It was Sunday afternoon, and Riversdale, by reason of the gaiety
gathered there, had eclipsed the gaiety of all other places. Some dozen
people were staying in the house, but the most of them had come down
from London to spend the afternoon and return after dinner, and the
lawns, which the company of blameless fools had caused to wear their
most ravishing appearance, were suitably crowded. A set of croquet-hoops
had been put up on one, and a game was proceeding in the orthodox Sunday
afternoon style; that is to say, a nervous, palpitating little man, to
whom at the moment croquet seemed of more importance than his eternal
salvation, was busy, with a tea-party of four balls, separating
adversaries and making hoops with intolerable precision, while a long,
willowy girl, his partner, trailed after him in his triumphal progress
and gave faint and languid sounds of sycophantic applause.
"There you see they are separated, Miss Martin," said the zealot at
length, "and now I'll mobilize with you. Then you can make your hoop
next time, and I ought to go out."
"Yes, it's quite too beautiful," said Miss Martin; "but I know I'll
miss. Oh, it's not my turn, is it? Where are they gone?"
"They" at this moment--a Guardsman of the most pronounced type and a
middle-aged woman of the most un-middle-aged type--being weary with this
faultless exhibition, had retired to a seat at the far end of the
garden, and were talking very low and laughing very loud. They were
recalled with difficulty, still lingering on the way, and the
unpromising situation was carefully explained to them by the palpitating
man in a voice in which the endeavour not to appear jubilant was rather
too marked. It being the lady's turn, she chipped her ball sideways at
about right angles to the required direction, and, without even
affecting to look where it had gone, dropped her mallet in the middle of
the lawn, and instantly retired with her Guardsman again.
Elsewhere other groups were forming and dispersing. In the new wooden
shelter Lady Ardingly had taken up her permanent position at the
Bridge-table, and, while others cut in and out, kept her seat with
tree-like composure, and played rubber after rubber with a success which
appeared monotonous to her adversaries. Anthony Maxwell occasionally
took a hand at her table, and in the intervals chased Maud Brereton from
terrace to terrace with a hunter's pertinacity, conscious of the
approving eye both of his mother and of Maud's. The fathers of them both
would no doubt have viewed his employment with equal approbation, had
they not been deeply engaged in a secluded corner in trying to rook each
other at piquet, each, however, finding to his indescribable dismay that
he had caught a Tartar. Like many very rich men, they played for very
low stakes, and exhibited an inordinate greed for half-crowns, and even
smaller coins.
Jack Alston and his wife had been among the guests who came down from
the Saturday till Monday, but he had gone over for the day, rather to
Mildred's disgust, to a neighbouring golf-links, and would not be back
till dinner. Marie, however, had been, so Mildred considered, at her
very best all the afternoon, conferring, as she in some mysterious
manner had always the power to do, an air of distinction and success to
the party. Wherever she was there was a crowd; wherever she was there
was more constant laughter, more animated conversation. She had the
gift, rare and inimitable, of making people play up. Dull folk aroused
themselves when she talked to them, brilliant people coruscated, for
there went from her, an unconscious but pervading emanation, some air of
freshness and vitality, which acted like a breath of wind in a close
atmosphere, reviving and bracing. At present she was talking to Lady
Devereux and Arthur Naseby, who wore a straw hat which was strangely
unsuitable to him and appeared stouter than ever, in the comparative
privacy of the lower lawn.
"Ah yes," she was saying, "that is just the fault with us all now. We
think we can be amused merely by having people to amuse us. It is not
so; being amused depends almost entirely on one's self. Some days
nothing amuses one; on others one is amused by the other sort of
nothing."
"It's always the other sort of nothing with me," said Arthur Naseby.
"And what I like really best of all is the pantomime. You find in the
pantomime exactly what you take there. I take there an invincible
gaiety. That is why I find it there."
"That's what I mean," said Marie. "It is the case with everything. I
love the pantomime, like you. Everything takes place without the
slightest reason. It is so like life; and, like the clowns, we belabour
each other with bladders and throw mud at butter belonging to other
people. But the audience--the part of it like Mr. Naseby and me--are
enormously amused."
"You are horribly unjust, Marie," said Lady Devereux in her sleepy,
drawling voice. "We never belabour you. You are a privileged person; you
go flying over hedges and ditches, while if I, for instance, as much as
look over a hedge, I am supposed to be there for no good purpose. Is it
the consciousness of innocence that gives you such license! One can
acquire almost anything by practice. I think I shall set about that."
