In the autumn of the third year of Morgan's engagement with the Upper
Thames street firm of printers he found himself with enough money to
pay off the balance due to his one remaining creditor. There had been
a good deal of method displayed in the order in which he had enjoined
Helen to settle the debts, and this particular firm had been left to
the last because it had received a goodly sum in the first days when
Cleo was using up their ready money.
It was Saturday, and he had just got away from the works. He had been
intending to take this last instalment to Helen that very afternoon;
but the idea came to him that he would rather enjoy the sensation of
making this last payment in person, and he proceeded immediately to
act on it.
Arrived at the business place of the firm, he explained to a clerk
that he wished to clear off an old matter, and recalled the occasion
to him. The man looked surprised, and went to consult his principal.
An old ledger had to be looked up, and then Morgan was informed the
account had been settled very shortly after the closing of the
theatre. The principal now remembered the circumstances perfectly. A
cheque had come from a certain firm of solicitors in the West End,
much to his surprise. After some further searching the clerk was able
to tell Morgan who these solicitors were.
This last piece of information simply corroborated what he had at once
suspected. Helen had carried out, without consulting him, the very
same suggestion that Margaret had once made to him, and was keeping
the sums he had been sending her from time to time. He understood,
though, that she must have done it mainly for the sake of the actors
and workpeople.
He said nothing to her of his discovery when he called at Belgrave
Square a couple of hours later, but just handed her the money, which
she quietly placed in a drawer of her escritoire.
"And now I have to congratulate you, Morgan," she said. "You have
shown the stuff you are made of. Tell me, how does it feel?"
"I feel extraordinarily light-hearted," he admitted.
"I'm sorry," she said, and looked it.
He stared at her.
"There is a story of a hungry peasant gorging himself on bread and
cheese, and, when he couldn't eat any more, they brought in the
stuffed geese and other delicacies."
"Well?"
"Stupid! the stuffed geese and other delicacies have yet to come in.
If the coarser part of the feast has made you so joyful, the rest will
be wasted on you to-day."
"I feel more stupid than ever. Still, my capacities for storing away
joy are unlimited, and, what is more, I shall appreciate every crumb."
"Very well." She took up a journal from the table near her. "Let me
read you this paragraph: 'In the course of the coming session an
extraordinary case will be reached in the Divorce Courts. The
petitioner is a lady of title belonging to one of the noblest and
oldest families in the kingdom, and the respondent is a well-known
novelist and dramatist. The parties were married barely three years
back and the wedding was much discussed at the time. It is rumoured
that facts of a strange and sensational character are likely to come
to light at the trial, and the occasion will not be the first one on
which the petitioner has figured in the same Court.'"
She passed him the paper--it was a gossippy society weekly--and he
read the paragraph again. For a moment quick vague flashes seemed to
rise in his brain as from a vain attempt to strike a flint; then light
came to him.
"Ingram and Cleo," he cried. "She went back to him!"
"Precisely," smiled Helen. "You will remember my lamenting I could not
be the good fairy of your life, because things were already destined
to work themselves out for your happiness. You see now I was a true
prophet."
But a sort of dizziness came to him on account of his stumbling
efforts to think, to trace the significance of things.
"Don't faint, please. I'm only a helpless woman, and I'm sure I
couldn't rise to the occasion. Perhaps I've been too precipitate. I've
made you swallow the whole stuffed goose at once."
"I'm not so sure that my personal life is going to be affected by it,"
he began.
"Stuff and nonsense!" she cried. "Your proceedings will be reduced to
the utmost simplicity. There will be no defence at all. I have been,
watching affairs patiently for three years now, and what has happened
was bound to come. Do you know who sent your Cleo those bank-notes she
had at Dover? Do you know where she went directly after leaving you?
