There are occasions when thought is terribly and comprehensively
sudden: the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and
syllogism, so slow and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an
occult vision, immediate and complete, into the obscure manner of
life, and crowd an infinity of discovery into a very few seconds. It
was so with Philip Rainham now. Lightmark had scarcely closed the
door, against which he now stood in a black silence, with the air of
a man turned to stone; Rainham's eyes had only fallen once upon the
two figures on the sofa--Eve crushed in a corner, a sorrowful,
dainty shape in the silk and lace of her pretty tea-gown, with the
white drawn face of a scared child; Kitty Crichton, in her cloak and
hat, bending forward a little, the hectic flush of strong excitement
colouring her checks, that were already branded by her malady--when
he underwent a moral revolution. He had no more to learn. He glanced
at Lightmark curiously, almost impartially, his loathing strangely
tempered by a sort of self-contempt, that he should have been so
deluded. The clumsy lies which this man had told him, and which he
in his indolent charity had believed! All at once, and finally, in a
flash of brutal illumination, he saw Lightmark, who had once been
his friend, as he really was, naked and unclean. It stripped him of
all his superficial qualities; the mask of genial good-nature, the
air of good-fellowship, under which his gross egoism lay concealed
that it might be more securely mischievous when it went loose. His
amiability was an imposture, a dangerous harlequinade; the man was
bad. It was a plausible scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a
handsome face and a few cheap talents--had he not been reduced to
stealing the picture of his friend?--whom these two women had loved,
to whom one of them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good
or bad, he was Eve's husband, and she was his wife, bound to him
until the end. And then, for the first time, seeing her there,
helpless and terrified, in her forlorn prettiness, he deceived
himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for the woman, his
angry pity for her misery that was coming, in no false terms. Such
self-deception, honest as it had been, was no longer possible. He
knew now that he loved her, and all that his love had been--the very
salt and savour of life to him, the one delicious and adorable pain
relieving the gray _ennui_ of the rest of it, to remain with him
always (even, as it seemed now, in the very article of death) as a
reminder of the intolerable sweetness which life, under other
conditions, might have contained. And inexplicably, in the midst of
his desolation, his heart sang a sort of fierce pæan: as a woman,
delivered of a man-child, goes triumphing to meet the sordidness of
death, so was there in Rainham's rapid acceptance of his fruitless
and ineffectual love a distinct sense of victory, in which pain
expired--victory over the meanness and triviality of modern life,
which could never seem quite mean and trivial again, since he had
proved it to be capable of such moments; had looked once--and could
so sing his "Nunc Dimittis"--upon the face of love. And it all
happened in a second, and in a further second--for his thought,
quickened by the emergency, still leapt forward with incredible
swiftness--a great audacity seized Philip Rainham, to save the
beloved woman pain. The devil would be at him later, would beset
him, harass him, madden him with hint and opportunity of profiting
by Lightmark's forfeiture. But the devil's turn was not yet; he was
filled only with his great and reverent love, his sublime pity for
the little tragical figure in front of him, whose house of painted
cards tumbled. Well! he might save it for her for a little
longer--at least, there was one desperate chance which he would try.
He had lived too long, unconsciously, in the habit of seeking her
happiness, that it should fail him now in her evil hour, in the
first flush of his new consciousness (ah, yes, there was beauty in
that, and victory!), for any base personal thought or animosity
against the man. He would have given her so easily his life; should
he grudge her his reputation? The reputation of a man with one foot
in the grave--what did it matter? And it all came about in a few
seconds.
Before any one of that strange company had found time to speak,
Rainham had grasped the situation, knew himself at last and the
others, and was prepared, scarcely counting the cost, with his
splendid lie. He made a step forward, then stopped suddenly, as if
he were bracing himself for a moral conflict. His face was very
white and rigid, his mouth set firmly; and the other three watched
him with a strange expectancy depicted on all their countenances,
amidst the various emotions proper to each of them; for he alone had
the air of being master of the situation. And his resolve had need
to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have
wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty,
distressed face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly
anguish, with some of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs
instinctively in its extremity to the person whom it knows best; and
she gave him her two little trembling hands, which he held for a
moment silently.
"Philip," she said, in a low, constrained voice--"Philip, I have
known you all my life--longer than anyone. You were always good to
me. Tell me whether it's true or not what this woman has told me.
Philip, I shall die if this be true!"
He bent his head for a moment. He had a wild longing to give up,
simply to clasp her in his arms and console her with kisses and
incoherent words of tenderness, as he had done years ago, when she
was a very small child, and ran to him with her tear-stained cheeks,
after a difficulty with her governess. But he only put her away from
him very quietly and sadly.
"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your
husband."
The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward
irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in
Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very
fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story,
learnt by rote.
"I tell you it is not true. Lightmark," he added sternly, "there has
been a mistake--you see that--for which I apologize. Wake up, for
God's sake! Come and see after your wife; some slander has upset
her. This woman is--mine; I will take her away."
The girl trembled violently; she appeared fascinated, terrified into
a passive obedience by Rainham's imperious eyes, which burnt in his
white face like the eyes of a dying man. She followed, half
unconsciously, his beckoning hand. But Eve confronted her before she
reached the door.
"Whom am I to believe?" she cried scornfully. "Why did you say it?
What was the good of it--a lie like that? It is a lie, I suppose?"
