Lady Tamworth felt unutterably bored. The sensation of lassitude, even
in its less acute degrees, was rare with her; for she possessed a
nature of so fresh a buoyancy that she was able, as a rule, to extract
diversion from any environment. Her mind took impressions with the
vivid clearness of a mirror, and also, it should be owned, with a
mirror's transient objectivity. To-day, however, the mirror was
clouded. She looked out of the window; a level row of grey houses
frowned at her across the street. She looked upwards; a grey pall of
cloud swung over the rooftops. The interior of the room appeared to
her even less inviting than the street. It was the afternoon of the
first drawing-room, and a _debutante_ was exhibiting herself to her
friends. She stood in the centre, a figure from a Twelfth-Night cake,
amidst a babble of congratulations, and was plainly occupied in a
perpetual struggle to conceal her moments of enthusiasm beneath a
crust of deprecatory languor.
The spectacle would have afforded choice entertainment to Lady
Tamworth, had she viewed it in the company of a sympathetic companion.
Solitary appreciation of the humorous, however, only induced in her
a yet more despondent mood. The tea seemed tepid; the conversation
matched the tea. Epigrams without point, sallies void of wit, and
cynicisms innocent of the sting of an apt application floated about
her on a ripple of unintelligent laughter. A phrase of Mr. Dale's
recurred to her mind, "Hock and seltzer with the sparkle out of it;"
so he had stigmatised the style and she sadly thanked him for the
metaphor.
There was, moreover, a particular reason for her discontent. Nobody
realised the presence of Lady Tamworth, and this unaccustomed neglect
shot a barbed question at her breast. "After all why should they?" She
was useless, she reflected; she did nothing, exercised no influence.
The thought, however, was too painful for lengthened endurance; the
very humiliation of it produced the antidote. She remembered that she
had at last persuaded her lazy Sir John to stand for Parliament. Only
wait until he was elected! She would exercise an influence then. The
vision of a _salon_ was miraged before her, with herself in the middle
deftly manipulating the destinies of a nation.
"Lady Tamworth!" a voice sounded at her elbow.
"Mr. Dale!" She turned with a sudden sprightliness. "My guardian angel
sent you."
"So bad as that?"
"I have an intuition." She paused impressively upon the word.
"Never mind!" said he soothingly. "It will go away."
Lady Tamworth glared, that is, as well as she could; nature had not
really adapted her for glaring. "I have an intuition," she resumed,
"that this is what the suburbs mean." And she waved her hand
comprehensively.
"They are perhaps a trifle excessive," he returned. "But then you
needn't have come."
"Oh, yes! Clients of Sir John." Lady Tamworth sighed and sank with a
weary elegance into a chair. Mr. Dale interpreted the sigh. "Ah! A
wife's duties," he began.
"No man can know," she interrupted, and she spread out her hands in
pathetic forgiveness of an over-exacting world. Her companion laughed
brutally. "You _are_ rude!" she said and laughed too. And then, "Tell
me something new!"
"I met an admirer of yours to-day."
"But that's nothing new." She looked up at him with a plaintive
reproach.
"I will begin again," he replied submissively. "I walked down the
Mile-End road this morning to Sir John's jute-factory."
"You fail to interest me," she said with some emphasis.
"I am so sorry. Good-bye!"
"Mr. Dale!"
"Yes!"
"You may, if you like, go on with the first story."
"There is only one. It was in the Mile-End road I met the
admirer--Julian Fairholm."
"Oh!" Lady Tamworth sat up and blushed. However, Lady Tamworth blushed
very readily.
"It was a queer incident," Mr. Dale continued. "I caught sight of a
necktie in a little dusty shop-window near the Pavilion Theatre. I
had never seen anything like it in my life; it fairly fascinated me,
seemed to dare me to buy it."
The lady's foot began to tap upon the carpet. Mr. Dale stopped and
leaned critically forward.
"Well! Why don't you go on?" she asked impatiently.
