In the month of September Mr. Wyvern was called upon to unite in holy
matrimony two pairs in whom we are interested. Alice Mutimer became
Mrs. Willis Rodman, and Alfred Waltham took home a bride who suited him
exactly, seeing that she was never so happy as when submitting herself
to a stronger will. Alfred and Letty ran away and hid themselves in
South Wales. Mr. and Mrs. Rodman fled to the Continent.
Half Alice’s fortune was settled upon herself, her brother and Alfred
Waltham being trustees. This was all Mutimer could do. He disliked the
marriage intensely, and not only because he had set his heart on a far
better match for Alice; he had no real confidence in Rodman. Though the
latter’s extreme usefulness and personal tact had from the first led
Richard to admit him to terms of intimacy, time did not favour the
friendship. Mutimer, growing daily more ambitious and more punctilious
in his intercourse with all whom, notwithstanding his principles, he
deemed inferiors from the social point of view, often regretted keenly
that he had allowed any relation between himself and Rodman more than
that of master and man. Experience taught him how easily he might have
made the most of Rodman without granting him a single favour. The first
suggestion of the marriage enraged him; in the conversation with Rodman,
which took place, moreover, at an unfavourable moment, he lost his
temper and flung out very broad hints indeed as to the suitor’s motives.
Rodman was calm; life had instructed him in the advantages of a curbed
tongue; but there was heightened colour on his face, and his demeanour
much resembled that of a proud man who cares little to justify
himself, but will assuredly never forget an insult. It was one of the
peculiarities of this gentleman that his exterior was most impressive
when the inner man was most busy with ignoble or venomous thoughts.
But for Alice’s sake Mutimer could not persist in his hostility.
Alice had a weapon which he durst not defy, and, the marriage being
inevitable, he strove hard to see it in a more agreeable light,
even tried to convince himself that his prejudice against Rodman was
groundless. He loved his sister, and for her alone would put up
with things otherwise intolerable. It was a new exasperation when he
discovered that Rodman could not be persuaded to continue his work at
New Wanley. All inducements proved vain. Richard had hoped that at
least one advantage might come of the marriage, that Rodman would devote
capital to the works; but Rodman’s Socialism cooled strangely from the
day when his ends were secured. He purposed living in London, and Alice
was delighted to encourage him. The girl had visions of a life such as
the heroines of certain novels rejoice in. For a wonder, her husband was
indispensable to the brightness of that future. Rodman had inspired
her with an infatuation. Their relations once declared, she grudged him
every moment he spent away from her. It was strangely like true passion,
the difference only marked by an extravagant selfishness. She thought of
no one, cared for no one, but herself, Rodman having become part of that
self. With him she was imperiously slavish; her tenderness was a kind
of greed; she did not pretend to forgive her brother for his threatened
opposition, and, having got hold of the idea that Adela took part
against Rodman, she hated her and would not be alone in her company for
a moment. On her marriage day she refused Adela’s offered kiss and did
her best to let everyone see how delighted she was to leave them behind.
The autumn was a time of physical suffering for Adela. Formerly she had
sought to escape her mother’s attentions, now she accepted them with
thankfulness. Mrs. Waltham had grave fears for her daughter; doctors
suspected some organic disease, one summoned from London going so far as
to hint at a weakness of the chest. Early in November it was decided to
go south for the winter, and Exmouth was chosen, chiefly because Mrs.
Westlake was spending a month there. Mr. Westlake, whose interest in
Adela had grown with each visit he paid to the Manor, himself suggested
the plan. Mrs. Waltham and Adela left Wanley together; Mutimer promised
visits as often as he could manage to get away. Since Rodman’s departure
Richard found himself overwhelmed with work. None the less he resolutely
pursued the idea of canvassing Belwick at the coming general election.
