Lady Helen's Medicine Operates
On arrival at Jermyn Street I changed my clothes and, having collected
all my belongings, I repaired at once to Dixon Hubbard's flat. I could
not endure the thought of spending one unnecessary moment in my poor
dead friend's abode. I saw his honest face and gay, mirth-filled eyes
in every corner; and he smiled at me from every dark nook and shadow
of the trophy-covered walls. Hubbard received me with his usual frozen
politeness. He was still in bed. But I felt an overmastering desire for
human sympathy, so I ignored his manner and told him what had passed.
He was sorry, I think. He had only met Weldon twice, and had merely
exchanged a word or two with him, but he admitted having felt drawn to
the bright and manly lad; and though he said little, it could be seen
that he was shocked to hear of a death so untimely and on all accounts
so utterly regrettable. And he strove to cheer me in his way. After a
long silence, he suddenly remarked on the iron-bound remorselessness of
fate. "There," he said, "was a young fellow just about to taste his cup
of long-anticipated happiness. A man with many friends and no enemies;
universally liked and respected. Yet destiny, without warning, dashed
the cup for ever from his lips. And one cannot console oneself with the
reflection that he has been spared the pain and shame of finding the
contents bitter-sweet and mixed with dregs; for the girl loved him, I
am told, and she was good to look upon, and honest-hearted. What is the
meaning of it all? Omar laughingly declares that the Potter is a Good
Fellow and 'twill all be well. But how many pots have encountered that
experience? Have I--though still I'm here? And you? I'm all awry. The
Potter's hand shook in making me. As for you, you started straight,
but you grow more crooked every day and it's not your fault; you are a
helpless dough puppet in the hands of destiny."
"You think I grow crooked?" I asked, surprised. "Mentally?"
"Morally," he answered, with a sneer. "You picked a foolish quarrel to
leave me, and now you are back again. Why?"
"Can you tell me?"
"I have a theory," he said, with kindly eyes. "Tell me if I am wrong.
My wife has become interested in you. She has marked you for a victim.
At first you were unwilling. You could not even bear to be near me. But
now you are more callous."
"You are wrong," I replied--then suddenly remembered that I had given a
solemn promise to Lady Helen.
No doubt Hubbard marked the change in my expression. His sneer grew
more pronounced. But I had a task to get through somehow.
"Lady Helen, with all due deference to you, Hubbard," I said slowly,
"is not a woman I could ever care about. I feel certain she is even
less interested in me than I am in her. But even were the reverse the
case with her, as you suspect, what odds? I have the utmost contempt
for her; and I think that she deserves--but there, you have the
misfortune to be her husband, so I'll say no more."
His face was scarlet. "What reason have you to despise her?" he
demanded.
"Is it not enough that she has most unwarrantably caused you a great
deal of unhappiness?" I retorted. "Besides, you have told me sufficient
of her character to convince me that she is one of those flighty
butterfly women whom all honest men regard with only one step short of
loathing."
"And you are an honest man?" he sneered.
"I try to be," I answered modestly.
He was furious. In order to hide it, he sprang out of bed, flung on his
dressing-gown and rushed to the bath. I thought of Lady Helen's acute
prevision of the event, and almost contrived to smile. Hubbard had come
within an ace of defending his defamed wife with naked fists on my
impertinent face, according to the simple rules of the Supreme Court of
Appeals of primeval unlettered aborigines.
We tabooed the subject by tacit consent for the remainder of the
forenoon, but Hubbard announced his intention of accompanying me to
the inquest, and as soon as we were seated in the train he opened fire
again.
"I am afraid I have given you an exaggerated idea of Lady Helen's
shortcomings," he commenced, looking anywhere but at me. "I am afraid
I have created a false impression in your mind. I don't want you to
consider her entirely blameworthy, Pinsent; if she were that I should
long ago have ceased to care a pin for her."
I shrugged my shoulders and looked out of the window.