"It's pretty," he reflected aloud.
The foot disappeared demurely into the seclusion of petticoats. "You
exasperate me," she remarked. But her face hardly guaranteed her
words. "We were speaking of ties."
"Ah, the tie wasn't pretty. It was of satin, bright yellow with blue
spots. And an idea struck me; yes, an idea! Sir John's election
colours are yellow, his opponent's blue. So I thought the tie would
make a tactful present, symbolical (do you see?) of the state of the
parties in the constituency."
He paused a second time.
"Well?"
"I went in and bought it."
"Well?"
"Julian Fairholm sold it to me."
Lady Tamworth stared at the speaker in pure perplexity. Then all at
once she understood and the blood eddied into her cheeks. "I don't
believe it!" she exclaimed.
"His face would be difficult to mistake," Mr. Dale objected. "Besides
I had time to assure myself, for I had to wait my turn. When I entered
the shop, he was serving a woman with baby-linen. Oh yes! Julian
Fairholm sold me the tie."
Lady Tamworth kept her eyes upon the ground. Then she looked up. She
struck the arm of her chair with her closed fist and cried in a quick
petulance, "How dare he?"
"Exactly what I thought," answered her companion smoothly. "The
colours were crude by themselves, the combination was detestable. And
he an artist too!" Mr. Dale laughed pleasantly.
"Did he speak to you?"
"He asked me whether I would take a packet of pins instead of a
farthing."
"Ah, don't," she entreated, and rose from her chair. It might have
been her own degradation of which Mr. Dale was speaking.
"By the way," he added, "I was so taken aback that I forgot to present
the tie. Would you?"
"No! No!" she said decisively and turned away. But a sudden notion
checked her. "On second thoughts I will; but I can't promise to make
him wear it."
The smile which sped the words flickered strangely upon quivering lips
and her eyes shone with anger. However the tie changed hands, and Lady
Tamworth tripped down stairs and stepped into her brougham. The packet
lay upon her lap and she unfolded it. A round ticket was enclosed, and
the bill. On the ticket was printed, _A Present from Zedediah Moss_.
With a convulsion of disgust she swept the parcel on to the floor.
"How dare he?" she cried again, and her thoughts flew back to the
brief period of their engagement. She had been just Kitty Arlton in
those days, the daughter of a poor sea-captain but dowered with
the compensating grace of personal attractions. Providence had
indisputably designed her for the establishment of the family
fortunes; such at all events was the family creed, and the girl
herself felt no inclination to doubt a faith which was backed by the
evidence of her looking-glass. Julian Fairholm at that time shared a
studio with her brother, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into
an attachment and ended in a betrothal. For Julian, in the common
prediction, possessed that vague blessing, a future. It is true the
common prediction was always protected by a saving clause: "If he
could struggle free from his mysticism." But none the less his
pictures were beginning to sell, and the family displayed a moderate
content. The discomposing appearance of Sir John Tamworth, however,
gave a different complexion to the matter. Sir John was rich, and had
besides the confident pertinacity of success. In a word, Kitty Arlton
married Sir John.
Lady Tamworth's recollections of the episode were characteristically
vague; they came back to her in pieces like disconnected sections of
a wooden puzzle. She remembered that she had written an exquisitely
pathetic letter to Fairholm "when the end came," as she expressed it;
and she recalled queer scraps of the artist's talk about the danger
of forming ties. "New ties," he would say, "mean new duties, and they
hamper and clog the will." Ah yes, the will; he was always holding
forth about that and here was the lecture finally exemplified! He
was selling baby-linen in the Mile-End road. She had borne her
disappointment, she reflected, without any talk about will. The
thought of her self-sacrifice even now brought the tears to her eyes;
she saw herself wearing her orange-blossoms in the spirit of an
Iphigeneia.