Opposition, from whomsoever it came, aggravated him. He was more than
ever troubled about the prospects of New Wanley; there even loomed
before his mind a possible abandonment of the undertaking. He had never
contemplated the sacrifice of his fortune, and though anything of that
kind was still very far off, it was daily more difficult for him to face
with equanimity even moderate losses. Money had fostered ambition, and
ambition full grown had more need than ever of its nurse. New Wanley was
no longer an end in itself, but a stepping-stone You must come to your
own conclusions in judging the value of Mutimer’s social zeal; the facts
of his life up to this time are before you, and you will not forget how
complex a matter is the mind of a strong man with whom circumstances
have dealt so strangely. His was assuredly not the vulgar self-seeking
of the gilded _bourgeois_ who covets an after-dinner sleep on
Parliamentary benches. His ignorance of the machinery of government was
profound; though he spoke scornfully of Parliament and its members, he
had no conception of those powers of dulness and respectability which
seize upon the best men if folly lures them within the precincts of St.
Stephen’s. He thought, poor fellow! that he could rise in his place and
thunder forth his indignant eloquence as he did in Commonwealth Hall
and elsewhere; he imagined a conscience-stricken House, he dreamed of
passionate debates on a Bill which really had the good of the people
for its sole object. Such Bill would of course bear _his_ name; shall we
condemn him for that?
Adela was at Exmouth, drinking the mild air, wondering whether there was
in truth a life to come, and, if so, whether it was a life wherein Love
and Duty were at one. A year ago such thoughts could not have entered
her mind. But she had spent several weeks in close companionship with
Stella Westlake, and Stella’s influence was subtle. Mrs. Westlake had
come here to regain strength after a confinement; the fact drew her near
to Adela, whose time for giving birth to a child was not far off.
Adela at first regarded this friend with much the same feeling of awe
as mingled with Letty’s affection for Adela herself. Stella Westlake
was not only possessed of intellectual riches which Adela had had no
opportunity of gaining; her character was so full of imaginative force,
of dreamy splendours, that it addressed itself to a mind like Adela’s
with magic irresistible and permanent. No rules of the polite world
applied to Stella; she spoke and acted with an independence so
spontaneous that it did not suggest conscious opposition to the received
ways of thought to which ordinary women are confined, but rather a
complete ignorance of them. Adela felt herself startled, but never
shocked, even when the originality went most counter to her own
prejudices; it was as though she had drunk a draught of most unexpected
flavour, the effect of which was to set her nerves delightfully
trembling, and make her long to taste it again. It was not an
occasional effect, the result of an effort on Stella’s part to surprise
or charm; the commonest words had novel meanings when uttered in her
voice; a profound sincerity seemed to inspire every lightest question
or remark. Her presence was agitating; she had but to enter the room and
sit in silence, and Adela forthwith was raised from the depression of
her broodings to a vividness of being, an imaginative energy, such as
she had never known. Adela doubted for some time whether Stella regarded
her with affection; the little demonstrations in which women are wont to
indulge were incompatible with that grave dreaminess, and Stella seemed
to avoid even the common phrases of friendship. But one day, when Adela
had not been well enough to rise, and as she lay on the borderland of
sleeping and waking, she half dreamt, half knew, that a face bent over
her, and that lips were pressed against her own; and such a thrill
struck through her that, though now fully conscious, she had not power
to stir, but lay as in the moment of some rapturous death. For when the
presence entered into her dream, when the warmth melted upon her lips,
she imagined it the kiss which might once have come to her but now was
lost for ever. It was pain to open her eyes, but when she did so, and
met Stella’s silent gaze, she knew that love was offered her, a love of
which it was needless to speak.
Mrs. Waltham was rather afraid of Stella; privately she doubted whether
the poor thing was altogether in her perfect mind. When the visitor
came the mother generally found occupation or amusement elsewhere,
conversation with Stella was so extremely difficult. Mr. Westlake was
also at Exmouth, but much engaged in literary work. There was, too, an
artist and his family, with whom the Westlakes were acquainted, their
name Boscobel. Mrs. Boscobel was a woman of the world, five-and-thirty,
charming, intelligent; she read little, but was full of interest in
literary and artistic matters, and talked as only a woman can who
has long associated with men of brains. To her Adela was interesting,
personally and still more as an illustration of a social experiment.
‘How young she is!’ was her remark to Mr. Westlake shortly after making
Adela’s acquaintance. ‘It will amuse you, the thought I had; I really
must tell it you. She realises my idea of a virgin mother. Haven’t you
felt anything of the kind?’
