In her appeal to Wyndham Audrey had played a bold stroke, and it seemed
that she had won it. She had amply revenged herself on Hardy, and more
than assured herself of Wyndham's friendship. All the same, ever since
she had left him at the doors of the Hotel Metropole, a certain
constraint had crept into their intercourse. Wyndham was not easily
deceived, and he rightly interpreted her abrupt dismissal of him as a
final effort to assert herself before the onset of the inevitable. Even
if he at times suspected her of playing a part, she had chosen the right
part to play, and he respected her for it. He himself was leading a
curious double life. He was working hard at his novel, which promised to
surpass everything that he had yet done. He was so much absorbed in
observing, studying, shaping, and touching up, that it never occurred to
him to ask himself if he were indeed creating. The thing had been
growing under his hands through the autumn; in the winter it seemed to
advance by bounds; but in the spring his work came to a sudden
standstill. He did not know what Laura, his heroine, was going to do
next. He had drawn her as the creature of impulse, but dragging the
dead weight of all the conventions at her back--a woman variously
dramatic when stirred by influences from without, but incapable of
decisive action from within. How would such a woman behave under stress
of conflicting circumstances?--if it came, say, to a fight for
possession between the force of traditional inertia and the feeling of
the moment? On the one hand the problem was as old as the hills, on the
other it was new with every man and woman born into the world. What he
called his literary conscience told him that it had to be solved;
another conscience in him shrank from the solution. At this point
Wyndham did what, as a conscientious artist, he had never done before;
he put his work away for a season, and tried not to think about it,
devoting himself to Audrey Craven instead. Even he was not always able
to preserve the critical attitude with regard to her. As he had told
her, criticism comes first, sympathy last of all. And with him--last of
all--it had come. He could not go on from day to day, seeing, hearing,
and understanding more and more, without acquiring a curious sympathy
with the thing he studied. And when the artist tired of her art, the man
felt all the influence of her natural magic. He was prepared for that,
and had no illusions on the subject.
He tested his present feelings by comparing them with those he had had
for Alison Fraser. He had not the least intention of setting up Audrey
Craven anywhere near his idol's ancient place,--he would have shuddered
at the bare idea of it. This, though he expressed it differently, was
what he meant when he resolved once for all that he would never marry,
never put himself in any woman's power again. And in the plenitude of
his self-knowledge he knew exactly how far he could let himself go
without either of these evil results following.
Unfortunately, in these cases the woman is seldom so well equipped for
self-defence as the man. Owing to her invincible ignorance of her own
nature, she must be more or less at a disadvantage. And if this is true
of women in general, it was doubly true of any one so specially prone to
illusion as Audrey Craven, who would have had difficulty in recognising
any part of her true self under its numerous disguises. She was
therefore unaware of the action and reaction which had been going on
within her during the last year. Whatever its precise quality may have
been, her love for Ted Haviland was of a different quality from her
feeling for Langley Wyndham. Under that earlier influence, whatever
intelligence she possessed had been roused from its torpor by the tumult
of her senses; her mind had been opened and made ready for the attack of
a finer intellectual passion, which again in its turn brought her under
the tyranny of the senses. For though her worst enemies could not call
Audrey clever, it was Wyndham's intellectual eminence which had
fascinated her from the first. Herein lay her danger and her excuse. She
was aware--hence her late access of reserve--that she was being carried
away by her feelings; but how, when, and whither, she neither knew nor
apparently cared to know. In the meanwhile, in Wyndham's friendship she
not only triumphed over Vincent's scorn, but she felt secure against his
infatuation. For she imagined the scorn and the infatuation as still
existing together. She knew that he was still in London, presumably
unable to tear himself away from her neighbourhood; and the sense of his
presence, of his power over her, had been so long a habit of her mind
that she could not lose it now. Otherwise she hardly gave him a thought;
and having cut herself off from all communication with Devon Street, she
did not certainly know what had become of him.
She had yet to learn.
Towards the end of February she received a letter from Vincent's mother
which left no doubt on the subject. The news of his downfall had reached
his home at last. Mrs. Hardy knew of her son's attachment to his cousin,
and had always had fixed ideas on that point. On being told that he had
"gone" irretrievably "to the bad," she jumped to a conclusion: it was
the right one, as it happened, though she had managed to cover a great
deal of ground in that jump. She at once wrote off a long and violent
letter to her niece, taxing her with cruelty, fickleness, and
ingratitude, laying Vincent's misdeeds on her shoulders, and ending
thus: "They tell me you are engaged. I pray God you may not have to go
through what you have made my darling boy suffer."
Now, either the poor hysterical lady was an unconscious instrument in
the hands of Destiny, or her prayer may have been meant as a modified
and lady-like curse; at any rate, if it had not entered into her head to
write that letter, it would have saved the writing of one chapter in her
niece's history. But, in the first place, the communication had the
effect of making Audrey cry a great deal, for her; in the second, it
came by an afternoon post, so that Langley Wyndham, calling at his usual
hour, found her crying.
He was a little taken aback by the sight, as indeed any man would have
been, for most women of his acquaintance arranged things so as not to do
their crying in calling hours.
