AFTER that night Lady Holme began to do something she had never done
before--to idealise her husband. Hitherto she had loved him without
weaving pretty fancies round him, loved him crudely for his strength,
his animalism, his powerful egoism and imperturbable self-satisfaction.
She had loved him almost as a savage woman might love, though without
her sense of slavery. Now a change came over her. She thought of Fritz
in a different way, the new Fritz, the Fritz who was a believer in the
angel. It seemed to her that he could be kept faithful most easily,
most surely, by such an appeal as Robin Pierce would have loved. She had
sought to rouse, to play upon the instincts of the primitive man. She
had not gone very far, it is true, but her methods had been common,
ordinary. She had undervalued Fritz’s nature. That was what she felt
now. He had behaved badly to her, had wronged her, but he had believed
in her very much. She resolved to make his belief more intense. An
expression on his face--only that--had wrought a vital change in her
feeling towards him, her conception of him. She ranged him henceforth
with Sir Donald, with Robin Pierce. He stood among the believers in the
angel.
She called upon the angel passionately, feverishly.
There was strength in Lady Holme’s character, and not merely strength
of temper. When she was roused, confident, she could be resolute,
persistent; could shut her eyes to side issues and go onward looking
straight before her. Now she went onward and she felt a new force within
her, a force that would not condescend to pettiness, to any groping in
the mud.
Lord Holme was puzzled. He felt the change in his wife, but did not
understand it. Since the fracas with Leo Ulford their relations had
slightly altered. Vaguely, confusedly, he was conscious of being pitied,
yes, surely pitied by his wife. She shed a faint compassion, like a
light cloud, over the glory of his wrongdoing. And the glory was abated.
He felt a little doubtful of himself, almost as a son feels sometimes
in the presence of his mother. For the first time he began to think of
himself, now and then, as the inferior of his wife, began even, now and
then, to think of man as the inferior of woman--in certain ways. Such a
state of mind was very novel in him. He stared at it as a baby stares
at its toes, with round amazement, inwardly saying, “Is this phenomenon
part of me?”
There was a new gentleness in Viola, a new tenderness. Both put him--as
one lifted and dropped--a step below her. He pulled his bronze moustache
over it with vigour.
His wife showed no desire to control his proceedings, to know what
he was about. When she spoke of Miss Schley she spoke kindly,
sympathetically, but with a dainty, delicate pity, as one who secretly
murmurs, “If she had only had a chance!” Lord Holme began to think it
a sad thing that she had not had a chance. The mere thought sent the
American a step down from her throne. She stood below him now, as he
stood below Viola. It seemed to him that there was less resemblance
between his wife and Miss Schley than he had fancied. He even said so to
Lady Holme. The angel smiled. Somebody else in her smiled too. Once he
remarked to the angel, _a propos de bottes_, “We men are awful brutes
sometimes.” Then he paused. As she said nothing, only looked very kind,
he added, “I’ll bet you think so, Vi?”
It sounded like a question, but she preferred to give no answer, and he
walked away shaking his head over the brutishness of men.
The believers in the angel naturally welcomed the development in Lady
Holme and the unbelievers laughed at it, especially those who had been
at Arkell House and those who had been influenced by Pimpernel Schley’s
clever imitation. One night at the opera, when _Tannhauser_ was being
given, Mr. Bry said of it, “I seem to hear the voice of Venus raised in
the prayer of Elizabeth.” Mrs. Wolfstein lifted large eyebrows over it,
and remarked to Henry, in exceptionally guttural German:
“If this goes on Pimpernel’s imitation will soon be completely out of
date.”
To be out of date--in Mrs. Wolfstein’s opinion--was to be irremediably
damned. Lady Cardington, Sir Donald Ulford, and one or two others began
to feel as if their dream took form and stepped out of the mystic realm
towards the light of day. Sir Donald seemed specially moved by the
change. It was almost as if something within him blossomed, warmed by
the breath of spring.
Lady Holme wondered whether he knew of the fight between her husband and
his son. She dared not ask him and he only mentioned Leo once. Then
he said that Leo had gone down to his wife’s country place in
Hertfordshire. Lady Holme could not tell by his intonation whether he
had guessed that there was a special reason for this departure. She was
glad Leo had gone. The developing angel did not want to meet the man who
had suffered from the siren’s common conduct. Leo was not worth much.
She knew that. But she realised now the meanness of having used him
merely as a weapon against Fritz, and not only the meanness, but the
vulgarity of the action. There were moments in which she was fully
conscious that, despite her rank, she had not endured unsmirched close
contact with the rampant commonness of London.
