George Goring and Mildred Stewart did not move in the same social set,
but their sets had points of contact, and it was at these that Goring
was now most likely to be found; especially at the pleasant bachelor
house on Campden Hill. Mrs. Stewart walked in the Park every morning at
an unfashionable hour, and sometimes, yet not too often for discretion,
Goring happened to be walking there too. All told, their meetings were
not very numerous, nor very private. But every half-hour they spent in
each other's company seemed to do the work of a month of intimacy.
July hastened to an end, but an autumn Session brought Goring up to town
in November, and three months of absence found him and Mildred still at
the same point. Sir Cyril Meres was already beginning to plan his
wonderful _tableaux-vivants_, which, however, did not come off until
February. The extraordinary imitative talent which his artistic career
had been one long struggle to disguise, was for once to be allowed full
play. The _tableaux_ were to represent paintings by certain
fellow-artists and friends; not actual pictures by them, but pictures
which they might have painted, and the supposed authors were allowed a
right of veto or criticism.
A stage of Renaissance design, which did not jar with the surrounding
architecture, was erected in the depth of the portico at the end of the
Hellenic room.
The human material at Meres's command was physically admirable. He had
long been the chosen portrait-painter of wealth and fashion, and there
was not a beauty in Society, with the biggest "S," who was not delighted
to lend her charms for his purpose. The young men might grumble for
form's sake, but at the bottom of their hearts they were equally
sensible to the compliment of being asked to appear. It was when it came
to the moulding of the material for artistic purposes, that the trouble
began. The English have produced great actors, but in the bulk they have
little natural aptitude for the stage; and what they have is discouraged
by a social training which strains after the ideal composure, the few
movements, the glassy eye of a waxwork. Only a small and chosen number,
it is true, fully attain that ideal; but when we see them we recognize
with a start, almost with a shudder, that it is there, the perfection of
our deportment.
Cyril Meres was, however, an admirable stage-manager, exquisite in tact,
in temper, and urbane patience. The results of his prolonged training
were wonderful; yet again and again he found it impossible to carry out
his idea without placing his cousin Mrs. Stewart at the vital point of
his picture. She was certainly not the most physically beautiful woman
there, but she was unrivalled by any other in the grace, the variety,
the meaning of her gestures, the dramatic transformations of her
countenance. She was Pandora, she was Hope, she was Lady Hammerton, she
was the Vampire, and she was the Queen of Faerie.
There is jealousy on the amateur stage as well as on the professional,
and ladies of social position, accustomed to see their beauty lauded in
the newspapers, saw no reason why Mrs. Stewart should be thrust to the
front of half of the pictures. Lady Langham, the "smart" Socialist, with
whom George Goring had flirted last season, to Lady Augusta's real
dismay, was the leading rival candidate for Mildred's rôles. But Lady
Langham never guessed that Mrs. Stewart was the cause of George Goring's
disappearance from the list of her admirers, and she still had hopes of
his return.
The _tableaux_ were a brilliant success. Ian was there on the first
evening, so was Lady Augusta Goring. Lady Langham, peeping through the
curtains, saw her, and swept the horizon--that is, the circle of black
coats around the walls--in vain for George Goring. Then Lady Augusta
became audible, saying that in the present state of affairs in the House
it was quite impossible for Mr. Goring to leave it, even for dinner, on
that evening or the next. Nevertheless, on the next evening, Lady
Langham espied George Goring in the act of taking a vacant chair near
the front, next to a social _protégée_ of her own. She turned and
mentioned the fact to a friend, who smiled meaningly and remarked, "In
spite of Lady Augusta's whip!"
Mildred, passing, caught the information, the comment, the smile. During
the rehearsals for the _tableaux_, she had heard people coupling the
names of Goring and Lady Langham, not seriously, yet seriously enough
for her. A winged shaft of jealousy pierced at once her heart and her
pride. Was she allowing her whole inner life to be shaken, dissolved by
the passing admiration of a flirt? Her intimate self had assurance that
it was not so; but sometimes a colder wind, blowing she knew not whence,
or the lash of a chance word, threw her into the attitude of a chance
observer, one who sees, guesses, does not know.
