"Nulla fere causa est in qua non femina litem
Moverit."
When Mr. Wylie, the pamphleteer, left Gabriel Cassilis, the latter
resumed with undisturbed countenance his previous occupation of
reading the letters and telegrams he had laid aside. Among them was
one which he took up gingerly, as if it were a torpedo.
"Pshaw!" he cried impatiently, tossing it from him. "Another of those
anonymous letters. The third." He looked at it with disgust, and then
half involuntarily his hand reached out and took it up again. "The
third, and all in the same handwriting. 'I have written you two
letters, and you have taken no notice. This is the third. Beware! Your
wife was with Mr. Colquhoun yesterday; she will be with him again
to-day and to-morrow. Ask her, if you dare, what is her secret with
him. Ask him what hold he has over her. Watch her, and caution her
lest something evil befall you.--Your well-wisher.'
"I am a fool," he said, "to be disquieted about an anonymous slander.
What does it matter to me? As if Victoria--she did know Colquhoun
before her marriage--their names were mentioned--I remember hearing
that there had been flirtation--flirtation! As if Victoria could ever
flirt! She was no frivolous silly girl. No one who knows Victoria
could for a moment suspect--suspect! The word is intolerable. One
would say I was jealous."
He pushed forward his papers and leaned back in his chair, casting his
thoughts behind him to the days of his stiff and formal wooing. He
remembered how he said, sitting opposite to her in her cousin's
drawing-room--there was no wandering by the river-bank or in pleasant
gardens on summer evenings for those two lovers--
"You bring me fewer springs than I can offer you, Victoria;" which was
his pretty poetical way of telling her that he was nearly forty years
older than herself: "but we shall begin life with no trammels of
previous attachments on either hand."
He called it--and thought it--at sixty-five, beginning life; and it
was quite true that he had never before conceived an attachment for
any woman.
"No, Mr. Cassilis," she replied; "we are both free, quite free; and
the disparity of age is only a disadvantage on my side, which a few
years will remedy."
This cold stately woman conducting a flirtation before her marriage?
This Juno among young matrons causing a scandal after her marriage? It
was ridiculous.
He said to himself that it was ridiculous so often, that he succeeded
at last in persuading himself that it really was. And when he had
quite done that, he folded up the anonymous document, docketed it, and
placed it in one of the numerous pigeon-holes of his desk, which was
one of those which shut up completely, covering over papers,
pigeon-holes, and everything.
Then he addressed himself again to business, and, but for an
occasional twinge of uneasiness, like the first throb which presages
the coming gout, he got through an important day's work with his
accustomed ease and power.
The situation, as Lawrence Colquhoun told Victoria, was strained.
There they were, as he put it, all three--himself, for some reason of
his own, put first; the lady; and Gabriel Cassilis. The last was the
one who did not know. There was no reason, none in the world, why
things should not remain as they were, only that the lady would not
let sleeping dangers sleep, and Lawrence was too indolent to resist.
In other words, Victoria Cassilis, having once succeeded in making him
visit her, spared no pains to bring him constantly to her house, and
to make it seem as if he was that innocent sort of _cicisbeo_ whom
English society allows.
Why?
The investigation of motives is a delicate thing at the best, and apt
to lead the analyst into strange paths. It may be discovered that the
philanthropist acts for love of notoriety; that the preacher does not
believe in the truths he proclaims; that the woman of self-sacrifice
and good works is consciously posing before an admiring world. This is
disheartening, because it makes the cynic and the worldly-minded man
to chuckle and chortle with an open joy. St. Paul, who was versed in
the ways of the world, knew this perfectly when he proclaimed the
insufficiency of good works. It is at all times best to accept the
deed, and never ask the motive. And, after all, good deeds are
something practical. And as for a foolish or a bad deed, the
difficulty of ascertaining an adequate motive only becomes more
complicated with its folly or its villainy. Mrs. Cassilis had
everything to gain by keeping her old friend on the respectful level
of a former acquaintance; she had everything to lose by treating him
as a friend. And yet she forced her friendship upon him.
Kindly people who find in the affairs of other people sufficient
occupation for themselves, and whose activity of intellect obtains a
useful vent in observation and comment, watched them. The man was
always the same; indolent, careless, unmoved by any kind of passion
for any other man's wife or for any maid. That was a just conclusion.
Lawrence Colquhoun was not in love with this lady. And yet he suffered
himself to obey orders; dropped easily in the position; allowed
himself to be led by her invitations; went where she told him to go;
and all the time half laughed at himself and was half angry to think
that he was thus enthralled by a siren who charmed him not. To have
once loved a woman; to love her no longer; to go about the town
behaving as if you did: this, it was evident to him, was not a
position to be envied or desired. Few false positions are. Perhaps he
did not know that Mrs. Grundy talked; perhaps he was only amused when
he heard of remarks that had been made by Sir Benjamin Backbite; and
although the brief sunshine of passion which he only felt for this
woman was long since past and gone, nipped in its very bud by the lady
herself perhaps, he still liked her cold and cynical talk. Colquhoun
habitually chose the most pleasant paths for his lounge through life.
