Margaret’s night was disturbed, and next day she was unable to go about
her work with her usual tranquillity. She tried to reason herself into
a natural explanation of the events that had happened. The telegram
that Susie had received pointed to a definite scheme on Haddo’s part,
and suggested that his sudden illness was but a device to get into the
studio. Once there, he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby
to exercise his hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the
creation of his own libidinous fancy. But though she sought to persuade
herself that, in playing a vile trick on her, he had taken a shameful
advantage of her pity, she could not look upon him with anger. Her
contempt for him, her utter loathing, were alloyed with a feeling that
aroused in her horror and dismay. She could not get the man out of her
thoughts. All that he had said, all that she had seen, seemed, as
though it possessed a power of material growth, unaccountably to absorb
her. It was as if a rank weed were planted in her heart and slid long
poisonous tentacles down every artery, so that each part of her body
was enmeshed. Work could not distract her, conversation, exercise, art,
left her listless; and between her and all the actions of life stood
the flamboyant, bulky form of Oliver Haddo. She was terrified of him
now as never before, but curiously had no longer the physical repulsion
which hitherto had mastered all other feelings. Although she repeated
to herself that she wanted never to see him again, Margaret could
scarcely resist an overwhelming desire to go to him. Her will had been
taken from her, and she was an automaton. She struggled, like a bird in
the fowler’s net with useless beating of the wings; but at the bottom
of her heart she was dimly conscious that she did not want to resist.
If he had given her that address, it was because he knew she would use
it. She did not know why she wanted to go to him; she had nothing to
say to him; she knew only that it was necessary to go. But a few days
before she had seen the _Phèdre_ of Racine, and she felt on a sudden
all the torments that wrung the heart of that unhappy queen; she, too,
struggled aimlessly to escape from the poison that the immortal gods
poured in her veins. She asked herself frantically whether a spell had
been cast over her, for now she was willing to believe that Haddo’s
power was all-embracing. Margaret knew that if she yielded to the
horrible temptation nothing could save her from destruction. She would
have cried for help to Arthur or to Susie, but something, she knew not
what, prevented her. At length, driven almost to distraction, she
thought that Dr Porhoët might do something for her. He, at least, would
understand her misery. There seemed not a moment to lose, and she
hastened to his house. They told her he was out. Her heart sank, for it
seemed that her last hope was gone. She was like a person drowning, who
clings to a rock; and the waves dash against him, and beat upon his
bleeding hands with a malice all too human, as if to tear them from
their refuge.
Instead of going to the sketch-class, which was held at six in the
evening, she hurried to the address that Oliver Haddo had given her.
She went along the crowded street stealthily, as though afraid that
someone would see her, and her heart was in a turmoil. She desired with
all her might not to go, and sought vehemently to prevent herself, and
yet withal she went. She ran up the stairs and knocked at the door. She
remembered his directions distinctly. In a moment Oliver Haddo stood
before her. He did not seem astonished that she was there. As she stood
on the landing, it occurred to her suddenly that she had no reason to
offer for her visit, but his words saved her from any need for
explanation.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
Haddo led her into a sitting-room. He had an apartment in a _maison
meublée_, and heavy hangings, the solid furniture of that sort of house
in Paris, was unexpected in connexion with him. The surroundings were
so commonplace that they seemed to emphasise his singularity. There was
a peculiar lack of comfort, which suggested that he was indifferent to
material things. The room was large, but so cumbered that it gave a
cramped impression. Haddo dwelt there as if he were apart from any
habitation that might be his. He moved cautiously among the heavy
furniture, and his great obesity was somehow more remarkable. There was
the acrid perfume which Margaret remembered a few days before in her
vision of an Eastern city.
Asking her to sit down, he began to talk as if they were old
acquaintances between whom nothing of moment had occurred. At last she
took her courage in both hands.
“Why did you make me come here?” she asked suddenly,
“You give me credit now for very marvellous powers,” he smiled.
“You knew I should come.”
“I knew.”
“What have I done to you that you should make me so unhappy? I want you
to leave me alone.”
“I shall not prevent you from going out if you choose to go. No harm
has come to you. The door is open.”
