The meeting in Mr. Symeon's library lasted all through the summer
afternoon, till the edge of evening. The large and gloomy room was
darkened by Venetian shutters, nearly closed over open windows. There
was air, and the ceaseless sound of traffic; but the summer sun was
excluded, and figures were seen dimly, as if they belonged to the
shadow world.
Among those indistinct forms Vera recognised people she knew, people
she would never have expected to find in a society of mystics: a
statesman, a poet, three popular novelists, and half a dozen of the
idlest women of her acquaintance, two of whom were the heroines
of romantic stories, women over whose future friends watched and
prophesied with the keen interest that centres in a domestic situation
where catastrophe seems imminent.
Vera wondered, seeing these two. Had they come, like her, for a refuge
from the tragedy of life? They had not come for an escape from sin;
for, if their friends were to be believed, the border line had been
passed long ago.
An hour of silence, broken now and then by deep breathing, as of
agitation, and sometimes by a stifled sob, and then a flood of words,
speech that was eloquent enough to seem inspired, speech that might
have come from him who wrote "Christmas Eve," and "Easter Day," and
"A Death in the Desert," the speech of a believer in all that is
most divine in the promise of a future life. And after that burst
of impassioned utterance there were other speakers, men and women,
the men strong in faith, strong in the gift of tongues, possessed by
the higher mind that spoke through organs of common clay; the women
semi-hysterical, romantic, eloquent with remembered poetry. But in men
and women alike there was sincerity, an intense belief in that close
contact of disembodied mind, sincerity that carried conviction to an
imaginative neophyte like Vera Provana.
Suddenly from the stillness there came a voice more thrilling than any
Vera had heard in that long _séance_, a voice that was not altogether
unfamiliar, but with a note more intense, more poignant than she knew.
Gleaming through the shadows, she saw eyes that flashed green light,
and a long, thin face of marble pallor, in which she knew the face of
Lady Fanny Ransom.
And now came the most startling speech that had been heard that
afternoon--the passionate advocacy of Free Love--love released from the
dominion of law, the bonds of custom, the fear of the world; love as in
Shelley's wildest dreams, but more transcendental than in the dreams of
poets; the love of spirit for spirit, soul for soul, "pure to pure"--as
Milton imagined the love of angels. All the grossness of earth was
eliminated from that rarefied atmosphere in which Francis Symeon's
disciples had their being. Their first and indispensable qualification
was to have liberated thought and feeling from the dominion of the
senses. While still wearing the husk of the flesh, they were to be
spirits; and not till they had become spirits were they capable of
communion with those radiant beings whose earthly vesture had been
annihilated by death.
To Vera there was an awful beauty in those echoes of great minds; and
her faith was strong in the belief that among this little company of
aspiring mortals there hovered the spirits of the illustrious dead. She
left Mr. Symeon's room with those others, who dispersed in absolute
silence, as good people leave a church, with no recognition of each
other, stealing away as from a service of unusual solemnity. They did
not even look at each other, nor did they take leave of Mr. Symeon, who
stood by one of the shuttered windows, gravely watching as his guests
departed.
It was past seven, and the sun was low, as Vera went to her carriage,
which was waiting for her in Burlington Gardens. She was stepping into
it, when a too familiar voice startled her. She had been too deep in
thought to see Claude Rutherford waiting for her at the gate of the
"Albany."
"Send your carriage home, Vera, and walk through the Green Park with
me. You must want fresh air after the gloom of Symeon's Egyptian
temple."
"No, no. I am going straight home."
"Indeed you are not," and without further argument he took upon himself
to give the order to the footman.
"Your mistress will walk home."
She would have resisted; but it was not easy to dispute with a man who
had a way of taking things for granted, especially those things he
wanted. It would have been easier to contend against energy, or even
brute force, than against that nonchalant self-assurance of an amiable
idler, who sauntered through life, getting his own way by a passive
resistance of all opposing circumstances.
"I have been waiting nearly two hours," he said. "It would be hard if
you couldn't give me half an hour before your dinner. I know you never
dine before half-past eight."
"But I have to be punctual. Aunt Mildred is coming to dinner, and Susie
Amphlett."
"It has only just struck seven. You shall be home before eight, and I
suppose you can dress in half an hour."
"I won't risk not being in the drawing-room when Aunt Mildred comes."
"Lady Okehampton is a terror, I admit. You shall be home in good time,
child. But I must have something for my two hours."
"How absurd of you to wait," she said lightly. "And how did you know I
was at Mr. Symeon's?"
They were going through the "Albany" to Piccadilly. She had recovered
from the shock of his appearance, and was able to speak with the old
trivial air, the tone of comradeship, an easy friendliness, without
the possibility of deeper feeling. It had seemed so natural before
the consciousness of sin; and it had been so sweet. This evening, as
she walked by his side, she began to think that they might still be
comrades and friends, without the shadow of fear; that her agony of
awakened conscience had been foolish and hysterical, imaginary sin,
like the self-accusation of some demented nun.
"How did I know? Well, after calling at your house repeatedly, only
to be told you were not at home, I lost my temper, and determined to
find out where you were--at least for this one afternoon, when I knew
of no high jinks in the houses of your friends; and so, having asked
an impertinent question or two of your butler, I found that Symeon had
been with you yesterday, and guessed that you might be at his occult
assembly this afternoon. I had heard a whisper of such an assembly more
than a week ago--so you see the process of discovery was not difficult."