However, he judged it the truest kindness to sit down and talk as if
nothing had happened. But it requires considerable self-possession and
command of language to sit still and talk about the weather with a
woman's tears falling before you like rain; and even Langley Wyndham,
that studious cultivator of phrases, found it hard. Audrey herself
relieved him from his embarrassment by frankly drying her eyes and
saying--
"I beg your pardon. I didn't mean that to happen; but----"
He glanced at the letter open in her lap.
"Not bad news, I hope?"
"N-no," she answered, with a sob verging on the hysterical.
Wyndham looked frightened at that, and she checked herself in time.
"No, it's nothing. At least I can't speak about it. And yet--if I did, I
believe I should feel better. I am so miserable."
"I am truly sorry. I wish I could be of some use. If you thought you
could speak about it to me, you know you can trust me."
"I know I can. Oh, if I could only tell you! But I can't."
"Why not? Would it be so very hard? I _might_ be able to help you."
"You might. I do want somebody's advice--so much."
"You are always welcome to mine. You needn't take it, you know."
She smiled through her tears, for she had acquired a faint sense of
humour under Ted's influence, and had not yet lost it.
"Well, it's about Vinc--my cousin Mr. Hardy. You remember meeting him
here once?"
"I do indeed."
"You may remember something I told you about him then. Perhaps I ought
not to have told you."
"Never mind that. Yes, I remember perfectly. Has he been persecuting you
again?"
"Ye-yes. Well, no. I haven't seen him for ages, but I live in dread of
seeing him every day. I know, sooner or later, he will come."
She paused. "I wonder if I really could tell you everything."
"Please do, or tell me as much as you care to. I'd like to help you if
you would let me."
She went on in a low voice, rather suggestive, Wyndham thought, of the
confessional: "I was engaged to him once--long ago--he forced me into
it. It began when we were children. He always made me do everything he
wanted. Then--he went away immediately after--for a year. When he came
back--I don't know how it was--I suppose it was because he had been away
so long--but I was stronger. He seemed to have lost his hold over me,
and I--I broke it off."
She looked away from Wyndham as she spoke.
He wondered, "Is she acting all the time? If so, how admirably she does
it! She must be a cleverer woman than I thought. But she isn't a clever
woman. Therefore----" But Audrey went on before he could draw a
conclusion.
"But I know some day he will come back and make it begin all over again,
and I shall have no power. And the thought of it is horrible!"
There was no mistaking the passion in her voice this time. He said to
himself, "This is nature," and he felt the same cold shiver of sympathy
that sometimes ran through him at the performance of some splendid
actress. But before he could presume to sympathise he must judge.
"Do you mind telling me one thing? Had you any graver reasons for
breaking it off than what you have told me?"
"Yes. He drinks."
"Brute! That's enough. But--supposing he didn't drink?"
"It would make no difference. I never cared for him. He thought I did. I
couldn't help that, could I? And then afterwards so many things
happened--I was not the same person. If he had not begun to--do that,
still it would have been impossible. But he won't believe it, or else he
doesn't care. He'll persecute me again, and perhaps make me marry him."
"My dear Miss Craven, he won't do that. People don't do those things in
the nineteenth century. You've only got to state clearly that you won't
have anything to say to him, and he can't do anything. If he tries to,
there are measures that can be taken."
She shook her head dismally.
"Now comes the advice. Shall I tell you the truth? You've been worrying
your brain over that wretched animal till your nerves are all upset.
You're ill practically, or you couldn't take this morbid view of it. You
ought to leave town and go away for a change."
"Where could I go to?"
"The south coast for choice. It's bracing."
"If I only could! No, I can't leave London."
"Why not? There's an excellent service of trains----"
"Because--because I love London."
"So do I for many reasons. There's no place like it, to my mind. But if
I'd overworked myself in it, I should tear myself away. You can have too
much of a good thing."
"No, not of the only place on earth you care to be in."
"Well, I've given my valuable advice. You're not going to take it--I
never thought you would. Personally I hate the people who give me
advice. What I should like to give you would be help. But the question
is, Am I able to give it? Have I even the right to offer it?"
She looked up at him. Some lyric voice, whether of hope or joy, or both,
had called the soul for an instant to her face--a poor little fluttering
soul, that gazed out through her grey eyes at Wyndham--for an instant
only, and was seen no more. When he spoke, he spoke not to it, but to
the woman he had known.
"You don't answer." (She had answered, and he knew it.) "It all comes
back to what I said long ago. The most elementary knowledge of life
would have saved you all this: if you'd had it, you could not have let
these fatuities worry you to this extent. Do you remember my telling you
that you ought to love life for its own sake?"
The moment he had said the words, he would have given anything to recall
them, but it was too late; she remembered only too well. However she had
disguised the truth, Wyndham's passionate defence of realism was not
altogether an appeal to her intellect. He ought not to have reminded her
of that now.
"Yes," she answered; "how could I forget?"
"I said at the time that you must know life in order to love it, and I
say so now. But, Audrey"--she started and flushed--"if I were another
man I should not say that."