Her heart beat quickly, painfully almost, and she remained silent. She
knew that she did not want to go. There was something that drew her
strangely to him, and she was ceasing to resist. A strange feeling
began to take hold of her, creeping stealthily through her limbs; and
she was terrified, but unaccountably elated.
He began to talk with that low voice of his that thrilled her with a
curious magic. He spoke not of pictures now, nor of books, but of life.
He told her of strange Eastern places where no infidel had been, and
her sensitive fancy was aflame with the honeyed fervour of his phrase.
He spoke of the dawn upon sleeping desolate cities, and the moonlit
nights of the desert, of the sunsets with their splendour, and of the
crowded streets at noon. The beauty of the East rose before her. He
told her of many-coloured webs and of silken carpets, the glittering
steel of armour damascened, and of barbaric, priceless gems. The
splendour of the East blinded her eyes. He spoke of frankincense and
myrrh and aloes, of heavy perfumes of the scent-merchants, and drowsy
odours of the Syrian gardens. The fragrance of the East filled her
nostrils. And all these things were transformed by the power of his
words till life itself seemed offered to her, a life of infinite
vivacity, a life of freedom, a life of supernatural knowledge. It
seemed to her that a comparison was drawn for her attention between the
narrow round which awaited her as Arthur’s wife and this fair, full
existence. She shuddered to think of the dull house in Harley Street
and the insignificance of its humdrum duties. But it was possible for
her also to enjoy the wonder of the world. Her soul yearned for a
beauty that the commonalty of men did not know. And what devil
suggested, a warp as it were in the woof of Oliver’s speech, that her
exquisite loveliness gave her the right to devote herself to the great
art of living? She felt a sudden desire for perilous adventures. As
though fire passed through her, she sprang to her feet and stood with
panting bosom, her flashing eyes bright with the multi-coloured
pictures that his magic presented.
Oliver Haddo stood too, and they faced one another. Then, on a sudden,
she knew what the passion was that consumed her. With a quick movement,
his eyes more than ever strangely staring, he took her in his arms, and
he kissed her lips. She surrendered herself to him voluptuously. Her
whole body burned with the ecstasy of his embrace.
“I think I love you,” she said, hoarsely.
She looked at him. She did not feel ashamed.
“Now you must go,” he said.
He opened the door, and, without another word, she went. She walked
through the streets as if nothing at all had happened. She felt neither
remorse nor revulsion.
Then Margaret felt every day that uncontrollable desire to go to him;
and, though she tried to persuade herself not to yield, she knew that
her effort was only a pretence: she did not want anything to prevent
her. When it seemed that some accident would do so, she could scarcely
control her irritation. There was always that violent hunger of the
soul which called her to him, and the only happy hours she had were
those spent in his company. Day after day she felt that complete
ecstasy when he took her in his huge arms, and kissed her with his
heavy, sensual lips. But the ecstasy was extraordinarily mingled with
loathing, and her physical attraction was allied with physical
abhorrence.
Yet when he looked at her with those pale blue eyes, and threw into his
voice those troubling accents, she forgot everything. He spoke of
unhallowed things. Sometimes, as it were, he lifted a corner of the
veil, and she caught a glimpse of terrible secrets. She understood how
men had bartered their souls for infinite knowledge. She seemed to
stand upon a pinnacle of the temple, and spiritual kingdoms of
darkness, principalities of the unknown, were spread before her eyes to
lure her to destruction. But of Haddo himself she learned nothing. She
did not know if he loved her. She did not know if he had ever loved. He
appeared to stand apart from human kind. Margaret discovered by chance
that his mother lived, but he would not speak of her.
“Some day you shall see her,” he said.
“When?”
“Very soon.”
