She came to him so noiselessly, that for a moment or two he was
unaware of her entrance. There was neither the rustle of skirts nor
the sound of any movement to apprise him of it, yet he became suddenly
conscious that he was not alone. He turned around at once and saw her
standing within a few feet of him. She held out her hand frankly.
"So you have come," she said; "I thought that you would. But then you
had very little choice, had you?" she added with a little laugh.
She passed him, and deliberately seated herself amongst a pile of
cushions on the divan nearest her reading stand. For the moment he
neglected her gestured invitation, and remained standing, looking at
her.
"I was very glad to come," he said simply.
She shook her head.
"You were afraid of my threat. You were afraid that I might come to
you. Well, it is probable, almost certain that I should have come. You
have saved yourself from that, at any rate."
Although the situation was a novel one to him, he was not in the least
embarrassed. He was altogether too sincere to be possessed of any
self-consciousness. He found himself at last actually in the presence
of the woman who, since first he had seen her, months ago, driving
in the Park, had been constantly in his thoughts, and he began to
wonder with perfect clearness of judgment wherein lay her peculiar
fascination! That she was handsome, of her type, went for nothing. The
world was full of more beautiful women whom he saw day by day without
the faintest thrill of interest. Besides, her face was too pale and
her form too thin for exceptional beauty. There must be something
else,--something about her personality which refused to lend itself to
any absolute analysis. She was perfectly dressed,--he realized that,
because he was never afterwards able to recall exactly what she wore.
Her eyes were soft and dark and luminous,--soft with a light the power
of which he was not slow to recognize.
But none of these things were of any important account in reckoning
with the woman. He became convinced, in those few moments of
deliberate observation, that there was nothing in her "personnel"
which could justify her reputation. On the whole he was glad of it.
Any other form of attraction was more welcome to him than a purely
physical one!
"First of all," she began, leaning forward and looking at him over
her interlaced fingers; "I want you to tell me this! You will answer
me faithfully, I know. What did you think of my writing to you, of my
persistence? Tell me exactly what you thought."
"I was surprised," he answered; "how could I help it? I was surprised,
too," he added, "to find that I wanted very much to come."
"The women whom you know," she said quietly,--"I suppose you do know
some,--would not have done such a thing. Some people say that I am
mad! One may as well try to live up to one's reputation; I have taken
a little of the license of madness."
"It was unusual, perhaps," he admitted; "but who is not weary of usual
things? I gathered from your note that you had something to explain. I
was anxious to hear what that explanation could be."
She was silent for a moment, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, a faint
smile at the corners of her lips.
"First," she said, "let me tell you this. I want to have you
understand why I was anxious that you should not think worse of me
than I deserved. I am rather a spoilt woman. I have grown used to
having my own way; I wanted to know you, I have wanted to for some
time. We have passed one another day after day; I knew quite well all
the time who you were, and it seemed so stupid! Do you know once or
twice I have had an insane desire to come right up to your chair and
break in upon your meditations,--hold out my hand and make you talk to
me? That would have been worse than this, would it not? But I firmly
believe that I should have done it some day. So you see I wrote my
little note in self-defence."
"I do not know that I should have been so completely surprised after
all," he said. "I, too, have felt something of what you have
expressed. I have been interested in your comings and your goings. But
then you knew that, or you would never have written to me."
"One sacrifices so much," she murmured, "on the altars of the modern
Goddess. We live in such a tiny compass,--nothing ever happens. It is
only psychologically that one's emotions can be reached at all. Events
are quite out of date. I am speaking from a woman's point of view."
"You should have lived," he said, smiling, "in the days of Joan of
Arc."
"No doubt," she answered, "I should have found that equally dull. What
I was endeavouring to do was, first of all to plead some justification
for wanting to know you. For a woman there is nothing left but the
study of personalities."
"Mine," he answered with a faint gleam in his eyes, "is very much at
your service."
"I am going to take you at your word," she warned him.
"You will be very much disappointed. I am perfectly willing to be
dissected, but the result will be inadequate."
She leaned back amongst the cushions and looked at him thoughtfully.
"Listen," she said; "I can tell you something of your history, as you
will see. I want you to fill in the blanks."
"Mine," he murmured, "will be the greater task. My life is a record of
blank places. The history is to come."
"This," she said, "is the extent of my knowledge. You were the second
son of Sir Lionel Matravers, and you have been an orphan since you
were very young. You were meant to take Holy Orders, but when the time
came you declined. At Oxford you did very well indeed. You established
a brilliant reputation as a classical scholar, and you became a
fellow of St. John's.
"It was whilst you were there that you wrote _Studies in Character_.
