Kitabı oku: «The Angel of Pain», sayfa 7
“That is entirely for you to settle,” he said. “If you want to sleep I can make you; if you don’t, I shall go to sleep myself. I shall do that in any case,” he added.
Evelyn was already overwrought with the events of the day, and he spoke petulantly.
“Oh, make me sleep, then!” he said. “There is to-morrow coming. I can do nothing to-night, so let’s get it over.”
“Lie down, then,” said the Hermit, “and look at me, look at my eyes, I mean.”
He sat down on the edge of Evelyn’s bed, and spoke low and slow.
“The wind is asleep,” he said, “it sleeps among the trees of the forest, for the time of sleep has come, and everything sleeps, your love sleeps too. Lie still;” he said, as Evelyn moved, “the trees of the forest sleep; and their leaves sleep, and high in the branches the birds sleep. Everything sleeps, the tired even and the weary sleep, and those who are strong sleep, and those who are weak.”
Evelyn’s eyelids quivered, shut a moment, then half-opened again.
“The flowers sleep,” said Merivale, “and the eyelids of their petals are closed, as your eyelids are closing. Sleep, the black soft wing, has shut over them, as the wings of birds shut over their heads. The earth sleeps, the very stones of her sleep; she will not stir till morning, or if she stirs it will be but to sleep again. The sad and the happy sleep, the very sea sleeps and is hushed, and the tides of the sea are asleep. Sleep, too,” he said, slightly raising his voice, “sleep till they wake – sleep till I wake you.”
He waited a moment, but Evelyn’s eyelids did not even quiver again. Then he blew out the light and left the room.
Merivale stepped softly down the stairs, and went out on to the verandah, where they had dined a few hours before. At the touch of the soft night-air all the trouble that during this evening had been his was evaporated and vanished. The sum of his consciousness was contained in the bracket, that he was alive, and that he was part of life. It was like stepping into an ocean that received him and bore him on its surface, or took him to its depths; which mattered not at all – the thing embraced and encompassed him. He went back again to it from the fretful trivialities that had arrested him as the midge on his wrist could for the moment arrest him, trivially and momentarily causing him some infinitesimal annoyance. But that was over; the huge sky was above him, the world was asleep, and was his possession. It – the material part of it – was but a dream, the spirit of it all suffused him. There was life everywhere, life in its myriad forms, its myriad beauties. The sleepy voice of the river was part of him, the moon was he, the utmost twinkle of a star was he also. Yet no less the smallest blade of grass was he; there was no atom of the universe with which he did not claim identity.
Yes, there was one, the fretting of the human spirit, whereas his own did not fret. What he could interpret existence into was to him satisfying. For himself he longed and wished for nothing, except to hold himself open, as he indeed held himself, for the moods of Nature to play upon. Yet in that bedroom upstairs he had left one, asleep indeed by the mere exercise of a stronger will on his, who would to-morrow awake and combat and perhaps succumb to forces that were stronger than he. For himself, he combatted with no force; he but yielded in welcome to what to him was irresistible. But Evelyn, who slept now, would awake to try his strength against another. Which was right?
SEVENTH
GLADYS ELLINGTON, as has been remarked, was not in the least ill-natured, and never even hinted ill-natured things against anybody unless she was certain to be undiscovered. So, as all the world knew, since she was not “quite devoted,” a phrase of her’s, to her mother-in-law, the merest elements of wisdom demanded of her that she should be unreserved in her commendation of Madge’s engagement. Unreserved, in consequence, she was, even to her own husband. He also was quite unreserved, but his unreserve was whiskered and red-faced like himself, and bore not the slightest resemblance to his wife’s voluble raptures.
“Seems to me,” he said, “that Madge has married him for his money. Don’t believe she loves him. Cold-blooded fish like that. Don’t tell me. Hate a girl marrying for money. American and so on. Good love match, like you and me, Gladys. I hadn’t a sou, you hadn’t a penny. Same sort of thing, eh?”
Lord Ellington usually ended his sentences with “Eh?” If he did not end them with “Eh?” he ended them with “What?” The effect in either case was the same, for, like Pilate, he did not wait for an answer. “Eh” or “what,” in fact, meant that he had not finished; if he had finished, he ended up his period with “Don’t tell me.” As a consequence, perhaps, nobody told him anything. All worked together for good here, because he would not have understood it if they had. He was fond of his wife, and slightly fonder of his dinner. Why she had married him was a mystery; but there are so many mysteries of this kind that it is best to leave them alone.