Meanwhile her life proceeded with all outward regularity. She found it
easy to deceive her friends, because it occurred to neither that her
frequent absence was not due to the plausible reasons she gave. The
lies which at first seemed intolerable now tripped glibly off her
tongue. But though they were so natural, she was seized often with a
panic of fear lest they should be discovered; and sometimes, suffering
agonies of remorse, she would lie in bed at night and think with utter
shame of the way she was using Arthur. But things had gone too far now,
and she must let them take their course. She scarcely knew why her
feelings towards him had so completely changed. Oliver Haddo had
scarcely mentioned his name and yet had poisoned her mind. The
comparison between the two was to Arthur’s disadvantage. She thought
him a little dull now, and his commonplace way of looking at life
contrasted with Haddo’s fascinating boldness. She reproached Arthur in
her heart because he had never understood what was in her. He narrowed
her mind. And gradually she began to hate him because her debt of
gratitude was so great. It seemed unfair that he should have done so
much for her. He forced her to marry him by his beneficence. Yet
Margaret continued to discuss with him the arrangement of their house
in Harley Street. It had been her wish to furnish the drawing-room in
the style of Louis XV; and together they made long excursions to buy
chairs or old pieces of silk with which to cover them. Everything
should be perfect in its kind. The date of their marriage was fixed,
and all the details were settled. Arthur was ridiculously happy.
Margaret made no sign. She did not think of the future, and she spoke
of it only to ward off suspicion. She was inwardly convinced now that
the marriage would never take place, but what was to prevent it she did
not know. She watched Susie and Arthur cunningly. But though she
watched in order to conceal her own secret, it was another’s that she
discovered. Suddenly Margaret became aware that Susie was deeply in
love with Arthur Burdon. The discovery was so astounding that at first
it seemed absurd.
“You’ve never done that caricature of Arthur for me that you promised,”
she said, suddenly.
“I’ve tried, but he doesn’t lend himself to it,” laughed Susie.
“With that long nose and the gaunt figure I should have thought you
could make something screamingly funny.”
“How oddly you talk of him! Somehow I can only see his beautiful, kind
eyes and his tender mouth. I would as soon do a caricature of him as
write a parody on a poem I loved.”
Margaret took the portfolio in which Susie kept her sketches. She
caught the look of alarm that crossed her friend’s face, but Susie had
not the courage to prevent her from looking. She turned the drawings
carelessly and presently came to a sheet upon which, in a more or less
finished state, were half a dozen heads of Arthur. Pretending not to
see it, she went on to the end. When she closed the portfolio Susie
gave a sigh of relief.
“I wish you worked harder,” said Margaret, as she put the sketches
down. “I wonder you don’t do a head of Arthur as you can’t do a
caricature.”
“My dear, you mustn’t expect everyone to take such an overpowering
interest in that young man as you do.”
The answer added a last certainty to Margaret’s suspicion. She told
herself bitterly that Susie was no less a liar than she. Next day, when
the other was out, Margaret looked through the portfolio once more, but
the sketches of Arthur had disappeared. She was seized on a sudden with
anger because Susie dared to love the man who loved her.
The web in which Oliver Haddo enmeshed her was woven with skilful
intricacy. He took each part of her character separately and fortified
with consummate art his influence over her. There was something satanic
in his deliberation, yet in actual time it was almost incredible that
he could have changed the old abhorrence with which she regarded him
into that hungry passion. Margaret could not now realize her life apart
from his. At length he thought the time was ripe for the final step.
“It may interest you to know that I’m leaving Paris on Thursday,” he
said casually, one afternoon.
She started to her feet and stared at him with bewildered eyes.
“But what is to become of me?”
“You will marry the excellent Mr Burdon.”
“You know I cannot live without you. How can you be so cruel?”
“Then the only alternative is that you should accompany me.”
Her blood ran cold, and her heart seemed pressed in an iron vice.
“What do you mean?”
“There is no need to be agitated. I am making you an eminently
desirable offer of marriage.”
She sank helplessly into her chair. Because she had refused to think of
the future, it had never struck her that the time must come when it
would be necessary to leave Haddo or to throw in her lot with his
definitely. She was seized with revulsion. Margaret realized that,
though an odious attraction bound her to the man, she loathed and
feared him. The scales fell from her eyes. She remembered on a sudden
Arthur’s great love and all that he had done for her sake. She hated
herself. Like a bird at its last gasp beating frantically against the
bars of a cage, Margaret made a desperate effort to regain her freedom.
