to her usual
quiet, serene way of speaking.

“I saw her at Brighton with Mr. Maddison, and Agatha told me about her.
But even if I’d not heard anything about her, I should have known _what_
she is. Are you disgusted at my talking like this? Are you going to tell
me—quite kindly, I know—to mind my own business? I think it _is_ my
business. I’m your friend, and with me friendship doesn’t mean sitting
by and watching a friend—lowering himself.”

“You’re a real friend,” he said, holding out his hand and pressing
hers—“a real friend. But friendship’s blind as well as love. You put me
higher than I am; I’m not lowering myself.”

“Not higher than you were once, at any rate. And what you were once, you
can be again. You don’t love Agatha, then?”

He hesitated a moment before replying.

“No, and I see now I never did,” he answered. “I didn’t know anything
about her when I married her, or about myself either. I thought I could
go on loving her and that we should be happy together. We aren’t. I
can’t make her happy and she can’t make me. You knew that when you asked
me, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I wanted to hear you say so.”

“Why?”

“You don’t care for that other woman?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“You know that too. You know I don’t.”

“And—you can’t live alone?” she spoke almost in a whisper so that he
could scarcely catch her words.

“That’s just it. I can’t bear being alone now. I used not to mind it a
bit, but somehow I seem to have been changing lately—since I found out
that Agatha couldn’t be a real companion to me. I never wanted one
before; I suppose thinking I had found one and finding I had not, has
made me long for one. So—don’t blame me too much.”

“I’m not blaming you,” she said fiercely almost. “You don’t think I’m
preaching to you?—don’t think that. How little you know of me! I
suppose you imagine I’m a cold-blooded saint? I’m not. I’m a woman. I
can forgive any man, or any woman either, anything that they do for
love, real love. But—women like the one you were with last night I
can’t forgive—they’re pests, beasts themselves and making beasts of
others. Is that the kind of thing you expected _me_ to say? I can see it
isn’t.”

West did not answer. He was utterly amazed at his complete ignorance of
one he believed he knew well.

“You’ve never—really understood what love means,” she went on; “I
sometimes think that only women do.”

“You’re wrong there, Alice. I, for one, know. Only—only, I found out
too late. I did not find out until after I was married and the woman I
love—well—you understand. I’ve got what I don’t want and I can’t get
what I do.”

“You’re not a coward?”

“A coward? I hope not. One never knows.”

“But isn’t it rather cowardly because you think you can’t have what you
long for, to go and play at love—with such women as that?”

“It means nothing. No more than a good dinner or a beautiful picture or
a play. Just passes the time.”

“It means more than that,” she said, speaking very earnestly and
quickly, “ever so much more than that. It means that you are degrading
love, by taking part of it and making it common and vile. That’s what it
means, and you see it clearly enough when a woman does it. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“You do, you _do_,” she exclaimed, standing still and looking straight
at him; but he dropped his eyes before hers, and ground his heel into
the soft gravel, “you do! I don’t care what a man or a woman does for
love. I’m not talking unthinking nonsense about the sanctity of
marriage—there’s just one thing in the world, and everything done in
its name is forgivable.”

“You mean——?”

“Love.”

He looked at her now.

“Love?” he said. “My God, there’s no man in the world worthy of you.
Alice, I thought you were really in trouble yesterday, and I wanted to
help you—is it that?”

“Is it—what?”

“Are you in love, and—are things going wrong? Perhaps I can’t help you
really, but at any rate I can sympathize.”

“Yes,” she answered, still looking at him. He had never realized fully
the beauty of her face, softened now from its wonted passivity, or the
deep splendor of her eyes. “I do love, so I _can_ understand.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, angry with himself at the downright
incompetency of his words.

“You needn’t be. I didn’t know how incomplete my life was until—I
loved. It’s made me happy. Doesn’t it help you, too? Even though it must
be hopeless?”

“Yes, it’s strange; I didn’t know until last night that I really did
love anyone. When I said good-by to her—at the theater—I walked home,
and I sat alone by my fire and thought. A lot of things I hadn’t
understood came clear, and now—I hardly think I’m the same man I was
yesterday. But—I know myself too well; I shall soon drift back to what
I was. If she loved me—it would be different. Now, don’t talk any more
about myself. Tell me—can I help you in any way?”

“Yes, you can.”

“How? I’m so glad. You’re such a thundering good sort that—I’d give a
great deal to be able to do you a good turn. What a fool the fellow must
be!”