Marie laughed.
"I would, dear. Be innocent for an hour a day, to begin with, and
increase it by degrees."
"Ah, it's not innocence, but the consciousness of it, I want," said
Blanche. "It is a different matter."
"But it leads to absolutely nothing," said Arthur Naseby, in a
discontented voice, "except, perhaps, promotion in the Church; but I
have given up all real thought of that."
"I thought the real way to get on in the Church now was to preach
heretical doctrine," remarked Lady Devereux. "Our parson at Rye always
casts doubt on things like Jonah and the whale, or tries to explain them
by supposing it was not a whale, but an extinct animal with an enormous
gullet, which seems to me just as remarkable. They tell me he is certain
to be made a Bishop. My grandfather was a Bishop."
"And mine was a draper," said Arthur Naseby. "I am thankful every day
that he was such a successful one. Really, nothing matters nowadays
except money. That is so convenient for the people who have some. Here
is a most convenient person, for instance, just coming."
Jim Spencer entered the tent with the air of looking for somebody. He
also had the air of having found somebody when he saw Marie, and sat
down in a low chair by her.
"I have been playing croquet," he said; "but I shall never play again."
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened. I remained in sublime inactivity, except when other
people used me for their own base ends. I never felt so useful in my
life."
"But that, again, is no use," said Arthur--"like the consciousness of
innocence which Lady Devereux means to cultivate. Being simply an
opportunity for other people seems to me the very type of a wasted life.
I am continually being an opportunity for other people, and the
opportunity I give them is to make unkind remarks about me; they
constantly take advantage of it."
"What do they say?" asked Marie.
"They say I am idle, and therefore probably vicious. Now, nothing was
ever less proved than that; it is a perfect fallacy, entirely due to
that pessimistic person who said that Satan finds some mischief still
for idle hands to do. That I am idle is, of course, quite true. For
thirty years I have been very busy doing nothing whatever, and every day
I live I find more nothing to do, if you understand."
"Then, you allow the world doesn't libel you?" said Lady Devereux.
"Certainly it does. It is that to which I so strongly object. People go
about saying all sorts of things about me which are perfectly true. The
greater the truth, the greater the libel."
Marie got up from her chair.
"It is true that the world has a keen grasp of the obvious," she said.
"Why don't you disappoint them, Mr. Naseby, and do something?"
"I am ready to do almost anything in the world," said he, "for a
suitable inducement; but nobody ever induces me."
"Well, I shall go for a stroll," said Marie, "and expect neither
inducement nor companionship unless any one is inclined."
Jim Spencer got up instantly.
"Please let me come," he said.
The two left the tent, but Arthur Naseby and Lady Devereux continued to
sit there. There was a moment's pause, and then in a shrill whisper,
"Yes, the case certainly presents some points of interest," said he;
"and as a consulting doctor, although nobody has shown the slightest
desire to consult me, I don't see why I shouldn't give my diagnosis.
Briefly it is this: This exceeding warm weather will undoubtedly cause
the snowflake to melt; if it does not, it is no true snowflake. But it
must be, for anything but a snowflake would have melted long ago; in
fact, it is proved."
Lady Devereux considered this.
"Marie is a great friend of mine," she said; "but I have one criticism
to make upon her: Her extraordinarily healthy way of looking at things
cannot be genuine; she would not be human if it was. She gave me a
lecture the other day about the vulgarity of lying down to be trampled
on. Now, any one that was human would know that that is just about the
only thing in the world worth doing. Personally, I consider it an
instance of the wonderful self-abandonment and self-sacrificing
character of love."
"And she wouldn't even call it love," said Arthur.
"No; she would use some perfectly antiquated and shocking word. Now,
whatever I am, I am not antique. It is absurd to treat me as if I was
Old Testament history. But Marie is a great dear. She has been too sweet
about the bazaar, and has promised to hold a stall every day."
"I never can quite make out what people see in her," said Arthur. "Of
course I adore her, simply because one has to--it is unheard of not
to--but is there anything there after all, except--except what one
sees?"
"Yes, of course there is," said Blanche. "There is in her all that you
and I and the rest of us are without. To put it baldly, she is a good
woman. You get force from being good if you are clever as well. Yes, you
may laugh, but it is so true. Now, the rest of us are not good--neither
you, nor I, nor dear Mildred."
"But Andrew is," said Arthur.
