"Well, now your whim has been gratified, I should like to know what
you think of Francis Symeon?" Claude Rutherford asked, as he put down
his hat in Vera's sanctum, the day after her conference with the high
priest of occultism.
The question was his only greeting. He slipped into the low and
spacious chair by the hearth, and seemed to lose himself in it, while
he waited for a reply. He had the air of being perfectly at home in
the room, with no idea that he could possibly be unwelcome. He came
and went in Madame Provana's house with a lazy insouciance that many
people would have taken for indifference. Only the skilled reader of
men would have detected the hidden fire under that outward serenity
of the attractive man, who flirts with any attractive woman of his
acquaintance, and cares for none.
"I think he is wonderful."
"And you believe in him?"
"Yes, I believe in him, because his ideas only give form and substance
to the thoughts that have haunted me ever since I began to think."
"Grisly thoughts?"
"No, Claude; happy thoughts. When I first read my father's poetry and
began to think about him--in my dull grey room in Grannie's lodgings--I
had a feeling that he was near me. He was there; but behind the veil.
When I read 'In Memoriam' the feeling grew stronger, and I knew that
death is not the end of love. There was nothing that shocked or
startled me in what Mr. Symeon told me yesterday."
"About 'Us,' the spiritual club, in which the dead and the living
are members on the same footing? The club that elects, or selects,
Confucius or Browning one day, and Lady Fanny Ransom--mad Lady Fanny as
they call her--the next?"
"I saw nothing to ridicule in a companionship of lofty minds. But you
know more about the society than I do. Perhaps you are a member?"
Claude answered first with a light gay laugh, and then in his most
languid voice.
"Not I! I am of the earth earthy, sensual, sinful. If I went to one of
their meetings I should have to go disguised as a poodle. Lady Fanny
owns a fine Russian, that has a look of Mephisto, though I believe he
is purely canine."
"Tell me all you know about their meetings."
"Imagine a Quakers' meeting, with the female members in Parisian
frocks and hats--a large room at the back of Symeon's chambers in the
'Albany.' It was once a fashionable editor's library, smelling of
Russia leather, and gay with Zansdorf's bindings--but it is now the
abode of shadow, 'where glowing embers through the room, teach light
to counterfeit a gloom.' And there the congregation sits in melancholy
silence, till somebody, Lady Fanny or another, begins to say things
that have been borne in upon her from Shakespeare or Browning, or
Marlowe or Schopenhauer; or her favourite bishop, if she is pious.
They wait for inspiration as the Quakers do. I am told Lady F. is
tremendous. She is strong upon politics, and is frankly socialistic;
she has communications from Karl Marx and Fourier, George Eliot and
Comte. Her inspiration takes the widest range, and moves her to the
wildest speech; but she is greatly admired. They never have a blank day
when she is there."
"I should like to hear her. I know she is eccentric; but she is
immensely clever, and she seems to have read everything worth reading,
in half a dozen languages."
"She crams her expansive brain with the best books; but I am told she
occasionally puts them in upside down, and the author's views came out
topsy-turvy. You are of imagination all compact, Vera; but I should be
sorry to see you lapsing into Fannytude."
"You scoff at everything. There is nothing serious for you in this
world or the next."
"Which next world? There are so many. Symeon's for instance, and Father
Hammond's. What could be more diverse than those? I have thought very
little about the undiscovered country. But you must not say I am not
serious about something in this world."
"I cannot imagine what that something is."
"I hope you will never know. If fact, you are never to know."
His earnestness startled her. When a man's dominant note is persiflage
any touch of grave feeling is impressive. Vera was silent--and they sat
opposite each other for a few moments, she watching the rise and fall
of a blue flame in the heap of logs, he watching her face as the blue
light flashed upon it for an instant and then left it dark.
It was a face worth watching. She had her mermaid look this evening,
and her eyes--ordinarily dark grey--looked as green as her sea-water
necklace.
"How is Provana?" he asked at last; an automatic question, indicating
faintest interest in the answer.
"Oh, he is very well; but I am afraid he is worried. He stays longer in
the City than he used to stay, and he is very grave and silent when we
dine alone."