“You can help me a great deal, by helping me to honor and respect the
man—I love.”

“Why,” he asked, puzzled and surprised, “how can I do that?”

“By remembering what I’ve said about not lowering yourself.”

Still she looked straight at him, and he at her. Gradually he came to
understand what she meant.

“Alice—it’s me you love! No, don’t answer me till I’ve spoken. I told
you that I found myself last night, and found out that I loved a woman,
really and truly loved her. You’re the woman, Alice, but I never dreamed
that you could care for me. Tell me now—is it me?”

There was no necessity for her to speak. The light in her eyes was more
eloquent than any words could have been, and careless whether anyone was
watching, he seized her hands in his.

“Alice, you do love me?”

Then he drew himself apart quickly, saying:

“I forgot.”

“What is it?”

“Agatha.”

“I don’t pretend not to know what you mean,” she said slowly. “Do you
think I haven’t thought of her? If she had loved you, or been able to
love you, you should never have known. But as things are—there’s only
one way—we love.”




                              CHAPTER XXIV


MARIAN was very angry at West’s unexpected desertion after the theater.
When she reached home she sat down by the bright fire in the drawing
room, which she had told the servant to keep up well, and gave full rein
to her disappointment.

It would soon be time to go down again to Rottingdean; Maddison had
written to say that work was progressing fast and well, and calling on
her to keep her promise to return to him when he could truly report that
things were going satisfactorily. She hated the very thought of him
now—without any reason, as she admitted to herself. She had looked to
West for rescue, and now he seemed about to fail her.

A ring at the outer bell surprised her, and, knowing her maid to be in
bed, she went to answer it herself.

“Hullo,” said Mrs. Harding, as Marian opened the door and looked
inquiringly out. “Are you alone?”

“Yes, come in.”

“Only for half a shake. I’ve got two boys upstairs, and I thought if you
were alone, you’d like to come up for a bit. They’re both pretty oofy,
and I can spare you one of them. Come along. You look spiffing.”

The angry blood in her jumped at this unexpected opportunity.

Mrs. Harding’s room reeked with cigarette smoke and the smell of
spirits. Two well-dressed young men lounged one on each side of the
fireplace, in front of which stood the sofa on which Mrs. Harding had
evidently been lying.

“Here, boys,” she said, ushering in Marian. “Now we shall be a four.
Two’s company, so’s four, when they split into twos. I’m not good at
introductions: Bobby Williams and Chawles Brewer, who never gets quite
so intossicated as his name suggests, and this is Marian, though I can’t
call her Maid Marian. Now, you sit down that end of the sofa and keep
your eye on Bobby or he’ll run you in before you know where you are.
Have a drink? I’ve only got B. and S.”

“Yes, thanks, I’m thirsty. I’ve been at the Gaiety, and theaters always
make me dry.”

Bobby, as a rule, was not at a loss for conversation in such society as
the present, but Marian’s beauty and style overawed him at first. As for
her, she was mad with the spirit of dare-devilry and threw away all
remaining sense of decency. She drank eagerly at the brandy-and-soda,
soon handing the glass to Bobby to be replenished.

“Say when,” he said, holding up the tumbler and the spirit decanter.

“When!” said Marian, stopping him when he had poured out a stiff
allowance, “and not too much water. And then you may mix quite a mild
dose for yourself.”

She laughed gayly as she took the glass from him, and Mrs. Harding was
not so engrossed in her companion’s talk as to fail noticing Marian’s
wildness.

“Been dining too—eh, Maid Marian?” she asked.

“Yes, so I’m not hungry, only thirsty. Now, Bobby, amuse me.”

“What shall I do?”

“Talk, tell stories, anything except be serious. I daresay Ethel told
you I was a serious young person, but I’m not. She don’t really know
me.”

“Nor do I,” said Bobby; his eyes adding that he would like to do so.

“That’s a misfortune that can be mended.”

Her color heightened and her eyes grew brighter as the brandy warmed her
blood, and a stray tress of hair fell deliciously down her neck. She put
up her feet on his knees as she repeated:

“Bobby, amuse me. I want amusing badly. You look full of fun. Look here,
Ethel, you play us a tune and we’ll dance. I must do something!”

She sprang up and was pushing the table aside with Bobby’s assistance,
when Mrs. Harding stopped her.

