As Wyndham read the reply to his letter, it seemed as if the kind, bluff
voice of the old earl were itself speaking. "A few mornings! Come along
and make your nice little sketches for the next half-century. We have
often thought of you, and wondered what you were up to. I think we may
say with truth that we've missed you. This is a dull house now, and I
suppose I'm getting old and dull myself. At any rate I've many a twinge
in the joints, and am inclined to shut myself up in my library, though
I'm never much of a reader." Then there was a PS. "Somebody or other
tells me that you are contemplating matrimony. Well, you're a brave
young fellow, and I like you for it. I congratulate you, and wish you
luck."
As the next morning turned out fairly clear, Wyndham took his materials
with him into a hansom, and rang the bell at Grosvenor Place at about
ten o'clock. Not only had he decided that his misgivings were entirely
morbid, but as a matter of course he had been quite open with the
Robinsons about the arrangement. He had indeed explained to Alice some
considerable time ago that he should in all likelihood find it necessary
to make these fresh sketches on the very scene of the picture. It did
not seem anything out of the way to her; she regarded it as a pure
matter of work. It was sufficient that she understood his disappearance
from the studio in the midst of these busy times. And as he had made it
a point that she should possess a key of the new house just as she had
had one of the old studio, she and her mother could come and go as they
pleased in his absence, and proceed with their engrossing business of
embellishing his hall and stairway.
But as he set foot in the house at Grosvenor Place after this long
interval of years, Wyndham could not maintain his reasoned conviction of
the simplicity and insignificance of the occasion.
He had the very real thrill of embarking on some extraordinary
adventure; even of stepping outside his own existence--that theatre
where he had been the spectator of his own fate, whose curtain--fire-proof
--had already fallen on a played-out drama. But here was a strange
theatre, with a curtain to rise, fascinating with promise of other drama
to be revealed; yet the stillness and the dim light cast some spell of
awe upon him.
A hand seemed to clutch at him and pull him back out of the house at the
last moment. He was penetrating here against the warning of his deeper
self; his heart beat fast not merely with the consciousness of
imprudence, but of downright disloyalty to the settled destiny before
which he had bowed his head so profoundly. The warning voice, too, was
stern; but the sense of daring, of courting and facing some unknown
delicious danger, lured him forward.
His lordship had already gone across to his club, the butler informed
him; but he had half-expected Wyndham and had left orders in case he
should present himself. As he followed the man up to the room he had
used of old, he felt, despite the lofty well of the staircase, that the
air hung heavy in the great house, muffled and silent with gigantic
hangings, and thick carpets underfoot. Wyndham stood at the well-known
window a leisurely moment, then arranged a chair or two, and unpacked
his materials. The butler helped him to open the casement at the side of
the bay and to rearrange the curtain, then asked if there was anything
more he could do for him.
"Oh, would you get my hat again?" returned Wyndham, as a current of
wintry air flowed in. He laughed; having forgotten he could not work
uncovered.
When finally the man had complied with his request, and left him again,
Wyndham looked out on the scene before him, his eye lingering for a
moment on the royal gardens, then trying to catch the exact view he had
painted. But as yet his mind was in too great a turmoil to concentrate
itself sternly on the business in hand. "I shall be acclimatised in a
minute or two," he reassured himself. "The atmosphere of this house is
so oppressive--it upset me the first moment." He stood gratefully
inhaling the fresher draught that streamed against his face; and when he
had calmed down he took a turn or two about the room, observing it with
interest. He had scarcely received any impression of it yet, but now he
perceived that it was greatly changed in some respects. A new fireplace,
and a mantel of a dainty cabinet-like design, replaced the former
streaked framework of marble that had enshrined a great rococo grate.
The double leaf door that led to some adjoining room had had its hanging
stripped away, and the beauty of panelling showed naked and unashamed.
The former carpet had gone; there were now soft Eastern rugs on the
floor lying closely side by side, and covering it entirely. But though
the Chippendale bookcases and the rest of the furniture had been left
untouched, there was somehow a more intimate personal note about the
room; accentuated perhaps by the trifles and photographs clustered
about the mantelshelf. And then Wyndham came to an abrupt stop as if
some sheet of flame had flashed by and seared him. There in the centre
of the mantel, next to a tiny clock shaped like a Gothic arch, stood the
silver easel bearing the framed photograph of his old Academy
picture--his wedding present to Lady Betty!