She sprang up.
“Let me go from here. I wish I’d never seen you. I don’t know what
you’ve done with me.”
“Go by all means if you choose,” he answered.
He opened the door, so that she might see he used no compulsion, and
stood lazily at the threshold, with a hateful smile on his face. There
was something terrible in his excessive bulk. Rolls of fat descended
from his chin and concealed his neck. His cheeks were huge, and the
lack of beard added to the hideous nakedness of his face. Margaret
stopped as she passed him, horribly repelled yet horribly fascinated.
She had an immense desire that he should take her again in his arms and
press her lips with that red voluptuous mouth. It was as though fiends
of hell were taking revenge upon her loveliness by inspiring in her a
passion for this monstrous creature. She trembled with the intensity of
her desire. His eyes were hard and cruel.
“Go,” he said.
She bent her head and fled from before him. To get home she passed
through the gardens of the Luxembourg, but her legs failed her, and in
exhaustion she sank upon a bench. The day was sultry. She tried to
collect herself. Margaret knew well the part in which she sat, for in
the enthusiastic days that seemed so long gone by she was accustomed to
come there for the sake of a certain tree upon which her eyes now
rested. It had all the slim delicacy of a Japanese print. The leaves
were slender and fragile, half gold with autumn, half green, but so
tenuous that the dark branches made a pattern of subtle beauty against
the sky. The hand of a draughtsman could not have fashioned it with a
more excellent skill. But now Margaret could take no pleasure in its
grace. She felt a heartrending pang to think that thenceforward the
consummate things of art would have no meaning for her. She had seen
Arthur the evening before, and remembered with an agony of shame the
lies to which she had been forced in order to explain why she could not
see him till late that day. He had proposed that they should go to
Versailles, and was bitterly disappointed when she told him they could
not, as usual on Sundays, spend the whole day together. He accepted her
excuse that she had to visit a sick friend. It would not have been so
intolerable if he had suspected her of deceit, and his reproaches would
have hardened her heart. It was his entire confidence which was so
difficult to bear.
“Oh, if I could only make a clean breast of it all,” she cried.
The bell of Saint Sulpice was ringing for vespers. Margaret walked
slowly to the church, and sat down in the seats reserved in the
transept for the needy. She hoped that the music she must hear there
would rest her soul, and perhaps she might be able to pray. Of late she
had not dared. There was a pleasant darkness in the place, and its
large simplicity was soothing. In her exhaustion, she watched
listlessly the people go to and fro. Behind her was a priest in the
confessional. A little peasant girl, in a Breton _coiffe_, perhaps a
maid-servant lately come from her native village to the great capital,
passed in and knelt down. Margaret could hear her muttered words, and
at intervals the deep voice of the priest. In three minutes she tripped
neatly away. She looked so fresh in her plain black dress, so healthy
and innocent, that Margaret could not restrain a sob of envy. The child
had so little to confess, a few puny errors which must excite a smile
on the lips of the gentle priest, and her candid spirit was like snow.
Margaret would have given anything to kneel down and whisper in those
passionless ears all that she suffered, but the priest’s faith and hers
were not the same. They spoke a different tongue, not of the lips only
but of the soul, and he would not listen to the words of an heretic.
A long procession of seminarists came in from the college which is
under the shadow of that great church, two by two, in black cassocks
and short white surplices. Many were tonsured already. Some were quite
young. Margaret watched their faces, wondering if they were tormented
by such agony as she. But they had a living faith to sustain them, and
if some, as was plain, were narrow and obtuse, they had at least a
fixed rule which prevented them from swerving into treacherous byways.
One of two had a wan ascetic look, such as the saints may have had when
the terror of life was known to them only in the imaginings of the
cloister. The canons of the church followed in their more gorgeous
vestments, and finally the officiating clergy.
The music was beautiful. There was about it a staid, sad dignity; and
it seemed to Margaret fit thus to adore God. But it did not move her.
She could not understand the words that the priests chanted; their
gestures, their movements to and fro, were strange to her. For her that
stately service had no meaning. And with a great cry in her heart she
said that God had forsaken her. She was alone in an alien land. Evil
was all about her, and in those ceremonies she could find no comfort.