"That is why one never knows whether he is in the room or not," said
Lady Devereux. "He is, or may be, good; but there is nothing else there
whatever. Mere goodness is pretty colourless by itself; but Marie is
everything else, and good as well. She is about five times as clever as
all of us. She has tact, else she would have made rows long ago; she is
a woman of the world, but she is also good."
"I suppose that is probably why I am never quite comfortable with her,"
said Arthur in a mild, ruminating voice.
"Very likely. It is also why you are quite wrong in your diagnosis just
now. Oh, there's Lady Ardingly looking for people to make up her table.
She has probably cleaned everybody else out. Come, Arthur, let us go
and be cleaned out too."
They both laughed loudly and went.
Marie and Jim Spencer meantime had strolled away from the crowds on the
lawn towards the meadow and the river. Even though he had been only a
fortnight or so back in England, he had begun clearly to recognise that
his experiment of going away, his self-banishment to South Africa in
order to win back freedom from the spell which she had cast on him, had
been a failure. He had thought that by filling his mind with other
interests, by drugging his soul with the pursuit of gold, as you can
drug an aching body into unconsciousness, he would still that pain. So,
indeed, he had done for the time, but the opiate, it appeared, was not
permanent in its effects; the drowsiness had passed off, and again at
the sight of her his love had awoke. It seemed, too, to him now that he
loved her with a more devout passion than ever before; all the old
longing was there with this added--that his heightened and matured
perception could now appreciate how fine she was; how different from the
jostling race that swirled round her, who clutched like greedy children
with both hands at the two things they alone thought worthy of effort:
pleasure, at whatever cost or violation; and money, which was worth any
sacrifice except that of pleasure. Like the whole of the rest of London,
he knew the intrigue which Jack had been carrying on for years, and
which was now so stale that it had almost ceased to form a subject for
gossip, and this thought was bitterly poisonous to his mind. Could it be
possible, he wondered, that Marie knew and condoned it? that she had
accepted that for which there was no remedy but divorce, played
gooseberry to her husband, and knew what were his relations to the woman
whose hospitality she was even now enjoying? That she and Jack had
drifted into the apathetic estrangement which so often is the result of
childless marriages, he did not doubt; but was the reason for it that
which was so well known to everybody else? Again and again during this
last fortnight this unworthy and debasing suspicion had assailed him,
and, to do him justice, he had as often cast it from him, his trust and
whole-hearted belief in her rejecting and strangling it; and as often as
it presented itself, he vowed that he would give it no home. But the
other alternative, the only other possible, though it left her stainless
and unsullied, was hardly less painful; and it was an intolerable
thought to him that she alone should be ignorant of that of which all
his better mind told him she was ignorant. Three-quarters of the world,
no doubt, if they ever gave a thought now to a piece of scandal which
had long outlived its first youth, commended her for her admirable
common-sense in recognising the folly of making a fruitless public
exhibition of her private affairs; the other quarter no doubt wondered
idly how long her blissful ignorance would continue, and saw material
for drama the moment that enlightenment came. And in this wonder he
could not help joining--what would she do if ever she found out? Her
worldly wisdom would assuredly indicate a direction completely opposite
to that in which her moral sense would point. That there would be a
struggle he regarded as inevitable; but even he, knowing her as well as
he did, could form no conjecture as to which way it would go. Marie
accepting what had happened, and not quarrelling with the irremediable,
made a picture unpaintable; but Marie, living the life of a woman who
had separated herself from her husband, was almost equally outside
possibilities. He had a vague sense of approaching storm and brewing
mischief, remote it might be, but marching inevitably nearer, even as in
some spell of sultry and oppressive days we know that it is only through
thunder and a convulsion of elements that we can get back to cool and
dewy mornings, and again regard sunshine as a friend, not as a thing to
be shunned and shrunk from.
It may have been that the vividness with which he was conscious in every
fibre of threatening disaster was communicated by some subtle brain-wave
to her; in any case, her first words as they walked down the shady path
below the full-fledged elms bore very distinctly on that which filled
his mind.
"How hot it is!" she said. "There will surely be a storm."
The echo made by her audible voice to his inaudible thought startled
him.
"What sort of storm?" he asked quickly, still busy on his own ground.
She laughed.
"So you have been thinking of storms, too," she said. "We often used to
think in harness--do you remember, Jim? What sort of storm? Well, I too
had other storms than thunder in my mind. You used to dislike real
thunder-storms, I remember; but I always loved them. I expect other
sorts of storms affect one similarly. I hate compromise, you know. If
one is absolutely at cross-purposes with other people, it is much better
to have it out fair and square, to upset the furniture and smash the
china if necessary, rather than concede a little here and have a little
conceded there. That always results in a state of things no better than
before, and an added distaste on both sides to open the subject again."
