For nearly half an hour he sat in his usual place under the trees,
watching with indifferent eyes the constant stream of carriages
passing along the drive. It seemed to him only a few hours since he
had sat there before, almost in the same spot, a solitary figure in
the cold, grey twilight, yet watching then, even as he was watching
now, for that small victoria with its single occupant whose soft dark
eyes had met his so often with a frank curiosity which she had never
troubled to conceal. Something of that same perturbation of spirit
which had driven him then out into the dawn-lit streets, was upon him
once more, only with a very real and tangible difference. The grey
half-lights, the ghostly shadows, and the faint wind sounding in the
tree-tops like the rising and falling of a midnight sea upon some
lonely shore, had given to his early morning dreams an indefiniteness
which they could scarcely hope to possess now. He himself was a living
unit of this gay and brilliant world, whose conversation and light
laughter filled the sunlit air around him, whose skirts were brushing
against his knees, and whose jargon fell upon his ears with a familiar
and a kindly sound. There was no possibility here for such a wave of
passion,--he could call it nothing else,--as had swept through him,
when he had first read that brief message from the woman, who had
already become something of a disturbing element in his seemly life.
Yet under a calm exterior he was conscious of a distinct tremor of
excitement when her carriage drew up within a few feet of him, and
obeying her mute but smiling command, he rose and offered his hand as
she stepped out on to the path.
"This," she remarked, resting her daintily gloved fingers for a moment
in his, "is the beginning of a new order of things. Do you realize
that only the day before yesterday we passed one another here with a
polite stare?"
"I remember it," he answered, "perfectly. Long may the new order
last."
"But it is not going to last long--with me at any rate," she said,
laughing. "Don't you know that I am almost ruined? Mr. Thorndyke is
going to close the theatre. He says that we have been losing money
every week. I shall have to sell my horses, and go and live in the
suburbs."
"I hope," he said fervently, "that you will not find it so bad as
that."
"Of course," she remarked, "you know that yours is the hand which has
given us our death-blow. I have just read your notice. It is a
brilliant piece of satirical writing, of course, but need you have
been quite so severe? Don't you regret your handiwork a little?"
"I cannot," he answered deliberately. "On the contrary, I feel that I
have done you a service. If you do not agree with me to-day, the time
will certainly come when you will do so. You have a gift which
delighted me: you are really an actress; you are one of very few."
"That is a kind speech," she answered; "but even if there is truth in
it, I am as yet quite unrecognized. There is no other theatre open to
me; you and I look upon Istein and his work from a different point of
view; but even if you are right, the part of Herdrine suited me. I was
beginning to get some excellent notices. If we could have kept the
thing going for only a few weeks longer, I think that I might have
established some sort of a reputation."
He sighed.
"A reputation, perhaps," he admitted; "but not of the best order. You
do not wish to be known only as the portrayer of unnatural passions,
the interpreter of diseased desires. It would be an ephemeral
reputation. It might lead you into many strange byways, but it would
never help you to rise. Art is above all things catholic, and
universal. You may be a perfect Herdrine; but Herdrine herself is but
a night weed--a thing of no account. Even you cannot make her natural.
She is the puppet of a man's fantasy. She is never a woman."
"I suppose," she said sorrowfully, "that your judgment is the true
one. Yet--but we will talk of something else. How strange to be
walking here with you!"
Berenice was always a much-observed woman, but to-day she seemed to
attract more even than ordinary attention. Her personality, her
toilette, which was superb, and her companion, were all alike
interesting to the slowly moving throng of men and women amongst whom
they were threading their way. The attitude of her sex towards
Berenice was in a certain sense a paradox. She was distinctly the most
talented and the most original of all the "petticoat apostles," as the
very man who was now walking by her side had scornfully described the
little band of women writers who were accused of trying to launch upon
society a new type of their own sex. Her last novel was flooding all
the bookstalls; and if not of the day, was certainly the book of the
hour. She herself, known before only as a brilliant journalist writing
under a curious _nom de plume_, had suddenly become one of the most
marked figures in London life. Yet she had not gone so far as other
writers who had dealt with the same subject. Marriage, she had
dared to write, had become the whitewashing of the impure, the
sanctifying of the vicious! But she had not added the almost natural
corollary,--therefore let there be no marriage. On the contrary,
marriage in the ideal she had written of as the most wonderful and
the most beautiful thing in life,--only marriage in the ideal did
not exist.