He went on presently. "I'm afraid, Pinsent, I have done a foolish
thing, perhaps even a caddish thing, in telling you anything about
our private quarrel. It did not occur to me at the time that I might
prejudice you against her. To be honest, there were faults on both
sides, and if you knew all you might consider me the more deserving of
censure, her the more deserving of pity."
"My dear old chap," I answered solemnly, "have I known you all these
years for nothing? All you have said only the more assures me of your
chivalry and generosity and tenderness of heart, and makes me feel the
angrier at her insensate incapacity to appreciate your qualities. I
grant you that you hide yourself at times behind a mask of surliness,
but do you mean to tell me that any true woman, any woman, indeed,
even such a frivolous creature as she has proved herself to be, could
have failed to penetrate so transparent a disguise? I can't believe it,
my boy. In my opinion, Lady Helen knows you perfectly for what you are.
But instead of responding with an equal or similar nobility of mind, at
the instance of her innate selfishness she is using her knowledge to
put upon you, to hurt you, to trifle with you, and to drain your purse,
all that she may pass the sort of existence she prefers without the
wheel-brake of your tutelage."
Hubbard moved uncomfortably in his seat. He frowned and bit his lip.
Then he coughed and put up a hand to his brow.
"Damme!" at length he blurted out. "You're as wrong as you can be. It
was I who insisted on the separation."
"But she forced you to it. She broke her marriage vow of obedience, by
refusing to accept the rules of life that you had planned."
"I prescribed conditions which she characterised as grossly
unreasonable and unfair. I am by no means sure now that she was not
right."
"Nonsense, Hubbard. It's a woman's first duty to obey and cleave to
her husband at all costs and whatever be the consequences or fancied
consequences to her comfort or convenience. Marriage imposes that
obligation on the woman in its sacramental character. It is a sacred
obligation and it cannot be violated without the guilt of crime. I
could have no mercy on such a criminal."
Hubbard unbuttoned his coat and threw back the lapels. He seemed hot.
He puffed out his cheeks and began to fan himself with a newspaper.
"Lord!" he muttered. "What strait-laced ideas you have of matrimony.
Upon my soul I cannot follow you. They are out of date. There was a
time, perhaps, when they were necessary. But now! My dear Hugh, you
should reconsider the matter. Your views are somewhat narrow. For years
past the world has been allowing an ever-increasing license to woman.
And who shall say that it is wrong! Woman is a reasoning, responsible
being. I----"
"Nonsense, Hubbard," I interrupted. "Woman is the weaker vessel, and
the more she is restricted the better for her own protection. Look at
the Divorce Court! Thousands of marriages are every year dissolved.
That is all owing to the greater freedom which men have conceded woman
of latter years. Divorce was, comparatively speaking, an unknown
quantity when men asserted the right to confine their wives in proper
bounds and forced them to observe and practise the domestic virtues
both for occupation and amusement. Look around you and consider what
has been brought about by the unwise relaxation of the old, sound laws!
A race of social moths and drones and gad-flies has been created, whose
chief business in life it is to amuse themselves; whose pleasure it
is to spend money often earned with difficulty by devoted fools; whose
delight it is to ensnare and to deceive their former tyrants; whose
estimate of motherhood is an avoidable and loathsome human incident;
whose morality is a resolution to preserve their immorality from public
criticism; whose faith is a shibboleth composed of superstitious
formulæ, and whose religion is occasionally to attend divine service in
some fashionable church arrayed in the latest thing in headgear and a
chic French gown."
Hubbard straightened his shoulders. His expression had grown quite
superior during my tirade, and when it was over, it was plain that he
looked down on me from the heights of a philosophic Aconcagua.
"I would not advertise those opinions if I were you," he observed with
a slight sneer. "They have a grain of truth in them, but not enough to
conceal the brand of special advocate. I suppose you do not wish to be
regarded as a social reformer?"
"I shall be content to reform one woman--if ever I marry," I answered,
with a straight face, though it was hard to keep it straight.