He did not at once answer; this bore directly on his stifled
questionings, and answered them.
"Was anything particular in your mind?" he asked at length.
"No--I mean yes. I can't lie to any purpose, Jim; it's no good my
trying. Yes, what was partly in my mind was a disagreement I had with
Jack some ten days ago. We patched it up quite beautifully, and agreed
that nothing was worth bothering about. I acquiesced, though I should
personally have preferred to have it out. At least I am sure of this,
that if one differs fundamentally from any one, it is no use arguing,
or, as he says, bothering. And fundamentally Jack and I are very
different."
She paused a moment and glanced suddenly at him.
"And that is why we get on so excellently," she added, with just a
suspicion of hurry in her words.
Jim longed to applaud her quickness; it had been excellently done. But
the most elementary courtesy forbade him to call attention to it.
"Asides" are conventionally observed at other places besides the
theatres.
"I am glad of that," he said in a perfectly even voice.
This was a turning of the tables; his conventionality was as obvious as
hers; she silently noticed it and also passed on.
"Yes, that little patch-up with Jack was in my mind," she said; "but
then, as I told you, we have privately settled to have no storms. No,
the storm which I mean will be a bigger storm than that. On that subject
Jack and I are quite agreed. I mean a national storm, a general
upheaval. My goodness! some high towers and steeples will be smashed.
And here we all go, meantime, dancing in the middle of the
thunder-clouds, with the lightning, so to speak, playing about us."
They had emerged from the wooded walk on to the edge of the meadow
bordering the river, and as Marie spoke she pointed across the field to
the lawn visible beyond it, filled with gay figures, and bordered with
the bright colour of the flower-beds, and set in the sombre green of the
yew hedges. Jim followed her finger.
"Yes, assuredly we are dancing," he said. "But Sunday afternoon in the
country is an innocuous sort of high-dress dance, isn't it?"
"Certainly; but if we dance all and every day we don't get on with our
work. And in point of fact, Jim, all our dances are not very high-dress.
No; the fact is we are going to the dogs as quick as ever we can. Money,
money, money! That is a perfectly sound and legitimate cry if the means
you adopt are those that increase wealth. But if I get a tip from a City
man and speculate, I am merely snatching at what I want. Did you go to
the Maxwells' the other night? I did, because we all do. That is what we
all have come to; but it does not spell efficiency. We worship the
golden calf, but instead of feeding it we try to cut little pieces off
it."
"And Deborah was a prophetess before the Lord," said Jim. "Proceed,
Deborah."
"I wish I were," said Marie. "Oh, you should hear the truth if I was!
But, Jack, I must tell you, comes pretty near to being a prophet."
"Then you are the prophet's wife. Tell me what he says about it."
"Ah! he is a prophet in all but the one thing needful--I mean the fire
and the burning. The prophet is like the phoenix; he is born from the
ashes of a conflagration. In Jack's case all the message is there, but
it is delivered--I don't know if it will mean anything to you, but
personally I feel it--it is delivered out of cold lips. He needs the
touch of the red-hot coal like Isaiah. Did you hear or read his speech
last week about the Army Estimates? The First Secretary had given his
statement in an apologetic kind of way, apparently wishing to conciliate
the Opposition for the estimates being so high. The usual bickering over
rounds of ammunition followed, and then Jack got up. Instead of
apologizing for their being so high, he fell foul of his own chief for
their being so low. He wanted to know why the autumn manoeuvres had
been curtailed; he wanted to know why the experiments at Lydd had been
abandoned in the middle; he wanted to know why the projected battery at
Gibraltar had not been constructed: was it because of the expense? Why,
in fact, they had not spent twice as much as they had."
"That would hardly be a popular speech from a member of the Government."
"Popular? No. The prophet is no opportunist, and thank God Jack cares
absolutely not one jot what either his own side or the Opposition think
of him. The press the next morning was worth reading; he got the most
violent abuse from both sides."
"Won't that sort of thing damage him both in and after the next
election? I should not think his party would like it, and I am sure the
Government will not."