Mr. Westlake smiled.
‘Yes, I understand. Stella said something evidently traceable to the
same impression; her voice, she said, is full of forgiveness.’
‘Excellent! And has she much to forgive, do you think?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Yet she is not exactly happy, I imagine?’
Mr. Westlake did not care to discuss the subject. The lady had recourse
to Stella for some account of Mr. Mutimer.
‘He is a strong man,’ Stella said in a tone which betrayed the
Socialist’s enthusiasm. ‘He stands for earth-subduing energy. I imagine
him at a forge, beating fire out of iron.’
‘H’m! That’s not quite the same thing as imagining him that beautiful
child’s husband. No education, I suppose?’
‘Sufficient. With more, he would no longer fill the place he does. He
can speak eloquently; he is the true voice of the millions who cannot
speak their own thoughts. If he were more intellectual he would become
commonplace; I hope he will never see further than he does now. Isn’t
a perfect type more precious than a man who is neither one thing nor
another?’
‘Artistically speaking, by all means.’
‘In his case I don’t mean it artistically. He is doing a great work.’
‘A friend of mine--you don’t know Hubert Eldon, I think?--tells me he
has ruined one of the loveliest valleys in England.’
‘Yes, I dare say he has done that. It is an essential part of his
protest against social wrong. The earth renews itself, but a dead man or
woman who has lived without joy can never be recompensed.’
‘She, of course, is strongly of the same opinion?’
‘Adela is a Socialist.’
Mrs. Boscobel laughed rather satirically.
‘I doubt it.’
Stella, when she went to sit with Adela, either at home or by the
sea-shore, often carried a book in her hand, and at Adela’s request
she read aloud. In this way Adela first came to know what was meant
by literature, as distinguished from works of learning. The verse of
Shelley and the prose of Landor fell upon her ears; it was as though she
had hitherto lived in deafness. Sometimes she had to beg the reader to
pause for that day; her heart and mind seemed overfull; she could not
even speak of these new things, but felt the need of lying back in
twilight to marvel and repeat melodies.
Mrs. Boscobel happened to approach them once whilst this reading was
going on.
‘You are educating her?’ she said to Stella afterwards.
‘Perhaps--a little,’ Stella replied absently.
‘Isn’t it just a trifle dangerous?’ suggested the understanding lady.
‘Dangerous? How?’
‘The wife of the man who makes sparks fly out of iron? The man who is on
no account to learn anything?’
Stella shook her head, saying, ‘You don’t know her.’
‘I should much like to,’ was Mrs. Boscobel’s smiling rejoinder.
In Stella’s company it did not seem very likely that Adela would lose
her social enthusiasm, yet danger there was, and that precisely on
account of Mrs. Westlake’s idealist tendencies. When she spoke of the
toiling multitude, she saw them in a kind of exalted vision; she beheld
them glorious in their woe, ennobled by the tyranny under which
they groaned. She had seen little if anything of the representative
proletarian, and perchance even if she had the momentary impression
would have faded in the light of her burning soul. Now Adela was in the
very best position for understanding those faults of the working class
which are ineradicable in any one generation. She knew her husband, knew
him better than ever now that she regarded him from a distance; she knew
‘Arry Mutimer; and now she was getting to appreciate with a thoroughness
impossible hitherto, the monstrous gulf between men of that kind and
cultured human beings. She had, too, studied the children and the women
of New Wanley, and the results of such study were arranging themselves
in her mind. All unconsciously, Stella Westlake was cooling Adela’s
zeal with every fervid word she uttered; Adela at times with difficulty
restrained herself from crying, ‘But it is a mistake! They have not
these feelings you attribute to them. Such suffering as you picture
them enduring comes only of the poetry-fed soul at issue with fate.’
She could not as yet have so expressed herself, but the knowledge was
growing within her. For Adela was not by nature a social enthusiast.