“For the Lord’s sake, no. We shall wake the people below, and they’re
goody-goody and will kick up a devil of a fuss.”

She tried to push Marian back on to the sofa, but she resisted.

“No, I won’t. You said the four had better split up. So we will. Come
along, Bobby, we’ll trot downstairs to my place and leave these two to
canoodle by themselves.”


                 *        *        *        *        *

The next day her head ached rackingly, and she had but dim recollections
of what she had done the night before. She remembered getting out a
bottle of wine, which she and Bobby had drunk together; remembered
having become uproariously merry; then quarrelsome over something he had
said or done; then madly merry again; she dimly remembered his embrace
and his going away in the dim gray of the early morning, making some
excuse about having to go back to his rooms to dress as he had to be at
the office early. Her head ached and her eyes were heavy and hot. Her
clothes were wildly tossed about the room and one of his white gloves
stared at her ridiculously as it lay on the dark carpet. Several
sovereigns lay on the dressing table. She rang the bell and the maid
brought her tea, which seemed tasteless, and a letter from Maddison,
which she threw impatiently aside, unopened.

The day seemed endless.

Mrs. Harding came down to her in the afternoon.

“Well, you’re a nice cup of tea, you are; you demure little monkey, do
you often carry on like that?”

“If I did, I suppose I shouldn’t have such a beastly headache.”

“Don’t know so much about that; I’m a pretty hardened vessel, but a
drink too much always gets back at you in the morning, I find. I don’t
feel too bright myself, and I don’t look much of a beauty,” she said,
looking into the glass. “This life knocks spots out of one, there’s no
doubt, but it’s the only one worth living—merry if it is short. Had a
hair of the dog that bit? If not, why not? I’ll have one too, he bit me
a bit.”

“Help yourself; you’ll find it on the sideboard in the next room.”

“Feel so cheap as all that? Buck up! Have one with me, and you’ll soon
feel spry again.”

Marian did not refuse.

“What are you doing to-night?” asked Mrs. Harding. “I’m dining out with
my old man, who’s just wired me he gets back this afternoon, or we could
have had a lark together somewhere.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“How’s your young man? George’s been away a long time. Wouldn’t he be
wild if he knew what a rollicking time the mouse has when the cat’s
away. It’s just like men; they expect us to be jolly when they want us,
and we jolly well have to be—but as for being jolly when they’re
away—oh, Lord, no, that’s shocking. My lord may carry on with as many
as he likes, but one woman one man. Thank goodness, they’re easily
bamboozled.”

Mrs. Harding did not remain for long. She did not care for dull company,
which Marian undoubtedly was this afternoon. She felt a trifle mean,
too. She did not know for what purpose Davis desired the information he
had asked her to obtain, but believed it to be for Maddison, and knew
that if such was the case, Marian’s next meeting with him would not be
pleasant.

Marian did not go out that day or the next, spending her time reading
and dozing over the fire. She hoped to hear from West, but no message of
any sort came from him.

On the third day, she dressed early in the afternoon, and went in the
omnibus down to Regent Street. As she stepped on to the pavement at
Oxford Circus, she knocked against a man who was passing. He did not
notice her, but she recognized West, and with him the woman she had seen
at the Gaiety. They were evidently absorbed in one another, so much so
that he did not apologize to Marian for an accident which was more than
half his fault. Her first impulse was to walk up to him and speak to
him. Then a sickening sense of the difference between the other woman
and herself stopped her; they could not be rivals. She had set her wares
before West, and if he did not wish to buy them, she could not force him
to do so.

She went slowly on past the shops, to look into the windows of which was
usually a pleasure to her, but now she saw nothing except a vague throng
going to and fro; she heard vaguely the roar of the traffic; she was
looking vaguely straight ahead at her future, and listening to its call.
This was then the end of her ambitions? Well, after all, did it matter
so much to her? There were other joys in life, and while she retained
her beauty, she need not want for luxury and ease. The future called to
her and her vicious blood soon answered almost gladly, almost eagerly;
she had sipped already at the cup of unruly pleasures, she would drink
deep of it now. The thought of reckless, unrestrained, unlicensed
enjoyment intoxicated her. As she passed a painted, over-dressed
Frenchwoman, she thanked God that she was not such as that one. Not such
to look at; but the very relics of decency in her seemed to drive her on
to acting like the lowest of them all. As for Maddison—she would write
and tell him she was tired of him. He would probably make a scene, but
that would not hurt her, and then she would be free.

