LOVERS
Bernard Maddison kept his engagement that evening, and dined alone with
Lady Thurwell and Helen. There had been some talk of going to the opera
afterwards, but no one seemed to care about it, and so it dropped
through.
"For my part," Lady Thurwell said, as they sat lingering over their
dessert, "I shall quite enjoy an evening's rest. You literary men, Mr.
Maddison, talk a good deal about being overworked, but you know nothing
of the life of a chaperon in the season. I tell Helen that she is sadly
wanting in gratitude. We do everything worth doing--picture galleries,
matinees, shopping, afternoon calls, dinners, dances, receptions--why,
there's no slavery like it."
Helen laughed softly.
"We do a great deal too much, aunt," she said. "I am almost coming round
to my father's opinion. You know, Mr. Maddison, he very seldom comes to
London, and then only when he wants to pay a visit to his gunmaker, or
to renew his hunting kit, or something of that sort. London life does
not suit him at all."
"I think your father a very wise man," he answered. "He seeks his
pleasures in a more wholesome manner."
She looked thoughtful.
"Yes, I suppose, ethically, the life of a man about town is on a very
low level. That is why one meets so few who interest one, as a rule.
Don't you think all this society life very frivolous, Mr. Maddison?"
"I am not willing to be its judge," he answered. "Yet it is a moral
axiom that the higher we seek for our pleasures the greater happiness we
attain to. I am an uncompromising enemy to what is known as fashionable
society, so I will draw no conclusions."
"It is intellect and artistic sensibility _versus_ sensuousness," yawned
Lady Thurwell. "I'm a weak woman, and I'm afraid I'm too old to change
my ways. But I'm on the wrong side of the argument all the same; at
least, I should be if I took up the cudgels."
"Which are the greater sinners, Mr. Maddison?" asked Helen, smiling,
"men of the world or women of the world?"
"Without doubt, men," he answered quickly. "However we may talk about
the equality of the sexes, the fact remains that women are born into the
world with lighter natures than men. They have at once a greater
capacity, and more desire for amusement pure and simple. They wear
themselves out in search of it, more especially the women of other
nations. And after all, when their life has passed, they have never
known the meaning of real happiness, of the pleasures that have no
reaction, and that sweet elevation of mind that is only won by thought
and study."
"Poor women!" murmured Lady Thurwell. "Mr. Maddison, you are making me
quite uncomfortable. Paint my sex in more glowing colors, please, or
leave them alone. Remember that I am the only middle-aged woman here. I
don't count Helen at all. I see that she is something of your way of
thinking already. Traitress! Do light a cigarette, Mr. Maddison. I adore
the perfume of them, and so does Helen."
He took one from the box she passed him, and gravely lit it. They were
doing everything in a very informal manner. Dinner had been served in
the library, a cozy little apartment with a large open grate in which a
cheerful fire had been lit. The ordinary table had been dispensed with
in favor of a small round one just large enough for them, and now, with
dessert on the table, they had turned their chairs round to the fire in
very homelike fashion.
"Do you know, I like this," Helen said softly. "I think it is so much
better than a dinner party, or going out anywhere."
"See what a difference the presence of a distinguished man of letters
makes," laughed Lady Thurwell. "Now, only a few hours ago, we were
dreading a very dull evening--Helen as well as myself. How nice it was
of you to take pity on us, Mr. Maddison!"
"Especially considering your aversion to our society," put in Helen.
"Are not you really thinking it a shocking waste of time to be here
talking to two very unlearned women instead of seeking inspiration in
your study?"
He looked at her reproachfully.
"I know nothing of Lady Thurwell's tastes," he said; "but you can
scarcely call yourself unlearned. You have read much, and you have
thought."
"A pure accident--I mean the thinking," she answered lightly. "If I had
not been a country girl, with a mind above my station, intellectually,
there's no telling what might have happened. Town life is very
distracting, if you once get into the groove. Isn't it, aunt?"
Lady Thurwell, who was a thorough little _dame de societe_, rose with a
pout and shrugged her shoulders.
"I'm not going to be hauled over the coals by you superior people any
longer," she answered. "I shall leave you to form a mutual improvement
society, and go and write some letters. When you want me, come into the
drawing room, but don't come yet. Thank you, Mr. Maddison," she added,
as he held the door open for her; "be merciful to the absent, won't
you?"