When her heart leapt at Stella’s chant, it was not in truth through
contagion of sympathy, but in admiration and love of the noble woman
who could thus think and speak. Adela--and who will not be thankful
for it?--was, before all things, feminine; her true enthusiasms were
personal. It was a necessity of her nature to love a human being, this
or that one, not a crowd. She had been starving, killing the self which
was her value. This home on the Devon coast received her like an earthly
paradise; looking back on New Wanley, she saw it murky and lurid; it was
hard to believe that the sun ever shone there. But for the most part,
she tried to keep it altogether from her mind, tried to dissociate her
husband from his public tasks, and to remember him as the man with whom
her life was irrevocably bound up. When delight in Stella’s poetry was
followed by fear, she strengthened herself by thought of the child
she bore beneath her heart; for that child’s sake she would accept the
beautiful things offered to her, some day to bring them, as rich gifts
to the young life. Her own lot was fixed; she might not muse upon it,
she durst not consider it too deeply. There were things in the past
which she had determined, if by any means it were possible, utterly to
forget. For the future, there was her child.
Mutimer came to Exmouth when she had been there three weeks, and
he stayed four days. Mrs. Boscobel had an opportunity of making his
acquaintance.
‘Who contrived that marriage?’ she asked of Mr. Westlake subsequently.
‘Our lady mother, presumably.’
‘I have no reason to think it was not well done,’ replied Mr. Westlake
with reserve.
‘Most skilfully done, no doubt,’ rejoined the lady.
But at the end of the year, the Westlakes returned to London, the
Boscobels shortly after. Mrs. Waltham and her daughter had made no other
close connections, and Adela’s health alone allowed of her leaving the
house for a short drive on sunny days. At the end of February the child
was born prematurely; it entered the world only to leave it again. For a
week they believed that Adela would die. Scarcely was she pronounced out
of danger by the end of March. But after that she recovered strength.
May saw her at Wanley once more. She had become impatient to return. The
Parliamentary elections were very near at hand, and Mutimer almost lived
in Belwick; it seemed to Adela that duty required her to be near him, as
well as to supply his absence from New Wanley as much as was possible.
She was still only the ghost of her former self, but disease no longer
threatened her, and activity alone could completely restore her health.
She was anxious to recommence her studies, to resume her readings to the
children; and she desired to see Mr. Wyvern. She understood by this
time why he had chosen Andersen’s Tales for her readings; of many other
things which he had said, causing her doubt, the meaning was now clear
enough to her. She had so much to talk of with the vicar, so
many questions to put to him, not a few of a kind that would--she
thought--surprise and trouble him. None the less, they must be asked and
answered. Part of her desire to see him again was merely the result of
her longing for the society of well-read and thoughtful people. She
knew that he would appear to her in a different light from formerly; she
would be far better able to understand him.
She began by seeking his opinion of her husband’s chances in Belwick.
Mr. Wyvern shook his head and said frankly that he thought there was no
chance at all. Mutimer was looked upon in the borough as a mischievous
interloper, who came to make disunion in the Radical party. The son of
a lord and an ironmaster of great influence were the serious candidates.
Had he seen fit, Mr. Wyvern could have mentioned not a few lively
incidents in the course of the political warfare; such, for instance, as
the appearance of a neat little pamphlet which purported to give a full
and complete account of Mutimer’s life. In this pamphlet nothing untrue
was set down, nor did it contain anything likely to render its publisher
amenable to the law of libel; but the writer, a gentleman closely
connected with Comrade Roodhouse, most skilfully managed to convey the
worst possible impression throughout. Nor did the vicar hesitate to
express his regret that Mutimer should be seeking election at all. Adela
felt with him.
She found Richard in a strange state of chronic excitement. On whatever
subject he spoke it was with the same nervous irritation, and the
slightest annoyance set him fuming. To her he paid very little
attention, and for the most part seemed disinclined to converse with
her; Adela found it necessary to keep silence on political matters; once
or twice he replied to her questions with a rough impatience which kept
her miserable throughout the day, so much had it revealed of the working
man. As the election day approached she suffered from a sinking of the
heart, almost a bodily fear; a fear the same in kind as that of the
wretched woman who anticipates the return of a brute-husband late on
Saturday night. The same in kind; no reasoning would overcome it. She
worked hard all day long, that at night she might fall on deep sleep.
