A SURPRISING REQUEST
The Duchess of Ampthill was giving a great dinner-party at her house
in Grosvenor Square. She had found several new prodigies, and one of
them was performing in a most satisfactory manner. He sat at her left
hand, and though, unlike Saton, he had at first been shy, the
continual encouragement of his hostess had eventually produced the
desired result. His name was Chalmers, and he was the nephew of a
bishop. He had taken a double first at Oxford, and now announced his
intention of embracing literature as a profession. He wore glasses,
and he was still very young.
"There is no doubt at all," he said, in answer to a remark from the
Duchess, "that London has reached just that stage in her development
as a city of human beings, which was so fatal to some of her
predecessors in pre-eminence, some of those ancient cities of which
there exists to-day only the name. The blood in her arteries is no
longer robust. Already the signs of decay are plentiful."
"I wonder," Rochester inquired, "what you consider your evidences
are for such a statement. To a poor outsider like myself, for
instance, London seems to have all the outward signs of an amazingly
prosperous--one might almost say a splendidly progressive city."
Chalmers smiled. It was a smile he had cultivated when contradicted at
the Union, and he knew its weight.
"From a similar point of view," he said, "as yours, Mr. Rochester,
Rome and Athens, Nineveh, and those more ancient cities, presented the
same appearance of prosperity. Yet if you ask for signs, there are
surely many to be seen. I am anxious," he continued, gazing around him
with an air of bland enjoyment, "to avoid anything in the nature of an
epigram. There is nothing so unconvincing, so stultifying to one's
statements, as to express them epigrammatically. People at once give
you credit for an attempt at intellectual gymnastics which takes no
regard to the truth. I will not, therefore, weary you with a diatribe
upon the condition of that heterogeneous mass which is known to-day as
Society. I will simply point out to you one of the portents which has
inevitably heralded disaster. I mean the restless searching everywhere
for new things and new emotions. Our friend opposite," he said, bowing
to Saton, "will forgive me if I instance the almost passionate
interest in this new science which he is making brave efforts to give
to the world. A lecture to-day from Mr. Bertrand Saton would fill any
hall in London. And why? Simply because the people know that he will
speak to them of new things. Look at this man Father Cresswell. There
is no building in this great city which would hold the crowds who
flock to his meetings. And why? Simply because he has adopted a new
tone--because in place of the old methods, he stands in his pulpit
with a lash, and wields it like a Russian executioner."
Lady Mary interrupted him suddenly from her place a little way down
the table.
"Oh, I don't agree with you!" she said. "Indeed, I think you are
wrong. The reason why people go to hear Father Cresswell is not
because he has anything new to say, or any new way of saying it. The
real reason is because he has the gift of showing them the truth. You
can be told things very often, and receive a great many warnings, but
you take no notice. There is something wrong about the method of
delivering them. It is not the lash which Father Cresswell uses, but
it is his extraordinary gift of impressing one with the truth of what
he says, that has had such an effect upon everyone."
Rochester looked across at his wife curiously. It was almost the first
time that he had ever heard her speak upon a serious subject. Now he
came to think of it, he remembered that she had been spending much of
her time lately listening to this wonderful enthusiast. Was he really
great enough to have influenced so light a creature, he wondered?
Certainly there was something changed in her. He had noticed it during
the last few days--an odd sort of nervousness, a greater kindness of
speech, an unaccustomed gravity. Her remark set him thinking.
Chalmers leaned forward and bowed to Lady Mary. Again the shadow of a
tolerant smile rested upon his lips.
"Very well, Lady Mary," he said, "I will accept the truth of what you
say. Yet a few decades ago, who cared about religion, or hearing the
truth? It is simply because the men and women of Society have
exhausted every means of self-gratification, that in a sort of
unwholesome reaction they turn towards the things as far as possible
removed from those with which they are surfeited. But I will leave
Father Cresswell alone. I will ask you whether it is not the bizarre,
the grotesque in art, which to-day wins most favor. I will turn to the
making of books--I avoid the term literature--and I will ask you
whether it is not the extravagant, the impossible, the deformed, in
style and matter, which is most eagerly read. The simplest things in
life should convince one. The novelist's hero is no longer the fine,
handsome young fellow of twenty years ago. He is something between
forty and fifty, if not deformed, at least decrepit with dissipations,
and with the gift of fascination, whatever that may mean, in place of
the simpler attributes of a few decades ago. And the heroine!--There
is no more book-muslin and innocence. She has, as a rule, green eyes;
she is middle-aged, and if she has not been married before, she has
had her affairs. Everything obvious in life, from politics to
mutton-chops, is absolutely barred by anyone with any pretensions to
intellect to-day."
"One wonders," Rochester murmured, "how in the course of your long
life, Mr. Chalmers, you have been able to see so far and truthfully
into the heart of things!"
Chalmers bowed.
"Mr. Rochester," he said, "it is the newcomer in life, as in many
other things, who sees most of the game."
The conversation drifted away. Rochester was reminded of it only when
driving home that night with his wife. Again, as they took their
places in the electric brougham, he was conscious of something
changed, not only in the woman herself, but in her demeanor towards
him.
"Do you mind," he asked, soon after they started, "just dropping me at
the club? It is scarcely out of your way, and I feel that I need a
whiskey and soda, and a game of billiards, to take the taste of that
young man's talk out of my mouth. What a sickly brood of chickens the
Duchess does encourage, to be sure!"