Gladys, on this occasion (a speech which had given rise to his, in so far as any speech or connected thought would account for what Lord Ellington would say next), had merely remarked that the engagement was very, very nice.
“You seem to object to him,” she said, “because he is rich. That is very feeble. I never knew riches to be a bar to anything except the kingdom of heaven, with which you, Ellington, are not immediately concerned. But you are much more immediately concerned with South African mines. Now, he is dining here to-night, and so is Madge. If you can’t get something out of him between the time we leave the room and you join us, I really shall despair of you.”
A heavy, jocular look came into Lord Ellington’s face.
“You don’t despair of me yet, Gladys?” he said.
“No, not quite. Very nearly, but not quite. Oh, Ellington, do wake up for once to-night! Philip Home moves a finger in that dreadful office of his in the City, somewhere E.C., and you and I are beggars, even worse than now, or comparatively opulent. Ask him which finger he moves. If only I were you, I could do it in two minutes. So I’ll allow you ten. Not more than that, because we’ve got the Reeves’ box at the opera, and Melba is singing.”
“Lot of squawking,” said he. “Why not sit at home? Who wants to hear squawking? All in Italian too. Don’t understand a word, nor do you. And you don’t know one note from another, nor do I. Don’t tell me.”
Gladys required all her tact, which is the polite word for evasion, sometimes, in getting her way with her husband, and all her diplomacy, which is the polite word for lying. If he got a notion into his head it required something like the Lisbon earthquake to get it out; if, on the other hand, a thing commoner with him, he had not a notion in his head, it required a flash of lightning, followed by the steady application of a steam-hammer to get it in. Also in talking to him it was almost as difficult to concentrate one’s own attention as it was to command his, for the fact that he was being talked to produced in him, unless he was dining, an irresistible tendency to make a quarter-deck of the room he was in, up and down which he shuffled. When this became intolerable, Gladys told him not to quarter-deck, but this she only did as a last resort, because he attended rather more when he was quarter-decking than when not.
“Never mind about the opera then,” she said, “you needn’t go unless you like. But what is important is that since Madge is going to marry Philip Home, we should reap all the advantages we can. Perhaps there is only one, apart from having another very comfortable house to stay in, but that is a big one. He can make some money for us.”
This was only the second time she had mentioned this, and in consequence she was rather agreeably surprised to find that her husband grasped it. He even appeared to think about it, and suggested an amendment, though the process required, it seemed to Gladys, miles of quarter-decking.
“Eh, what?” he said. “Something South African? Put in twopence and get out fourpence, with a dividend in the interim? By Gad, yes! But you’d better get it out of him, Gladys, not I. Lovely woman, you know; a man tells everything to lovely woman. Don’t tell me.”
This had never occurred to Gladys, and she always respected anyone to whom things occurred before they occurred to her.
“How very simple,” she said, “and much better than my suggestion. I suppose it was so simple that it never occurred to me.”
Ellington chuckled, and as the conversation was over, sat down again to read the evening paper, which had just come in. He read the morning paper all the morning, and talked of it at lunch, and the evening paper all evening, and talked of it at dinner; these two supplied him with his mental daily bread. All the same, he never seemed well-informed even about current events; he managed somehow to miss the point of all the news he read, and could never distinguish between Kuroki and Kuropatkin.
Three days had passed since Madge had had her last sitting for her portrait, and those three days had passed for her in a sort of dream of disquietude which was not wholly pain. She had not seen Evelyn since, and scarcely Philip, for he had been harder worked than usual, and last night, when he was to have dined with them, had sent word that he could not possibly get there in time. They were to go to the theatre afterwards, and he said he would join them there. She had upbraided him laughingly for his desertion of them, telling him that he put the pleasure of business higher than the pleasure of her society. For retort he had the fact that when he was not at work he was never anywhere else but in her society, whereas two days ago, when he was free one morning, she refused to ride with him because she was to give a sitting to Evelyn. But the moment he had said this he was sorry for it, for Madge had flushed, and turned from him, biting her lip. But though he was sorry for the undesigned pain he had apparently given her, his heart could not but sing to him. She could not bear such a word from him even in jest.