Sections of the puzzle, however, were missing to Lady Tamworth's
perceptions. For, in fact, her sense of sacrifice had been mainly
artificial, and fostered by a vanity which made the possession of a
broken romance seem to pose her on a notable pedestal of duty. What
had really attracted her to Julian was the evidence of her power shown
in the subjugation of a being intellectually higher than his compeers.
It was not so much the man she had cared for, as the sight of herself
in a superior setting; a sure proof whereof might have been found in a
certain wilful pleasure which she had drawn from constantly impelling
him to acts and admissions which she knew to be alien to his nature.
It was some revival of this idea which explained her exclamation, "How
dare he?" For his conduct appeared more in the light of an outrage and
insult to her than of a degradation of himself. He must be rescued
from his position, she determined.
She stooped to pick up the bill from the floor as the brougham swung
sharply round a corner. She looked out of the window; the coachman had
turned into Berkeley Square; in another hundred yards she would reach
home. She hastily pulled the check-string, and the footman came to the
door. "Drive down the Mile-End road," she said; "I will fetch Sir John
home." Lady Tamworth read the address on the bill. "Near the Pavilion
Theatre," Mr. Dale had explained. She would just see the place this
evening, she determined, and then reflect on the practical course to
be pursued.
The decision relieved her of her sense of humiliation, and she nestled
back among her furs with a sigh of content. There was a pleasurable
excitement about her present impulse which contrasted very brightly
with her recent _ennui_. She felt that her wish to do something,
to exert an influence, had been providentially answered. The task,
besides, seemed to her to have a flavour of antique chivalry; it
smacked of the princess undoing enchantments, and reminded her vaguely
of Camelot. She determined to stop at the house and begin the work
at once; so she summoned the footman a second time and gave him the
address. So great indeed was the charm which her conception exercised
over her, that her very indignation against Julian changed to pity.
He had to be fitted to the chivalric pattern, and consequently
refashioned. Her harlequin fancy straightway transformed him into the
romantic lover who, having lost his mistress, had lost the world and
therefore, naturally, held the sale of baby-linen on a par with the
painting of pictures. "Poor Julian!" she thought.
The carriage stopped suddenly in front of a shuttered window. A
neighbouring gas-lamp lit up the letters on the board above it, _Z.
Moss_. This unexpected check in the full flight of ardour dropped her
to earth like a plummet. And as if to accentuate her disappointment
the surrounding shops were aglare with light; customers pressed
busily in and out of them, and even on the roadway naphtha-jets waved
flauntingly over barrows of sweet-stuff and fruit. Only this sordid
little house was dark. "They can't afford to close at this hour," she
murmured reproachfully.
The footman came to the carriage door, disdain perceptibly struggling
through his mask of impassivity.
"Why is the shop closed?" Lady Tamworth asked.
"The name, perhaps, my lady," he suggested. "It is Friday."
Lady Tamworth had forgotten the day. "Very well," she said sullenly.
"Home at once!" However, she corrected herself adroitly: "I mean, of
course, fetch Sir John first."
Sir John was duly fetched and carried home jubilant at so rare an
attention. The tie was presented to him on the way, and he bellowed
his merriment at its shape and colour. To her surprise Lady Tamworth
found herself defending the style, and inveighing against the monotony
of the fashions of the West End. Nor was this the only occasion on
which she disagreed with her husband that evening. He launched an
aphorism across the dinner-table which he had cogitated from the
report of a divorce-suit in the evening papers. "It is a strange
thing," he said, "that the woman who knows her influence over a man
usually employs it to hurt him; the woman who doesn't, employs it
unconsciously for his good."
"You don't mean that?" she asked earnestly.
"I have noticed it more than once," he replied.