Meantime George Goring had flung himself down in the only vacant chair
he could see, and careless of the brilliant company about him, careless
even of the face of Aphrodite herself, smiling divinely, unconcerned
with human affairs, from a far corner he waited for the curtain to go
up. His neighbor spoke. She had met him at the Langhams last season.
What a pity he had just missed Lady Langham's great _tableau_, "Helen
before the Elders of Troy"! There was no one to be compared to Maud
Langham, so beautiful, so clever! She would have made her fortune if she
had gone on the stage. Goring gave the necessary assent.
The curtain went up, exhibiting a picture called "The Vampire." It was
smaller than most and shown by a curious pale light. A fair young girl
was lying in a deep sleep on a curtained bed, and hovering, crawling
over her with a deadly, serpentine grace, was a white figure wrapped in
a veiling garment that might have been a shroud. Out of white cerements
showed a trail of yellow hair and a face alabaster white, save for the
lips that were blood red--an intent face with a kind of terrible beauty,
yet instinct with cruelty. One slender, bloodless hand was in the girl's
hair, and, even without the title, it would have been plain that there
was a deadly purpose in that creeping figure.
"Isn't it horrid?" whispered Goring's neighbor. "Fancy that Mrs. Stewart
letting herself be made to look so dreadful!"
"Who?" asked Goring, horrified. He had not recognized Mildred.
"Why, the girl on the bed's Gertrude Waters, and the Vampire's a cousin
of Sir Cyril Meres. A horrid little woman some people admire, but I
shouldn't think any one would after this. I call it disgusting, don't
you?"
"It's horrible!" gasped George; "it oughtn't to be allowed. What does
that fellow Meres mean by inventing such deviltries? By Jove, I should
like to thrash him!"
The neighbor stared. It was all very well to be horrified at Mrs.
Stewart, but why this particular form of horror?
"Please call me when it's over," said Goring, putting his head down
between his hands.
What an eccentric young man he was! But clever people often were
eccentric.
In due course the _tableau_ was over, and to the relief of one
spectator at least, it was not encored. The next was some harmless
domestic scene with people in short waists. George Goring looked in vain
for Mildred among them, longing to see her, the real lovely her, and
forget the horrible thing she had portrayed. Lady Langham was there, and
his neighbor commended her tediously, convinced of pleasing.
There followed a large and very beautiful picture in the manner of a
great English Pre-Raphaelite. This was called "Thomas the Rhymer,
meeting with the Faerie Queen," but it did not follow the description of
the ballad. The Faerie Queen, a figure of a Botticellian grace, was
coming, with all her fellowship, out of a wonderful pinewood, while
Thomas the Rhymer, handsome and young and lean and brown, his harp
across his back, had just crossed a mountain-stream by a rough bridge.
He appeared suddenly to have beheld her, pausing above him before
descending the heathery bank that edged the wood; and looking in her
face, to have entered at once into the land of Faerie. The pose, the
figure, the face of the Faerie Queen were of the most exquisite charm
and beauty, touched with a something of romance and mystery that no
other woman there except Mildred could have lent it. The youth who
personated Thomas the Rhymer was temporarily in love with Mrs. Stewart
and acted his part with intense expression. Goring, shading his eyes
with his hand, fixed them upon her as long as he dared; then glanced at
the Rhymer and was angry. He turned to his chattering neighbor and
asked:
"Who's the chap doing Thomas? Looks as if he wanted a wash."
"I don't know. Nobody particular, I should think. Wasn't it a pity they
didn't have Lady Langham for the Faerie Queen? I do call it absurd the
way Sir Cyril Meres has put that pert, insignificant cousin of his
forward in quite half the pictures--and when he might have had Maud
Langham."
Goring threw himself back in his chair and laughed his quite loud laugh.
"'A mad world, my masters,'" he quoted.