"What would you do if the great house of Provana were to go down like a
scuttled ship? Would you stick to a bankrupt husband--renounce London
and all its pomps and vanities--give up this wilderness of a house and
all the splendid things in it?"
"Can you suppose the loss of money would change my feeling for him? If
you can think that you must think I married him because he was rich."
"And didn't you?"
"I hate you for the question. When Mario asked me to be his wife I had
not a thought of his wealth. I knew that he was a good man, and I was
proud of his love."
"But you were not in love with him?"
"I don't know what you mean. I loved him for his noble character. I was
proud of his love."
"That is not being in love, Vera. A woman who is in love does not care
a jot for her lover's character. She loves him all the better, perhaps,
because he is a scoundrel--the last of the last--the off-scouring.
There were women in Rome who doted upon Cæsar Borgia; women who knew
that he was a poisoner--take my word for it. You liked Provana because
he was your first lover, and you were tired of a year in year out
_tête-à-tête_ with Grannie."
"You know nothing about it. If he were to lose his fortune to-morrow I
think I should be rather glad. We could live in Italy. Poverty would
bring us nearer together--as we were in our honeymoon year. We should
have plenty to live upon with my settlement."
She rose and moved towards the door.
"It is nearly five, and there will be people coming," she said.
The door opened as she spoke, and Lady Susan Amphlett looked in.
"Aren't you coming, Vera? There is a mob already, and people want their
tea. What are you two talking about, _entre chien et loup_? You look as
weird as Mr. Symeon, Claude."
"We were talking of Symeon, when Vera began to worry about the people
downstairs, who are not half so interesting."
"I should think not. Mr. Symeon is thrilling. To know him is like what
it must have been to be intimate with Simon Forman or Dr. Dee. I would
give worlds to belong to his society. It is quite the smart thing to
do. The members give themselves no end of airs in a quiet way."
Lady Susan would have stood in the doorway talking in her crisp and
rapid way for a quarter of an hour, oblivious of the people in the
drawing-room; but Vera slipped a hand through her arm, and they went
downstairs together, Susan talking all the way.
"Fanny Ransom has just come in, with her girl--not out yet, but ages
old in knowing what she oughtn't to know. How can a woman like Fanny,
eaten up with spiritualism, look after a daughter? They say she went to
Paris last winter on purpose to attend a Black Mass."
"The not-out daughter?" asked Claude.
"No, the mother; but she told the girl all about it, and the minx raves
about the devil--and says she would rather be initiated than presented
next year."
"Lady Fanny had better take care, or she will be expelled from Us. I
don't think Symeon would approve of the Black Mass. His philosophy is
all light. Light and darkness are his good and evil."
Claude spoke in an undertone, as they were in the room by this time,
but he ran small risk of being overheard in a place where everybody
seemed to be talking and nobody listening.
Lady Fanny was the centre of a group, her large brown eyes flashing,
her voice the loudest, a tall, commanding figure in a black and gold
gown, and a black beaver hat with long ostrich feathers and a diamond
buckle, a hat that suggested Rupert of the Rhine rather than a modern
matron.
Her girl stood a little way off, with three other not-outs, listening
to her mother's "balderdash" with unsuppressed mockery.
"Isn't she too killing?" this dutiful child exclaimed, in a rapture
of contemptuous amusement, and then she and her satellites bounced
down upon the most luxurious ottoman within reach, and employed
themselves in disparaging criticism of the company generally--their
dress, demeanour, and social status, with much whispering and
giggling--happily unobserved by grown-ups, who all had their own
interesting subjects to talk about.
Lady Fanny was deserted in favour of Vera, who, at the tea-table,
became the focus of everybody's attention. At the beginning she had
taken a childish pleasure in pouring out tea for her friends, rejoicing
in the exquisite china, the old-world silver, glittering in the blue
light of the spirit lamps, the flowers, and beauteous surroundings;
so different from the scanty treasures of shabby-gentility--the
dinted silver, worn thin with long use, the relics of a Swansea
tea-service with many a crack and rivet--to which her youth had been
restricted. She performed the office automatically nowadays, oppressed
with the languor that hangs over those who are tired of everything,
most especially the luxury and beauty they once longed for. One can
understand that in the reign of our Hanoverian kings it was just this
state of mind which made the wits and beauties eager for a window over
against Newgate--to see a row of murdering pirates hanging against the
morning sky. Nothing could be too ghastly or grim for exhausted souls
in want of a sensation.