Again she had taken up her hard German books, and was also busy with
French histories of revolution, which did indeed fascinate her, though,
as she half perceived, solely by the dramatic quality of the stories
they told. And at length the morning of her fear had come.
When he left home Mutimer bade her not expect him till the following
day. She spent the hours in loneliness and misery. Mr. Wyvern called,
but even him she begged through a servant to excuse her; her mother
likewise came, and her she talked with for a few minutes, then pleaded
headache. At nine o’clock in the evening she went to her bedroom. She
had a soporific at hand, remaining from the time of her illness, and in
dread of a sleepless night she had recourse to it.
It seemed to her that she had slept a very long time when a great and
persistent noise awoke her. It was someone knocking at her door, even,
as she at length became aware, turning the handle and shaking it.
Being alone, she had locked herself in. She sprang from bed, put on
her dressing-gown, and went to the door. Then came her husband’s voice,
impatiently calling her name. She admitted him.
Through the white blind the morning twilight just made objects visible
in the room; Adela afterwards remembered noticing the drowsy pipe of a
bird near the window. Mutimer came in, and, without closing the door,
began to demand angrily why she had locked him out. Only now she quite
shook off her sleep, and could perceive that there was something unusual
in his manner. He smelt strongly of tobacco, and, as she fancied, of
spirits; but it was his staggering as he moved to draw up the blind that
made her aware of his condition. She found afterwards that he had driven
all the way from Belwick, and the marvel was that he had accomplished
such a feat; probably his horse deserved most of the credit. When he
had pulled the blind up, he turned, propped himself against the
dressing-table, and gazed at her with terribly lack-lustre eyes. Then
she saw the expression of his face change; there came upon it a smile
such as she had never seen or imagined, a hideous smile that made her
blood cold. Without speaking, he threw himself forward and came towards
her. For an instant she was powerless, paralysed with terror; but
happily she found utterance for a cry, and that released her limbs.
Before he could reach her, she had darted out of the room, and fled
to another chamber, that which Alice had formerly occupied, where she
locked herself against him. To her surprise he did not discover her
retreat; she heard him moving about the passages, stumbling here and
there, then he seemed to return to his bedroom. She wrapped herself in a
counterpane, and sat in a chair till it was full morning.
He was absent for a week after that. Of course his polling at the
election had been ridiculously small compared with that of the other
candidates. When he returned he went about his ordinary occupations; he
was seemingly not in his usual health, but the constant irritableness
had left him. Adela tried to bear herself as though nothing unwonted had
come to pass, but Mutimer scarcely spoke when at home; if he addressed
her it was in a quick, off-hand way, and without looking at her. Adela
again lived almost alone. Her mother and Letty understood that she
preferred this. Letty had many occupations; before long she hoped to
welcome her first child. The children of New Wanley still came once
a week to the Manor; Adela endeavoured to amuse them, to make them
thoughtful, but it had become a hard, hard task. Only with Mr. Wyvern
did she occasionally speak without constraint, though not of course
without reserve; speech of _that_ kind she feared would never again be
possible to her. Still she felt that the vicar saw far into her life.
On some topics she was more open than she had hitherto ventured to be;
a boldness, almost a carelessness, for which she herself could not
account, possessed her at such times.
Late in June she received from Stella Westlake a pressing invitation to
come and spend a fortnight in London. It was like sunshine to her
heart; almost without hesitation she re solved to accept it. Her husband
offered no objection, seemed to treat the proposal with indifference.
Later in the day he said:
‘If you have time, you might perhaps give Alice a call.’
‘I shall do that as soon as ever I can.’
He had something else to say.
‘Perhaps Mrs. Westlake might ask her to come, whilst you are there.’
‘Very likely, I think,’ Adela replied, with an attempt at confidence.
