"L'opinion dispose de tout. Elle fait la beauté, la justice, et le
bonheur qui est le tout du monde."
To say that the most important events of life often turn on trifling
incidents has become a truism, and yet it may be doubted if any of us
realise how especially true this is concerning the greatest of human
riddles, the riddle of sex.
Had the man of whose presence on the platform of Selford Junction Mrs.
Maule had become aware, turned round and watched the London express
before it steamed out of the station, his own immediate future, to say
nothing of that secret, inner life of memory which each human being
carries as a burden, might have been considerably modified. But at the
moment when Mrs. Maule had been engaged in trying her not very happy
experiment with Bayworth Kaye, the only other occupant of the platform
was staring with a good deal of interest and curiosity at a long row of
illustrated newspaper pages pinned dado-wise round the top of the
bookstall.
The newsagent's clerk, when arranging his wares that morning, had had
what he felt to be an unusually bright idea. Picking out what he
considered the two most attractive items in the illustrated paper with
which he was dealing, he had repeated these items alternately with what
to most onlookers would have seemed an irritating regularity.
The two pages he had selected for this honour were very different. The
one consisted of a set of photographs, nine officers in uniform:
_General Hew Lingard and his Staff, just returned home after the
victorious Amadawa Expedition_. "Here," the bookstall clerk had probably
argued unconsciously, and quite wrongly, to himself, "is a page that
will interest gentlemen and boys. Now I must find something that will
cause ladies to purchase the paper," and he had accordingly put next to
the page of military portraits one consisting of a single
illustration--the reproduction of a beautiful painting of a beautiful
woman.
The man staring up at the black and white pages was true to what the
clerk took to be the masculine type of newspaper buyer and reader, for
he devoted his whole attention to the group of military portraits. He
had, however, a special reason for staring up as he was now doing at the
rather absurd dado, for it was his own portrait which occupied the place
of honour in the centre of the page.
Being the manner of man he was, Hew Lingard felt at once elated and
ashamed at seeing himself hung up in this queer pillory of fame. He was
moved more than he would have cared to admit, even to himself, at seeing
the honour paid to that old photograph taken some seven years before,
at a time when he was out of love with life, having been, as he
imagined, shelved by a small home appointment.
The portraits of his staff were comparatively new; they had doubtless
been supplied in haste by the happy mothers and sisters of the sitters,
and his grey eyes, set under deep overhanging brows, rested on them
proudly. It was to these eight comrades--so he would have been the first
to admit, nay to insist--that he had owed much of the sudden
overwhelming success which had now come to him.
At last he resolutely concentrated his attention on the opposite
illustration, and coming up a little closer to the stall, he read what
was printed underneath:
"This modern picture, only painted ten years ago, fetched ten thousand
pounds at Christie's last week. It is a portrait of the beautiful Mrs.
Richard Maule in the character of a Greek nymph. Mrs. Maule, before her
marriage to the well-known owner of Rede Place, one of the show places
of Surrey, was Miss Athena Durdon. Her father was British Consul at
Athens, and her mother a Greek lady of rank; hence her interesting and
unusual Christian name."
"Why, it's Jane's friend," he said to himself. "How very odd that I
should see it here and now!"
General Lingard had glanced at the illustration, when his eye had first
caught sight of it, with distaste. But now that he knew that this rather
fantastic picture was a painting of the dearest friend of the woman who
was going to be his wife, he looked with kind, considering, and even
eager eyes at the Greek nymph.
The famous soldier did not find it easy to adjust his imaginary portrait
of Athena Maule, Jane Oglander's Athena, to this lovely embodiment of a
pagan myth. But artists, or so he supposed, sometimes times take strange
liberties with their sitters--besides, this was not in any sense a
portrait....
"Your train's in, sir. Redyford is the second station from here."
He turned away and walked quickly to the side-platform where the short
local train was standing ready to start.
* * * * *
There were still some minutes to spare, and Mrs. Maule, on her way to
the train, stopped and looked up with a curious sensation in which
pleasure and anger both played a part, at the dado formed of the two
pages taken from the _Illustrated London News_.