She turned up a side street and went into a public-house to which Mrs.
Harding had once taken her late at night and which had then been crowded
with men and women. The saloon bar, with its pretentious decorations,
was empty and looked seedy and shabby by the light of day. She ordered a
liqueur of brandy and sipped it slowly, listening the while to a heated
controversy between two cabmen in the next compartment. As she went out
of the heavy swing doors, a man passed quickly by; he looked at her
surprised—she recognized Mortimer. She watched him as he walked on and
round the corner into Regent Street, and then followed in the same
direction, but did not catch sight of him again.

She was utterly at a loss what to do to while away the afternoon. Later
on she intended to dine and then go to a music-hall. Meanwhile, the
hours would hang heavy on her hands. The spirit she had drunk, too
strong and none too pure, filled her with spurious energy that a sharp
walk soon dispelled, leaving behind a feeling half of nausea, half of
faintness. She laughed as she remembered Mrs. Harding’s invariable
remedy on similar occasions, and went into another public-house, but
this time did not drink the brandy neat. A man was leaning over the bar
talking familiarly with the barmaid, and he turned to look inquisitively
at Marian. When she raised her glass to drink he did the same, looking
at her insolently, and followed her when she left the place.

“Well, my dear, where are you off to?” he asked, slipping his hand
through her arm. “If you’ve nothing better to do—and what could be
better?—take me to tea at your place. Here’s a hansom; let’s jump in.”

For a moment she hesitated. Then, with a laugh and look, stepped with
him into the cab.




                              CHAPTER XXV


THOUGH the days were lengthening out toward the spring, there were many
hours during each when the light was not clean and clear enough for
painting; these Maddison found unspeakably dreary. He was greatly
tempted often either to call Marian back to him or to run up to town to
see her, but he did not give way to the impulse, for he had determined
to test this plan of hers to the bitter end. He did not much believe
that she was right and that separation would enable him to do better
with his work. Rather to the opposite opinion he inclined, that constant
companionship would make them become one, all in all to each other, so
that no longer would her presence disturb him, but on the contrary would
inspire and spur him on to greater things than he had ever achieved
before.

The new picture, a view of the downs and the gray sea beyond, progressed
apace, but he was not satisfied with it. There was no defect in it that
he could name or which he felt he could amend, but there was something
lacking. The outward semblance was right; it was the inward spiritual
grace that was lacking. Probably no other than himself would notice it,
yet it hurt him. He felt as if some power had gone out of him, and that
he painted no longer with gusto or firm, imperative inspiration. His
skill had not deserted him, the coloring and the drawing satisfied his
exacting taste and his intimate knowledge of nature. But it was only the
outside of nature that he had caught and fixed; the heart of her was not
there, as it had been in the pictures that had brought him name and
fame. This was a dead thing—there was no life in it.

He could not understand why his love for Marian should have affected him
in this way or to so great an extent. Why should the absorption in her
of all his hopes in any degree depreciate his insight into and love of
nature? Surely a man might serve a woman and nature too? But though he
could not trace its working or even fix in what it lay, he knew that
some change had come over him, and that since he and Marian had been
together he was a different man. This love that he had fully counted on
to elevate and ennoble him, seemed to restrain him from reaching to that
which had before been easily within his grasp.

Perhaps, he sometimes thought, it was that he was not altogether free
from anxiety concerning her. To her this separation had not appeared to
be so miserable a thing as it was to him. She had suggested it, had
argued for it, had not admitted any of the drawbacks which he had seen
in it, and had absolutely refused to be shaken from her determination.
On the other hand, she might have felt it as deeply and as keenly as he
had done, while for his sake and to make it bearable for him, she had
just put on a brave face, smiling when tears would easily have come. If
this were so, how brave she had been and how cowardly he.

This thought had come to him one morning when he had found work
difficult, and was about to leave it for the day. It invigorated him; he
would not be outdone by her, or he would ever have to reproach himself
for not having faithfully abided by his word to work with all his might.
Work! Yes, not for himself, but for her. If that did not drive him on,
if that failed to inspire him, he was weak indeed.

Again and again, however, fears and doubts assailed him. He would wake
suddenly in the night, aroused by no apparent cause, and would start
thinking about her, wondering if she were well and happy. At first he
had written to her almost daily, until she had forbidden him to do so
any longer, urging that it was nearly, if not quite as harmful for him
to do this as to have her chattering and laughing by his side. Her
letters to him had grown more and more infrequent, shorter and shorter;
mere little messages now, that stimulated a hunger they did not do
anything to satisfy.