"Yes, yes!" said the girl hysterically, "it seems so. Oh, let me go,
madam! I'm sorry I told you. I'll trouble nobody much longer. Call
it a lie."
She threw out her hands helplessly; she would have fallen, but
Rainham caught her wrist, drew her toward him, supporting her with
an arm.
"Come," he said firmly, "this is no place for us."
Eve regarded them all strangely, vaguely, the terror gradually dying
out of her eyes--Lightmark expressionless and silent, as he had been
all through the interview; the woman trembling on Rainham's arm, who
stood beside her with his downcast eyes, the picture of conscious
guilt. A curious anguish too pale to be indignation plucked at her
heart-strings--anguish in which, unaccountably, the false charge
against her husband was scarcely considered; that had become
altogether remote and unreal, something barely historical, fading
already away in the dim shadows of the past. What hurt her, with a
dull pain which she could not analyse, was the sudden tarnishing of
a scarcely-admitted ideal by Rainham's deliberate confession, making
life appear for the moment intolerably sordid and mean. Would she
have owned to herself that, with an almost unconscious instinct, she
had judged these two men all along by a different standard? Hardly:
she loved her husband, and her marriage had not yet dissipated the
memory of those golden days of illusion preceding it, in which her
love had been of a finer kind. Only that time, in which it would
have been impossible for her to judge him, in which he could only do
right in her eyes, was gone. Occasions had arrived when they had
inevitably to differ, on which the girl had gently acquiesced--if
not without a touch of scorn--in his action, but had not felt
obliged to accept his point of view. There had been times when her
pride had suffered--for underneath her childish exterior, her air of
being just a dainty little figure of Watteau, she had a very
sensitive and delicate pride of her own--and then, if she had
succeeded in forgiving Lightmark, it had not been without an effort
which had made it difficult for her to pardon herself. Sometimes,
though she would scarcely have confessed it, her husband's mere
approbativeness had almost shocked her. It was good, no doubt, to be
popular, harmless even, to care for popularity--at least, one's
traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so
exorbitantly as Lightmark appeared to do, to sacrifice so much to
one's enthusiasm for pleasing inferior people--people whom, behind
their backs, one was quite ready to tear to pieces, allowing them
neither intelligence nor virtue--in just that there seemed to her
some flaw of taste that was almost like a confession of failure.
Surely she loved him, and was ready to forgive him much: not for
worlds would she have confessed to disillusion. And yet, now and
again, when the rush and ostentation of their new life, with its
monotony of dinners and dances--so little like that which she had
anticipated as the future lot of a painter's wife--had left her
rather weary, a trifle sad, she had thought suddenly of her old
friend Philip Rainham, and the thought had solaced her. There is a
sort of pleasure, even when one is married to the most amiable of
husbands, and is getting quite old--very nearly twenty--in turning
from time to time to a person who has known one in the very shortest
of frocks, and whose intimate connection with chocolates and
"treats" is among one's earliest traditions. She made no contrasts;
and yet when occasionally on one of those afternoons--there seemed
to be so many of them--when she was "at home," when her bright,
large drawing-room was fullest, and she was distracted to find
herself confusing, amidst the clatter of teacups, dear Mrs.
Henderson, who painted wild-flowers so cleverly, with dear Lady
Lorimer, who was going on the stage, she looked up and saw Rainham
hovering in the near distance, or sitting with his teacup balanced
in one long white hand as he turned a politely tolerant ear to the
small talk of a neighbour, she felt strangely rested. Trouble or
confusion might come, she told herself, and how suddenly all these
charming people, who were so surprisingly alike, and whose names
were so exasperatingly different, would disappear. Dear Mrs.
Henderson and dear Lady Lorimer, and that odious Mrs. Dollond--what
was she saying to Dick now which had to be spoken with an air of
such exaggerated intimacy in so discreet an undertone?--how swiftly
they would all be gone, like the snows of last year! Only Philip
Rainham, she was sure, would be there still, a little older,
perhaps, with the air of being a little more tired of things, but
inwardly the same, unalterably loyal and certain. The prospect was
curiously sustaining, the more in that she had no tangible cause of
uneasiness, was an extremely happy woman--it was so that she would
have most frequently described herself--only growing at times a
little weary of the fashionable tread-mill, and the daily routine of
not particularly noble interests which it involved. Catching his
eyes sometimes, as he sat there, looking out idly, indifferently,
upon it all--this success which was the breath of life to
Dick--she found him somewhat admirable; disdainful, fastidious,
reserved--beneath his surface good-humour, his constant kindness, he
could scarcely be a happy man. In flashes of sudden gratitude, she
would have been glad often to have done something for him, had there
been anything in the world to do. And then she laughed at herself
for such a vain imagination. Had it not been his proper charm all
along that he was a man for whom one could do nothing? precisely,
because he wanted nothing, was so genuinely indifferent to anything
that life could offer? And now all that was at an end; by his own
confession he had finished it, admitting himself, with a frankness
almost brutal, a man like other men, only with passions more sordid,
and a temper more unscrupulous, in that he had ruined this wretched
woman, whose coming there had left a trail of vileness over her own
life.
"Ah, yes, go!" she said, after a while, answering Rainham's
exclamation. "For pity's sake, go!"
Rainham bowed his head, obeyed her; as the door closed behind them
he could hear that she cried softly, and that Lightmark, his silence
at last broken, consoled her with inaudible words.