One of the last great events of the season was to be a charity concert,
got up by a Royal Princess in connection with a committee of well-known
women to start a club for soldiers and sailors. Various amateurs and
professionals were asked to take part in it, among them Lady Holme and
Miss Schley. The latter had already accepted the invitation when Lady
Holme received the Royal request, which was made _viva voce_ and was
followed by a statement about the composition of the programme, in which
“that clever Miss Schley” was named.
Lady Holme hesitated. She had not met the American for some time and
did not wish to meet her. Since she had bathed her husband’s wound she
knew--she could not have told how--that Miss Schley’s power over him had
lessened. She did not know what had happened between them. She did not
know that anything had happened. And, as part of this new effort of
hers, she had had the strength to beat down the vehement, the terrible
curiosity--cold steel and fire combined--that is a part of jealousy.
That curiosity, she told herself, belonged to the siren, not to the
angel. But at this Royal request her temper waked, and with it many
other children of her temperament. It was as if she had driven them into
a dark cave and had rolled a great stone to the cave’s mouth. Now the
stone was pushed back, and in the darkness she heard them stirring,
whispering, preparing to come forth.
The Royal lady looked slightly surprised. She coughed and glanced at a
watch she wore at her side.
“I shall be delighted to do anything, ma’am,” Lady Holme said quickly.
When she received the programme she found that her two songs came
immediately after “Some Imitations” by Miss Pimpernel Schley.
She stood for a moment with the programme in her hand.
“Some Imitations”; there was a certain crudeness about the statement, a
crudeness and an indefiniteness combined. Who were to be the victims? At
this moment, perhaps, they were being studied. Was she to be pilloried
again as she had been pilloried that night at the British Theatre? The
calm malice of the American was capable of any impudent act. It seemed
to Lady Holme that she had perhaps been very foolish in promising to
appear in the same programme with Miss Schley. Was it by accident that
their names were put together? Lady Holme did not know who had arranged
the order of the performances, but it occurred to her that there was
attraction to the public in the contiguity, and that probably it was a
matter of design. No other two women had been discussed and compared,
smiled over and whispered about that season by Society as she and Miss
Schley had been.
For a moment, while she looked at the programme, she thought of the
strange complications of feeling that are surely the fruit of an extreme
civilisation. She saw herself caught in a spider’s web of apparently
frail, yet really powerful, threads spun by an invisible spider. Her
world was full of gossamer playing the part of iron, of gossamer that
was compelling, that made and kept prisoners. What freedom was there
for her and women like her, what reality of freedom? Even beauty, birth,
money were gossamer to hold the fly. For they concentrated the gaze of
those terrible watchful eyes which govern lives, dominating actions,
even dominating thoughts.
She moved, had always moved, in a maze of complications. She saw them
tiny yet intense, like ants in their hill. They stirred minds, hearts,
as the ants stirred twigs, leaves, blossoms, and carried them to the
hill for their own purposes. In this maze free will was surely lost. The
beautiful woman of the world seems to the world to be a dominant being,
to be imposing the yoke of her will on those around her. But is she
anything but a slave?
Why were she and Miss Schley enemies? Why had they been enemies from the
moment they met? There was perhaps a reason for their hostility now,
a reason in Fritz. But at the beginning what reason had there been?
Civilisation manufactures reasons as the spider manufactures threads,
because it is the deadly enemy of peace--manufactures reasons for all
those thoughts and actions which are destructive of inward and exterior
peace.
For a moment it seemed to Lady Holme as if she and the American
were merely victims of the morbid conditions amid which they lived;
conditions which caused the natural vanity of women to become a
destroying fever, the natural striving of women to please a venomous
battle, the natural desire of women to be loved a fracas, in which
clothes were the armour, modes of hair-dressing, manicure, perfumes,
dyes, powder-puffs the weapons.
What a tremendous, noisy nothingness it was, this state of being! How
could an angel be natural in it,--be an angel at all?
She laid down the programme and sighed. She felt a vague yet violent
desire for release, for a fierce change, for something that would brush
away the spider’s web and set free her wings. Yet where would she fly?
She did not know; probably against a window-pane. And the change would
never come. She and Fritz--what could they ever be but a successful
couple known in a certain world and never moving beyond its orbit?
Perhaps for the first time the longing that she had often expressed
in her singing, obedient to poet and composer, invaded her own soul.
