The Merriams lived in a comfortable detached house on Sunnington Heath,
most convenient and pleasant of London suburbs. A year or so before they
had persuaded Hugh Colman to leave his somewhat dismal chambers in the
Temple and take a flat in a block of red-brick mansions that had just
arisen to glorify the end of the High Street of Sunnington proper.
Irene, with a woman’s eye to economy, had picked out for him a
commodious little set on the fourth floor. But Hugh put aside her choice
and rented a sumptuous flat lower down, which he furnished in expensive
style. When Irene reproved him he laughed, with a grand-signorial wave
of the hand. His pigsty and husk days were over. He was going to take
advantage of the fatted calves and other resources of rehabilitated
prodigals. Was not his income going up by leaps and bounds? Besides,
there was his uncle, Geoffrey Colman, of Brantfield Park. He had
more than expectations. Irene lectured him on the vanity of human
expectations.
“Your uncle may marry again and have a family,” she said, sagely.
Hugh snapped his fingers. It would be indecent. Geoffrey Colman had ever
been the correctest of livers. He dressed for his solitary dinner every
night of his life, on account of his butler. His marriage would convulse
a whole neighbourhood. He would just as soon think of throwing a
nitro-glycerine bomb into the parish church.
Irene yielded with a pitying shrug of the shoulders. She had not lived
six and twenty years for nothing. She knew that in every man lurks
something of Voltaire’s droll of a Habbakuk. About eighteen months later
her prognostications were fulfilled. Geoffrey Colman showed himself
capable of anything by marrying a young wife. Quite recent rumours
hinted at the probable arrival of an heir. All Hugh’s expectations
came to a ghastly end. Irene sympathised with him, made elaborate
calculations as to means for reducing his expenditure. He listened with
pathetic admiration--she had a regal way of taking impossible things for
granted--acquiesced silently in her schemes and then went out and cursed
himself.
To-night, after leaving the Merriams, he walked along in the same
self-reproaching temper. The March wind, coming keenly across the heath,
blew a small drizzle into his face, causing him to pull up his coat
collar and step out briskly. He swung his stick with an irritation
which, however, had nothing to do with the weather. If only the past had
been different--if only Irene had loved him instead of Gerard! He would
have husbanded his life, instead of playing ducks and drakes with it as
he was doing. What business had he along this road? Had he not better
retrace his steps past the Merriams’ house and go to his own study
fire and his imaginary brief? Suddenly he uttered an exclamation of
impatience, drew himself up and called himself a fool. A familiar
recklessness of mood gained gradual hold upon him. He laughed, gratified
at the possession of a sense of humour that could look mockingly upon
the portentous seriousness of this ridiculous world.
He turned his thoughts to the cases he had in hand, went off at a
tangent to the points he had made in an emotional address to the jury
the day before. The success was sweet--sweeter because he was conscious
that the secret of it lay within himself. He had the gift of eloquent
speech--pathos, persuasion, invective. It had brought him suddenly, when
his chance came, from the obscurest ranks of the junior bar, into public
light. A pittance had leaped into a competence, which in its turn might
rise to the dignity of an income. His temperament had done for him, a
young and struggling man, what legal learning and acumen had not done
for hundreds many years his senior. When he realised this, he felt
grateful to his temperament, and granted it indulgence for the many
scurvy tricks it had played him.
Accordingly, he was fairly satisfied with himself when, after a quarter
of an hour’s walk, he opened the garden gate of a large house standing
in its own grounds. He walked up the drive humming an air. He rang,
was admitted, conducted across a luxuriously carpeted hall, up a broad
staircase, into the drawing-room.
“Mr. Colman, miss.”
The servant withdrew and shut the door. A girl rose from a low chair by
the fire and advanced with quick steps to meet him.
“Oh, how late you are--no, you couldn’t help it. You told me. But the
evening has been so long--waiting for you.”
“I got away as soon as I could. You see, I had promised. If your note
had come yesterday, instead of this morning-----”
“I only knew last night that father was going out of town. It seemed too
good a chance of having you all to myself. Oh, I am so glad you’ve come.
It was good of you.”
“By no means,” he said, with a mock bow. “Don’t you think it’s a
pleasure I’ve been looking forward to all day long?”
“I don’t--if you express yourself in that sarcastic way,” she answered,
reseating herself.
Her voice was deep and rich, and she affected a lazy utterance--half
aware that it might warm the blood of the man she was addressing. It
did. He had been irritably conscious of its seductiveness in Irene’s
dining-room; of the seductiveness, too, of her sensuous grace that
had first caught his imagination. “You are a witch, Minna,” he said,
admiringly.
The echo in his ear of the threadbare commonplace sounded an ironical
note. It pleased the girl, however.