There is a certain house in Hampstead you know quite well. It has a
room in it with a fountain, and really pretty hanging lamps, and
peacocks on the windows. Well, she immediately took repossession of
it. And very glad her rightful lord and master was to have her back
again! The distraction of his affections by the engrossing interest of
ambitious matrimonial schemes had been only temporary. As for his
wife--well, about the living one should be silent unless one has
something nice to say. Therefore I'll say nothing about her. Before
long, Morgan, you'll be a free man, and a certain chapter of your life
will be erased. Fox & Kraft are an excellent firm of solicitors--almost
a pity to employ such steam-hammers to crack such a very simple nut."
"You are going along much too fast, Helen. You know I am leaving Upper
Thames street next week; it is an old promise made to my father. I
must consult him first. Of course, I shall be glad to have this
meaningless tie that binds me to Cleo cut right through, and for ever.
But I do not care to let my happiness rest on such a basis. Margaret
and I shall remain friends and nothing more."
"Stuff and nonsense!" she cried again. "Your father is too wise a man
not to agree with me. And so I am quite content you shall abide by his
counsel. Otherwise I'd have to force you into happiness even if I had
to do it by threatening suicide, and you know my threats are not idle
ones."
"I shall be guided by my father," he conceded. "But don't overwhelm me
so much, please. My emotions at this moment are much too complex for
my understanding."
"Then let me give you some tea. It will put all your notions--and your
emotions--in order."
The tea certainly did soothe him. He had never known that the beverage
could be so delicious.
"How did you find out about Ingram and Cleo?" he asked suddenly.
"Oh, that was very easy. The moment I heard she had bank-notes I had a
very strong suspicion of the truth. As I was eager to learn whether I
could be your good fairy, I had that house watched. When my suspicions
were corroborated I waltzed round my room sixteen times, and, you may
be sure, I was determined never to lose sight of your Cleo for a
moment. But my task was not a difficult one. That delightful room
seems to have been as fatal to her imagination as she was to yours.
She made some desperate attempts to leave it; twice she crossed to
America and made obscure appearances on the boards, and once she
sojourned in Paris for several months. But all in vain--she _had_ to
go back and sit on her gilded couch. Do you know, I rather like her;
after all, she has never tried to turn to account her connection with
you, Morgan. She's no mere vulgar adventuress. There's something
really taking about her. But I'd like to slap her sisters. When do you
leave for the country?"
"A fortnight hence, I hope," said Morgan. "But I am rather vague about
what immediately is going to follow. In a general way it is understood
that I am to work in the bank, which is precisely what I refused to
do thirteen years ago."
"Thirteen years! That is a good stretch out of a life," said Helen,
with a half sigh, "Time flies. I scarcely realise that I am thirty-six
already. And the years seem to bring nothing but perplexity and
embarrassment at the increase of my fortune. It is perfectly
meaningless and absurd to me, this monstrous fortune. I feel I haven't
any right to it; though, as I derive no happiness from it, that
feeling ought not to give me very much concern. Happiness depends on
one's personal relations with others--a few others, that is--and
though I shake hands with a vast crowd, I have no close personal
relations; not, at least, in the sense in which I understand the
phrase. A sort of subtle fusion must accompany. I should have
preferred to leave my fortune to you, Morgan, but I knew you wouldn't
like to benefit by my death, so I have disposed of it otherwise."
He looked hard at her.
"Why this sudden lugubriousness?" he asked.
"Well," she said enigmatically, and the enigma was repeated in the
accompanying shrug of her shoulders.
He seemed, however, to pierce beyond the smiling placidity of her
expression, and to be aware of something that chilled him, of
something that seemed to say: "There are such things as broken
hearts."
"You've never had the life you deserved to have, Helen," he cried.