"She has my unmeasured sympathy," said Hubbard. "Once upon a time I was
a woman-hater--but in my most uncharitable moments I was never such a
fool as you. You will forgive my plain speaking?"
"Certainly, Hubbard, certainly. You are not responsible. It is plain
to me that Lady Helen has bewitched you. One of these days you'll be
lauding her as a creature of incomparable excellences--a very paragon
of merit and a pattern of the virtues. I can see it coming. I am sorry,
for, of course, I know what she is."
Hubbard turned crimson. He snapped his teeth together and rapped out:
"See here, Pinsent, we are very old friends, but I'll be damned if I
allow you to disparage my wife. Is that plain?"
I took out my cigarette case. "Perfectly," I murmured.
He glared at me for a moment, then scowled still more blackly and
growled deep in throat: "I can't think what has come over you. You
haven't the least right or cause to hate her. It's positively unmanly.
Especially as she thinks of you far more highly than you deserve. She
feels it, too. You must have shown her how you regard her. She made me
feel a brute."
"Look here, Hubbard," I cried, with a nicely assumed show of
indignation, "I want to oblige you and I want to keep the peace between
us, but I shan't be able to if you keep on defending her when you know
as well as I----"
"What?" he thundered.
"That she is a butterfly!" I thundered back.
"She is not!" he shouted.
"She is!" I said.
"You, you, you imbecile!" spluttered my poor friend. "I tell you
once and for all that is only one phase of her. I don't like it, I
admit," (he began to cool off), "but still it is only a phase. She is
in reality a woman of great depth of character." (He was quite cool by
this.) "I had a conversation with her the other night that astonished
me. Of course, I have always known that she is an educated woman,
but the extent of her knowledge had previously escaped me. She has
a much more than superficial acquaintance with the modern forms of
speculative philosophy. She has read Kant and Spencer and Nietzsche
with understanding: and she is now engaged in the study of Egyptian
history. You have interested her deeply in the subject."
I shrugged my shoulders. "And from all this you conclude?"
"That I have been an idiot not to recognise long ago that she is
my intellectual equal. And I have treated her as if she were an
irresponsible child."
"But she is a woman."
"Quite so," replied this converted woman-hater, "and because she is a
woman, and such a woman, she has the power to bless the man fortunate
enough to win her--her affection--as few men are blessed. Now you can
appreciate my position. I have blindly sacrificed my chance. I----"
"Pish!" I interrupted. "Tell her what you have told me and be blessed!
You'll repent it all your life through."
"It is too late," he groaned. "I have been weighed in the balance and
found wanting. Pride, if nothing else, would always prevent her from
forgiving me. She--liked me once, I think--but now----" He cleared his
throat and forced a wry smile. "She looks upon me as her treasurer and
friend. It was my own choice. I have no right to grumble." Then he
burst out suddenly, "But it's damnable, Pinsent, damnable!"
Lady Helen's medicine was working like a charm. I thought it best
to let well enough alone. So I made a rude effort and changed the
conversation. We soon reached our journey's end.
The inquest was a nightmare dreamed by day. The courtroom was filled
with poor Weldon's relatives. His father, the old baron, ostentatiously
turned his back on me. He seemed to think me in some way responsible
for his son's fate. Weldon's sisters, too, whom I knew slightly,
vouchsafed me no sign of recognition. His younger brother--now the
heir--was the only member of the family who extended the slightest
token of civility. He was so manifestly delighted at the unlooked-for
promotion of his prospects that I read in his warm hand-grip a secret
pæan of joy. He had been intended for that limbo of younger sons and
blue-blooded incompetents, the bar. Happily, the inquest was soon
over. I was only in the box five minutes, and a quarter-hour later the
verdict was recorded: "Accidental death."
Hubbard and I returned at once to London. There arrived, I plunged
into work upon my book and for a space of two days I managed to forget
that the world contained anything but steles and obelisks and mural
hieroglyphic inscriptions which, though always half obliterate with
time, had somehow or other to be made sense of and translated into
English prose.