From eighteen to forty there had been but one disagreeable episode,
which he would fain have forgotten. Mrs. Cassilis revived it; but, in
her presence, the memory was robbed somehow of half its sting.
Sir Benjamin Backbite remarked that though the gentleman was languid,
the lady was shaken out of her habitual coldness. She was changed.
What could change her, asked the Baronet, but passion for this old
friend of her youth? Why, it was only four years since he had followed
her, after a London season, down to Scotland, and everybody said it
would be a match. She received his attentions coldly then, as she
received the attentions of every man. Now the tables were turned; it
was the man who was cold.
These social observers are always right. But they never rise out of
themselves; therefore their conclusions are generally wrong. Victoria
Cassilis was not, as they charitably thought, running after Colquhoun
through the fancy of a wayward heart. Not at all. She was simply
wondering where it had gone--that old power of hers, by which she once
twisted him round her finger--and why it was gone. A woman cannot
believe that she has lost her power over a man. It is an intolerable
thought. Her power is born of her beauty and her grace; these may
vanish, but the old attractiveness remains, she thinks, if only as a
tradition. When she is no longer beautiful she loves to believe that
her lovers are faithful still. Now Victoria Cassilis remembered this
man as a lover and a slave; his was the only pleading she had ever
heard which could make her understand the meaning of man's passion; he
was the only suitor whom a word could make wretched or a look happy.
For he had once loved her with all his power and all his might.
Between them there was the knowledge of a thing which, if any
knowledge could, should have crushed out and beaten down the memory of
this love. She had made it, by her own act and deed, a crime to
remember it. And yet, in spite of all, she could not bring herself to
remember that the old power was dead. She tried to bring him again
under influence. She failed, but she succeeded in making him come back
to her as if nothing had ever happened. And then she said to herself
that there must be another woman, and she set herself to find out who
that woman was.
Formerly many men had hovered--marriageable men, excellent
_partis_--round the cold and statuesque beauty of Victoria Pengelley.
She was an acknowledged beauty; she brought an atmosphere of perfect
taste and grace into a room with her; men looked at her and wondered;
foolish girls, who knew no better, envied her. Presently the foolish
girls, who had soft faces and eyes, which could melt in love or
sorrow, envied her no longer, because they got engaged and married.
And of all the men who came and went, there was but one who loved her
so that his pulse beat quicker when she came; who trembled when he
took her hand; whose nerves tingled and whose blood ran swifter
through his veins when he asked her, down in that quiet Scotch
village, with no one to know it but her maid, to be his wife.
The man was Lawrence Colquhoun. The passion had been his. Now love and
passion were buried in the ashes of the past. The man was impassable,
and the woman, madly kicking against the fetters which she had bound
around herself, was angry and jealous.
It is by some mistake of Nature that women who cannot love can yet be
jealous. Victoria Pengelley's pulse never once moved the faster for
all the impetuosity of her lover. She liked to watch it, this curious
yearning after her beauty, this eminently masculine weakness, because
it was a tribute to her power; it is always pleasant for a woman to
feel that she is loved as women are loved in novels--men's novels, not
the pseudo-passionate school-girls' novels, or the calmly respectable
feminine tales where the young gentlemen and the young ladies are
superior to the instincts of common humanity. Victoria played with
this giant as an engineer will play with the wheels of a mighty
engine. She could do what she liked with it. Samson was not more
pliable to Delilah; and Delilah was not more unresponsive to that
guileless strong man. She soon got tired of her toy, however. Scarcely
were the morning and the evening of the fifth day, when by pressing
some unknown spring she smashed it altogether.
Now, when it was quite too late, when the thing was utterly smashed,
when she had a husband and child, she was actually trying to
reconstruct it. Some philosopher, probing more deeply than usual the
mysteries of mankind, once discovered that it was at all times
impossible to know what a woman wants. He laid that down as a general
axiom, and presented it as an irrefragable truth for the universal use
of humanity. One may sometimes, however, guess what a woman does not
want. Victoria Cassilis, one may be sure, did not want to sacrifice
her honour, her social standing, or her future. She was not intending
to go off, for instance, with her old lover, even if he should propose
the step, which seemed unlikely. And yet she would have liked him to
propose it, because then she would have felt the recovery of her
power. Now her sex, as Chaucer and others before him pointed out, love
power beyond all other earthly things. And the history of queens, from
Semiramis to Isabella, shows what a mess they always make of it when
they do get power.