What could she expect when the God of her fathers left her to her fate?
So that she might not weep in front of all those people, Margaret with
down-turned face walked to the door. She felt utterly lost. As she
walked along the interminable street that led to her own house, she was
shaken with sobs.
“God has forsaken me,” she repeated. “God has foresaken me.”
Next day, her eyes red with weeping, she dragged herself to Haddo’s
door. When he opened it, she went in without a word. She sat down, and
he watched her in silence.
“I am willing to marry you whenever you choose,” she said at last.
“I have made all the necessary arrangements.”
“You have spoken to me of your mother. Will you take me to her at
once.”
The shadow of a smile crossed his lips.
“If you wish it.”
Haddo told her that they could be married before the Consul early
enough on the Thursday morning to catch a train for England. She left
everything in his hands.
“I’m desperately unhappy,” she said dully.
Oliver laid his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her eyes.
“Go home, and you will forget your tears. I command you to be happy.”
Then it seemed that the bitter struggle between the good and the evil
in her was done, and the evil had conquered. She felt on a sudden
curiously elated. It seemed no longer to matter that she deceived her
faithful friends. She gave a bitter laugh, as she thought how easy it
was to hoodwink them.
Wednesday happened to be Arthur’s birthday, and he asked her to dine
with him alone.
“We’ll do ourselves proud, and hang the expense,” he said.
They had arranged to eat at a fashionable restaurant on the other side
of the river, and soon after seven he fetched her. Margaret was dressed
with exceeding care. She stood in the middle of the room, waiting for
Arthur’s arrival, and surveyed herself in the glass. Susie thought she
had never been more beautiful.
“I think you’ve grown more pleasing to look upon than you ever were,”
she said. “I don’t know what it is that has come over you of late, but
there’s a depth in your eyes that is quite new. It gives you an odd
mysteriousness which is very attractive.”
Knowing Susie’s love for Arthur, she wondered whether her friend was
not heartbroken as she compared her own plainness with the radiant
beauty that was before her. Arthur came in, and Margaret did not move.
He stopped at the door to look at her. Their eyes met. His heart beat
quickly, and yet he was seized with awe. His good fortune was too great
to bear, when he thought that this priceless treasure was his. He could
have knelt down and worshipped as though a goddess of old Greece stood
before him. And to him also her eyes had changed. They had acquired a
burning passion which disturbed and yet enchanted him. It seemed that
the lovely girl was changed already into a lovely woman. An enigmatic
smile came to her lips.
“Are you pleased?” she asked.
Arthur came forward and Margaret put her hands on his shoulders.
“You have scent on,” he said.
He was surprised, for she had never used it before. It was a faint,
almost acrid perfume that he did not know. It reminded him vaguely of
those odours which he remembered in his childhood in the East. It was
remote and strange. It gave Margaret a new and troubling charm. There
had ever been something cold in her statuesque beauty, but this touch
somehow curiously emphasized her sex. Arthur’s lips twitched, and his
gaunt face grew pale with passion. His emotion was so great that it was
nearly pain. He was puzzled, for her eyes expressed things that he had
never seen in them before.
“Why don’t you kiss me?” she said.
She did not see Susie, but knew that a quick look of anguish crossed
her face. Margaret drew Arthur towards her. His hands began to tremble.
He had never ventured to express the passion that consumed him, and
when he kissed her it was with a restraint that was almost brotherly.
Now their lips met. Forgetting that anyone else was in the room, he
flung his arms around Margaret. She had never kissed him in that way
before, and the rapture was intolerable. Her lips were like living
fire. He could not take his own away. He forgot everything. All his
strength, all his self-control, deserted him. It crossed his mind that
at this moment he would willingly die. But the delight of it was so
great that he could scarcely withhold a cry of agony. At length Susie’s
voice reminded him of the world.
“You’d far better go out to dinner instead of behaving like a pair of
complete idiots.”