Why was it here in this house? he asked himself, trembling. Had she left
it behind because she esteemed it so lightly? Or was there perhaps some
special significance in the fact; something his thought groped for
wildly and blindly as if in panic?
He staggered back to the window, astonished to find how overcome he had
been. The air revived him, and then a new and sterner spirit came upon
him. Was he going to waste his whole morning by yielding himself to
these idle and futile emotions? Resolutely he prepared his palette, and
bent his mind by force to his task. He was pleased presently to find how
exactly his eye recovered his scene; he felt he could almost lay the one
he had painted over this one, and that it would fit like a transfer.
Slowly and carefully he let the view sink into him, estimating the
tones, the masses, the spaces; peopling it in his mind with all the
figures and accessories that went to build up his great symbolic
representation. Then he set one of the smaller canvasses on his knee,
and started his note-making. Soon he was absorbed in the work, glad
that he had forced himself to begin, and that the little wheels of his
mind were turning so smoothly.
At eleven the butler appeared with wine and sandwiches, moved a little
table over near Wyndham, and set down the tray within reach of his hand.
Wyndham was glad of this refreshment; he had been in too uncertain a
mood to do more than gulp down his coffee at breakfast, and the raw air
had roused a craving for some sort of sustenance--a desire for
stimulation rather than a keen hunger. He swallowed a glass of the wine,
then began to nibble a sandwich slowly; but his mind was still in his
work. He half-knew that the great folding door at the bottom of the room
had opened, that somebody had entered. But it was as in a dream, and he
did not look up. He considered his results, then poured more wine, and
was in the act of raising it to his lips. God! what was this gracious,
willowy figure, with the wonderful sheen on the fresh hair, and the
girlish rounded cheeks! She was smiling at him, her eyes strangely
alight under their long, soft lashes, her lips half parted; she was
advancing towards him with outstretched hand. He put back the glass on
the table and rose hastily, holding his sketch suspended from one hand;
but his wits left him and he stared as at a ghost.
"Lady Betty!" he stammered.
"I am not an apparition," she reassured him; "but only a simple
flesh-and-blood creature. Won't you put down your picture?" She smiled
again at his embarrassment.
He laughed, and stood the sketch on a chair.
"Your presence certainly startled me," he confessed. "I had an idea you
were thousands of miles away." They took hands--a good, comrade-like
clasp. "Fortunately the idea was erroneous."
"Fortunately," she echoed, laughingly capping his gallantry.
"Oh, but how stupid I am! Forgive me!" He almost swept the hat from his
head. "You see how I was scared; how ill prepared to cope with
apparitions."
She laughed again. "You are to keep your hat on," she commanded. "My
presence is easily accounted for; out of sheer restlessness of spirit I
thought I should like to try London again--I had shunned it like the
plague for ever so long. As all the nice little hotels were full, I
descended on my father here, and practically appropriated this room."
"I fear I'm an intruder," he stammered.
"You had my permission; it was obtained in due form. Only I insisted my
name was to be held back. I wanted to play the apparition, and my father
entered into the whim of the thing. It seems like old times again."
Wyndham tried to transport himself back along the years. "I wonder
whether there's anything better in life than to repeat the best moments
of the past," he said pensively; "that is, if we can catch them with all
the original magic in them." He saw her head drop a little; her
expression was full of musing, half-sad and tender. Then he remembered
that things had indeed changed since those old days, that Lady Betty had
a husband! It was strange, but the apparition, besides the rest of the
mischief, had momentarily driven the fact from the store of his
knowledge. He had had absolutely the delusion that this was the
brilliant Lady Betty, still unwed, to whom no suitor might aspire save
with yachts and palaces.
"I have been calling you Lady Betty!" he exclaimed. "The delusion of old
times was very strong."
"Please to keep on with the Lady Betty--I come back to it so easily. It
quite pleased me when it slipped from your lips. You have stepped out of
the long ago; I step back to meet you. You must still think of me as
Lady Betty."
"And Lord Lakeden?" he murmured, though he felt the inquiry was rather a
belated courtesy.
She stared at him, her cheeks white, her eyes growing unnaturally large.