His neighbor took this for Mr. Goring's eccentric way of approving her
sentiments. But what he really meant was: What a strange masquerade is
the world! This neighbor of his, so ordinary, so desirous to please,
would have shuddered at the notion of hinting to him the patent fact
that Lady Augusta Goring was a tiring woman; while she pressed upon him
laudations of a person to whom he was perfectly indifferent, mingled
with insulting comments on the only woman in the world for him--the
woman who was his world, without whom nothing was; on her whose very
name, even on these silly, hostile lips, gave him a strong sensation,
whether of pain or pleasure he could hardly tell.
After the performance he constrained himself to go the round of the
ladies of his acquaintance who had been acting and compliment them
cleverly and with good taste. Lady Langham of course seized the lion's
share of his company and his compliments. He seemed to address only a
few remarks of the same nature to Mrs. Stewart, but he had watched his
opportunity and was able to say to her:
"I must leave in a quarter of an hour at latest. Please let me drive you
back. You won't say no?"
There was a pleading note in the last phrase and his eyes met hers
gravely, anxiously. It was evident that she must answer immediately,
while their neighbors' attention was distracted from them. She was pale
before under her stage make-up, and now she grew still paler.
"Thanks. I told Cousin Cyril I was tired and shouldn't stay long. I'll
go and change at once."
Then Thomas the Rhymer was at her elbow again, bringing her something
for which she had sent him.
The green-room, in which she resumed the old white lace evening-dress
that she had worn to dine with her cousin, was strewn with the delicate
underclothing, the sumptuous wraps and costly knick-knacks of wealthy
women. She had felt ashamed, as she had undressed there, of her own poor
little belongings among these; and ashamed to be so ashamed. As she had
seen her garments overswept by the folds of the fair Socialist's white
velvet mantle, lined with Arctic fox and clasped with diamonds, she had
smiled ironically at the juxtaposition. Since circumstances and her own
gifts had drawn her into the stream of the world, she had been more and
more conscious, however unwillingly, of a longing for luxuries, for rich
settings to her beauty, for some stage upon which her brilliant
personality might shine uplifted, secure. For she seemed to herself
sometimes like a tumbler at a fair, struggling in the crowd for a space
in which to spread his carpet. Now--George Goring loved her. Let the
others keep their furs and laces and gewgaws, their great fortunes or
great names. Yet if it had been possible for her to take George Goring's
love, he could have given her most of these things as well.
Wrapped in a gauzy white scarf, she seemed to float rather than walk
down the stairs into the hall, where Thomas the Rhymer was lingering, in
the hope of finding an excuse to escort her home. She was pale, with a
clear, beautiful pallor, a strange smile was on her lips and her eyes
shone like stars. The Queen of Faerie had looked less lovely, meeting
him on the edge of the wood. She nodded him good-night and passed
quickly on into the porch. With a boyish pang he saw her vanish, not
into the darkness of night, but into the blond interior of a smart
brougham. A young man, also smart--her husband, for aught he
knew--paused on the step to give orders to the coachman, and followed
her in. A moment he saw her dimly, in the glare of carriage-lamps, a
white vision, half eclipsed by the black silhouette of the man at her
side; then they glided away over the crunching gravel of the drive, into
the fiery night of London.
"Do you really think it went off well?" she asked, as they passed
through the gates into the street. George was taking off his hat and
putting it down on the little shelf opposite. He leaned back and was
silent a few seconds; then starting forward, laid his hand upon her
knee.
"Don't let's waste time like that, Mildred," he said--and although he
had never called her so before, it seemed natural that he should--"we
haven't got much. You know, don't you, why I asked you to drive with
me?"
She in her turn was silent a moment, then meeting his eyes:
"Yes," she said, quite simply and courageously.
"I thought you could hardly help seeing I loved you, however blind other
people might be."
Her head was turned away again and she looked out of the window, as she
answered in a voice that tried to be light:
"But it isn't of any consequence, is it? I suppose you're always in love
with somebody or other."
"Is that what people told you about me?"--and it was new and wonderful
to her to hear George Goring speak with this calmness and
gravity--"You've not been long in the world, little girl, or you'd know
how much to believe of what's said there."
"No," she answered, in turn becoming calm and deliberate. "When I come
to think of it, people only say that women generally like you and that
you flirt with them. I--I invented the rest."