But this had not been the cause of Madge’s disquietude; Philip’s remark indeed had, so far as it alone was concerned, gone in at one ear but to come out at the other. In its passage through it had touched something that made her wince with sudden pain. But the pain passed, and a warmth, a glow of some secret kind, remained. Disquieting it was, but not painful, except that at intervals a sort of pity and remorse would stab her, and at other times her heart, like Philip’s, could not but sing to her for the splendour of love which was beginning to dawn. She could not help that dawn coming, and she could not help glorying in its light.
Of what should be the practical issue she did not at once think. It was but three weeks ago that she had promised to marry Philip, and then her honesty had made her tell him that she gave him liking, esteem, affection, all that she was conscious that it was in her power to give. And now, when she knew that she was possessed of more than these, and that the new possession was not hers to give him, a long day of indecision, this day on which in the evening they were to dine together with Gladys Ellington, had been hers. But gradually, slowly, with painful gropings after light, she had made up her mind.
She had no choice – her choice was already made, and all duty, all obedience, all honour, called her to fulfil the promise she had made, to fulfil it, too, in no niggardly lip-service sense of the word, but to fulfil it loyally. She must turn her back to the dawn which had come too late, she must never look there, she must for ever avert her eyes from it. Above all, she must do all that lay in her power to prevent that brightness growing. She must, in fact, not see Evelyn again of her own free will.
Then the difficulties, each to be met and overcome, began to swarm thick about her. First and foremost there was the portrait, for which she was engaged to give him a sitting to-morrow. That, at any rate, as far as this particular sitting was concerned, was easily managed, a note of three lines expressing regret did that. This, however, was only a temporary measure, it but put off for this one occasion the necessity of meeting what lay before her. For she knew she must not sit to him again; she dared not risk that, she must not give this strange new rapture in her heart the food that would make it grow. Yet, again, she must not act like a mad-woman, and what reasonable cause could she give for so strange a freak? Perhaps if she went there with Philip, or if she took her mother with her.
Yet that did not dispose of the question. Evelyn was one of her future husband’s warmest friends. In the ordinary course of things they must often meet, but till she had conquered herself, made sure of herself, such meetings were impossible. And how could she ever be sure of herself, to whom had come this utterly unlooked for thing, a thing so unlooked for that only a few weeks before she had consented to its being dismissed as a practical impossibility?
Then came a thought which, for the very shame of it, was bracing. Not by word or look or sign had Evelyn ever showed that he regarded her with the faintest feeling that answered hers. She remembered well the rise of the full moon on the terrace of Philip’s house above Pangbourne, how he had called attention to it, merely to point out that it was not in drawing, how she herself on that occasion had noticed how different he was to the ordinary moonlight-walker. No hint of sentiment, no sign of the vaguest desire towards the most harmless flirtation had appeared in him then, nor had any appeared since. While she was sitting to him, half the time he scowled at her, the other half he bubbled with boyish nonsense. For very shame she must turn her back on the dawn.
Dinner was to be early to-night, as the objective was Melba and the opera, and her maid came in to tell her that dressing-time was already overstepped. She got up, but paused for a moment at the window, looking out from Buckingham Gate over the blue haze that overhung St. James’ Park, driving her resolution home. She half-pitied, half-spurned herself, telling herself at one moment that it was hard that she had to suffer thus, at another that she was despicable for thinking of suffering when her road was so clearly marked for her. If what had happened was not her fault, still less should there be any fault of hers in what should happen. Clearly the future was in her own control; of the future she could make what she would.
Her mother was not coming with her to-night; indeed, she seldom wasted the golden evening hours at the opera, when there was a rubber of bridge so certainly at her command, and Madge went into the drawing-room to wish her good-night before she set off. Prosperity – and the last three weeks seemed to Lady Ellington to be most prosperous – had always a softening effect on her, and she was particularly gracious to her daughter, since Madge was responsible for so large a part of these auspicious events.
“So you’re just off, dear,” she said. “Dear me, you are rather late, and I mustn’t keep you. But give my love to Philip, and let him see you home, and if I am in – you can ask them at the door – bring him in for a few minutes. And don’t forget your sitting with Mr. Dundas to-morrow.”