A curious change had come over his imaginings. In the early days after
her going away he had found no difficulty in conjuring up her face
before his mind’s eye. Gradually the image had grown vaguer and more
vague until at last, if he would think of her as she was, he had to look
at “The Rebel.” What memories the picture called back to him! The
meeting with her that foggy afternoon in Bond Street; years ago it
seemed, but in reality only a few brief months; the afternoon he had
first gone down to visit her at Kennington; the thought that he had then
that she was deliciously beautiful, and that he would love to have her
for his playmate; the birth of a better feeling, the growth of his deep
love for her; the finding her alone and lonely in that stuffy Bloomsbury
hotel; the long days and nights of delight that they had passed together
since. Again and again he reproached himself for little attentions that
he had failed to pay her, and for the few bitter words that he had
spoken to her once in a moment of irritation. He was so utterly unworthy
of her that in good truth he should have done for her all the little
that was in his power. He had kept her apart from his friends selfishly,
with the result that she must be very lonely now. He had written to
Mortimer asking him to do anything he could to relieve the monotony of
her existence. What a dear woman she was, he thought over and over
again, to put up with all the troubles and worries he had brought upon
her—all for love of him.

So whenever any slightest shadow of doubt of her entered his mind, he
gave it no resting-place there, but chased it away as an insult and a
deep wrong to the woman who had intrusted her life’s happiness to his
poor keeping.

As the picture drew near completion he worked every minute that the sun
gave to him, for when it was finished he would be free to go to her. It
was his letter telling her that but a few more days, a week at most,
kept them apart, which she had tossed aside unopened and had afterward
thrown upon the fire unread.

He had been painting patiently all one morning, almost angrily sometimes
because he could not exactly translate his thought to the canvas, when
he was surprised by a knock at the door of the cottage. Mrs. Witchout
had not yet returned from her morning’s marketing, so he went to the
door himself, expecting to find some casual visitor from Brighton who
had heard of his being down here. He was astonished to see Mortimer.

“My dear Fred, is it you or your ghost?”

“I don’t suppose any ghost ever had such a thirst on him as I have; show
me the way to the pump; I could drink buckets even of water.”

“Oh, we’re not so primitive as that—but, rot! you’ve been here before.
Come along, there’s whisky and a siphon in the locker here. Drink, smoke
and chat while I paint, only don’t mind if I don’t hear a word you say.
I’m at a ticklish point. How are you and what brings you down? Spread
your answer out as long as you can, so that I needn’t say anything for
at least five minutes.”

“I’m well. Came down because there was a rush of work in the office and
I was afraid I might be in the way,” Mortimer answered, with a chuckle.

He then lighted a cigarette, sat down on the window seat and looked
aimlessly out over the broad down. The sun was shining brightly, a lark
was singing somewhere high up in the blue, through the open window
drifted the keen, fresh air, full of the salt fragrance of the sea; the
world looked young down here to the eye of the Londoner. Then,
stealthily, he watched Maddison. At first he saw no change in him: he
appeared well and hearty; but later he noticed a tired, nervous look
about the eyes, and that every now and then he bit his lip as if
impatient at some difficulty he could not immediately overcome. He had
often before watched him at work and had always wondered at the vigorous
joy Maddison found in his labor.

“May I look?” he asked.

“Yes, I don’t mind your looking; you don’t imagine you really know
anything about pictures and so you don’t chatter bosh and think it
criticism.”

Mortimer stood in front of the easel, looking keenly at the picture—a
great stretch of the downs and the gray sea beyond, overhead a splendid
tumult of rain cloud.

“Well, say something, however idiotic!” exclaimed Maddison, after
impatiently waiting for Mortimer to speak.

“My dear boy, what’s up? Have I interrupted you at an awkward moment?
Why didn’t you tell me?” said Mortimer, turning quickly, surprised at
the tone in which Maddison had spoken.

“No, no, of course not.”

“It’s the first time I’ve heard you speak as if you were put out about
something. Nothing’s wrong?”

“No, no!” Maddison answered, laying his hand heartily on Mortimer’s
shoulder, “not a bit. But—what do you think of it?”

“And this is the first time you’ve ever _asked_ my humble opinion. I
like it.”