Two years ago, I do not know why, you gave up your fellowship and came
to London. You took up the editorship of a Review--the _Bi-Weekly_, I
think--but you resigned it on a matter of principle. You have a
somewhat curious reputation. The _Scrutineer_ invariably alludes to
you as the Apostle of AEstheticism. You are reported to have fixed
views as to the conduct of life, down even to its most trifling
details. That sounds unpleasant, but it probably isn't altogether
true.... Don't interrupt, please! You have no intimate friends, but
you go sometimes into society. You are apparently a mixture of poet,
philosopher, and man of fashion. I have heard you spoken of more than
once as a disciple of Epicurus. You also, in the course of your
literary work, review novels--unfortunately for me--and six months ago
you were the cause of my nearly crying my eyes out. It was perhaps
silly of me to attempt, without any literary experience, to write a
modern story, but my own life supplied the motive, and at least I was
faithful to what I felt and knew. No one else has ever said such cruel
things about my work.
"Woman-like, you see, I repay my injuries by becoming interested in
you. If you had praised my book, I daresay I should never have thought
of you at all. Then there is one thing more. Every day you sit in the
Park close to where I stop, and--you look at me. It seems as though we
had often spoken there. Shall I tell you what I have been vain enough
to think sometimes?
"I have watched you from a distance, often before you have seen me.
You always sit in the same attitude, your eyebrows are a little
contracted, there is generally the ghost of a smile upon your lips.
You are like an outsider who has come to look upon a brilliant show. I
could fancy that you have clothed yourself in the personality of that
young Roman noble whose name you have made so famous, and from another
age were gazing tolerantly and even kindly upon the folly and the
pageantry which have survived for two thousand years. And then I have
taken my little place in the procession, and I have fancied that a
subtle change has stolen into your face. You have looked at me as
gravely as ever, but no longer as an impersonal spectator.
"It is as though I have seemed a live person to you, and the others,
mummies. Once the change came so swiftly that I smiled at you,--I
could not help it,--and you looked away."
"I remember it distinctly," he interrupted. "I thought the smile was
for some one behind me."
She shook her head.
"It was for you. Now I have finished. Fill in the blanks, please."
He was content to answer her in the same strain. The effect of her
complete naturalness was already upon him.
"So far as my personal history is concerned," he told her, "you are
wonderfully correct. There is nothing more to be said about it. I gave
up my fellowship at Oxford because I have always been convinced of the
increasing narrowness and limitations of purely academic culture and
scholarship. I was afraid of what I should become as an old man, of
what I was already growing into. I wanted to have a closer grip upon
human things, to be in more sympathetic relations with the great world
of my fellow-men. Can you understand me, I wonder? The influences of
a university town are too purely scholarly to produce literary work of
wide human interest. London had always fascinated me--though as yet I
have met with many disappointments. As to the _Bi-Weekly_, it was my
first idea to undertake no fixed literary work, and it was only after
great pressure that I took it for a time. As you know, my editorship
was a failure."
He paused for a moment or two, and looked steadily at her. He was
anxious to watch the effect of what he was going to say.
"You have mentioned my review upon your novel in the _Bi-Weekly_. I
cannot say that I am sorry I wrote it. I never attacked a book with so
much pleasure. But I am very sorry indeed that you should have written
it. With your gifts you could have given to the world something better
than a mere psychological debauch!"
She laughed softly, but genuinely.
"I adore sincerity," she exclaimed, "and it is so many years since I
was actually scolded. A 'psychological debauch' is delightful. But I
cannot help my views, can I? My experiences were made for me! I became
the creature of circumstances. No one is morally responsible for their
opinions."
"There are things," he said, "which find their way into our thoughts
and consciousness, but of which it would be considered flagrantly bad
taste to speak. And there are things in the world which exist, which
have existed from time immemorial, the evil legacy of countless
generations, of which it seems to me to be equally bad taste to write.
Art has a limitless choice of subjects. I would not have you sully
your fine gifts by writing of anything save of the beautiful."
"This is rank hedonism," she laughed. "It is a survival of your
academic days."
"Some day," he answered, "we will talk more fully of this. It is a
little early for us to discuss a subject upon which we hold such
opposite views."
"You are afraid that we might quarrel!"
He shook his head.
"No, not that! Only as I am something of an idealist, and you, I
suppose, have placed yourself amongst the ranks of the realists, we
should scarcely meet upon a common basis. But will you forgive me if I
say so--I am very sure that some day you will be a deserter?"
"And why?"
[Illustration: "Friends," she repeated, with a certain wistfulness in
her tone]
"I do not know anything of your history," he continued gently, "nor am
I asking for your confidence. Only in your story there was a personal
note, which seemed to me to somehow explain the bitterness and
directness with which you wrote--of certain subjects. I think that you
yourself have had trouble--or perhaps a dear friend has suffered,
and her grief has become yours. There was a little poison in your pen,
I think. Never mind! We shall be friends, and I shall watch it pass
away!"