It was only her second visit to London: the first had been in winter
time, and under conditions which had not allowed her to attend to
anything she saw. But for Stella’s presence there she would have feared
London; her memory of it was like that of an ill dream long past; her
mind only reverted to it in darkest hours, and then she shuddered. But
now she thought only of Stella; Stella was light and joy, a fountain
of magic waters. Her arrival at the house in Avenue Road was one of the
most blissful moments she had ever known. The servant led her upstairs
to a small room, where the veiled sun made warmth on rich hangings, on
beautiful furniture, on books and pictures, on ferns and flowers. The
goddess of this sanctuary was alone; as the door opened the notes of
a zither trembled into silence, and Adela saw a light-robed loveliness
rise and stand before her. Stella took both her hands very gently, then
looked into her face with eyes which seemed to be new from some high
vision, then drew her within the paradise of an embrace. The kiss was
once more like that first touch of lips which had come to Adela on the
verge of sleep; she quivered through her frame.
Mr. Westlake shortly joined them, and spoke with an extreme kindness
which completed Adela’s sense of being at home. No one disturbed them
through the evening; Adela went to bed early and slept without a dream.
Stella and her husband talked of her in the night. Mr. Westlake had, at
the time of the election, heard for the first time the story of Mutimer
and the obscure work-girl in Hoxton, and had taken some trouble to
investigate it. It had not reached his ears when the Hoxton Socialists
made it a subject of public discussion; Comrade Roodhouse had inserted
only a very general report of the proceedings in his paper the ‘Tocsin,
and even this Mr. Westlake had not seen. But a copy of the pamphlet
which circulated in Belwick came into his hands, and when he began
to talk on the subject with an intimate friend, who, without being a
Socialist, amused himself with following the movement closely, he heard
more than he liked. To Stella he said nothing of all this. His own
ultimate judgment was that you cannot expect men to be perfect, and that
great causes have often been served by very indifferent characters.
‘She looks shockingly ill,’ he began to-night when alone with Stella.
‘Wasn’t there something said about consumption when she was at Exmouth?
Has she any cough?’
‘No, I don’t think it is that,’ Stella answered.
‘She seems glad to be with you.’
‘Very glad, I think.’
‘Did the loss of her child affect her deeply?’
‘I cannot say. She has never spoken of it.’
‘Poor child!’
Stella made no reply to the exclamation.
The next day Adela went to call on Mrs. Rodman. It was a house in
Bayswater, not large, but richly furnished. Adela chose a morning
hour, hoping to find her sister-in-law alone, but in this she was
disappointed. Four visitors were in the drawing-room, three ladies and
a man of horsey appearance, who talked loudly as he leaned back with his
legs crossed, a walking-stick held over his knee, his hat on the ground
before him. The ladies were all apparently middle-aged; one of them had
a great quantity of astonishingly yellow hair, and the others made up
for deficiency in that respect with toilets in very striking taste.
The subject under discussion was a recent murder. The gentleman had
the happiness of being personally acquainted with the murderer, at all
events had frequently met him at certain resorts of the male population.
When Mrs. Rodman had briefly welcomed Adela, the discussion continued.
Its tone was vulgar, but perhaps not more so than the average tone
among middle-class people who are on familiar terms with each other. The
gentleman, still leading the conversation, kept his eyes fixed on Adela,
greatly to her discomfort.
In less than half an hour these four took their departure.
‘So Dick came a cropper!’ was Alice’s first remark, when alone with her
sister-in-law.
Adela tried in vain to understand.
‘At the election, you know. I don’t see what he wanted to go making
himself so ridiculous. Is he much cut up?’
‘I don’t think it troubles him much,’ Adela said; ‘he really had
no expectation of being elected. It was just to draw attention to
Socialism.’
‘Of course he’ll put it in that way. But I’d no idea you were in London.
Where are you living?’
Alice had suffered, had suffered distinctly, in her manners, and
probably in her character. It was not only that she affected a fastness
of tone, and betrayed an ill-bred pleasure in receiving Adela in her
fine drawing-room; her face no longer expressed the idle good-nature
which used to make it pleasant to contemplate, it was thinner, less
wholesome in colour, rather acid about the lips. Her manner was hurried,
she seemed to be living in a whirl of frivolous excitements. Her taste
in dress had deteriorated; she wore a lot of jewellery of a common kind,
and her headgear was fantastic.
‘We have a few friends to-morrow night,’ she said when the conversation
had with difficulty dragged itself over ten minutes. ‘Will you come to
dinner? I’m sure Willis will be very glad to see you.’