"What would you say?"
"That you must love in order to know."
"Is there any need to tell me that _now_?"
"Perhaps not. It's what I would have told you then--if I had been
another man."
Her lip quivered slightly, and she held one hand with the other to give
herself the feeling of a human touch. He went on without the least idea
whether he were talking sense or nonsense, interrupted sometimes by his
own conscience, sometimes by Audrey's changes of expression.
"Bear with my egoism a moment--several moments, for I'm going to be
tediously autobiographical. Once, when I was a young man, I was offered
some journalistic work. It was at the very start; I had barely tasted
print. Remember, I was ambitious, and it meant the beginning of a
career; I was poor, and it meant a good salary. But it meant the
production of a column of 'copy' a-day, whether I was in the vein for it
or no. I wanted it badly, and--I refused it. I could _not_ be tied down.
Since then I have never bound myself to any publisher or editor. This
anecdote is not in the least interesting, but it is characteristic of my
whole nature, which is my reason for inflicting it on you. That nature
may be an unfortunate one, but I didn't invent it myself. Anyhow,
knowing it as thoroughly as I do, I've made up my mind never to do
certain things--never, for instance, to ask any woman to be my wife.
Marriage is the one impossible thing. It involves duty, or, worse still,
duties. Now, as it happens, I consider duty to be the very lowest of
moral motives. In fact--don't be shocked--it isn't moral at all. It is
to conduct what authority is to belief--that is, it has nothing whatever
to do with it. No. Goodness no more depends on duty than truth depends
on authority. Forgive me; I know you are a metaphysician and a moral
philosopher, and you'll appreciate this. You're going to make a
quotation; please don't. It's perfectly useless to tell me that
Wordsworth calls duty 'stern daughter of the voice of God.' It may be; I
don't know. I only know that if I believed it was my _duty_ to live, I'd
commit suicide to-morrow. I don't like stern daughters. But granted that
Wordsworth had the facts at his finger-ends, God's voice is freedom,
whatever its daughters may be. That's not a doctrine I'd preach to every
one; but for me, and those like me, freedom, absolute freedom, is the
condition of all sane thinking and feeling. Fancy loving any one because
it was your duty! Take a case. Supposing I married: the more I loved my
wife, the less a free agent I should be; and when I once realised that I
wasn't free, there would be an end of my love. I deplore this state of
things, but I can't alter it. So you see, when I most want to give you
love and protection, I can only offer you friendship, which you don't
want perhaps, and--er--good advice, which you won't take."
But she was looking beyond him, far away.
"As I can't possibly ask you to--accept my conditions, perhaps the
cleverest thing I could do would be to go away and never see you again.
There's no other alternative."
Her lips parted as if she would have spoken, but no words came. They
searched each other's faces, the woman thirsting for life, for love; the
man thirsting too--for knowledge. And he knew.
It was his turn to look away from her; and as he fixed his eyes absently
on the corner where the Psyche stood motionless on her pedestal, he
noticed, as people will notice at these moments, the ironical suggestion
of the torso, with the nasty Malay creese hanging over its head. Psyche
and--the sword of Damocles.
"I don't want you to go away," she said at last.
"I am going, all the same. For a little while--a fortnight perhaps. I
want you to have time to think." He was not by any means sure what he
meant by that. He had solved his problem, though not quite as he had
intended to, and that was enough for him. And yet his conscience (not
the literary one, but the other) would not altogether acquit him of
treachery to Audrey. Instead of going away, as he ought to have done, he
sat on talking, in the hope of silencing the reproachful voice inside
him, of setting things on their ordinary footing again. But this was
impossible at the moment. They were talking now across some thin barrier
woven of trivialities, as it were some half-transparent Japanese screen,
with all sorts of frivolous figures painted on it in an absurd
perspective. And behind this flimsy partition their human life went on,
each soul playing its part more or less earnestly in a little tragedy of
temptation. Each knew all the time what the other was doing; though
Wyndham had still the advantage of Audrey in this respect. Which of them
would first have the courage to pull down the screen and face the solid,
impenetrable truth?
Neither of them attempted it,--they dared not. After half an hour's
commonplaces Wyndham left her to think. He too had some matter for
reflection. He was not inhuman, and if at times he seemed so, he had
ways of reconciling his inhumanity to his conscience. He told himself
that his strictly impartial attitude as the student of human nature
enabled him to do these things. He was as a higher intelligence, looking
down on the crowd of struggling, suffering men and women beneath him,
forgiving, tolerating all, because he understood all. He who saw life so
whole, who knew the hidden motives and far-off causes of human action,
could make allowances for everything. There was something divine in his
literary charity. What matter, then, if he now and then looked into some
girl's expressive face, and found out the secret she thought she was
hiding so cleverly from everybody,--if he knew the sources of
So-and-so's mysterious illness, which had puzzled the doctors so long?
And what if he had obtained something more than a passing glimpse into
the nature of the woman who had trusted him? It would have been base,
impossible, in any other man, of course: the impersonal point of view,
you see, made all the difference.