“Ah, I have put that off,” said Madge, “I am rather busy!”
“A pity, surely.”
“Well, I have sent the note, I am afraid. Good-night, mother, in case I am in first.”
Philip had already arrived when she got to her cousin’s house, and they went down to dinner. Lord Ellington had got the news of the evening feverishly mixed up in his head, and was disposed to mingle fragments of Stock Exchange with it, forgetful, apparently, that this had been relegated to his wife. But his natural incoherence redeemed the situation, and when dinner was over it was already time to start for the opera. While Gladys got her cloak, however, the two lovers had a few private minutes, as the master of the house remained in the dining-room when they went out. Philip had sent her that day a diamond pendant which she was wearing now.
“It is too good of you, Philip,” she said, “and I can’t tell you how I value it. It is most beautiful. But why should you always be sending me things?”
Philip was usually serious, and always sincere.
“Because I can’t help it,” he said. “I must give you signs of what I feel, and even these clumsy, material signs are something.”
That sincerity touched the girl.
“I know what you feel,” she said. “I want to have it never absent from my mind. I want to think of nothing else but that.”
This was sincere too, the outcome of this long day of thought. But Philip came a little closer to her, and his voice vibrated as he spoke.
“That contents me utterly,” he said – “that and the gift of yourself that you made me.”
She gave a long sigh.
“Oh, Philip!” she began. But the voice of Gladys called to her from the passage outside the drawing-room.
“Come, Madge. Come, Mr. Home,” she cried. “We are already so late, and I can’t bear to miss a note of Bohême.”
Apparently to be present in the opera-house when Bohême was going on was sufficient for Gladys, and constituted not missing a note, for she spent that small portion of the first act which still remained to be performed after their arrival in an absorbed examination of the occupants of the other boxes, and whispered communications as to the result of her investigations to Madge. The fall of the curtain had the effect of rendering these more audible.
“Yes, absolutely everybody is here; so good of you, dear Mr. Home, to ask us to-night. Of course, it is the last night Melba sings, is it not? How wonderful, is she not? That long last note quite thrilled me. So sad, too, the last act, it always makes me cry! Oh! there is Madame Odintseff, dearest Madge, did you ever see such ropes of pearls – cables you might call them. Who is that she is talking to? I know her face quite well. That’s her daughter, yes, the sandy-coloured thing, rather like a rabbit. They say she’s engaged to Lord Hitchin, but I don’t believe it. Dear Madge, is it not brilliant? You look so well, dear, to-night. If only Mr. Dundas could paint you as you are looking now! By the way, how is the portrait getting on?”
Philip also had risen when the act ended, and was looking out over the house. Here he joined in.
“Evelyn was absolutely jubilant when I saw him a few days ago,” he said. “And though he is usually jubilant over the last thing, I saw he thought there was something extra-special about this. By-the-way, Madge, you are sitting to him to-morrow afternoon, are you not? I shall try to look in; my spate of work is over, I hope.”
“Oh! I’m afraid I have had to put it off,” said she. “I couldn’t manage it to-morrow.”
She fingered her fan nervously for a moment.
“In fact, Philip,” she said, “I am so dreadfully full of engagements for the next week or two that I don’t see how I can squeeze in another sitting. I am so ashamed of myself, but I can’t help it. I wish you would go down to Mr. Dundas’ studio to-morrow and tell him so.”
Philip looked at her a moment in blank surprise.
“Ah, but you can’t do that,” he said; “a painter isn’t like a tailor to whom you say, ‘I am not coming to try on; send it home as it is.’”
Madge lost her head a little; the burden of the hours of this day pressed heavily on her.
“Ah! but that is what I want him to do,” she cried. “It is a wonderful portrait; he said so himself. There is a little background that must be put in, but I needn’t be there for that.”
Gladys Ellington had turned her attention again to the house, and, with her opera-glasses glued to her eyes, was spying and observing in all directions. Philip cast one glance at her, and rightly considered himself alone with Madge, for the other was blind and deaf to them.
“Madge, is anything wrong?” he asked gently.
“No, nothing is wrong,” she said, recovering herself a little. “But I ask you to do as I say. I can’t bear sitting for that portrait any more, and Mr. Dundas – he bores me.”
