heavy sleep before the broad yellow sunshine of Monday outlined the pink
velvet brocade curtains unhygienically drawn before the open windows.
And she dreamed, not of the magic wind that had blown upon her that
night, nor of the Mercury-like figure in the suit of Carberrys, but of
the supple bodies that had bounded and whirled, and of the gleaming
panther-fangs that had clashed in mid-air. Then the dominant figure
became that of von Herrnung. Again the red mouth under the tight-rolled
red moustache alternately flattered, insulted, and cajoled. Again she
felt that violation of her virgin flesh, its moist, hot touch upon her
naked shoulder. Its kiss bit and stung.
She awakened late from those poisoned dreams to a riotous blaze of
colour and a breath of musky fragrance. On the coffee-stand beside her
bed lay a great sheaf of long-stalked roses; deep orange-hearted, with
outer petals of ruddy flame. She plunged her face deep into the
flowers. The corner of a large square envelope thrust from amongst them.
She caught it between her teeth and pulled it out.
It was from von Herrnung, written on paper bearing the device of the
Societe Aeronautique Internationale in the Faubourg St. Honore. It was
brief enough.
"_That I offended yesterday, Isis will pardon. The address I promised
is--'Atelier Wiber, 000, Rue de la Paix.' The good Wiber demands no fee
for making Beauty yet more beautiful. All has been arranged._
"_Devotedly,_
"_T. v. H._"
*CHAPTER XVII*
*INTRODUCES AN OLD FRIEND*
Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.V.O., Consulting Surgeon to St. Stephen's and
the Hospital of St. Stanislaus and St. Teresa, sat busily writing at the
big leather-topped table in the consulting-room, that, with the
well-stocked library adjoining, occupied the rearward ground-floor of
the Harley Street corner house.
The hands of the table-clock pointed to eleven A.M. Since nine the
doctor had sat at the receipt of patients, the crowd in the waiting-room
had melted down to half a dozen souls. Fourteen years had gone by since
Saxham, late Temporary Captain, R.A.M.C., attached Headquarters Staff,
H.I.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, had taken over the lease and bought his
practice from the fashionable physician who had been ruined by the war
slump in South African mining-stocks.
The broken speculator's successor had struck pay-reef from the outset.
Society had taken Saxham up and could not afford to drop him again. He
was harsh and unconciliatory in manner--a perfect bear, according to
Society--but quite too frightfully clever; and as yet no speedier rival
had outrun him in the race.
Now as the July sunshine, its fierceness tempered by the short curtains
of pale yellow silk that screened the wide-open windows, came streaming
in over the fragrant heads of a row of pot-grown rose-trees, ranged on
the white-enamelled window-seat, it shone upon a man to whom both Time
and Fortune had been kind. The admirable structure of bone, clothed
with tough muscle and firm white flesh, had not suffered the degrading
changes inseparable from obesity. Nor had the man waxed lean and grisly
in proportion as his banking account grew fat. His scholar's stoop
bowed the great shoulders even more, disguising the excessive
development of the throat and deltoid muscles. The square, pale face,
with the short aquiline nose and jutting under-lip, was close-shaven as
of old. The thickly growing black hair was streaked with silver-grey
and tufted with white upon the temples. His loosely fitting clothes of
fine silky black cloth were not the newest cut, neither were they
old-fashioned. They were suited perfectly to the man.
While Saxham minutely copied his prescription, the patient who sat
facing the window in the chair on the doctor's left hand had not ceased
from the enumeration of a lengthy catalogue of symptoms, peculiar to the
middle-aged, self-indulgent, and tightly-laced. At the close of a
thrilling description of after-dinner palpitations, she became aware
that her hearer's attention had strayed. Following up his glance she
ran him to earth in one of three tinted photographs that stood in a
triptych frame upon his writing-table, and glowed with an indignation
that tinged with violet a plump face coated with the latest
complexion-cream.
"How very charming your wife is--still!"
The speaker, her recent character of patient now merged in that of
visitor, plucked down her veil of violet gauze with a gesture that
betrayed her wrath. But her voice was carefully honeyed to match her
smile--as she continued:
"You have been married quite an age, haven't you?"
The anniversary of her own second honeymoon was due next week. She went
on answering her own query:
"Nearly fourteen years, I think?"