Only one of those pages--that which was a reproduction of the picture
sold the week before at Christie's--attracted her attention and aroused
in her very mixed sensations: pleasure at the thought that her portrait
should be displayed in a fashion so wholly satisfying to her own
critical and now highly educated taste; anger at the knowledge that the
splendid painting had been sold to an American, instead of taking
its place in the picture-gallery of Rede Place. When the picture had
suddenly come into the market, she had ardently desired that her
husband should buy it, and she had even ventured to convey her wish to
him through his cousin, Dick Wantele, but to her mortification Richard
Maule had refused.
Mrs. Maule now remembered with a sharp pang of self-pity the
circumstances which had surrounded the painting of this picture. A
portrait which her husband had commissioned the famous artist to paint
of her was scarcely begun when the painter, who had taken an adjoining
villa to theirs at Naples for the winter, had asked her whether she
would sit to him in the character of a Greek nymph. Pleased and
flattered, she had assented. Then, mentioning what she was about to do
to her then indulgent and adoring husband, he, to her great
astonishment, had disliked the idea: disliked it sufficiently to beg her
as a personal favour to himself to make some excuse for not keeping her
promise.
But even in those malleable days Athena Maule was incapable of denying
herself a fleeting gratification. While appearing to assent to her
husband's wish she had secretly fulfilled her promise to the artist, and
the picture had excited such keen admiration when it was first exhibited
that it had made Mrs. Richard Maule's beauty famous even before she came
to England. The episode had also resulted in her first serious quarrel
with Richard Maule.
When he had first seen the painting--for rather against her will the
great artist had insisted on showing it to him--Mr. Maule had expressed
an admiration it was impossible not to feel for the technical qualities
of the work, but he had refused, with angry decision, any thought of
commissioning a replica for Rede Place.
* * * * *
At last Mrs. Maule made her way to the train, and deliberately she chose
a carriage which had, as its one occupant, the man she had noticed
standing by the bookstall a quarter of an hour before. She had liked the
look of him then, and she liked it even more now. She wondered where he
was going to stay--whether with people she knew.
As she sat down in the opposite corner, she glanced at him with
instinctive interest and curiosity; he was lean and brown, and his face
had the taut, tense look of the man who achieves--whose life is spent in
combating forces greater than himself.
She longed for something to distract her mind from the emotion--a
mingling of impatient annoyance and self-pity--induced by her parting
scene with Bayworth Kaye. She blamed herself for having come to Selford
Junction; they, she and Bayworth, had said good-bye, in a real sense,
yesterday. Why, acting on a good-natured impulse, had she been so
foolish as to write him a last word saying she would come and see him
off? He had not understood, poor fellow--men never did. Instead of
having something touching, sentimental--in a word, soothing to look
back to--there would only be a sad, painful memory. She was still, even
now, haunted by young Kaye's desperate, unhappy eyes--and yet she had
been so kind, so very kind to him!
Yes, she had made a mistake in coming to Selford Junction. With a
pettish movement she pulled down her veil yet further over her face.
Three more travellers made sudden irruption into the railway carriage,
and both Athena Maule and the man opposite to her turned round with
frowning faces; they were one in their dislike of noise and vulgarity.
But the man soon looked away, indifferent to his surroundings; he opened
a German Service paper, and was soon reading it intently.
Athena Maule glanced distastefully at the three people who had just come
into the carriage. She knew them to be a Lady Barking and Lady Barking's
married daughter, very wealthy people new to the neighbourhood. They had
been pointed out to her by her husband's cousin, Dick Wantele, only a
day or two before, driving past in one of the horseless carriages which
were then becoming the fashion, but with which Richard Maule obstinately
refused to supersede--or even allow them to be added to--his stables.
She also knew, and in a more real sense, the man who was with the two
ladies. He was a Major Biddell, one of those men only to be found, so
Mrs. Maule now reminded herself, in hospitable England. Such men drift
about from country house to country house, making themselves useful to
the hostess; they are able to take part with modest success in any of
the games and sports that may be going on; and with advancing years they
endear themselves to the dowagers by an unceasing flow of malicious and
often very unsavory gossip.