"There have been those who have envied me. My biography would read
like a record of every earthly happiness. I am the daughter of a rich
country gentleman with whom I have always been on the best of terms,
only agriculture bores me rather. I was presented to my sovereign at
seventeen. I danced and rode and flirted and was supposed to be having
a good time, and a Baronet thought he fell in love with me, and did
really marry me. I have always had a big house, a big income, a
position in society. What more can a woman want? Well, all these
things do not constitute the personal life. The remembrance of the
whole course of my personal life is a vivid one to me, and it seems to
have run through all these things like a thin thread of silver through
a mass of stuff. Looking back, this swirl of the social world, its
functions, its movements, the acquaintanceships it brought me, seem to
me all strangely unreal. I seem to be aware of a large, swarming
vision, amid which I have lived. But nothing of it has ever in-mingled
with my real sense of happiness or misery. Fortune, society--these are
not the essentials. The essentials are the same for all ranks, and it
is on those that personal happiness depends. Up to the age of
twenty-five even a clever girl may delude herself into thinking that
the hearty fun and enjoyment she may be extracting from her
circumstances and her position in the world are really what make
happiness, but if she have real brains, a clear vision and quick
sympathies, she will inevitably stifle in her atmosphere of mere
pleasure. She will not continue to set store on her material
advantages, on the stage accessories by which she may be surrounded.
She will long for something else--and most often not get it. If I had
only been penniless and had loved and married a man who had all his
fighting to do yet! I should have lived beside him, conscious of being
helpful, of being valued for what my companionship meant to him, with
a sense of my dignity and worth as a human being. Instead, I was born
rich, I married a man who had no fighting to do, and so I was a mere
mate to him. I was but a child and there was no one to warn me.
Everybody about me was stupid, enslaved to ideas that are rotten at
the core! We dangle baubles before our children and poison the fresh,
pure fount of humanity. Thus it is I have been a waste and useless
force in the world. If it had only been decreed to me to have children
of my own, I feel sure I should have been a better woman than I am."
Her voice died away in a strange sweet murmur. In her face there came
a look as of holy meditation; her eyes shone with a light of yearning.
"I am tired of England," she resumed in a moment. "I shall be going
away before long. I want to find some secluded spot near a lovely
Italian lake, where I may stay and rest indefinitely. Perhaps for
years, for I am very tired. I shall wait till I see your happiness
completed, Morgan, even though this may be our last meeting. Till then
I dare not go; you are not to be trusted to take the happiness that is
within your grasp. You know I claim to be a connoisseur of women, and
I am perfectly satisfied that you shall marry your Margaret. That is
the highest compliment I could pay her. There is that indefinable,
unseizable something in her face which reveals the whole personality,
and it won me immediately. We have met three or four times now, but,
of course, I do not figure sufficiently in her consciousness that she
should mention me specially to you. One thing I am grateful to you
for, that you are respecting my wish that she should not know we have
ever been friends. After all, I am only a sort of imaginary figure to
whom you come and talk, and I haven't really counted in your life. You
know I have a weakness for mysticism, and I like to think of myself as
a sort of phantom that just accompanied you on your way a little and
perhaps helped you a little at a critical moment and then disappeared.
So promise me Margaret shall never, never know."
"She knows everything but that," he replied. "It hurts me to make the
promise, but I understand why you wish me to. Besides, I must look on
this one reservation from her as the penalty--the lingering symbol of
the past. But there is now one thing I should like to mention, Helen,
and that is, I want to recur to that money, the five hundred pounds I
borrowed of you. You see I have tasted blood."
"When you feel you can spare the money, dear Morgan, I should wish you
to do some good work with it. Seek out those who may need it--a
struggling student, a starving poet, a brave orphaned boy or girl
toiling to support the younger children. Save some human being from
despair, and restore his faith and hope. That is the best repayment
you could make me. And now there is one thing I should like to ask
you. Do you think----"
She hesitated. His look bade her continue.
"Well," she continued, smiling a little. "I was going to ask you to
kiss me--a real kiss--if you thought your Margaret could spare me one.
You have never given me a real kiss, Morgan, and it would be for the
last time."
She looked down almost demurely. For sole reply he took her in his
arms and their lips came together. Gently she disengaged herself at
length; and, as the hot tears fell from his eyes, he felt impelled to
fall on his knees and cover his face with his hands.
When he looked up again he was alone in the room. His sobs broke forth
afresh as he divined why she had left him.
A moment later he stole from the house.