The afternoon droppers-in had long become a weariness to Madame
Provana, yet as her fashion had depended much upon her accessibility,
she could not shut her door upon people who considered themselves
obliging when they used her drawing-room as a rather superior club.
Claude Rutherford slipped out of the room imperceptibly, eluding the
people who wanted to talk to him with the agility of a vanishing
harlequin. He had another visit to pay before his evening engagements,
an almost daily visit.
There was just one person in the world for whom he, who had left
off caring for people or things, was known to care very much. In
expatiating upon the blemishes in an agreeable young man's character,
people often concluded with:
"But he is a model son. He adores that old woman in Palace Place."
It was to the old woman in Palace Place that Claude was going this
November afternoon, and walking briskly through the clear, cold grey,
he knew as well what the old woman was doing as if he had been gifted
with second sight.
She was sitting in her large, low chair, with her table and exquisite
little tea-service--his gift--at her elbow, and with her eyes fixed on
the dial of the Sèvres clock on the mantelpiece, while her heart beat
in time to the ticking of the seconds, and he knew that if he were but
ten minutes later than usual those minutes were long enough for the
maternal mind to visualise every form of accident that can happen to a
young man about town.
Nobody talked of "poor Mrs. Rutherford," or pitied her widowed
solitude, as they had pitied Lady Felicia. The fact that she had her
own house in a fashionable quarter, and a handsome income, made all the
difference.
The house was not spacious, but it was old--an Adams house--and one of
the prettiest in London, for whatever had been done to it, after Adams,
had been done with taste and discretion. Much of the furniture was of
the same date as the house, and all that was more recent was precious
after its kind, and had been bought when precious things were easier
to buy than they are now. And Mrs. Rutherford was as perfect as her
surroundings--a slim, pale woman, dressed in black, and wearing the
same widow's cap which she had put on in sorrow and anguish fifteen
years before--and which harmonised well with the long oval face
and banded brown hair, lightly streaked with grey. She was a quiet
person, and entertained few visitors except those of her own blood, or
connections by marriage; but the name of those being legion, nobody
called her inhospitable. Altogether she was a mother whom no well-bred
son need be ashamed of loving.
Once, upon his friend saying something to this effect, Claude had
turned upon the man fiercely:
"I should have loved her as well if she had been a beggar in the
streets, and had hung about the doors of public-houses with me in
her arms. To me she is not Mrs. Rutherford, but just the sweetest,
tenderest mother on this earth--and she would have been the same if
Fate had made her a beggar."
"You believe that in your fantastic fits--but you know it ain't true,"
said his friend.
* * * * *
Mrs. Rutherford looked up with a radiant face when her son entered the
room. She had heard his light step on the stair. He had a latchkey, and
there was no other sound to announce his coming.
"Am I late, mother?"
"It is eight minutes past five."
"And you have been watching the clock instead of taking your tea."
The butler entered with the tea-pot as he spoke, having made the tea
immediately upon hearing the hall door open.
"What have you been doing with yourself this afternoon, dearest?" Mrs.
Rutherford asked, looking up at him fondly, as he stood with his back
to the mantelpiece, looking down at her.
"Loafing as usual. I looked in at the New Gallery--their winter show
began to-day--half a dozen grand things--the rest _croûtes_."
"And then?" she asked gently, seeming sure there would be something
else.
"Then I walked up Regent Street--it was a fine bracing afternoon--from
the Gallery to the 'Langham,' and along Portland Place."
"And you had tea with Vera Provana?"
"No--not tea. There is no tea worth tasting out of this room. There was
a mob as usual at the Provanas'--and I slipped away."
"Was Signor Provana there?"
"Not he. He was last heard of in Vienna. But I believe he is coming
home next week."
"An unsatisfactory husband for a young thing like Vera," said Mrs.
Rutherford, with a faint cloud on her thoughtful face.
Claude knew that look of vague trouble. It was often on his mother's
forehead when she spoke of Vera.