For a moment Lady Tamworth's chivalric edifice showed cracks and
rents; it threatened to crumble like a house of cards; but only for
a moment. For she merely considered the remark in reference to the
future; she applied it to her present wish to exercise an influence
over Julian. The issue of that, however, lay still in the dark, and
was consequently imaginable as inclination prompted. A glance at Sir
Julian sufficed to finally reassure her. He was rosy and modern, and
so plainly incapable of appreciating chivalric impulses. To estimate
them rightly one must have an insight into their nature, and therefore
an actual experience of their fire; but such fire left traces on the
person. Chivalric people were hollow-cheeked with luminous eyes; at
least chivalric men were hollow-cheeked, she corrected herself with
a look at the mirror. At all events Sir John and his aphorism were
beneath serious reflection; and she determined to repeat her journey
upon the first opportunity.
The opportunity, however, was delayed for a week and occasioned Lady
Tamworth no small amount of self-pity. Here was noble work waiting for
her hand, and duty kept her chained to the social oar!
On the afternoon, then, of the following Friday she dressed with
what even for her was unusual care, aiming at a complex effect of
daintiness and severity, and drove down in a hansom to Whitechapel.
She stopped the cab some yards from the shop and walked up to the
window. Through the glass she could see Julian standing behind the
counter. His hands (she noticed them particularly because he was
displaying some cheap skeins of coloured wool) seemed perhaps a trifle
thinner and more nervous, his features a little sharpened, and there
was a sprinkling of grey in the black of his hair. For the first time
since the conception of her scheme Lady Tamworth experienced a feeling
of irresolution. With Fairholm in the flesh before her eyes, the task
appeared difficult; its reality pressed in upon her, driving a breach
through the flimsy wall of her fancies. She resolved to wait until the
shop should be empty, and to that end took a few steps slowly up the
street and returned yet more slowly. She looked into the window again;
Julian was alone now, and still she hesitated. The admiring comments
of two loungers on the kerb concerning her appearance at last
determined her, and she brusquely thrust open the door. A little bell
jangled shrilly above it and Julian looked up.
"Lady Tamworth!" he said after the merest pause and with no more than
a natural start of surprise. Lady Tamworth, however, was too taken
aback by the cool manner of his greeting to respond at once. She had
forecast the commencement of the interview upon such wholly different
lines that she felt lost and bewildered. An abashed confusion was the
least that she expected from him, and she was prepared to increase it
with a nicely-tempered indignation. Now the positions seemed actually
reversed; he was looking at her with a composed attention, while she
was filled with embarrassment.
A suspicion flashed through her mind that she had come upon a fool's
errand. "Julian!" she said with something of humility in her voice,
and she timidly reached out her little gloved hand towards him. Julian
took it into the palm of his own and gazed at it with a sort of
wondering tenderness, as though he had lighted upon a toy which he
remembered to have prized dearly in an almost forgotten childhood.
This second blow to her pride quickened in her a feeling of
exasperation. She drew her fingers quickly out of his grasp. "What
brought you down to this!" She snapped out the words at him; she had
not come to Whitechapel to be slighted at all events.
"I have risen," he answered quietly.
"Risen? And you sell baby-linen!"
Julian laughed in pure contentment. "You don't understand," he said.
For a moment he looked at her as one debating with himself and then:
"You have a right to understand. I will tell you." He leaned across
the counter, and as he spoke the eager passion of a devotee began to
kindle in his eyes and vibrate through the tones of his voice. "The
knowledge of a truth worked into your heart will lift you, eh, must
lift you high? But base your life upon that truth, centre yourself
about it, till your thoughts become instincts born from it! It must
lift you still higher then; ah, how much higher! Well, I have done
that. Yes, that's why I am here. And I owe it all to you."
Lady Tamworth repeated his words in sheer bewilderment. "You owe it
all to me?"
"Yes," he nodded, "all to you." And with genuine gratitude he added,
"You didn't know the good that you had done."
"Ah, don't say that!" she cried.
The bell tinkled over the shop-door and a woman entered. Lady Tamworth
bent forward and said hastily, "I must speak to you."
"Then you must buy something; what shall it be?" Fairholm had already
recovered his self-possession and was drawing out one of the shelves
in the wall behind him.
"No, no!" she exclaimed, "not here; I can't speak to you here. Come
and call on me; what day will you come?"