"Your husband--I hope he is well," he explained, bewildered by this new
expression that seemed to hold mingled amazement and horror.
"My husband!" She laughed--a weird peal that filled him with a fear as
of blinding flashes to come. "Did you not know? I thought the whole
world knew. I have no husband!"
He looked at her. "I don't understand," he stammered.
"I really believe you don't," she said, her face still blanched. "My
married life was a short one. Lord Lakeden met with an accident on the
Alps--the summer before last. He went out without a guide. The details
were in all the papers. It was one of the sensations of the silly
season." Again a nervous laugh, but more than ever it was full of
unnatural echoes.
Instinctively Wyndham took off his hat again, and stood with his head
bowed. "I am sorry. My condolences are late, but they are sincere."
"I somehow expected you would write to me at the time. Hosts and hosts
wrote to me--till my head went dizzy; but never a word from you." She
was speaking with greater command of herself now, but he felt in her
words a world of reproach.
"I was living as a hermit at the time. I saw nobody for--shall I say it
seemed to me a lifetime--save the poor old woman who came to turn out my
studio once in every three months perhaps."
"Ah, you were unhappy!" Her face softened, telling of a swift,
spontaneous sympathy.
"I was nigh starving. I never saw a newspaper unless by chance; my
pennies were too precious."
"My poor friend!" Her eyes gleamed as if tears were about to come.
"I played the game up to a certain point with all my strength, but
everything went against me from every quarter. I know there are men that
would have risen triumphant above all these evils and difficulties. But
I was not one of those men. I was beaten--smashed--utterly and
hopelessly. I had not the smallest reserve of power to carry on the
fight. I lived cut off from the world like a man in a tomb. I am ashamed
to think that I kept myself alive----"
"No, no," she interrupted, shivering. "I can't bear it."
"I am ashamed that I did not die," he persisted. "It is the truth. It is
the first time I say it either to myself or to another. In order to live
I stepped below myself."
She covered her face with her hands. "I know you are misjudging. You are
harsh with yourself. I hold to my faith in you."
"I lived on the earnings of my sister, who stinted herself in food and
went shabbily clad that she might foster my work. Yet, for terrible
months and months, I deceived her. I did no work. My will was dead. As a
man I seemed to collapse physically and morally."
"You were not responsible. There is a limit to human endurance. You
needed a delicious rest in some blue sunny place, in one of those
earthly paradises where the orange-trees are golden in the sun. Your
sister's love consecrated her sacrifice. She saved you for a great
future. Her reward is yet to come."
"You see everything in so sweet a light; I can only hope that the issue
will be as you say. It is on my future work that I have staked the
redemption of my manhood in my own eyes. My work! That is where my real
heart lies. Outside of that my life will be a mere appearance."
"But you have somebody else in your life now," she broke in, pale as
death. "We heard a rumour that you were about to marry. Is it not true?"
He gasped at the bitter reminder. He hung his head. "It is true," he
breathed.
"Then you have given your affections: you are happy?"
He wavered for a deep instant, the whilst her eyes rested on him
gravely. "I have given my affections--I am happy." To himself he added:
"I must be loyal to Alice, if indeed I have not gone too far already.
But Lady Betty has made me see the truth. I understand now what I felt
only obscurely--I bartered my life to the Robinsons, kind as they are,
that I might repair the hurt and wrong to Mary."
"I congratulate you from my heart." She held out her hand again with a
wan smile. He took it limply; feeling he held it on false pretences,
that the sudden check he had put on his impulsive outpouring had raised
a barrier between them.
"But forgive me for my stupid egotism. Here am I, a great strapping
fellow, pitying myself because of a very ordinary sort of dismal
failure; more than commonplace by the side of the great sorrow that came
to you."
"Great sorrow!" Again that wild peal of laughter. "It was a great joy,
the greatest joy I have ever known. When they brought me the news, I
went out into the garden of our chalet, and, sure that no eyes were upon
me, I danced on the green in the sunlight--with the blood pulsing so
deliciously through my veins. I was free--I was free! The world seemed
so beautiful! the sky and the mountains so exquisite! Life was such a
gift! I was free--free!"
She stood up straight, all her muscles tense, her limbs quivering. The
pallor had gone; her face glowed with an exultation that was almost of
triumph. He stood spellbound at her revelation, unable to find a word.