Saxham answered, not glancing at the silver table-almanac but at the
threefold photograph frame:
"To be precise, just fourteen years and six weeks. We were married on
the 6th of June, 1900."
"You have a good memory--for some things!"
The undisguised resentment in her tone pulled Saxham's head round. He
surveyed her with genuine surprise. She bit her lips and tossed her
head, waggling her tall feather, jingling her strings of turquoise and
amber, coral and onyx, kunzite and olivine, big blocks of which
semi-precious stones were being worn just then, strung on the thinnest
of gold chains. Each movement evoked a whiff of perfume from the scanty
folds of her bizarre attire. Her frankly double chin quivered, and her
redundant bosom, already liberally displayed through its transparent
covering of embroidered chiffon, threatened to burst its confining bands
of baby-ribbon, as the Doctor said:
"Is it not natural that I should have a particularly clear recollection
of the greatest day of all my life--save one?"
"You're quite too killing, Owen!"
She laughed tunelessly, clanking her precious pebbles.
"Of course, we all know you're fearfully swanky about your wife's
beauty. I saw her yesterday at Lord's--sitting under the awning on the
sunny side, with the Duchess of Broads and Lady Castleclare. Your boy
was with them, jumping out of his skin over Naumann's bowling for
Oxford. Really marvellous! Your poor dear Cambridge hadn't a chance!
Tremendously like you he grows--I mean Bawne. Really, your very image!"
"I should prefer," said Saxham, stiffly, "that my son resembled his
mother."
"Ha, ha, ha! How quite too romantic!" She threw back her head, its
henna-dyed hair plastered closely about it and fastened with buckles of
jade, set with knobs of turquoise. A kind of stove-pipe of enamel green
velvet crowning her, was trimmed with a band of miniature silk roses in
addition to the towering violet plume. The plume, carefully dishevelled
so as to convey the impression of a recent wetting, threatened the
electric globe-lamp springing from a standard near. Her crossed legs
liberally revealed her stockings of white silk openwork, patterned with
extra-sized dragon-flies in black chenille, and her laugh rattled about
Saxham's vexed ears like Harlequin's painted bladder, full of little
pebbles or dried peas. "In love with your wife--and after fourteen
years and six weeks!" Her fleshy shoulders shook, and her opulent bosom
heaved stormily. She passed a little filmy perfumed handkerchief under
her violet gauze veil and delicately dabbed the corners of her eyes.
"You remind me of my poor David. I was always the _one woman on earth_,
in his opinion. To the last, he was jealous of the slightest reference
to you!"
"To _me_? Why should he have been?"
Mildred--for this was Saxham's faithless bride-elect of more than twenty
years previously--swallowed her wrath with an effort, and went on with
the mulish obstinacy of her type:
"Perhaps it was absurd. But men in love are unreasonable creatures, and
David was perfectly mad where I was concerned. He worshipped me to the
point of idolatry! He never could _quite_ believe that I did not regret
my--my choice--that my heart did not sometimes escape from his keeping
in dreams, and become yours again, Owen! He never _really_ cared for
Patrine, because she has a look of you.... Absurd, considering that she
was born two years after you disappeared into South Africa.... Though
of course I could not truthfully say that I did not--think of you a
great deal!"
It seemed to the silent man who heard, that Mildred offended against
decency. His soul loathed her. She went on:
"Her brother--my darling boy who died--was the very image of David!"
Her tone was even womanly and tender in speaking of the dead boy. "But
Patrine--a year younger--Patrine is really wonderfully like you, with
her commanding figure and almost Egyptian profile, those long eyes under
straight eyebrows--and all those masses of dead-black hair!" As Saxham
writhed under the category she gave out her irritating laugh again.
"Ah!--I forgot! When Patrine was in Paris with Lady Beauvayse for the
Big Week--Lady Beau took her to the Atelier Wiber--the famous
hairdresser's establishment at 000, Rue de la Paix--where they
specialise in _Chevelures des Teintes Moderne_--all the newest effects
displayed by stylish mannequins--and really the change is
astonishing--her sister Irma and I hardly knew Patrine when she came to
see us at Kensington--looking superb, with hair--one might almost call
it terra-cotta coloured--showing up her creamy-white skin."
"Do you tell me that Patrine has bleached her splendid hair and stained
it with one of those vile dyes that are based on aniline--or Egyptian
henna at the best?"