“That sounds rather dubious. Speak out—you mean you don’t like it.”

Mortimer looked again at the picture hesitatingly.

“You _don’t_ like it,” said Maddison again.

“Yes, I like it. But there’s something wanting; it doesn’t seem to me
quite you. It’s the only picture of yours I’ve ever seen that somebody
else might have painted.”

Maddison turned sharply away and strode over to the window.

“Oh, rot, old chap, you mustn’t mind what I say,” protested Mortimer.
“You hinted just now that what I don’t know about pictures would set up
half a dozen critics, and here you are getting the hump over my
nonsense.”

“It isn’t nonsense. You’ve seen straight off what I’ve been trying not
to see. You’re right, damnably right. It’s as dead as can be—not a
touch of life or light in it.”

He threw down his palette and brushes impatiently, crossed once again to
Mortimer and stood behind him, gazing gloomily over his shoulder.

“The critics will probably say I’ve eclipsed myself, all except Tasker,
who will say that, but mean total eclipse. But so long as it sells well,
what does it matter?”

“Look here, Maddison,” said Mortimer, sharply, “there _is_ something
wrong, or you couldn’t speak like that. This hermitizing down here don’t
suit you. Lock up the shop for to-day at any rate, and come into
Brighton for a blow off. Now, I know you’re going to say ‘no,’ but I say
‘yes,’ and if you’ll give me a shake-down I’ll bring my traps over to
stay the night here.”

Maddison hesitated a moment, then consented.

They drove back after dinner at the Metropole, where Mortimer had
intended to stop. The night was bitterly cold, and the huge fire which
Mrs. Witchout had made up in the studio was grateful.

“Now, I want to have a real yarn with you, George,” Mortimer said, as he
stretched his cold hands toward the warmth. “I told you a tarradiddle
this morning—I came down simply because I’ve something I want to talk
to you about.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Marian, is there?” Maddison asked, leaning
forward eagerly and speaking anxiously. “It’s not _that_?”

“She was quite well when I last saw her.”

Maddison sighed with relief and sat back again in his chair, puffing
steadily at his pipe.

“But tell me first,” Mortimer continued after a pause, “what’s wrong
with you? I know there is something; I saw it in your face this morning,
and though you’ve been as jolly as jolly all day, you’ve not been quite
your real self. What is it?”

“So I look different, and seem different, and my picture’s not mine.
There’s nothing wrong, Fred, nothing that I can lay a name to, but
you’re right. I’m changed. It’s this beastly separation from Marian that
doesn’t agree with me. I’ll come up to town with you to-morrow and fetch
her down here, or settle into the old place again.”

“You’re very fond of her,” Mortimer said meditatively, staring at the
blazing coals. “I was in love once, and I know what it means, old chap.”

“I never knew that——?”

“You’re the only one beside myself that does. She wasn’t for me. I’ve
told you this because I’ve something—very difficult to tell you, and I
want you to understand that—I understand.”

“It _is_ something wrong with Marian then?” Maddison exclaimed, starting
to his feet.

“Sit down, George, sit down. I’ll walk about in the dark while I tell
you; that’s why I asked you not to light the lamps. Sit down, and hold
on tight, grit your teeth, George; I’m going to hurt you.”

Mortimer paced slowly up and down, while Maddison sat down again, awed
into obedience.

“I’m going to hurt you, George; I needn’t tell you that I’d give a lot
not to have to do it. But you’d better hear it from me than find it out
for yourself.”

“Quick, quick, don’t beat about the bush. What is it?”

“It _is_ about Mrs. Squire. I knew it was no good talking to you until I
had facts to tell you. She’s—she’s—my God, it’s hard to tell
you!—she’s utterly worthless. She’s——”

“Don’t say another word, or I’ll kill you, on my soul I will!” Maddison
shrieked, leaping up, his eyes blazing with anger, his hands clenched.

“I must, I _must_,” said Mortimer, standing quietly before him, “and you
must hear me. It’s not suspicions, it’s facts. More than one man has
been with her while you’ve been down here. I suspected it; I had her
watched and there’s no room for doubt. I think you know
Geraldstein—he’s been with her; another man was with her only the other
night. I saw her myself come out of a disreputable public-house with a
man and drive off with him. It was sheer accident I saw her; I didn’t
follow—I knew enough already. I’m putting it brutally: there’s no good
mincing matters. If she was merely your mistress I wouldn’t have
worried, but——”

Maddison turned away, leaning against the mantelshelf, his face buried
in his arms; Mortimer went up to him.