"But, good Heavens! Why?" There was a note of pain and wonder in his
voice.
She paused, and his hand moved under her cloak to be laid on the two
slender hands clasped on her lap.
"I suppose I was jealous," she said.
He smiled.
"Absurd child! But I'm a bit of an ass that way myself. I was jealous of
Thomas the Rhymer this evening."
"That brat!"
She laughed low, the sweet laugh that was like no one else's. It was
past midnight and the streets were comparatively quiet and dark, but at
that moment they were whirled into a glare of strong light. They looked
in each other's eyes in silence, his hand tightening its hold upon hers.
Then again they plunged into wavering dimness, and he resumed, gravely
and calmly as before, but bending nearer her.
"If I weren't anxious to tell you the exact truth, to avoid
exaggeration, I should say I fell in love with you the first time I met
you. It seems to me now as though it had been so. And the second
time--you remember it was one very hot day last July, when we both
lunched with Meres--I hadn't the least doubt that if I had been free and
you also, I should have left no stone unturned to get you for my wife."
Every word was sweet to her, yet she answered sombrely:
"But we are not free."
He, disregarding the answer, went on:
"You love me, as I love you?"
"As you love me, dearest; and from the first."
A minute's silence, while the hands held each other fast. Then low,
triumphantly, he exclaimed: "Well?"
Her slim hands began to flutter a little in his as she answered all that
that "Well" implied.
"It's impossible, dear. It's no use arguing about it. It's just waste of
time--and we've only got this little time."
"To do what? To make love in? Dear, we've got all our lives if we
please. We've both made a tremendous mistake, we've both got a chance
now of going back on it, of setting our lives right again, making them
better indeed than we ever dreamed of their being. We inflict some loss
on other people--no loss comparable to our gain--we hurt them chiefly
because of their bloated ideas of their claims on us. I know you've
weighed things, have no prejudices. Rules, systems, are made for types
and classes, not for us. You belong to no type, Mildred. I belong to no
class."
She answered low, painfully:
"It's true I am unlike other people; that's the very reason, why--I--I'm
not good to love." There was a low utterance that was music in her ears,
yet she continued: "Then, dear friend, think of your career, ruined for
me, by me. You might be happy for a while, then you'd regret it."
"That's where you're wrong. My career? A rotten little game, these House
of Commons party politics, when you get into it! The big things go on
outside them; there's all the world outside them. Anyhow, my career, as
I planned it, is ruined already. The Ipswich gang have collared me; I
can't call my tongue my own, Mildred. Think of that!"
She smiled faintly.
"Temporary, George! You'll soon have your head up--and your tongue
out."
"Oh, from time to time, I presume, I shall always be the Horrid Vulgar
Boy of those poor Barthops; I shall kick like a galvanized frog long
after I'm dead. But--I wouldn't confess it to any one but you, dear--I'm
not strong enough to stand against the everlasting pressure that's
brought to bear upon me. You know what I mean, don't you?"
"Yes. You'll be no good if you let the originality be squeezed out of
you. Don't allow it."
"Nothing can prevent it--unless the Faerie Queen will stretch out her
dearest, sweetest hands to me and lead me, poor mortal, right away into
the wide world, into some delightful country where there's plenty of
love and no politics. I want love so much, Mildred; I've never had it,
and no one has ever guessed how much I wanted it except you,
dear--except you."
Yes, she had guessed. The queer childhood, so noisy yet so lonely, had
been spoken of; the married life spoke for itself.
His arm was around her now, their faces drawn close together, and in the
pale, faint light they looked each other deep in the eyes. Then their
lips met in a long kiss.
"You see how it is," he whispered; "you can't help it. It's got to be.
No one has power to prevent it."
But he spoke without knowledge, for there was one who had power to
prevent it, one conquered, helpless, less than a ghost, who yet could
lay an icy hand on the warm, high-beating heart of her subduer, and say:
"Love and desire, the pride of life and the freedom of the world, are
not for you. I forbid them to you--I--by a power stronger than the laws
of God or man. True, you have no husband, you have no child, for those
who seem to be yours are mine. You have taken them from me, and now you
must keep them, whether you will or no. You have taken my life from me,
and my life you must have, that and none other."