That got said, also she managed to smile at him naturally.
“That is all, dear Philip,” she added. “Pray don’t let us talk of it any more.”
“And you wish me to tell Evelyn what you say?” he asked.
“Yes, anything, anything,” she said. “I don’t want to sit to him again. But make it natural, if you can. Look at the portrait; tell him you don’t want it touched any more. Believe me, that is best.”
She paused a moment.
“I am excited and rather overwrought to-night somehow,” she said, “and you mustn’t indeed think that there is anything the matter. Indeed, there is nothing. Tell me you believe that?”
“Why, dear, of course, if you tell me so,” he said.
“I do tell you so.”
As has been mentioned before, there were two Philips; one known only to the four people who knew him best, the other the Philip who showed a sterner and harder face to the world. And though, since he was with Madge, the Philip of the inner sanctum, where only the intimates were admitted, was in possession, yet the door of the sanctum, as it were, opened for a moment, and the other Philip, quick as a lizard, glanced in. His appearance was of the most momentary duration, but he did look in.
She laid her hand on his arm as she said these last words, then left the back of the box, where they had been standing, and took a chair next Lady Ellington.
“How full it is!” she said. “Look at the stalls too; they are like an ant-heap, covered with brilliant, crawling ants. How hard it is to recognise people if one is above them. I’m sure there are a hundred people I know, but the tops of heads are like nothing except the tops of heads. How many bald heads too! What a blessing we don’t go bald like men. Who is that walking up the gangway now? I’m sure I know him. Ah! it’s Mr. Dundas.”
The sudden stream of her talk stopped, as if a tap had been turned on. Her eyes left the stalls and gazed vacantly over the boxes opposite. She was conscious of wondering what would happen next – whether she would speak, or her companion, or whether Philip would say something. Then it seemed to her nobody would say anything any more; there was to be this dreadful silence for ever. That possibility, at any rate, was soon averted, for Gladys signalled violently to Evelyn, and spoke.
“Yes, he sees us,” she said. “Mr. Home, do put the door of the box open, it is so stuffy. And Mr. Dundas I am sure is coming up. He’s such a darling, isn’t he?”
The greater part of her speech was justified by realities. Evelyn had seen them; the heat was undeniable; also, in answer to the violent signalling he had received, mere politeness, to say nothing of inclination, would have made him come. But he had seen too who sat in profile by Lady Ellington, and he took two and three steps in the stride as he mounted the staircases. And before Madge had time to put into execution her very unwise idea of asking Philip not to let him in, he was at the door of the box.
“You lordly box-holder,” he said to him, “just let me in. How are you, Lady Ellington? Yes, I’m just back from the Hermitage, to-night only, from three days in the forest with Merivale. How are you, Miss Ellington? I had to come up to-night, or I shouldn’t have been able to keep the appointment to-morrow.”
A sense of utter helplessness seized Madge; she could not even respond by a word to his greeting, for his presence merely was the only thing that mattered, the only thing she loved and dreaded. And he continued:
“Half-past two, isn’t it?” he said. “I could have come up to-morrow, of course, but it was necessary for me to have a morning’s work at the background before I troubled you again.”
Then Gladys broke in.
“Too wonderful, isn’t it?” she said, “the portrait, I mean. But, Mr. Dundas, who is that just opposite with rubies? I’m sure you’ve painted her. That great pink thing there, who must have come from the west coast of Asia Minor. How naughty of me!”
But Evelyn apparently condoned the naughtiness; he mentioned the name of the great pink thing, and turned to Madge again.
“But by half-past two I shall be ready,” he said. “Please, if it is not an impossible request, please be punctual. Art takes so long, you know. Not that life is short. Nobody ever died too soon.”
She turned to him, the diamond pendant that Philip had sent her that day glittering on the smooth whiteness of her bosom.
“I am so sorry,” she said, “and I know I ought to have let you know before, Mr. Dundas. But I can’t come to-morrow. I wrote you this evening only, I did not know you were out of town, explaining – at least saying – I could not come.”
Philip – the real, intimate Philip – heard this. And it was he only, the lover of this girl, who spoke in reply.