"I don't think women ought to call him unsatisfactory. He is the most
indulgent husband I know. He adores his wife, and she reigns like a
queen in that great house of his--and in their Roman villa."
"That kind of indulgence is a dangerous thing for a young
woman--especially if she is capricious and full of strange fancies."
"Poor little Vera. You don't seem to have a high opinion of her."
"I don't want to be unkind. She has passed through an ordeal that
only a woman of high principles and strong brain can pass without
deterioration. A girlhood of poverty and deprivation, under close
surveillance, and a married life of inordinate luxury and liberty. She
was married at eighteen, remember, Claude--before her character could
be formed. Nor was Lady Felicia the person to lay the foundation of
a fine character. One ought not to speak ill of the dead--but poor
Felicia was sadly trivial and worldly-minded."
"_Madre mia_, what a sermon. If you think poor little Vera is in
danger, why don't you contrive to see a little more of her? She would
love to have you for a real friend. She has a host of acquaintances,
but not too many friends. Susan Amphlett is devoted to her; but Lady
Susie is not a tower of strength."
"I believe they suit each other. They are both feather-headed, and both
_poseuses_."
At this Claude fired, and was almost fierce.
"Vera is no _poseuse_," he said. "She is utterly without
self-consciousness. I don't think she knows that she is lovely, in
spite of the Society papers. Fortunately she has no time to read them.
She is too absorbed in her poets--Browning, Shakespeare, Dante. I doubt
if she reads a page of prose in a day."
"And is not that a pose? Her idea is to be different from other
women--a creature of imagination--in the world, but not of it. That is
what people say of Madame Provana.--So charming! So different!
"She can't help what people say, any more than she can help looking
more like Undine than a woman whose clothes come from the Rue de la
Paix."
Mrs. Rutherford let the subject drop. She did not want to bring
unhappiness into the sweetest hour of her life, the hour her son
gave her; and she knew she could not talk of Vera without the risk
of unhappiness. He who was the joy of her life was also the cause of
much sorrow; but from the day he left the Army, under some kind of
cloud, never fully understood, but divined, by his mother, she had
never let him know what a disappointment his broken career had been to
her. She was a soldier's daughter, and a soldier's widow; and to be
distinguished as a leader of men was to her mind almost the only way to
greatness.
Yet she had smiled when this cherished son had made light of military
fame, and told her he would rather be another Millais than another
Arthur Wellesley. She had expressed no regret, a few years later, when
he told her that art was of all professions the most hateful--and that
he did not mean to follow up the flashy success of his early pictures.
"They might make me an Associate next year, if my work was a little
better," he told her; "but I am not good enough to hit the public taste
two years running. It was the subject or the devilry in my picture that
caught on. I might never catch on again--and I'm sick of it all--the
critics, the dealers, and the whole brotherhood of art."
There again his road in life came to a dead stop; but this time it
was not a wicked woman's form that barred the vista, and shut out the
Temple of Fame. As he had missed being a great soldier, he was to
miss being a famous painter, though the men who knew, the men who had
already arrived, had told his mother that a brilliant career might
have been his, if he had chosen to work for it; to work, not by fits
and starts, like a fine gentleman in a picturesque painting-room, but
as Reynolds had worked, and Etty, and Wilkie, when he sat on the floor
painting, with his own legs for his subject.
Again, after trying her powers of persuasion, and trying to fire his
ambition, Mrs. Rutherford had resigned herself to disappointment, and
had been neither reproachful nor lugubrious.
She was an ambitious woman, and her son had disappointed her ambition.
She was a deeply religious woman, and she saw her son indifferent to
his religion, if not an unbeliever; and she never persecuted him with
tears and remonstrances, only on rare occasions, and with the utmost
delicacy, pleading the urgency of a strong faith in the midst of a
faithless generation, and the deadly risk the man runs who neglects the
sacraments of his Church.
Although she did not often approach this subject in her talk with
Claude, it was not the less a subject of anxious thought; and she
relied on the influence of her old and devoted friend, Father Cyprian
Hammond, rather than her own, for the saving of her son's soul.
If a good woman's prayers could have guarded his path and kept him from
temptation, Claude Rutherford would have walked between guardian angels.