Athena Maule had no use for this type of man, and as for the particular
specimen who was now fussing round his two companions, thrusting
illustrated papers into their hands, pulling up and down the window, and
offering to change seats with them--she remembered that she had snubbed
him once, cruelly. They had met at a moment when she was enjoying the
new, the intoxicating experience of a suddenly acclaimed beauty.
She turned her head away, for she did not wish to be recognised by Major
Biddell; and then, as the train moved out of the station, she suddenly
became aware, not without a certain amusement, that she was being
discussed by the two ladies.
The younger lady, "the vulgar married daughter," as Athena mentally
described her, had opened the illustrated paper with which Major Biddell
had provided her, and begun looking at the reproduction of the picture
which had fetched a record price at Christie's.
"If that is really like Mrs. Maule, then she's a very beautiful woman,"
she said thoughtfully. "Is she really very like that, Major Biddell? You
know her, don't you?"
"Oh yes. I know her quite well," he said promptly. "She often stays with
the Kershaws of Cumberland, old friends of mine."
He bent his sleek head over the page, and jerked his eyeglass in and out
of his right eye. "H'm," he said, "rather a fancy portrait that! I doubt
if the fair Athena was ever as lovely. Of course she may have been when
she first married poor Maule, a matter of fifteen to sixteen years ago."
"Has she been married as long as that?" said Lady Barking. "I _am_
surprised! I thought Mrs. Maule was still quite a young woman."
"She's fairly young still--but then Maule married her when she was
almost a child. She was Greek, you know, and the women blossom and fade
very quickly out there. But still, I'm not denying that she's
good-looking. In fact she's still an uncommonly handsome woman," he
admitted generously. "I saw her at Ascot this year, and I was quite
struck by the way she was wearing."
The elder lady leant forward with sudden eagerness. "If you know her so
well"--she hesitated--"I wonder if you would mind going over and seeing
her, Major? Rede Place is the only house that hasn't called on us since
we've been in the neighbourhood."
Major Biddell shook his head very decidedly.
"Oh no," he said, "you don't understand the kind, my dear lady! It's
true that I do know her very well in a sense--but the likes of her
doesn't condescend to look at the likes of me," he laughed
uncomfortably. "She has no use for any one who isn't in love with her,
or who hasn't been in love with her. The first time I saw her the whole
crowd were at her feet. I was the only one who stood apart, so you can
imagine whether she likes me or not!"
"Do tell us, Major Biddell; is it really true that----" the voice
dropped, but the two other silent, unknown occupants of the carriage
caught a word or two which the young lady who spoke them had certainly
not intended them to hear.
"They're all like that in her particular set," declared Major Biddell
briefly. He looked round uncomfortably. It is always a mistake to talk
of people, especially women, by their names, in a railway carriage or
any other semi-public place.
Then the mother chimed in: "One does hear very peculiar stories about
her, Major."
The little man winced. "Well," he said, "there's a lot of excuse for
her, isn't there? Think of the state Maule's in! There she is, a
beautiful woman tied to a kind of mummy!"
"I don't think a woman, however good-looking she may be, has any excuse
for breaking her marriage vows," said the elder lady uncompromisingly.
She felt that Major Biddell was not behaving very nicely to her. She had
understood that he was a very useful man to know, but during the last
two or three days it had begun to strike her that he was a selfish
little man. Of course he could have contrived a meeting between herself
and Mrs. Maule if he really had a mind to do so! She also felt indignant
with him for pretending to her and to her daughter that there was
nothing specially scandalous in the behaviour of Mrs. Maule.
Why, everybody knew what Mrs. Maule was like! Even before she, Lady
Barking, had become a part of Society, she had heard of the beautiful
Mrs. Maule and her "goings on"; and in this part of the world the
escapades of Mrs. Maule, the extraordinary things she had been known to
do, were the standing gossip dish of the neighourhood. Even now,
everyone was talking of the way in which she had bewitched young
Bayworth Kaye, the Redyford clergyman's son, during the last few months.