"Ah, I disagree with you there," said Marie. "Jack, I think, is getting
a great hold on the people--the masses, if you like. He dislikes them,
and he treats them like dirt; but the masses, as you know, are profound
snobs, and rather enjoy that. They like a lord to behave in the way they
imagine lords do behave. They even like a wicked lord. On the other
hand, they are beginning to see that Jack means business. He thinks the
army is wholly inadequate, and, judging from the length of the Boer War,
would crumple under a great stress. You see, he considers that the
walk-over which was anticipated has degenerated into a stroll. So,
instead of joining in the hymn of praise to the British Empire which the
Government spend their time in singing, rather out of tune with each
other, he stands apart, and says bluntly that we must set to and put
ourselves in a far greater state of efficiency, otherwise 'Pop goes the
Empire.' Now, that is impalatable, but I think people in general are
beginning to see that it may be medicinal."
"I should say it was lucky he's a hereditary legislator," said Jim. "But
how about a Government post afterwards?"
"Well, I think the Government may see that, too. They know perfectly
well that Jack doesn't care one straw about party questions. He has said
as much. What he does care about is the Empire--I think he cares for it
more than anything else in the world--and what he knows about is the
army. And if this cry for efficiency--which certainly is getting
louder--in the country continues, they will have a far better chance of
remaining in power if Jack is put at the War Office."
They had come to the far end of the meadow, and Marie paused a moment,
looking at the broad, patient stream. Hundreds of pleasure-boats were
scattered over its surface, and electric launches and river steamers
crowded with roaring Sunday excursionists did their best to make vile
one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. Each, indeed, seemed a
Bedlam let loose and packed tight. Even the stuffy little cabins were
full of feather-hatted girls and amorous young men, who changed hats
with each other, without finding the brilliancy of this wit grow the
least stale even in endless repetition; took alternate mouthfuls of
solid refreshment out of paper bags and of beer out of the same bottle,
with shouts of laughter at slightly indelicate suggestions. The poor
river was flecked with fragments of bun-bags and floating bottles where
trout should have been feeding, and echoes of the music-halls, with
absolutely independent wheezings of concertinas, owning no suzerainty,
by way of accompaniment, came to Marie and her companion with that
curious sharp distinctness with which sound travels over water. For a
moment they stood there in silence; then Marie turned quickly in the
direction of the lawn behind them, and back to the river again.
"After all--" she said half to herself.
Jim laughed. It was somehow strangely pleasant to him to find himself,
as Marie had said, thinking in harness.
"Yes, but less loudly so," he answered, replying to that which she had
not said.
"So it seems to us. Those good folk on the river don't seem loud to
themselves. But--oh dear me, Jim! what an awkward and inconvenient thing
it is to be different from the people one moves among!"
He did not feel that he owed her any mercy on this point. She had
refused deliberately the other life he had once offered her.
"Ah, you find that, do you?" he said, his love for her surging up with
bitterness in his throat. "Yet you chose it yourself."
They had begun walking back towards the lawn again, but at his words
Marie suddenly stopped. From one side came the sound of laughter and
talk, from the other, now more remote, fragments of "D'isy, D'isy."
She well knew what was in his mind, and thanked him silently for not
putting it into words.
"I know I did," she said; "and no doubt the very fact that I am
different to most of my _milieu_ is what makes it so entertaining."
At that moment Jim saw where he stood. He knew that his taunt that her
lot was of her own choosing had been dictated by that which was bitter
within him, and was of the nature of revenge, however ineffectual. And
Revenge is a very smoky lamp wherewith to guide one's steps in this
world, and he had the justice to quench it without more ado. But he knew
also that the void which she might have filled ached horribly, and by
the irony of fate he had now in abundance that of which the lack years
ago had made it impossible then that she should fill it. She had been
but a girl, he but a boy; and in him, he felt now, that which had
subsequently flowered into this great bloom of love had been but in bud.
But the bud, it was now proved, was authentic, for there was no
mistaking the flowers.
Marie also was troubled. She could not but guess something of what was
in his mind, but his taunt seemed to her unworthy of him, and she did
not regret the light finality of her answer. But as they walked back by
the meadow-side, already growing tall with hay, and redolent with the
hundred unprized flowers of English meadows, her mind changed. He had
loved her with an honourable love; she on her side had liked him, but it
had been impossible--so she told herself rather hurriedly. If she had
been free, and he came to her now--but she dismissed such unprofitable
conjectures. Meanwhile she had been harsh, though perhaps deservedly, to
her old friend. So just as he held the gate into the garden open for
her:
"But I am so glad you have come back, Jim!" she said.