“George, old man——”

“Don’t—don’t touch me! Leave me alone for a bit.”

Mortimer sat down. Not a sound broke the silence except the loud ticking
of the clock. It seemed to him hours and hours, though it was barely
more than a minute, before Maddison spoke.

“What a fool I am, and what a beast,” he said, turning fiercely, “to
believe a word of what you’ve said. It’s all some mad mistake. It can’t
be true.”

“Do you think I’d have told you if I weren’t absolutely certain?”

“You don’t know her as I do. She couldn’t. She loves me. Now look here,
I won’t hear another word, and to-morrow I’ll go to her. I’ll never
leave her again, open to such filthy suspicions. You know your room.
I’ll stop here. Good night.”

“Here are the reports from the agent,” said Mortimer, ignoring
Maddison’s anger and holding out a bundle of papers. Maddison snatched
them from him and flung them into the fire.

“Do you want me to murder you? Can’t you leave me? For God’s sake, leave
me.”

Mortimer realized that it would not avail anything to press matters at
that moment, so without another word he went out of the room.




                              CHAPTER XXVI


THE instant the door had shut behind Mortimer, Maddison plucked the
scorching papers from the fire; they had by sheer chance fallen on a
mass of black coals out of reach of the flames. They were hot and
crackled in his fingers as he opened them. Then he sat down, and leaning
forward read them by the dancing firelight. They contained a cold,
bloodless account of all that Mrs. Harding knew of Marian, and by their
very lifelessness carried conviction. It was not without a struggle,
however, that he allowed himself to believe the accusations brought
against her; for long his heart refused to be subservient to his reason.

He sat motionless and intent; the fire waned and the room grew darker
and darker until at length there was only the glow of dying embers left
in the grate; the papers had fallen to the floor unheeded; his hands lay
limp and his head hung heavily. His eyes stared blankly; he saw nothing,
felt nothing, was numb, crushed, stricken.

The striking of the clock roused him. There were hours still before the
starting of the first train for London. Should he go there? To what end?
He knew that what he had been told was true. What was the use of seeing
her? She would only laugh at him. It was nothing to her; it was the
shattering of life to him. God! How greatly he had loved her, did love
her still. How he had trusted her, believing that she greatly loved him.
How easily she had played with him; all this pretense of separation for
his welfare, the reality being that she wished to be free to follow her
lusts. Could such a woman be such a mere beast? Why, yes, it was only an
old tale retold; no new thing in it; the devouring woman, the hoodwinked
man. There was nothing to be done. No hope, no hope.

Once again her face came vividly before him: its splendid oval, the deep
eyes, the glory of her hair, the half-parted lips, with a little smile
hovering round them—how lovely he had often seen her, and yet she was a
mere beast, who had sold herself to him and was selling herself to
others.

But nothing that she had done or would do could kill his love for her. A
dry, choking sob broke from him; he staggered, drunk with misery, across
the room, pulled aside the curtains and looked out on the cold, moonlit
night. Was there nothing to be done? No smallest ray of hope? No hope,
no hope.

He lit a lamp and set it on a table before the easel on which stood “The
Rebel.” Yes, there she sat, as she had been when first the desire came
to him to have her for his own. His own! His shout of laughter filled
the room. His! Any man’s who cared to pay her price. Just a mere beast,
no more. And yet, there she sat, the beautiful rebel who had caught him
body and soul. He picked a dagger off the wall and slashed the canvas to
tatters; that lie at least was dead. He looked at the white blade as if
there ought to be blood upon it.

He had killed that lie; it was agony as if he had killed part of
himself. But life was the agony now for him. She had taken from him
everything that made the world worth having; killed his art, killed his
love. There was no hope, no hope.

He looked again at the white blade as if there ought to be blood upon
it.


                 *        *        *        *        *

Mortimer woke early, roused by Mrs. Witchout knocking at the house door.
Wrapping himself in his dressing gown he went down and let her in,
briefly answering her exclamations of surprise at seeing him there.

He wondered why Maddison had not heard her. He listened at the studio
door, there was no sound within. He knocked—there was no reply.

The dead do not answer the living.

Before the easel on which stood the tattered remnants of “The Rebel”
Maddison lay dead.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber's note:

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.