Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive
IDOLS
By William J. Locke
Second Edition
John Lane: The Bodley Head London And New York
1898
[Illustration: 0009]
TO
J. S.
IN MEMORIAM
M. S.
IDOLS
PROEM
Two men once issued from the darkness and broke into a house. They came
for robbery, but, finding an old man asleep in a chair, they murdered
him. Then terrified at their deed, they fled, almost empty-handed,
and so vanished into the night. Long afterwards they were overtaken by
justice, confessed their crime and paid the penalty. Their sordid story
is set down in the newspapers of the time. Otherwise they have passed
into oblivion, and no man concerns himself with the dismal working of
their souls. Their existence would not have found a mention here, were
it not that the blow they dealt was the cause of convulsions in other
lives.
For under the outer seeming of harmonious days and gentle living, often
lies a smouldering train of devastating forces--stifled passions of
greed and lust and jealousy, splendid heroisms and enthusiasms that burn
white. In the common way of life no match is set; which forms a trite
moral for the elegist.
But now and then the way of life is lit with lurid suddenness and the
mine is sprung.
Beneath the surface of four gentle lives such a train was smouldering.
The vulgar crime of the two nameless abjects set it ablaze. And they,
issuing from the darkness for one ghastly moment, were but blind, almost
impersonal instruments of Destiny, so far as they concerned these four.
CHAPTER I
It was Irene Merriam’s hour of greatest content when she looked into
her heart for a fugitive desire and smiled at finding none. And this
was a source of all the more comfort, because she was a woman who gave
unsparingly of herself to life, and made large claims upon life in
return. She sat in a leathern armchair by the fireplace, listening to
the talk of her two companions, who were sitting by the dinner table
over their coffee. Now and then she interposed a remark, but lazily,
preferring to watch the play of expression on their faces, to dream
dreams about them, and to realise her own happiness. This after-dinner
scene was a familiar one; familiarity had made it dearer. She had grown
to regard it as an essential in her scheme of life, like sleep and food
and raiment.
Of the two men, one was her husband, Gerard Merriam; the other, his
life-long, intimate friend. They had chummed together at school, at the
University; had joined the same Inn of Court, and had been called to the
bar together; and in spite of wide divergence of taste and character,
had remained in close relationship to the present day.
It was on the homeward voyage, after a Long Vacation trip to India, that
they had met Irene, a lonely girl returning from the grave of a father
whose deathbed she had gone out too late to witness. Both men fell in
love with her. The rivalry becoming mutually obvious, each gave the
other a fair field. The wooing continued in London till success fell
upon Gerard. On his meeting with Irene after her marriage, the other,
Hugh Colman, bowed low over her hand, kissed it and put a loyal
friendship at her service. A proud bearing, emphasised by steel-blue
eyes and a supercilious up-sweep of a heavy auburn moustache, gave
distinction to the action. He had rather a courtly way of doing things.
The tears started to her eyes. She had been greatly drawn to him before,
and pitied him out of her girlish heart for having lost in his rivalry;
but from that moment she loved him with a pure friendship, and made it a
dear object of her life to intensify the brotherly affection between
the two men. In fact she had raised her conception of this Orestes and
Pylades relationship to a kind of cult, of which she herself was the
devoted and impassioned priestess. During the six years of her married
life Hugh had dined with them at least once a week. Lately he had taken
a flat in their immediate neighbourhood, and his visits had grown more
frequent. Gerard, being a man of few words, had not said much to evince
his gratification, but Irene had sounded the note of welcome loud enough
for the two.
As she lay back in her chair watching them, a spice of admiration
flavoured her thoughts. Both were men of fine physique. Gerard was six
feet two, of huge frame, with deep, sloping shoulders indicative of
great strength. Hugh, of somewhat slighter build, better proportioned,
holding his head erect on square shoulders; finer, too, of face than
Gerard, who had heavy features, eyes of uncertain blue and a reddish
moustache cut short at the ends. The one face gave the impression of
a man proudly scornful, quick in quarrel, with a Celtic strain of
sensitiveness; the other that of a man slow in method, determined of
purpose, shy of demonstration--one suggesting rather than revealing
strength--a dangerous face to trust. Of the two, Hugh was pre-eminently
the man more likely, on first sight, to win a woman’s heart in a joint
contest. Even Gerard himself had wondered at his success. When he
questioned his wife, she answered, lifting glorious eyes of faith,
“Because you are you.” And that was an end of the matter. But perhaps it
was the suggestion of reserved strength in the man that had influenced
her from the first in his favour, and an intuition, such as so many
women have trusted like a divine revelation, that in a great crisis of
life the one would be living rock and the other shifting sand.