And so they were alone! As he closed the door and walked across the room
to his seat, there came back to him, with a faint bewildering sweetness,
something of the passionate emotion of their farewell in the pine grove
on the cliff. He felt his pulses quicken, and his heart beat fast. It
was in vain that the dying tenets of his old life, a life of
renunciation and solitude, feebly reasserted themselves. At that moment,
if never before, he knew the truth. The warm fresh sunlight lay across
his barren life, brightening with a marvelous glow its gloomiest
corners. The old passionless serenity, in which the human had been
crushed out by the intellectual, was gone forever. He loved this woman.
And she was very fair. He stole a long glance at her as she leaned back
in her low wicker chair--the fond glance of a lover--and he felt his
keenly artistic sense stirred from its very depths by her purely
physical beauty. The firelight was casting strange gleams upon the deep
golden hair which waved about her oval face and shapely forehead in
picturesque unrestraint, and there was an ethereal glow in her exquisite
complexion, a light in her eyes, which seemed called up by some unusual
excitement.
The setting of the picture, too, was perfect. Her ivory satin gown hung
in long straight lines about her slim perfect outline with all the grace
of Greek drapery, unrelieved save by one large bunch of Neapolitan
violets nestling amongst the folds of old lace which filled up the open
space of her bodice. He stood and looked at her with a strange confusion
of feelings. A new life was burning in his veins, and for the first time
since his boyhood he doubted his absolute self-mastery. Dared he stay
there? Could he sit by her side, and bandy idle words with her?
The silence had lasted for several minutes, and was beginning to possess
something of that peculiar eloquence which such silences usually have.
At last she raised her eyes, and looked at him standing motionless and
thoughtful amongst the shadows of the room, and at the first glance he
felt his strength grow weak, and his passionate love rising up like a
living force. For there was in her eyes, and in her face, and in her
voice when she spoke, something of that softening change which
transfuses a woman's being when she loves, and lets the secret go from
her--a sort of mute yielding, an abandonment, having in it a subtle
essence of unconscious invitation.
"Come and talk to me," she said softly. "Why do you stand out there?"
He made one last despairing effort. With a strangely unnatural laugh, he
drew a chair to her side and began to talk rapidly, never once letting
his eyes rest upon her loveliness, striving to keep his thoughts fixed
upon his subject, but all the time acutely conscious of her presence. He
talked of many things with a restless energy which more than once caused
her to look up at him in wonderment. He strove even to keep her from
answering him, lest the magic of her voice should turn the trembling
scale. For her sake he unlocked the inmost recesses of his mind, and all
the rich store of artistic sensations, of jealously preserved memories,
came flooding out, clothed with all that eloquence of jeweled phrase and
daintily turned sentence which had made his writings so famous. For her
sake, too, he sent his imagination traveling through almost untrodden
fields, bringing back exquisite word pictures, and lifting the curtain
before many a landscape of sun-smitten thought. All the music of sweet
imagery and pure bracing idealism thrilled through her whole being. This
was indeed a man to love! And as his speech grew slower, and she heard
again that peculiar trembling in his tone, the meaning of which her
woman's heart so easily interpreted, she began to long for those few
words from him which she felt would be the awakening of a new life in
her. He could not fail to notice even that slight change, and wondering
whether her attention was commencing to flag, he paused and their eyes
met in a gaze full of that deep tragical intensity which marks the birth
between man and woman of any new sensation. The fire which glowed in his
eyes told her of his love as plainly as the dreamy yet expressive light
which gleamed in hers spoke also to him, and when her head drooped
before the gathering passion in his face, and the faint color streamed
into her cheeks, no will of his could keep the words back any longer. He
felt his breath come quickly, and his heart almost stop beating. His
pulses were quickening, and a strange new delight stole through him.
Surely this was the end. He could bear no more.
And it seemed as though it were indeed so, for with a sudden impulse he
caught hold of her white, ringless hand, and drew it gently toward him.
There was a slight instinctive resistance which came and went in a
space of time only a thought could measure. Then she yielded it to him,
and the sense of her touch stole through his veins with a sort of dreamy
fascination, to give place in a moment to the overmastering fire of his
great passion.
Her face was turned away from him, but he saw the faint color deepen in
her cheeks and the light quivering of the lip. And then a torrent of
feeling, before which his last shaking barriers of resistance crumbled
away like dust, swept from his heart, striking every chord of his nature
with a crash of wild music.
"Helen, my love, my love!" he cried.
And she turned round, her eyes dim with trembling tears, yet glowing
with a great happiness--turned around to feel his arms steal around her
and hold her clasped to his heart in a mad sweet embrace. And it seemed
to her that it was for this that she had lived.