“We have settled that I shall come instead,” he said. “So your time won’t be wasted, Evelyn. You have to paint me too, you know, and if you want it to be characteristic, make a study of a telephone and a tape-machine. Half-past two, I think you said.”
There came a sudden hush over the crowded house as the lights went down. Philip laid his hand on Evelyn’s shoulder, as he sat in the front of the box between the two ladies.
“Half-past two, then, to-morrow,” he repeated.
The hint was plain enough, and Evelyn took it, and stumbled his way out of the box to regain his seat in the stalls. What had happened, what this all meant, he did not and could not know; he knew only what he was left with, namely, that Madge for some reason would not sit to him to-morrow. In his eager way he searched for a hundred motives, yet none satisfied him, and he was forced to fall back on the obvious and simple one, that she was busy. Nothing in the world could be more likely, his whole practical self assured him of that; but he felt somehow as if someone had leaned out of the window when he called at a house and had shouted stentoriously to the servant who opened the door, “I am not at home.” He was bound to accept a thing which he did not believe.
Then he questioned himself as to whether the fault was his. Yet that was scarcely possible, for it was not till after he had last seen her that the knowledge of his love for her had dawned on him. It was impossible that he could have made that betrayal of himself, for until she had gone he had not known that there was anything to betray. He and she had always been on terms of the frankest comradeship, yet to-night her manner had somehow been subtly yet essentially different. All the good comradeship had gone from it, the indefinable feeling of “being friends” was no longer there. Was it that the “being friends” was no longer sufficient for him, and did the change really lie in himself? He felt sure it did not; Madge was different.
Evelyn was not of an analytical mind; his inferences were based usually on instinct rather than reason, and reason was powerless to help him here and his instinct drew no inference whatever. However, Philip was coming to take her hour to-morrow, and he would try to find out something about this. Indeed, perhaps there was nothing to find, for he knew that now and for ever his own view of Madge would be coloured by the super-sensitiveness of love. Then a suspicion altogether unworthy crossed his mind. Was it possible that Philip had… But, to do him justice, he instantly dismissed it.
Gladys, like the stag at eve, had drunk her fill of the occupants of the boxes, and turned her attention to the stage during the second act. Her mind was rather like a sparrow, it hopped about with such extraordinary briskness, and apparently found something to pick up everywhere. The things it picked up, it is true, were of no particular consequence, but they were things of a sort, and at the end of the act she announced them.
“Opera is really the best way of carrying on life,” she said. “You always sing, and at any crisis you sing a tune – a real tune. And if the crisis is really frightful, you make it the end of the act, pull the curtain down, and have some slight refreshment in privacy, and put on another frock. Mr. Home, is that Mrs. Israels there – that woman bound in green? How nice to have a husband who is a magnate of South African affairs! You can even afford to be bound in green; it doesn’t matter how you look if you are rich enough.”
Philip looked where she pointed; it certainly was Mrs. Israels.
“Yes, that is she,” he said; “but I had no idea they were as rich as her appearance indicates.”
Lady Ellington gave a little gasp of horror.
“Good gracious, I forgot you were a magnate too!” she cried. “How rude of me! But, really, you are so unlike Mrs. Israels.”
Then she sank her voice to a confidential whisper.
“Dear Mr. Home,” she said, with all the brilliance of unpremeditated invention, “do talk shop with me for one minute. Ellington told me he had got a little sum of money – you know the sort of thing, not big enough to be of any real use – ah, you mustn’t tell him I asked you. He would be furious, quite furious. Yes, and if you could just casually mention some investment which might eventually cause it to be of some use – ”
Philip – she could not see him, as he was sitting behind her, with his arm on the back of her chair – could not help frowning. He was delighted to be of any use to his friends, but sometimes, as now, his help was asked in a sideways, hole-and-corner manner. Why shouldn’t her husband know? He did not like intrigue at any time; purposeless intrigue was even more tiresome. But he expunged the frown from his voice anyhow when he answered:
“Yes, I can certainly recommend you an investment or two,” he said, “but I can promise you no certainty. I can only say that I hold a stake in them myself. I suppose, as you have this – this sum of money, you will take up your shares – pay for them, I mean!”
She gave a little laugh of surprise.
“You are too delicious!” she said. “You mean we can buy them without paying for them, like a bill?”