A curious problem. Given a woman, no longer in the first bloom of
youth, married well, and clinging with the instincts of her class to
her reputation and social position. She has everything to lose and
nothing to gain. She cannot hope even for the love of the man for whom
she is incurring the suspicions of the world, and exciting the
jealousy of her husband. Yet it is true, in her case, what the race of
evil-speakers, liars, and slanderers say of her. She is running after
Lawrence Colquhoun. He is too much with her. She has given the enemy
occasion to blaspheme.
As for Colquhoun, when he thought seriously over the situation, he
laughed when it was a fine day, and swore if it was raining. The
English generally take a sombre view of things because it is so
constantly raining. We proclaim our impotence, the lack of national
spirit, and our poverty, until other nations actually begin to believe
us. But Colquhoun, though he might swear, made no effort to release
himself, when a word would have done it.
"You may use harsh language to me, Lawrence," said Mrs. Cassilis--he
never had used harsh language to any woman--"you may sneer at me, and
laugh in your cold and cruelly impassive manner. But one thing I can
say for you, that you understand me."
"I have seen all your moods, Mrs. Cassilis, and I have a good memory.
If you will show your husband that the surface of the ocean may be
stormy sometimes, he will understand you a good deal better. Get up a
little breeze for him."
"I am certainly not going to have a vulgar quarrel with Mr. Cassilis."
"A vulgar quarrel? Vulgar? Ah, vulgarity changes every five years or
so. What a pity that vulgar quarrels were in fashion six years ago,
Mrs. Cassilis!"
"Some men are not worth losing your temper about."
"Thank you. I was, I suppose. It was very kind of you, indeed, to
remind me of it, as you then did, in a manner at once forcible and not
to be forgotten. Mr. Cassilis gets nothing, I suppose, but east wind,
with a cloudless sky which has the sun in it, but only the semblance
of warmth. I got a good sou'-wester. But take care, take care, Mrs.
Cassilis! You have wantonly thrown away once what most women would
have kept--kept, Mrs. Cassilis! I remember when I was kneeling at your
feet years ago, talking the usual nonsense about being unworthy of
you. Rubbish! I was more than worthy of you, because I could give
myself to you loyally, and you--you could only pretend!"
"Go on, Lawrence. It is something that you regret the past, and
something to see that you _can_ feel, after all."
She stopped and laughed carelessly.
"Prick me and I sing out. That is natural. But we will have no
heroics. What I mean is, that I am well out of it; and that you,
Victoria Cassilis, are--forgive the plain speaking--a foolish woman."
"Lawrence Colquhoun has the right to insult me as he pleases, and I
must bear it."
It was in her own room. Colquhoun was leaning on the window; she was
sitting on a chair before him. She was agitated and excited. He, save
for the brief moments when he spoke as if with emotion, was languid
and calm.
"I have no right," he replied, "and you know it. Let us finish. Mrs.
Cassilis, keep what you have, and be thankful."
"What I have! What have I?"
"One of the best houses in London. An excellent social position. A
husband said to be the ablest man in the City. An income which gives
you all that a woman can ask for. The confidence and esteem of your
husband--and a child. Do these things mean nothing?"
"My husband--Oh, my husband! He is insufferable sometimes, when I
remember, Lawrence."
"He is a man who gives his trust after a great deal of doubt and
hesitation. Then he gives it wholly. To take it back would be a
greater blow, a far greater blow, than it would ever be to a younger
man--to such a man as myself."
"Gabriel Cassilis only suffers when he loses money."
"That is not the case. You cannot afford to make another great
mistake. Success isn't on the cards after two such blunders, Mrs.
Cassilis."
"What do I want with success? Let me have happiness."
"Take it; it is at your feet," said Lawrence. "It is in this house. It
is the commonest secret. Every simple country woman knows it."
"No one will ever understand me," she sighed. "No one."
"It is simply to give up for ever thinking about yourself. Go and look
after your baby, and find happiness there."
Why superior women are always so angry if they are asked to look after
their babies, I cannot understand. There is no blinking the fact that
they have them. The maternal instinct makes women who cannot write or
talk fine language about the domestic affections, take to the tiny
creatures with a passion of devotion which is the loveliest thing to
look upon in all this earth. The _femme incomprise_ alone feels no
anguish if her baby cries, no joy if he laughs, and flies into a
divine rage if you remind her that she is a mother.
"My baby!" cried Victoria, springing to her feet. "You see me yearning
for sympathy, looking to you as my oldest--once my dearest--friend,
for a little--only a little--interest and pity, and you send me to my
baby! The world is all selfish and cold-hearted, but the most selfish
man in it is Lawrence Colquhoun!"