"I wonder if you'd mind not going to the club to-night, Henry?" Lady
Mary asked quietly.
He turned toward her in surprise.
"Why, certainly not," he answered. "Have we to go on anywhere?"
She shook her head.
"No!" she said. "Only I feel I'd like to talk to you for a little
time, if you don't mind. It's nothing very much," she continued,
nervously twisting her handkerchief between her fingers.
"I'll come home with pleasure," Rochester interrupted. "Don't look so
scared," he added, patting the back of her hand gently. "You know very
well, if there is any little trouble, I shall be delighted to help you
out."
She did not remove her hand, but she looked out of the window. What
she wanted to say seemed harder than ever. And after all, was it worth
while? It would mean giving up a very agreeable side to life. It would
mean--Her thoughts suddenly changed their course. Once more she was
sitting upon that very uncomfortable bench in the great city hall.
Once more she felt that curious new sensation, some answering
vibration in her heart to the wonderful, passionate words which were
bringing tears to the eyes not only of the women, but of the men, by
whom she was surrounded. No, it was not an art, this--a trick! No
acting was great enough to have touched the hearts of all this time
and sin-hardened multitude. It was the truth--simply the truth.
"It isn't exactly a little thing, Henry. I'll tell you about it when
we get home."
* * * * *
No, it was no little thing, Rochester thought to himself, as he stood
upon the hearthrug of her boudoir, and listened to the woman who sat
on the end of the sofa a few feet away as she talked to him. Sometimes
her eyes were raised to his--eyes whose color seemed more beautiful
because of the tears in them. Sometimes her head was almost buried in
her hands. But she talked all the time--an odd, disconnected sort of
monologue, half confession, half appeal. There was little in it which
seemed of any great moment, and yet to Rochester it was as though he
were face to face with a tragedy. This woman was asking him much!
"I know so well," she said, "what a useless, frivolous, miserable sort
of life mine has been, and I know so well that I haven't made the
least attempt, Henry, to be a good wife to you. That wasn't altogether
my fault, was it?" she asked pleadingly. "Do tell me that."
"It was not your fault at all," he answered gravely. "It was part of
our arrangement."
"I am afraid," she said, "that it was a very unholy, a very wicked
arrangement, only you see I was badly brought up, and it seemed to me
so natural, such an excellent way of providing a good time for myself,
to marry you, and to owe you nothing except one thing. Henry, you will
believe this, I know. I have flirted very badly, and I have had many
of those little love-affairs which every woman I know indulges
in--silly little affairs just to pass away the time, and to make one
believe that one is living. But I have never really cared for anybody,
and these little follies, although I suppose they are such a waste of
emotion and truthfulness and real feeling, haven't amounted to very
much, Henry. You know what I mean. It is so difficult to say. But you
believe that?"
"I believe it from my soul," he answered.
"You see," she went on, "it seemed to me all right, because there was
no one to point out how foolish and silly it was to play one's way
through life as though it were a nursery, and we children, and to
forget that we were grown-up, and that we were getting older with the
years. You have been quite content without me, Henry?" she asked,
looking up at him wistfully.
"Yes, I have been content!" he admitted, looking away from her,
looking out of the room. "I have been content, after a fashion."
"Ours was such a marriage of convenience," she went on, "and you were
so very plain-spoken about it, Henry. I feel somehow as though I were
breaking a compact when I turn round and ask you whether it is not
possible that we might be, perhaps, some day, a little more to one
another. You know why I am almost afraid to say this. It has not been
with you as it has been with me. I have always felt that she has been
there--Pauline."
She was tearing little bits from the lace of her handkerchief. Her
eyes sought his fearfully.
"Don't think, when I say that," she continued, "that I say it with any
idea of blaming you. You told me that you loved Pauline when we were
engaged, and of course she was married then, and one did not
expect--it never seemed likely that she might be free. And now she is
free," Lady Mary went on, with a little break in her voice, "and I am
here, your wife, and I am afraid that you love her still so much that
what I am saying to you must sound very, very unwelcome. Tell me,
Henry. Is that so?"
Rochester was touched. It was impossible not to feel the sincerity of
her words. He sank on one knee, and took her hands in his.
"Mary," he said, "this is all so surprising. I did not expect it. We
have lived so long and gone our own ways, and you have seemed until
just lately so utterly content, that I quite forgot that anywhere in
this butterfly little body there might be such a thing as a soul. Will
you give me time, dear?"
"All the time you ask for," she answered. "Oh! I know that I am asking
a great deal, but you see I am not a very strong person, and if I give
up everything else, I do want someone to lean on just a little. You
are very strong, Henry," she added, softly.
He took her face between his hands, and he kissed her, without
passion, yet kindly, even tenderly.
"My dear," he said, "I must think this thing out. At any rate, we
might start by seeing a little more of one another?"
"Yes!" she answered shyly. "I should like that."
"I will drive you down to Ranelagh to-morrow," he said, "alone, and we
will have lunch there."
"I shall love it," she answered. "Good night!"
She kissed him timidly, and flitted away into her room with a little
backward glance and a wave of the hand. Rochester stood where she had
left him, watching the place where she had disappeared, with the look
in his eyes of a man who sees a ghost.