She tried to make her tone as flippant as the words, but her voice was
cut by a pang of agony. With a little laugh, Margaret withdrew from
Arthur’s embrace and lightly looked at her friend. Susie’s brave smile
died away as she caught this glance, for there was in it a malicious
hatred that startled her. It was so unexpected that she was terrified.
What had she done? She was afraid, dreadfully afraid, that Margaret had
guessed her secret. Arthur stood as if his senses had left him,
quivering still with the extremity of passion.
“Susie says we must go,” smiled Margaret.
He could not speak. He could not regain the conventional manner of
polite society. Very pale, like a man suddenly awaked from deep sleep,
he went out at Margaret’s side. They walked along the passage. Though
the door was closed behind them and they were out of earshot, Margaret
seemed not withstanding to hear Susie’s passionate sobbing. It gave her
a horrible delight.
The tavern to which they went was on the Boulevard des Italiens, and at
this date the most frequented in Paris. It was crowded, but Arthur had
reserved a table in the middle of the room. Her radiant loveliness made
people stare at Margaret as she passed, and her consciousness of the
admiration she excited increased her beauty. She was satisfied that
amid that throng of the best-dressed women in the world she had cause
to envy no one. The gaiety was charming. Shaded lights gave an opulent
cosiness to the scene, and there were flowers everywhere. Innumerable
mirrors reflected women of the world, admirably gowned, actresses of
renown, and fashionable courtesans. The noise was very great. A
Hungarian band played in a distant corner, but the music was drowned by
the loud talking of excited men and the boisterous laughter of women.
It was plain that people had come to spend their money with a lavish
hand. The vivacious crowd was given over with all its heart to the
pleasure of the fleeting moment. Everyone had put aside grave thoughts
and sorrow.
Margaret had never been in better spirits. The champagne went quickly
to her head, and she talked all manner of charming nonsense. Arthur was
enchanted. He was very proud, very pleased, and very happy. They talked
of all the things they would do when they were married. They talked of
the places they must go to, of their home and of the beautiful things
with which they would fill it. Margaret’s animation was extraordinary.
Arthur was amused at her delight with the brightness of the place, with
the good things they ate, and with the wine. Her laughter was like a
rippling brook. Everything tended to take him out of his usual reserve.
Life was very pleasing, at that moment, and he felt singularly joyful.
“Let us drink to the happiness of our life,” he said.
They touched glasses. He could not take his eyes away from her.
“You’re simply wonderful tonight,” he said. “I’m almost afraid of my
good fortune.”
“What is there to be afraid of?” she cried.
“I should like to lose something I valued in order to propitiate the
fates. I am too happy now. Everything goes too well with me.”
She gave a soft, low laugh and stretched out her hand on the table. No
sculptor could have modelled its exquisite delicacy. She wore only one
ring, a large emerald which Arthur had given her on their engagement.
He could not resist taking her hand.
“Would you like to go on anywhere?” he said, when they had finished
dinner and were drinking their coffee.
“No, let us stay here. I must go to bed early, as I have a tiring day
before me tomorrow.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Nothing of any importance,” she laughed.
Presently the diners began to go in little groups, and Margaret
suggested that they should saunter towards the Madeleine. The night was
fine, but rather cold, and the broad avenue was crowded. Margaret
watched the people. It was no less amusing than a play. In a little
while, they took a cab and drove through the streets, silent already,
that led to the quarter of the Montparnasse. They sat in silence, and
Margaret nestled close to Arthur. He put his arm around her waist. In
the shut cab that faint, oriental odour rose again to his nostrils, and
his head reeled as it had before dinner.
“You’ve made me very happy, Margaret,” he whispered. “I feel that,
however long I live, I shall never have a happier day than this.”
“Do you love me very much?” she asked, lightly.
He did not answer, but took her face in his hands and kissed her
passionately. They arrived at Margaret’s house, and she tripped up to
the door. She held out her hand to him, smiling.
“Goodnight.”
“It’s dreadful to think that I must spend a dozen hours without seeing
you. When may I come?”
“Not in the morning, because I shall be too busy. Come at twelve.”
She remembered that her train started exactly at that hour. The door
was opened, and with a little wave of the hand she disappeared.