She had never posed as a woman with a mission! She formulated nowhere
any scheme for the re-organization of those social conditions whose
bases she had very eloquently and very trenchantly held to be rotten
and impure. She had written as a prophet of woe! She had preached only
destruction, and from the first she had left her readers curious as to
what sexual system could possibly replace the old. The thing which
happened was inevitable. The amazing demand for her book was exactly
in inverse proportion to its popularity amongst her sex. The crusade
against men was well! Admittedly they were a bad lot, and needed to
be told of it. A little self-assertion on behalf of his superior was a
thing to be encouraged and applauded. But a crusade against marriage!
Berenice must be a most abandoned, as well as a most immoral, woman!
No one who even hinted at the doctrine of love without marriage could
be altogether respectable. Not that Berenice had ever done that.
Still, she had written of marriage,--the usual run of marriages,--from
a woman's point of view, as a very hateful thing. What did she
require, then, of her sex? To live and die old maids, whilst men
became regenerated? It was too absurd. There were a good many curious
things said, and it was certainly true, that since she had gone upon
the stage her toilette and equipage were unrivalled. Berenice looked
into the eyes of the women whom she met day by day, and she read their
verdict. But if she suffered, she said not a word to any of it.
They passed out from the glancing shadows of the trees towards the
Piccadilly entrance. Here they paused for a moment and stood together
looking down the drive. The sunlight seemed to touch with quivering
fire the brilliant phantasmagoria. Berenice was serious. Her dark eyes
swept down the broad path and her under-lip quivered.
"It is this," she exclaimed, with a slight forward movement of her
parasol, "which makes me long for an earthquake. Can one do anything
for women like that? They are not the creations of a God; they are the
parasitical images of type. Only it is a very small type and a very
large reproduction. Why do I say these things to you, I wonder? You
are against me, too! But then you are not a woman!"
"I am not against you in your detestation of type," he answered. "The
whole world of our sex as well as yours is full of worn-out and
effete reproductions of an unworthy model. It is this intolerable
sameness which suffocates all thought. One meets it everywhere; the
deep melancholy of our days is its fruit. But the children of this
generation will never feel it. The taste of life between their teeth
will be neither like ashes nor green figs. They are numbed."
She flashed a look almost of anger upon him.
"Yet you have ranged yourself upon their side. When my story first
appeared, its fate hung for days in the balance. Women had not made up
their minds how to take it. It came into your hands for review. Well!
you did not spare it, did you? It was you who turned the scale. Your
denunciation became the keynote of popular opinion concerning me. The
women for whose sake I had written it, that they might at least
strike one blow for freedom, took it with a virtuous shudder from the
hands of their daughters. I was pronounced unwholesome and depraved;
even my personal character was torn into shreds. How odd it all
seems!" she added, with a light, mirthless laugh. "It was you who put
into their hands the weapon with which to scourge me. Their trim,
self-satisfied little sentences of condemnation are emasculated
versions of your judgment. It is you whom I have to thank for the
closing of the theatre and the failure of Herdrine,--you who are
responsible for the fact that these women look at me with insolence
and the men as though I were a courtesan. How strange it must seem to
them to see us together--the wolf and the lamb! Well, never mind. Take
me somewhere and give me some tea; you owe me that, at least."
They turned and left the park. For a few minutes conversation was
impossible, but as soon as they had emerged from the crowd he
answered her.
"If I have ever helped any one to believe ill of you," he said slowly,
"I am only too happy that they should have the opportunity of seeing
us together. You are rather severe on me. I thought then, as I think
now, that it is--to put it mildly--impolitic to enter upon a
passionate denunciation of such an institution as marriage when any
substitute for it must necessarily be another step upon the downward
grade. The decadence of self-respect amongst young men, any contrast
between their lives and the lives of the women who are brought up to
be their wives, is too terribly painful a subject for us to discuss
here. Forgive me if I think now, as I have always thought, that it is
not a fitting subject for a novelist--certainly not for a woman. I may
be prejudiced; yet it was my duty to write as I thought. You must not
forget that! So far as your story went, I had nothing but praise for
it. There were many chapters which only an artist could have written."
She raised her eyebrows. They had turned into Bond Street now, and
were close to their destination.
"You men of letters are so odd," she exclaimed. "What is Art but
Truth? and if my book be not true, how can it know anything of art?
But never mind! We are talking shop, and I am a little tired of taking
life seriously. Here we are! Order me some tea, please, and a
chocolate _eclair_."
He followed her to a tiny round table, and sat down by her side upon
the cushioned seat. As he gave his order and looked around the little
room, he smiled gravely to himself. It was the first time in his
life,--at any rate since his boyhood,--that he had taken a woman into
a public room. Decidedly it was a new era for him.