"But why take so much trouble?"
"Why? Because you have treated me very badly, and I don't mean to put
up with that kind of treatment. If it comes to why, I have my own
'why' to ask--a why that I must have answered. What ignorant sin have
I committed that it should be 'Darwaza band' when I call in Portland
Place? What has become of our cousinship; our memory of childish
pleasures, the sea, the woods, the heather; the pony that ran away with
you, while I stood with my blood frozen, telling myself, 'If he kills
her I shall throw myself over the cliff'? What has become of our past,
Vera? Is blood to be no thicker than water? Is the bond of our childish
affection to go for nothing? Is it because I am a failure that you have
cut me?"
"I have not cut you, Claude. How can you say such a thing?"
"Have you not? Then I know nothing of the cutting process. To be always
out when I call--to take infinite trouble to avoid me when we meet in
other people's houses! The cut direct was never more stony-hearted and
remorseless."
"You must not fancy things," she said lightly.
They were in the Green Park by this time, the quiet Green Park, whence
nursemaids and children had vanished, and where even loafers were few
at this hour between afternoon and evening.
She spoke lightly, and there was a lightness at her heart that was
new. It was sweet to be with him--sweet to be walking at his side on
the old familiar terms, friends, companions, comrades, as of old. His
careless speech, his supreme ease of manner, seemed to have broken a
spell. She looked back and thought of her troubled conscience, and all
the scheming and distress of the last two months, and she felt as if
she had awakened from a fever dream, from a dreary interval of delirium
and hysteria. What danger could there be in such a friendship? What had
tragedy to do with Claude Rutherford? This airy trifler, this saunterer
through life, was not of the stuff of which lovers are made. He was a
man whom all women liked; but he was not the man whom a woman calls her
Fate, and who cannot be her friend without being her destroyer. How
could she ever have feared him? He was of her own blood. His respect
for her race--the race to which he belonged--would hold him in check,
even if there were no other restraining influences. The burden of fear
was lifted; and her spirits rose to a girlish lightness, as she walked
by her cousin's side with swift footsteps, listening to his playful
reproaches, his facetious bewailing of his worthlessness. From this
time forward she would treat him as a brother. She would never again
think it possible that words of love, unholy words, could fall from his
lips. No such word had ever been spoken; and was it not shameful in her
to have feared him--to imagine him a lover while he had always shown
himself her loyal kinsman? In this new and happy hour she forgot that
it was her own heart that had sounded the alarm--that it was because
she loved him, not because he loved her, that she had resolved upon
ruling him out of her life.
Perhaps this evening, after the glamour of Mr. Symeon's assembly, she
was "fey." This sudden rush of gladness, this ecstasy of reunion with
the friend from whom she had compassed heaven and earth to hold herself
aloof, seemed more than the gladness of common day. She trod on air;
and when they pulled up suddenly at Hyde Park Comer, it was a surprise
to find that they had not been walking towards Portland Place.
"We must make for Stanhope Gate and cross Grosvenor Square and Bond
Street," Claude said gaily. "We have come a long way round, but a walk
is a walk, and I have no doubt we both wanted one. Perhaps you would
prefer a cab."
"No, I like walking, if there is time."
"Plenty of time. You walk like Atalanta, if that young person ever
condescended to anything but a run."
"Do you remember our walks in the woods, and the afternoon we lost our
way and could not get home for the nursery tea?"
"You mean when I lost my way, and you had to tramp the shoes off your
dear little feet. Brave little minx, I shall never forget how plucky
you were, and how you kept back the tears when your lips quivered with
pain."
Once launched upon reminiscences of that golden summer there was no
gap in their talk till the lions' heads were frowning at them on the
threshold of Vera's home.
She was flushed with her walk, and the colour in cheeks that were
generally pale gave a new brightness to her eyes. That long talk of
her childish days had taken her out of her present life. She was a
child again, happy in the present moment, without the wisdom that looks
before and after.
"Good-bye," said Claude; and then, pausing, with his hand on the moody
lion, "if you had some vague idea of asking me to dinner, it would
be a kindness to give shape to the notion, for I shan't get a dinner
anywhere else. My mother is in the country, and a solitary meal at a
restaurant is worse than a funeral."
Vera hesitated, with a faint blush, not being able utterly to forget
her determination to keep Claude Rutherford out of her daily life.
"Lady Okehampton expects to find me alone," she said.
"But you have Susie Amphlett?"
"Susie invited herself."
"As I am doing. Three women! What a funereal feast; as bad as
Domitian's black banquet. Your aunt dotes upon me, and so does Susan.
You will score by having secured me. You can say I threw over a long
engagement for the sake of meeting them. I dare say there is some
solemn dinner invitation stuck in my chimney glass. I often forget such
things."
The doors were flung open, and the suave man in black and his liveried
lieutenants awaited their mistress's entrance.
"_A ce soir_," said Claude, as he hailed a prowling hansom; and he was
seated in it, smiling at her with lifted hat, before Vera had time to
answer him.
"Mr. Rutherford will dine here this evening," she told the butler.