It was absurd for Major Biddell to pretend that Mrs. Maule was just like
everybody else!
Perhaps something of what she was feeling betrayed itself on her large,
round face, for Major Biddell moved a little nearer to her. After all,
Lady Barking was his hostess, and he desired to stay on at her
comfortable, luxuriously appointed house for at least another ten days.
"I see you know a good bit about her," he said, grinning. "I can tell
you one really funny story about her," and then he proceeded to tell it,
the two hanging on his lips, though the elder of his listeners felt
uncomfortable, half-ashamed at listening so eagerly to what in another
mood she would probably have described as "garbage."
A hand was suddenly laid on Major Biddell's shoulder. He faced about
quickly. A stranger of whose presence in the railway carriage he had
scarcely been aware, was standing before him, tall, grim, formidable.
"I must ask you, sir," the stranger spoke very clearly, "to withdraw
every word that you have said concerning Mrs. Richard Maule. As for the
story you have just told, you and I heard it at Undulah a good many
years ago. It was told--I remember the fact, if you do not--of another
lady, of, of--no matter--" he stopped himself abruptly.
Major Biddell jumped up. If no gentleman in the higher sense of the
word, he was also no coward.
"I shall say exactly what I like," he said sharply, "and I question your
right to interfere with me in any way. You say you met me at Undulah a
good many years ago? If that's the case, you have the advantage of me!"
There was a moment's pause; then it was broken by a nervous laugh and a
whisper from daughter to mother, "Poor man, I suppose he's another of
Mrs. Maule's victims!"
"Perhaps I should add," said the stranger, his voice thick with anger
and contempt, "that though I have never met Mrs. Maule, I know quite
enough of her to be assured that this vile gossip, these--these foul
allegations, are utterly, damnably untrue."
Major Biddell felt very much relieved. For a horrible moment he had
supposed, not unnaturally, that the man who had just administered so
sharp a rebuke to him was nearly related to Mrs. Maule. He had at once
realized that the speaker was a member of the profession he had once
adorned, nay more, he was uncomfortably aware that the man's dark face
had been seen by him before. The unpleasant stranger was eccentric--to
say the least of it. But of course there are such men in the
world--Major Biddell thanked God he hadn't hitherto met many such--who
go through life breaking lances for the sex.
The little scene was over in a very few moments, and, after one quick
look round, the woman who sat in the furthest corner had apparently
taken no interest in what was going on. Her face was turned away. She
was staring out of the narrow window. Major Biddell, glancing at her
apprehensively, could only see her slim, straight back, and the veil
twisted round her small hat hiding the dark shining coils of hair.
The train began to slow down. The two ladies got up with an air of
rather ostentatious relief. Major Biddell opened the door and jumped
out. He carefully helped his companions down the high steps. As all
three moved away, Lady Barking's sonorous voice could be heard saying,
"I should think that man was mad!"
"Oh no, he wasn't, mother," said her daughter loudly. "He's an adorer of
the lady--that's what it is. I expect he's on his way to stay there
now!"
"But they never have any visitors at Rede Place except that Miss
Oglander."
The train moved on. To the woman sitting in the corner the atmosphere of
the railway carriage was still charged with a not unpleasing
electricity.
Very deliberately she raised her veil and subjected the man sitting
opposite to a long, thoughtful scrutiny. She raked her memory in vain
for the strongly-drawn dark face, the large, loosely-made figure.
Suddenly he raised his eyes and met her full, considering glance. No,
they had never met before. No man who had ever known Athena Maule, even
for only a brief space of time, would look into her lovely, mobile face,
meet the peculiar glance of her large heavy-lidded violet eyes, as this
stranger was now doing, coldly, unchallengingly.
Mrs. Maule reddened, and hurriedly pulled down her veil. She felt--and
it was a disconcerting sensation--as if she had been snubbed.