Mildred retorted acidly:
"It was a very expensive process.... Five hundred francs--but I
understand that Lady Beauvayse was so good as to insist on paying
Wiber's charges herself."
Saxham answered brusquely:
"I would have given ten times the money to know my niece's hair
unspoiled. Whoever paid, the process will prove an expensive one to
Patrine when she finds herself excruciated by headaches, or when the
colour changes--as it will by-and-by!"
Mildred shrugged:
"She can have it re-dipped, surely? Or let it return to its original
black!"
"There are many chemical arguments against human hair so altered
returning to its original colour," came from Saxham grimly. "As these
women who have made coiffures of orange, pink, crimson, blue and green,
fashionable, had previously found to their cost. Do you not realise
that from mishaps of this kind resulted the chromatically tinted heads
one sees at public functions? Bizarre and strange in the electric
lights, hideous in the sun."
"Ha, ha, ha!" Mildred's laugh rattled about the Doctor's ears like a
shower of walnuts. "I shall certainly bring Patrine to call upon you,
if her hair happens to turn peacock-green or pinky-crimson. I would not
miss seeing your face for all the world! But seriously, my dear Owen,
when a girl is as handsome as my girl and has no _dot_ to back her, she
must make herself attractive and desirable to eligible men."
"By trying to make herself look like a Parisian _cocotte_, she renders
herself neither attractive nor desirable--to the kind of man whom I
should like to see married to my niece. The cleanly kind of man, with
wholesome tastes, a sound constitution, and an upright character."
"My dear Owen, you might be composing an advertisement for a butler or a
_chauffeur_!"
Mildred ostentatiously controlled a yawn as the Doctor continued:
"As to a provision for Patrine on her marriage, you know that I shall
gladly give it. Of course, upon condition----"
"Yes, yes, I know what your condition would be!" Mildred's finger-tips,
adorned with nails elaborately veneered and dyed, drummed a maddening
little tattoo on the table-ledge. "That she marries the 'right kind of
man, with wholesome tastes,' and all the rest of it. The question
is--would Patrine be able to endure him? She is--let us say--more than
a little difficult to get on with--and essentially an independent,
up-to-date girl."
"If Patrine would have subdued her ideas about independence and given up
this idea of taking a place as salaried companion, I would have welcomed
her, and so would my wife!"
"Patrine is--as you are very well aware--something very different to a
mere companion. She is reader and secretary to Lady Beauvayse. Her
Club subscription is paid, she moves there amongst gentlewomen, and is
treated at Berkeley Square exactly like a favoured guest. You should
see the presents Lady Beauvayse absolutely showers upon her--and she
gets all her expenses and a hundred a year."
Saxham was silent. Patrine might have had all this and much more, if
she would have accepted the home he offered. Not only because she was
his niece, but the girl was dear to him. His wife loved her, and in her
strange, wild way Patrine returned some measure of Lynette's tenderness.
"She is worth loving," Lynette had told her husband. "She has a
generous, brave, independent nature and a deep heart. She is not easily
won because she is so well worth winning. Ah! if the Mother were only
with us, how well she would understand and help Patrine!"
But Mildred had risen to depart. Saxham rose too, not without alacrity,
and taking her offered hand, pressed it and let it fall to her side.
"Well, good-bye. My kind regards to Captain Dyneham." He referred to
the second legal possessor of Mildred's once coveted charms. "When can
I dine with you at Kensington, do you ask? I fear I have very few
opportunities for sociality. Some day! ... Tell Patrine to come and see
me. Half-past one o'clock to-morrow. Lunch after my scolding--and a
chat with Lynette."
"You are extremely kind to Patrine." Mildred's tone was sweetly
venomous. "But I fear just at present she has little time to spare.
Men in love are so exacting. Dear me, what a feather-brained creature I
am! ... Haven't I told you about Count von Herrnung?"
"You have told me nothing," said Saxham, "and you know it. Who and what
is the man?"
Mildred said with a great air of dignity:
"He is a distinguished officer of the Prussian Flying Service, the son
and heir of a high official in the German Foreign Office. He holds the
rank of Count by courtesy. I assure you I never met a more agreeable
young man."
"Even were he all that you say, and more, and even while I regard the
German Army as a marvel of organisation and efficiency--I should not,
knowing the type of man that is the product of their military system,
desire my niece to marry a German officer."