"Ah, you don't understand what it is to be free again! Degradation! I
tasted it to its depths. Yours was no degradation! You know nothing of
it. I was tied to a brute--no, the brutes are decent and lovable. He was
lower--he was lower."
Her voice broke in a sob, though no tears came. Wyndham was still
silent; he would not seek to penetrate her last reserve. "Don't think me
too horrible," she pleaded. "You are the only living being to whom I
have bared my soul. You were the one to whom my mind flew as my
friend--I have waited for this moment. You must not set me down as a
monster."
"A monster!" he exclaimed. He was thrown off his irksome guard, and the
instant was fatal! "Oh, no, no! I shall always hold you for what you
are, for what you have always been to me--a rare princess!"
"I have always been to you--" she echoed, then broke off, her bosom
heaving, her eyes flashing out with the full comprehension of his almost
unwitting avowal. Then she went pale to the lips again. "You never
spoke," she breathed, "and I did not guess."
He realised, half in a daze, that his secret had escaped him; yet--with
swift change of mood--he was recklessly glad that she understood at
last: even as, standing before her, he, too, understood at last--reading
her distress, treasuring her implied reproach for its clear
significance, though it put him on his defence.
"I was not even on the footing of a guest in this house. The very bread
that kept me alive was not my own. It is the law of the world."
"You were wrong. There is no law."
"There is the law of pride," he argued. "We men do not stoop to
happiness, we stoop only to degradation.... And then I feared to break
the spell," he went on, seeking a lighter strain. "The wonderful
princess would disappear, and I should be left rubbing my eyes."
"But it was you who disappeared. The princess thought you shunned her,
and she was left--to weep--"
He hung his head like a broken reed. He had no longer anything to hide;
he had already sufficiently disclosed to her that his marriage was to be
a loveless one. She would understand and respect his first desire to
keep his true relation to Alice sacred from her gaze. But Lady Betty's
revelation of tragic experience had swept him off his feet. He had
responded to her great emotion; had confessed his allegiance to her
through all and despite all. His life seemed linked to hers with a
mystic, enduring passion. And yet were they not hopelessly sundered?
"'Men must work and women must weep,'" she quoted. "Ah, well! we never
can win our ideals; life is always a compromise. Perhaps it's a blessing
to see our clear obligations."
"Yes--if one has the strength to turn one's eyes aside from the dreams;
but saddening otherwise."
"Saddening otherwise," she echoed pensively. "But I thank you that I am
still the wonderful princess, even after my terrible confession."
He took a step forward, and seized her hand impulsively.
"Never believe otherwise, no matter what you may hear of me. Whether
this be the last time I see you or not, whether I fail and be broken
again, my last breath shall proclaim my allegiance to--the wonderful
princess! Listen, the woman I am marrying is more than goodness itself.
I cannot pretend to match her; my manhood falls below her womanhood. But
into the inner chamber of my life she can never enter. Out of loyalty to
her I gave you to understand that I had given my affections. That is
true, but not in the sense I led you to believe. There is no reason why
I should not be open now; it would be a poor compliment to you after all
this mutual confidence if I could not bare to you the absolute truth.
And the absolute truth is--I have sold myself for safety, for the sake
of my art, and for the sake of my sister. It would be unendurable were
there not the mitigation of the esteem I have for the woman I am
marrying, and for the many qualities of kindness and goodness in that
whole household. But she is not my true mate. Unlimited as is her virtue
in a hundred ways, she herself is yet limited. My work must find
inspiration entirely apart from her. May I think of you, princess, as my
inspiration?"
"She is a good woman. You must be loyal to her."
"It would be no disloyalty; I should be cherishing the ideal."
She was smiling and radiant again. "I can scarcely stop you--I see it
would certainly be rash to try. Well, goodbye now; I have a thousand
little neglected things crying to me. And your moments, too, are
precious. You will be here again one of these mornings?"
"To-morrow," he said. "For the present, we may be friends?"
"Till the tide sweeps us apart."
"The cruel tide!" he murmured. "But you will always be the wonderful
princess," he insisted again.
"I shall try to be worthy of the title."
She gave him a charming curtsey, flitted away down the room, threw him
yet a smile, and disappeared behind the panelled door through which she
had come.