Adela heard the invitation with distress. Fortunately it was given in a
way which all but presupposed refusal.
‘I am afraid I cannot,’ she answered. ‘My health is not good; I never
see people. Thank you very much.’
‘Oh, of course I wouldn’t put you out,’ said Alice, inspecting her
relative’s face curiously. And she added, rather more in her old voice,
‘I’m sorry you lost your baby. I believe you’re fond of children? I
don’t care anything about them myself; I hope I shan’t have any.’
Adela could not make any reply; she shook hands with Alice and took her
leave, only breathing freely when once more in the street. All the way
back to St. John’s Wood she was afflicted by the thought that it would
be impossible to advise a meeting between Stella and Mrs. Rodman. Yet
she had promised Richard to do so. Once more she found herself sundered
from him in sympathies. Affection between Alice and her there could
be none, yet Alice was the one person in the world whom Richard held
greatly dear.
The enchanted life of those first weeks at Exmouth was now resumed. The
golden mornings passed with poetry and music; in the afternoon visits
were paid to museums and galleries, or to the studios of artists who
were Mrs. Westlake’s friends, and who, as Adela was pleased to see,
always received Stella with reverential homage. The evening, save when a
concert called them forth, was generally a time of peaceful reading
and talking, the presence of friends making no difference in the simple
arrangements of the home. If a man came to dine at this house, it was
greatly preferred that he should not present himself in the costume of
a waiter, and only those came who were sufficiently intimate with
the Westlakes to know their habits. One evening weekly saw a purely
Socialist gathering; three or four artisans were always among the
guests. On that occasion Adela was sorely tempted to plead a headache,
but for several reasons she resisted. It was a trial to her, for she
was naturally expected to talk a good deal with the visitors, several of
whom she herself had entertained at Wanley. Watching Stella, she had a
feeling which she could not quite explain or justify; she was pained to
see her goddess in this company, and felt indignant with some of the men
who seemed to make themselves too much at their ease. There was no talk
of poetry.
Among the studios to which Stella took her was that of Mr. Boscobel.
Mrs. Boscobel made much of them, and insisted on Adela’s coming to dine
with her. An evening was appointed. Adela felt reproofs of conscience,
remembering the excuse she had offered to Alice, but in this case it was
impossible to decline. Stella assured her that the party would be small,
and would be sure to comprise none but really interesting people. It was
so, in fact. Two men whom, on arriving, they found in the drawing-room
Adela knew by fame, and the next to enter was a lady whose singing
she had heard with rapture at a concert on the evening before. She was
talking with this lady when a new announcement fell upon her ear, a name
which caused her to start and gaze towards the door. Impossible for
her to guard against this display of emotion; the name she heard so
distinctly seemed an unreal utterance, a fancy of her brain, or else
it belonged to another than the one she knew. But there was no such
illusion; he whom she saw enter was assuredly Hubert Eldon.
A few hot seconds only seemed to intervene before she was called upon to
acknowledge him, for Mrs. Boscobel was presenting him to her.
‘I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Mutimer before,’ Hubert said
as soon as he saw that Adela in voice and look recognised their
acquaintance.
Mrs. Boscobel was evidently surprised. She herself had met Hubert at the
house of an artist in Rome more than a year ago, but the details of his
life were unknown to her. Subsequently, in London, she happened once
to get on the subject of Socialism with him, and told him, as an
interesting story, what she heard from the Westlakes about Richard
Mutimer. Hubert admitted knowledge of the facts, and made the remark
about the valley of Wanley which Mrs. Boscobel repeated at Exmouth, but
he revealed nothing more. Having no marriageable daughter, Mrs. Boscobel
was under no necessity of searching into his antecedents. He was one of
ten or a dozen young men of possible future whom she liked to have about
her.
Hubert seated himself by Adela, and there was a moment of inevitable
silence.
‘I saw you as soon as I got into the room,’ he said, in the desperate
necessity for speech of some kind. ‘I thought I must have been mistaken;
I was so unprepared to meet you here.’
Adela replied that she was staying with Mrs. Westlake.