A pause in the talk gradually lingered into silence. Gerard, at the head
of the table, near Irene, manipulated his pipe, which had become choked
and would not draw. Hugh, at the side, half turning towards the fire,
leaned back in his chair, and, with hands clasped behind his head,
stared at the ceiling. Irene suddenly spoke:
“How are the Harts?”
Hugh started into a more normal posture.
“The Harts? They flourish. Have you ever heard of a Jew money-lender who
didn’t?”
There was an unwonted touch of acerbity in his tone that brought a quick
glance from Irene.
“They are not both money-lenders,” she remarked.
“Oh, Minna--she is right enough.”
“I’m sorry for the poor girl,” said Irene. “I wish she would let me be a
friend to her, but she won’t. I wonder why.”
“What do you want to worry about her for?” asked her husband, between
the whiffs of his newly regulated pipe.
“I pity her so.”
“Some people don’t like being pitied. I don’t.”
“But you are not a pretty girl cut by society,” insisted Irene.
“She’s proud, you know,” said Hugh. He might have adduced a reason much
nearer home. As it was, he gave a hint of it.
“The moon, Irene, pales as a matter of course before the sun; but it’s
an open question whether the moon likes it.”
“You are talking rubbish,” said Irene, calmly.
Gerard broke into a laugh.
“Anyway, I’m glad she hasn’t cottoned to you. I don’t like Jews about
the place. To your tents, O Israel!”
Irene flashed up. “You can’t object to the poor girl just because she is
a Jewess!”
“Of course not, my dear,” replied her husband, with a curious change of
tone. “I was only joking.”
Irene came behind his chair and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Forgive me, dear,” she said.
He nodded, and patted the back of her hand magnanimously; then pushed
his chair away from the table and rose to his feet, stretching himself
after the manner of burly men.
“I’m off to the smoking-room to make up some trout casts. You two can
come when you’ve finished the discussion.”
When he had gone Irene took his vacated seat. “The girl seems so lonely.
That’s why I take an interest in her.”
Hugh lit a cigarette and replied vaguely. Irene noticed a lack of
enthusiasm, and attributed it to a lack of interest. There was a short
silence.
“Is anything the matter?” she said at last.
“Why should there be?”
“You are not yourself to-night. You have been working too hard and want
a change. Why not go down to Weston’s to-morrow with Gerard to fish?”
“Gerard hasn’t asked me.”
“As if that were necessary. I’ll tell him at once you are going.”
“Oh, no,” he laughed. “I’m not to be regulated in that fashion. I’m not
overworked. I’m as strong as a horse. If you want to know what I was
thinking about, I’ll tell you--more or less. I remembered it was just
six years ago to-day when I first saw you after your marriage.”
She looked meditatively towards the fire, a smile upon her lips.
“And I had just been thinking how happy these six years had been and
how peaceful and sweet these evenings were, the three of us together.
Perhaps I have been selfish.”
He caught the implication, and broke into protest.
“You know very well they are the happiest times of my life,” he said.
“Where else could I get what I have here?”
“I sometimes think it would be better for you if you could find a nice
woman to give you something better,” she said, somewhat timorously.
“Oh, don’t talk like that, Renie,” he cried, impetuously, throwing his
cigarette into the fire. “The more I see of other women, the more
I despair. I see a lot of them. I’ve been married to a half a dozen
already, by popular rumour. I suppose I shall end one of these days
by marrying one in grim earnest. I’m a fool, Renie, I know. But _que
veux-tu?_ My temperament is not that of an anchorite. I know how it will
be. A whirl of the senses--and after that the deluge. And then I’ll come
back here and sit in this room and wonder how the devil I could have
thought of another woman. You’ve spoiled me for the common run of women.
I haven’t met one yet that is fit to black your shoes. The man that
worships the sun doesn’t give his allegiance to a bonfire.”
“But he can warm himself by the bonfire,” replied Irene, laughing.
“Until the thing goes out. Then he’s got to light another. But the sun
is eternal.”