“I have been longing for a little compliment for a week.”
“Why, I saw you the day before yesterday.”
“_Cela n’empeche pas._”
“Did I behave badly to you?”
“No--but I might just as well have been selling you postage-stamps
behind a counter.”
“Forgive me. But, you see, we met in the street.”
“You were ashamed of being seen with me, I suppose.”
“Minna!” he exclaimed, flushing into quick earnest.
She laughed softly. “I thought I should get something genuine out of
you--you walked into the trap beautifully. Do you like my new tea-gown?
I had it made because you admired one something like it in a shop
window.”
She rose and stood before him. She was undeniably beautiful, with warm,
southern beauty. From her mother, long since dead, whom chance had
brought from Smyrna to the tender keeping of Israel Hart and the fogs of
London, she inherited the languor of expression that was her charm. Yet
her features, more mutinous than regular, bore little or no trace of the
Jewess--none, save that almost imperceptible, strange contour of flesh
beneath the eyes, from cheekbone to cheekbone, which is the eternal mark
of her race. The soft crepon of the garment clung to her figure, showing
its young and supple curves. Its pale yellow shade heightened the
richness of her colouring.
Hugh expressed unreserved admiration. He had the power of a nice
extravagance in praise. The glow deepened on the girl’s face and her
eyes lit with gratification. After a quick glance at herself in the
mirror of the over-mantel, she sat down again. Her heart had thirsted
for his homage, and had drunk it in greedily.
“Now tell me all that you have seen and done lately,” she said.
An easy task. He had seen no one lovelier than herself. He had sketched
her portrait on brief-paper to bring a breath of sweetness into the
evil-smelling court. He had the scrap in his letter case. Minna took
possession of it, burst into roulades of delighted thanks. He laughed.
Compared her murmurings to the low notes of the nightingale. The matter
threshed out, Minna reverted to her original demand. He complied,
touched on the gossip of the day, spoke lightly of his forthcoming
volume of poems. Would he write a poem to her? He tried to explain the
severity of his style. Not flesh and blood. Perhaps on the tea-gown.
Thus the talk was brought round again to the bewitching garment.
“And this--creation--was really to please me?” he asked.
“It’s a godsend to have someone to think of pleasing,” she cried, with
sudden petulance. “Whom have I else? Papa and papa’s friends? They
never look at me unless I put on something barbaric--gold and silver
and precious stones. Then they can reckon me up in pounds, shillings and
pence. One grows weary of dressing for one’s own pleasure. Life gets
on one’s nerves like a chapter out of the Book of Ecclesiastes--I don’t
suppose you ever feel like that--because you’re a man.”
“I wish I could make life less lonely for you,” he said, kindly.
“I wish you could.”
“Why do you keep Mrs. Merriam so at arm’s length? She would do a great
deal for you, if you would let her.”
“I can’t,” said the girl. “I don’t know why. Why do you think so much of
her?”
“Because she is the finest woman I know.”
“Or simply because----” she checked herself--“No, I didn’t mean
that--but----”
“But what?”
“Oh, can’t you guess? I want you to estimate me a little, by myself--not
measure me by a standard--as you do--there!”
She leant forward, with one hand drooping over her knee, and looked up
at him with moist eyes, and behind the moisture burned the longing folly
of a woman.
“I don’t want anybody else to please. You are enough for me. All the
world.”
Hugh had come prepared. Her sensuous charm had long woven itself around
him. He had long known that a touch from him could awaken slumbering
volcanoes; that in a moment of madness he would one day give that touch.
Even now his pulses beat fast. He was flesh and blood, though his verse
was marble. Yet he kept a curb upon himself. He reached out his hand and
took her fingers.
“You mustn’t look at me like that. I am not a bad man. But you will make
me say things both of us may be sorry for.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Say anything.” The moment had come. In a
fraction of a second he could have her youth throbbing in his arms. With
an effort of will he threw back her hand and started to his feet. She
shrank away frightened.
“Listen, Minna, before we make fools of ourselves. Where is this going
to end? Have you thought of it? Use your intelligence instead of your
passions. I am speaking brutally to you. I know it. It’s our only chance
of salvation. You are throwing yourself away--into perdition perhaps. Do
you know that?”
He stood, regarding her sternly; resolved to set her upon his own
intellectual plane; to put before her serious issues; at the least, to
throw open the floodgates for her pride. Her face paled slightly, and
she asked, with quivering lip: “Don’t you care for me--a little?”
He swung his arm in earnest gesture. “Care for you? Of course I care for
you. Do you suppose I should be here to-night if I didn’t--not being a
scoundrel?”
“Then why are you so unkind?”