He laughed again. After all, he had said his say.
"I am glad you think so, because it simplifies matters. Now, Mrs.
Cassilis, we have had our little confidential talk, and I think, under
the circumstances, that it had better be the last. So, for a time, we
will not meet, if you please. I do take a certain amount of interest
in you--that is, I am always curious to see what line you will take
next. And if you are at all concerned to have my opinion and counsel,
it is this: that you've got your chance; and if you give that man who
loves you and trusts you any unhappiness through your folly, you will
be a much more heartless and wicked woman than even I have ever
thought you. And, by Gad! I ought to know."
He left her. Mrs. Cassilis heard his step in the hall and the door
close behind him. Then she ran to the window, and watched him
strolling in his leisurely, careless way down the road. It made her
mad to think that she could not make him unhappy, and made her jealous
to think that she could no longer touch his heart. Not in love with
him at all--she never had been; but jealous because her old power was
gone.
Jealous! There must be another girl. Doubtless Phillis Fleming. She
ordered her carriage and drove straight to Twickenham. Agatha was
having one of her little garden-parties. Jack Dunquerque was there
with Gilead Beck. Also Captain Ladds. But Lawrence Colquhoun was not.
She stayed an hour; she ascertained from Phillis that her guardian
seldom came to see her, and went home again in a worse temper than
before, because she felt herself on the wrong track.
Tomlinson, her maid, had a very bad time of it while she was dressing
her mistress for dinner. Nothing went right, somehow. Tomlinson, the
hard-featured, was long suffering and patient. She made no reply to
the torrent which flowed from her superior's angry lips. But when
respite came with the dinner-bell, and her mistress was safely
downstairs, the maid sat down to the table and wrote a letter very
carefully. This she read and re-read, and, being finally satisfied
with it, she took it out to the post herself. After that, as she would
not be wanted till midnight at least, she took a cab and went to the
Marylebone Theatre, where she wept over the distresses of a lady,
ruined by the secret voice of calumny.
It was at the end of May, and the season was at its height. Mrs.
Cassilis had two or three engagements, but she came home early, and
was even sharper with the unfortunate Tomlinson than before dinner.
But Tomlinson was very good, and bore all in patience. It is Christian
to endure.
Next morning Gabriel Cassilis found among his letters another in the
same handwriting as that of the three anonymous communications he had
already received.
He tore it open with a groan.
"This is the fourth letter. You will have to take notice of my
communications, and to act upon them, sooner or later. All this
morning Mr. Colquhoun was locked up with your wife in her boudoir. He
came at eleven and went away at half-past one. No one was admitted.
They talked of many things--of their Scotch secret especially, and how
to hide it from you. I shall keep you informed of what they do. At
half past two Mrs. Cassilis ordered the carriage and drove to
Twickenham. Mr. Colquhoun has got his ward there, Miss Fleming. So
that doubtless she went to meet him again. In the evening she came
home in a very bad temper, because she had failed to meet him. She had
hoped to see him three times at least this very day. Surely, surely
even your blind confidence cannot stand a continuation of this kind of
thing. All the world knows it except yourself. You may be rich and
generous to her, but she doesn't love you. And she doesn't care for
her child. She hasn't asked to see it for three days--think of that!
There is a pretty mother for you! She ill-treats her maid, who is _a
most faithful person, and devoted to your interests_. She is hated
by every servant in the house. She is a cold-hearted, cruel woman. And
even if she loves Mr. Colquhoun, it can only be through jealousy, and
because she won't let him marry anybody else, even if he wanted to.
But things are coming to a crisis. Wait!"
Mr. Mowll came in with a packet of papers, and found his master
staring straight before him into space. He spoke to him but received
no answer. Then he touched him gently on the arm. Mr. Cassilis
started, and looked round hastily. His first movement was to lay his
hand upon a letter on the desk.
"What is it, Mowll--what is it? I was thinking--I was thinking. I am
not very well to-day, Mowll."
"You have been working too hard, sir," said his secretary.
"Yes--yes. It is nothing. Now, then, let us look at what you have
brought."
For two hours Mr. Cassilis worked with his secretary. He had the
faculty of rapid and decisive work. And he had the eye of a hawk. They
were two hours of good work, and the secretary's notes were
voluminous. Suddenly the financier stopped--the work half done. It was
as if the machinery of a clock were to go wrong without warning.
"So," he said, with an effort, "I think we will stop for to-day. Put
all these matters at work, Mowll. I shall go home and rest."
A thing he had never done before in all his life.
He went back to his house. His wife was at home and alone. They had
luncheon together, and drove out in the afternoon. Her calm and
stately pride drove the jealous doubts from his troubled mind as the
sun chases away the mists of morning.