She was accustomed to his hyperbole. The woman in her loved the praise.
It supplemented Gerard’s rarer tributes to her worth, effectually
prevented her from feeling a lack in her husband’s lesser
demonstrativeness. Again, she was enlightened enough to allow relief to
overburdened feelings. A man of his type could not love her to-day and
cast her out of his heart to-morrow. She never had a moment’s doubt that
she was throned there as the love of his life. But a magnanimous scorn
of thoughts of disloyalty on his part triumphed supremely over a false
position.
In Hugh’s present outburst, however, she detected some special
determining cause.
“I’m a very limited being, my dear Hugh,” she said quickly, “whatever
exaggerations I let you use. But you know how deep my interest in your
welfare is, and life could not go wrong with you without causing me--and
Gerard--pain and anxiety. That was why I spoke. Whatever it is, I am
sorry.”
Sympathy could not have been more delicately conveyed than it was by
her tone and look. But there are times when sympathy stings. He remained
silent for a moment, then shifted his position, threw back his head
and twirled his great moustache.
“You are everything that is sweet, Renie,” said he. “But I was telling
you general truths--not posing as _un homme manqué_. I hate the kind
of fellows that are forever mewing about for women’s sympathy. It’s
despicable!”
He rose, and, with two arms held out, took her hands and raised her from
her chair.
“There. Don’t be hurt. Everything’s going on swimmingly, I assure
you. The world at my feet, and heaven at my finger tips. Let us go to
Gerard.” The smoking-room was a nondescript apartment, half library,
half gun-room, suggestive more of the country squire than the London
barrister. Gerard, with a glass of water on a little table by his side,
was engaged upon his casts, screwing up his eyes, so as both to avoid
the smoke of his pipe and to see the delicate involutions of his knots.
He looked up, with a nod, when his wife and friend entered. Irene turned
to a desk to scribble a note. The men’s talk turned upon fishing. Weston
had killed a two-pound trout the day before. They discussed the chances
of a similar prize for Gerard. Then came the question of flies. Gerard
waxed learned. Irene, having written her note and finding herself out of
the conversation, took up a book. Gerard’s love of sport she indulgently
allowed, but in her heart she could not sympathise with it. The wilful
infliction of pain passed her comprehension. There was so much of it in
the world already.
She was glad when she became aware of a change of topic, and drew her
chair nearer the fire. But Hugh, looking at his watch, rose to depart.
Irene protested.
“So early? It is not ten o’clock yet.”
There was a touch of dismay in her tone. Gerard, too, bade him sit down
again. But he pleaded work. He had been briefed in a hurry, had not a
notion yet of the case which was coming on immediately.
They had to let him go, and when he had gone, fell to discussing him as
they had done a thousand times before. Irene idealised and worshipped
her husband, but her feelings towards Hugh were composed of conflicting
and of somewhat delicate elements. The man’s history, mode of life and
diversity of character, appealed by turns to her sense of romance, of
trust, of protection. He had squandered a pretty patrimony in his early
days. A diamond brooch still glittered before the footlights on an
oblivious bosom. He had lived open-handedly, benefiting more by his
vices than many of the austere do by their virtues. Even now, with
modest income at the criminal bar, small thrift was incomprehensible to
him, in spite of Irene’s periodical expositions. On such occasions she
looked serenely down upon him from immeasurable heights. But in this man
of so many simplicities, seemed to lie a baffling fund of reserve, which
both compelled her respect and kept her intellectual interest in him
upon the alert. The paradox fascinated her especially in its extension
to achievement. For with a habit of glowing speech he combined a severe
literary taste. A reputation of some standing had been made and was
upheld by poems wrought with crystalline coldness. On the other hand,
a recent and sudden opening at the bar was chiefly due to tempestuous
advocacy.
“You seem to be worrying your head over everybody to-night,” said Gerard
at last. “First it was Israel Hart’s daughter and now it’s Hugh. Whence
this violent attack of altruism?”
“I have everything that life can give me, and I should like others to
have the same. Now, there’s something wrong with Hugh.”
“There always is. A man can’t have the temperament of an Ajax and expect
to go through life smoothly.”
“His friends can help him,” said Irene.
“My dear, good Renie,” said Gerard, slipping the last cast into his
fly-book, which he strapped deliberately, “if there is one cry bitterer
than another that goes up to heaven it is ‘Save us from our friends!’”