Mildred mocked:
"'Marry'--who said anything about marriage? ... When they have not known
each other for a month. Not"--her tone became sentimental--"that I am a
disbeliever in love at first sight. No one could doubt that Patrine is
attracted, and he--the Count"--she dropped her eyelids--"is simply too
fearfully gone for words. Absolutely dead-nuts!"
"'Gone.' ... 'Dead-nuts.' ..."
"I give you my word. Entangled hopelessly. 'What a captive to lead in
chains,' I said to Patrine--he is quite six feet in height or over, and
has the most perfect features; simply magnificent eyes, the most
fascinating manner, and the build of a Greek athlete. He is staying at
the 'Tarlton,' and I must say Lady Beauvayse is extremely sympathetic.
For since they came back from Paris together the Count has been taking
Patrine about everywhere. She can hardly have had a glimpse of my gay
girl.... Dinners, theatres, the opera, and heaven knows what else, they
have crowded into the week!" The smiling speaker shrugged her ample
shoulders. "To say nothing of cabaret suppers and dances. He even
promises to take her to the famous 'Upas Club.' Wonderful, by all
accounts. They say the French Regency came nowhere near it. Dancing in
the Hall of the Hundred Pillars, a simply wonderful three A.M. supper,
and champagne of the most expensive brands, served up in gold-mounted
crystal jugs."
"Can it be possible? ..." broke from Saxham. "Are you mad, that you
countenance this German in taking Patrine to such an infamous place?"
"'Infamous!' Really, Owen, your notions are too old-fashioned for
anything." Her laughter broke out, and her chains and bangles jingled
an accompaniment. "Do," she urged, "come out of your shell. Dine with
us on Thursday. We have a box for the 'Ministers' Theatre. We'll go on,
you and I, George and Irma, from there to the cabaret supper at the
'Rocroy.' We can't afford the 'Upas,' the subscription is too fearfully
prohibitive. But the entertainment at the 'Rocroy' is really
_chic_--the dancing is as good--everyone says--as they have it at
Maxim's. Do come! Of course, you can trust us not to blab to your
wife! Mercy! how severe you look!" Her tone changed, became wheedling,
her made-up eyes languished tenderly. "Odd! how we poor, silly women
prefer the men who bully us. Come! One chance more. Dine Thursday and
see 'Squiffed' at the 'Ministers'--try a whiff of Paris at the 'Rocroy'
after midnight, 'twill buck you up like nothing else--take my word!
Won't you?"
"I will not!"
"Why not?"
"I have told you why not. Because these places are centres of
corruption, schools for the inculcation and practice of vice in every
form. Men and women, young or old, those who take part in or witness
one of these loathsome dances, hot and reeking from the brothels and
voodoo-houses of Cuba and the Argentine are equally degraded. I had
rather see my niece Patrine dead and in her coffin than know her capable
of appreciating such abominable exhibitions, pernicious in their
effects, as I, and others of my profession have grave reason to
know!--ruinous in their results to body, mind, and soul!"
"Intolerable!"
Her plump, middle-aged face was leaden grey beneath her violet veil as
she screamed at him:
"You have insulted me! Horribly--abominably! ... How dare you tell me
that I frequent infamous places, and encourage my daughter to visit
schools of vice! And it is not for Irma you are so rottenly scrupulous,
but for Patrine, your wife's favourite! Who will do as she pleases, and
marry whom she prefers without 'by your leave' or with mine! She is a
mule for self-will and obstinacy--another point of resemblance to
yourself! ..."
He had recovered his stern self-possession. His face was granite as he
said:
"I have not insulted you, but if you will set no example to your
daughters in avoiding these evils, it is my duty to expostulate."
She reared like an angry cobra, then spat her jet of scalding venom.
"I take leave to think my present example quite harmless to Irma and
Patrine. Now yours--of a few years ago--was certainly calculated to
damage the bodily and worldly prospects of your son." She added, as
Saxham silently put out his hand to touch the bell: "No! please don't
ring. I know my way out. Good-morning.... Pray remember me to Bawne
and your wife!"
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*SAXHAM PAYS*
Thus, having shot her bolt, Mildred departed. The Dop Doctor standing
in the open doorway, watched the gaily-accoutred, middle-aged figure in
the peg-top skirt and bouffante tunic of green taffeta patterned with a
violet grape-vine, moving down the white-panelled corridor.