"Friends," she repeated with a certain wistfulness in her tone. "But
have you forgotten--what you came for?"
"I do not think," he said slowly, "that it is of much consequence."
"But it is," she insisted. "You asked me distinctly where I wished to
be driven to from the theatre, and I told you--home! All the time I
knew that I was going to have supper with Mr. Thorndyke at the Milan!
Morally I lied to you!"
"Why?" he asked.
"I cannot tell you," she answered; "it was an impulse. I thought
nothing of accepting the man's invitation. You know him, I daresay. He
is a millionaire, and it is his money which supports the theatre. He
has asked me several times, and although personally I dislike him, he
has, of course, a certain claim upon my acquaintance. I have made
excuses once or twice. Last night was the first time I have ever been
out anywhere with him. I do not of course pretend to be in the least
conventional--I have always permitted myself the utmost liberty of
action. Yet--I had wanted so much to know you--I was afraid of
prejudicing you.... After all, you see, I have no explanation. It was
just an impulse. I have hated myself for it; but it is done!"
"It was," he said, "a trifle of no importance. We will forget it."
A gleam of gratitude shone in her dark eyes. Her head drooped a
little. He fancied that her voice was not quite so steady.
"It is good," she said, "to hear you say that."
He looked around the room, and back into her face. Some dim
foreknowledge of what was to come between them seemed to flash before
his eyes. It was like a sudden glimpse into that unseen world so close
at hand, in which he--that Roman noble--had at any rate implicitly
believed. There was a faint smile upon his face as his eyes met hers.
"At least," he said, "I shall be able to come and talk with you now at
the railing, instead of watching you from my chair. For you were quite
right in what you said just now. I have watched for you every day--for
many days."
"You will be able to come," she said gravely, "if you care to. You mix
so little with the men who love to talk scandal of a woman, that you
may never have heard them--talk of me. But they do, I know! I hear all
about it--it used to amuse me! You have the reputation of ultra
exclusiveness! If you and I are known to be friends, you may have to
risk losing it."
His brows were slightly contracted, and he had half closed his eyes--a
habit of his when anything was said which offended his taste.
"I wonder whether you would mind not talking like that," he said.
"Why not? I would not have you hear these things from other people. It
is best to be truthful, is it not? To run no risk of any
misunderstandings."
"There is no fear of anything of that sort," he said calmly. "I do not
pretend to be a magician or a diviner, yet I think I know you for what
you are, and it is sufficient. Some day----"
He broke off in the middle of a sentence. The door had opened. A man
stood upon the threshold. The servant announced him--Mr. Thorndyke.
Matravers rose at once to his feet. He had a habit--the outcome,
doubtless, of his epicurean tenets, of leaving at once, and at any
costs, society not wholly agreeable to him. He bowed coldly to the man
who was already greeting Berenice, and who was carrying a great bunch
of Parma violets.
Mr. Thorndyke was evidently astonished at his presence--and not
agreeably.
"Have you come, Mr. Matravers," he asked coldly, "to make your peace?"
"I am not aware," Matravers answered calmly, "of any reason why I
should do so."
Mr. Thorndyke raised his eyebrows, and drew an afternoon paper from
his pocket.
"This is your writing, is it not?" he asked.
Matravers glanced at the paragraph.
"Certainly!"
Mr. Thorndyke threw the paper upon the table.
"Well," he said, "I have no doubt it is an excellent piece of literary
work--a satire I suppose you would call it--and I must congratulate
you upon its complete success. I don't mind running the theatre at a
financial loss, but I have a distinct objection to being made a
laughing stock of. I suppose this paper appeared about two hours ago,
and already I can't move a yard without having to suffer the
condolences of some sympathizing ass. I shall close the theatre next
week."
"That is naturally," Matravers said, "a matter of complete
indifference to me. In the cause of art I should say that you will do
well, unless you can select a play from a very different source. What
I wrote of the performance last night, I wrote according to my
convictions. You," he added, turning to Berenice, "will at least
believe that, I am sure!"
"Most certainly I do," she assured him, holding out her hand. "Must
you really go? You will come and see me again--very soon?"
He bowed over her fingers, and then their eyes met for a moment. She
was very pale, but she looked at him bravely. He realized suddenly
that Mr. Thorndyke's threat was a serious blow to her.
"I am very sorry," he said. "You will not bear me any ill will?"
"None!" she answered; "you may be sure of that!"
She walked with him to the open door, outside which the servant was
waiting to show him downstairs.
"You will come and see me again--very soon?" she repeated.
"Yes," he answered simply, "if I may I shall come again! I will come
as soon as you care to have me!"