“Because, though I love you in one way--there is only one woman whom I
could love in all ways, and the woman isn’t you. Simply that. If we let
this go on, you would be giving all; I, a part. This can’t be news
to you. I love you because your beauty and charm fire my blood. It’s
Oriental in its simplicity. Have you thought of what the end of it might
possibly be?”
The higher man suddenly had revolted against the readiness to seize the
too willing prey, and had grown reckless in use of devastating weapons.
He expected to see her facile southern nature rise in passionate
anger--or her womanliness shrink in tears of disgust from the insult. He
would have acted a brute part. But in either case he would have laid her
love dead at her feet. He waited. The unexpected happened. She looked at
him doggedly out of hardened eyes from which all the languor had faded.
And then she said, in her deep voice:
“I would sooner have a part of any kind of love from you than all the
best love of any other man.” He remained for a moment amazed at her
strength. Had he conceived an insultingly wrong impression of her?
“Do you mean that you love me, in spite of the words I have just used?”
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“I humbly beg your forgiveness,” he said in a low voice.
There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the ormolu clock
on the mantelpiece. The apparent vastness of the great drawing-room,
stiffly furnished with its cold Louis XV. furniture, increased the
impression of stillness. Hugh glanced at Minna from time to time,
hesitating to speak. She had changed utterly from the glowing girl
who had stood up before him an hour ago to coax his admiration for
her finery. Her face was set with lines of determination and stubborn
character. The riddle of the woman lay open to him who could read it.
The false light of the eternal, unutterably tragic missolution dawned
upon the man.
“I have made a horrible mistake,” he said at last.
“You have--in misjudging me.”
“I meant that I have used cruel words. My justification was my
intention. I wish I could make you some reparation.”
“That is easy,” she murmured.
“Name it.”
“Ask me to marry you.”
Marriage! At last he was brought brutally face to face with the problem
that he had hitherto left, unconsidered, to fortuity. Indeed he grew
conscious that marriage had been but vaguely contemplated. He had
persuaded himself into a belief in his own honour. The rottenness of
the belief stared at him hideously. The nakedness of his desire appeared
before him, stripped of its glamour.
He despised himself, put her on moral heights beyond his reach. To
ask her in marriage would be an added insult. And her money! A queen’s
dowry. The very temptation to retrieve his fortunes therewith was an
ugly and abhorrent thing. He ran the gauntlet of all these thoughts.
Emerged with rebellion in his soul; seized angrily at the first
unhonoured standard to his hand. Marriage--with the daughter of Israel
Hart, the Jew money-lender. It was impossible.
Half divining this last mood, she came to where he sat, knelt down and
placed her clasped hands on his knee. Her eyes dwelt upon him, softening
adorably. Andrea del Sarto might have painted her.
“Why don’t you speak? I have offended you? Asked for too much? Indeed, I
didn’t expect it. I am a Jewess and your people will despise me--and
my father’s a money-lender--it would be a disgrace to you. I was
willing--ready--only----”
The standard fell from the man’s hand. He yielded, utterly disarmed. The
woman conquered as she surrendered to his embrace.
“If I took your love and the gift of yourself,” he said, “and did not
marry you--just because you were Israel Hart’s daughter--I should loathe
myself. My child, I thought you a toy--I find you a woman--worthy to be
any man’s wife.”
“It would be sweet to be only yours,” she murmured. He kissed her again,
then released her gently.
“If I asked you to marry me now, I should be committing a base
action--for other reasons. Try to understand them. I am very badly
off for money. You are an heiress. And I owe your father £5,000 on a
reversion, which no longer exists. I scrape together the interest. It is
not heavy--your father has treated me as a friend and not as a client.
But he has been reproaching me with the rottenness of the security.
Until I am clear of him, at least, I can’t ask you to marry me.”
Minna broke into happy laughter.
“You foolish fellow! Don’t you see the obvious way of settling it? If
you married me, the debt would be dissolved--in its own juice, so to
speak.” His pride revolted. Impossible! It was mere trickery. Any honest
man would cry out upon him.
She could not see the point of honour. Her training had not sensitised
her perceptions in such things.
“What is to be done then?” she asked. “You won’t take me without making
me your wife--and you won’t make me your wife on account of my money. I
don’t believe you want me at all.”
After what had passed there was but one answer to be given. At the end
she smiled up at him and whispered: “That was very sweet; but it doesn’t
tell us what is to be done.”
He glanced at the clock. “The thing to be done is to say
‘Good-night’--and for you to go to sleep happy. I will find some way out
of it. And I will bind myself to you forever, by this kiss. There.”
So they parted; and he walked home with the softness of her young lips
upon his, wondering what the devil was going to happen next. On the
whole, happy. Quite unconscious that he had been fooled to the top of
his bent by the instinctive wiles of a woman, herself merely carried
away by an unregulated, headlong passion.