Saxham watched her out of sight before he shut the door and went back to
his chair. There he sat thinking.... No one would disturb the Doctor
until he touched his electric bell.
Ah! if the truth were told, not all of us find solace in the thought
that in the niches of Heaven are safely stored our ancient idols. To
Owen Saxham it was gall and verjuice to remember that for love of this
woman, weak, vain, silly, spiteful, he, the man of intellect and
knowledge, had gone down, quick, to the very verge of Hell.
Mildred was just eighteen when he had wooed and won her. She had been
slight and willowy and pale, with round, surprised brown eyes, an
indeterminate nose, and a little mouth of the rosebud kind. Her neck
had been long and swanlike, her waist long and slim, her hands and feet
long and narrow. He had desired her with all the indiscriminating
passion of early manhood. He had planned to pass his life by her side.
He had hoped that she might bear him children--he had wrought in a
frenzy of intellectual and physical endeavour to take rank in his chosen
profession, that Success might make life sweeter for Mildred--his wife.
She had seemed to love him, and he had been happy in that seeming. Then
the shadow of a tragic error had fallen blackly across his path. From
the omission to copy in his memorandum-book a prescription made up by
himself in a sudden emergency had sprung the branding suspicion that
culminated in the Old Bailey Criminal Case of the Crown _v._ Saxham.
His acquittal restored to him freedom of movement. He left the Court
without a stain on his professional reputation, but socially and
financially a ruined man.
Friends and patients fell away from Saxham--acquaintances dropped him.
Mildred--his Mildred--was one of the rats that scurried from the sinking
ship. She had thrown him over and married David, his brother. Her
betrayal had been the wreath of nightshade crowning Saxham's cup of woe.
Those vertical lines graven on his broad white forehead, those others
that descended from the outer angles of the deep-cut nostrils to the
corners of that stern mouth of his, and yet those others at the angles
of the lower jaw, were chiefly Mildred's handiwork. They told of past
excess, a desperate effort to drown Memory and hasten longed-for death
on the part of a man who had quarrelled with his God.
The demons of pride and self-will, defiance and scorn had been cast out.
An ordeal such as few men are called upon to endure had purified,
cleansed, and regenerated the drunkard. Friendship had taken the
desperate man by the hand, plucked his feet from the morass, led him
into the light and set his feet once more on firm ground. His
profession was his again to follow. Love, real love, had come to him
and folded her rose-white wings beside his hearth.
Years of pure domestic happiness, of successful work, had passed, and
now--the July sunshine had no warmth in it, though it streamed in
through the open window over the tops of the pot-roses. The Dop
Doctor's head was bowed upon his hands, his great shoulders shook as
though he strove with a mortal rigour, the wood of the table where his
elbows leaned, the boards beneath the thick carpet on which his feet
rested, creaked as the long shudders convulsed him at intervals.
It had seemed to Saxham--in whom the seed of Faith had germinated and
put forth leaves in one great night of storm following upon years of
arid dryness--that Almighty God must have forgiven those five worse than
wasted years.
Fool! he now cried in his heart. The Divine Mercy is boundless as the
ocean of air in which our planet swims, and for the cleansing of our
spotted souls the Blood of the Redeemer flowed on Calvary. But He who
said in His wrath that the sins of the fathers should be visited on the
children, does not break, even for those repentant prodigals whom He has
taken to His Heart again--the immutable laws of Nature. Nature, of all
forces most conservative, wastes nothing, loses nothing, pardons
nothing, avenges everything.
The shouted curse, like the whispered blessing, is carried on the
invisible wings of Air forever. Thus, the deformed limb, the devouring
cancer, the loathsome ulcer, and the degrading vice, are perpetuated and
reproduced as diligently and faithfully as the beautiful feature, the
noble quality, the wit that charms, the genius that dominates. Nay,
since Nature turns out some millions of fools to one Dante or
Shakespeare or Moliere or Cervantes, it would appear that she prefers
the fools.
So it is. Divine Grace has reached and saved the sinner. The ugly vice,
the base appetite, have been eradicated by prayer and mortification, by
years of self-control and watchfulness. Free will, moral and physical
force, self-command and self-respect are yours again. And with sobs of
gratitude the erstwhile slave of Hell gives thanks to Heaven.