‘I don’t know her,’ said Hubert, ‘and am very anxious to Boscobel’s
portrait of her--I saw it in the studio just before it went away--was a
wonderful thing.’
This was necessarily said in a low tone; it seemed to establish
confidence between them.
Adela experienced a sudden and strange calm; in a world so entirely new
to her, was it not to be expected that things would happen of which she
had never dreamt? The tremor with which she had faced this her first
evening in general society had allayed itself almost as soon as she
entered the room, giving place to a kind of pleasure for which she
was not at all prepared, a pleasure inconsistent with the mood which
governed her life. Perhaps, had she been brought into this world in
those sunny days before her marriage, just such pleasure as this, only
in a more pronounced degree, would have awoke in her and have been
fearlessly indulged. The first shock of the meeting with Hubert having
passed, she was surprised at her self-control, at the ease with which
she found she could converse. Hubert took her down to dinner; on the
stairs he twice turned to look at her face, yet she felt sure that her
hand had betrayed no agitation as it lay on his arm. At table he talked
freely; did he know--she asked herself--that this would relieve her? And
his conversation was altogether unlike what it had been two years and
a half ago--so long it was since she had talked with him under ordinary
conditions. There was still animation, and the note of intellectual
impatience was touched occasionally, but the world had ripened him, his
judgments were based on sounder knowledge, he was more polished, more
considerate--‘gentler,’ Adela afterwards said to herself. And decidedly
he had gained in personal appearance; a good deal of the bright, eager
boy had remained with him in his days of storm and stress, but now
his features had the repose of maturity and their refinement had fixed
itself in lines of strength.
He talked solely of the present, discussed with her the season’s
pictures, the books, the idle business of the town. At length she found
herself able to meet his glance without fear, even to try and read
its character. She thought of the day when her mother told her of his
wickedness. Since then she had made acquaintance with wickedness
in various forms, and now she marvelled at the way in which she had
regarded him. ‘I was a child, a child,’ she repeated to herself.
Thinking thus, she lost none of his words. He spoke of the things which
interested her most deeply; how much he could teach her, were such
teaching possible!
At last she ventured upon a personal question.
‘How is Mrs. Eldon?’
She thought he looked at her gratefully; certainly there was a deep
kindness in his eyes, a look which was one of the new things she noted
in him.
‘Very much as when you knew her,’ he replied. ‘Weaker, I fear. I have
just spent a few days at Agworth.’
Doubtless he had often been at Agworth; perchance he was there, so close
by, in some of the worst hours of her misery.
When the ladies withdrew Mrs. Boscobel seated herself by Adela for a
moment.
‘So you really knew Mr. Eldon?’
‘Yes, but it is some time since I saw him,’ Adela replied simply,
smiling in the joy of being so entirely mistress of herself.
‘You were talking pictures, I heard. You can trust him there; his
criticism is admirable. You know he did the Grosvenor for the--?’
She mentioned a weekly paper.
‘There are so many things I don’t know,’ Adela replied laughingly, ‘and
that is one of them.’
Hubert shortly after had his wish in being presented to Mrs. Westlake.
Adela observed them as they talked together. Gladness she could hardly
bear possessed her when she saw on Stella’s face the expression of
interest which not everyone could call forth. She did not ask why she
was so glad; for this one evening it might be allowed her to rest and
forget and enjoy.
There was singing, and the sweetest of the songs went home with her and
lived in her heart all through a night which was too voiceful for sleep.
Might she think of him henceforth as a friend? Would she meet him again
before her return to--to the darkness of that ravaged valley? Her mood
was a strange one; conscience gave her no trouble, appeared suspended.
And why should conscience have interfered with her? Her happiness was as
apart from past and future as if by some magic she had been granted an
intermezzo of life wholly distinct from her real one. These people with
whom she found living so pleasant did not really enter her existence; it
was as though she played parts to give her pleasure; she merely looked
on for the permitted hour.
But Stella was real, real as that glorious star whose name she knew not,
the brightest she could see from her chamber window. To Stella her soul
clung with passion and worship. Stella’s kiss had power to make her all
but faint with ecstasy; it was the kiss which woke her from her dream,
the kiss which would for ever be to her a terror and a mystery.