It was against this unknown and inflexible power that George Goring
struggled with all the might of his love, and absolutely in vain.
Between him and Mildred there could be no lies, no subterfuges; only
that one silence which to him, of all others, she dared not break.
She seemed to have been engaged in this struggle, at once so sweet and
so bitter, for an eternity before she stood on her own doorstep,
latch-key in hand.
"Good-night, Mr. Goring. So much obliged for the lift."
"Delighted, I'm sure. All right now? Good-night. Drop me at the House,
Edwards."
He lifted his hat, stepped in and closed the carriage-door sharply
behind him; and in a minute the brougham with its lights rolling almost
noiselessly behind the big fast-trotting bay horse, had disappeared
around a neighboring corner.
* * * * *
The house was cold and dark, except for a candle which burned on an oak
dresser in the narrow hall. As Mildred dragged herself up the stairs,
she had a sensation of physical fatigue, almost bruisedness, as though
she had come out of some actual bodily combat. Her room, fireless and
cold, was solitary, for Ian's sleep had to be protected from
disturbance. Nevertheless, having loosened her wraps, she threw herself
on the bed and lay there long, her bare arms under her head. The
sensation of chill, her own cold soft flesh against her face, seemed to
brace her mind and body, to restore her powers of clear, calm judgment,
so unlike the usual short-sighted, emotionalized judgments of youth. She
had nothing of the ordinary woman's feeling of guilt towards her
husband. The intimate bond between herself and George Goring did not
seem in any relation the accidental one between her and Ian Stewart. She
had never before faced the question, the possibility of a choice between
the two. Now she weighed it with characteristic swiftness and decision.
She reasoned that Ian had enjoyed a period of great happiness in his
marriage with her, in spite of the singularity of its conditions; but
that now, while Milly could never satisfy his fastidious nature, she
herself had grown to be a hinderance, a dissonance in his life. Could
she strike a blow which would sever him from her, he would suffer
cruelly, no doubt; but it would send him back again to the student's
life, the only life that could bring him honor, and in the long run
satisfaction. And that life would not be lonely, because Tony, so
completely his father's child, would be with him. As for herself and
George Goring, she had no fear of the future. They two were strong
enough to hew and build alone their own Palace of Delight. Her intuitive
knowledge of the world informed her that, in the long run, society, if
firmly disregarded, admits the claim of certain persons to go their own
way--even rapidly admits it, though they be the merest bleating strays
from the common fold, should they haply be possessed of rank or fortune.
The way lay plain enough before Mildred, were it not for that Other. But
she, the shadowy one, deep down in her limbo, laid a finger on the gate
of that Earthly Paradise and held it, as inflexibly as any armed
archangel, against the master key of her enemy's intelligence, the
passionate assaults of her heart.
Mildred, however, was one who found it hard, if not impossible, to
acquiesce in defeat. Two o'clock boomed from the watching towers of
Westminster over the great city. She rose from her bed, cold as a marble
figure on a monument, and went to the dressing-table to take off her few
and simple ornaments. The mirror on it was the same from which that
alien smile had peered twelve months ago, filling the sad soul of Milly
with trembling fear and sinister foreboding. The white face that stole
into its shadowy depths to-night, and looked Mildred in the eyes, was in
a manner new to her also. It had a new seriousness, a new intensity, as
of a woman whose vital energies, once spending themselves in mere
corruscations, in mere action for action's sake, were now concentrated
on one definite thought, one purpose, one emotion, which with an intense
yet benign fire blended in perfect harmony the life of the soul and of
the body.
For a moment the face in its gravity recalled to her the latest
photograph of Milly, a tragic photograph she did not care to look at
because it touched her with a pity, a remorse, which were after all
quite useless. But the impression was false and momentary.
"No," she said, speaking to the glass, "it's not really like. Poor weak
woman! I understand better now what you have suffered." Then almost
repeating the words of her own cruel subconscious self--"But there's all
the difference between the weak and the strong. I am the stronger, and
the stronger must win; that's written, and it's no use struggling
against the law of nature."