Without music she was what with music she had often seemed to be--a
creature of wayward and romantic desires, a yearning spirit, a soaring
flame.
At that moment she could have sung better than she had ever sung.
On the programme the names of her songs did not appear. They were
represented by the letters A and B. She had not decided yet what she
would sing. But now, moved by feeling to the longing for some action in
which she might express it, she resolved to sing something in which she
could at least flutter the wings she longed to free, something in
which the angel could lift its voice, something that would delight
the believers in the angel and be as far removed from Miss Schley’s
imitations as possible.
After a time she chose two songs. One was English, by a young composer,
and was called “Away.” It breathed something of the spirit of the East.
The man who had written it had travelled much in the East, had drawn
into his lungs the air, into his nostrils the perfume, into his soul
the meaning of desert places. There was distance in his music. There
was mystery. There was the call of the God of Gold who lives in the sun.
There was the sound of feet that travel. The second song she chose was
French. The poem was derived from a writing of Jalalu’d dinu’r Rumi, and
told this story.
One day a man came to knock upon the door of the being he loved. A voice
cried from within the house, “_Qui est la_?” “_C’est moi_!” replied
the man. There was a pause. Then the voice answered, “This house cannot
shelter us both together.” Sadly the lover went away, went into the
great solitude, fasted and prayed. When a long year had passed he came
once more to the house of the one he loved, and struck again upon
the door. The voice from within cried, “_Qui est la_?” “_C’est toi_!”
whispered the lover. Then the door was opened swiftly and he passed in
with outstretched arms.
Having decided that she would sing these two songs, Lady Holme sat down
to go through them at the piano. Just as she struck the first chord of
the desert song a footman came in to know whether she was at home to
Lady Cardington. She answered “Yes.” In her present mood she longed
to give out her feeling to an audience, and Lady Cardington was very
sympathetic.
In a minute she came in, looking as usual blanched and tired, dressed in
black with some pale yellow roses in the front of her gown. Seeing Lady
Holme at the piano she said, in her low voice with a thrill in it:
“You are singing? Let me listen, let me listen.”
She did not come up to shake hands, but at once sat down at a short
distance from the piano, leaned back, and gazed at Lady Holme with a
strange expression of weary, yet almost passionate, expectation.
Lady Holme looked at her and at the desert song. Suddenly she thought
she would not sing it to Lady Cardington. There was too wild a spell
in it for this auditor. She played a little prelude and sang an Italian
song, full, as a warm flower of sweetness, of the sweetness of love. The
refrain was soft as golden honey, soft and languorous, strangely sweet
and sad. There was an exquisite music in the words of the refrain, and
the music they were set to made their appeal more clinging, like the
appeal of white arms, of red, parting lips.
“Torna in fior di giovinezza
Isaotta Blanzesmano,
Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano:
Nell’amore ogni dolcezza.”
Tears came into Lady Cardington’s eyes as she listened, brimmed over and
fell down upon her blanched cheeks. Each time the refrain recurred she
moved her lips: “Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano: Nell’amore ogni dolcezza.”
Lady Holme’s voice was like honey as she sang, and tears were in her
eyes too. Each time the refrain fell from her heart she seemed to see
another world, empty of gossamer threads, a world of spread wings,
a world of--but such poetry and music do not tell you! Nor can you
imagine. You can only dream and wonder, as when you look at the horizon
line and pray for the things beyond.
“Tutto--tutto al mondo a vano:
Nell’amore ogni dolcezza.”
“Why do you sing like that to-day?” said Lady Cardington, wiping her
eyes gently.
“I feel like that to-day,” Lady Holme said, keeping her hands on the
keys in the last chord. There was a vagueness in her eyes, a sort of
faint cloud of fear. While she was singing she had thought, “Have I
known the love that shows the vanity of the world? Have I known the
love in which alone all sweetness lives?” The thought had come in like a
firefly through an open window. “Have I? Have I?”
And something within her felt a stab of pain, something within her soul
and yet surely a thousand miles away.
“Tutto--tutto al mondo e vano,” murmured Lady Cardington. “We feel that
and we feel it, and--do you?”
“To-day I seem to,” answered Lady Holme.
“When you sing that song you look like the love that gives all sweetness
to men. Sing like that, look like that, and you--If Sir Donald had heard
you!”
Lady Holme got up from the piano.
“Sir Donald!” she said.
She came to sit down near Lady Cardington.
“Sir Donald! Why do you say that?”
And she searched Lady Cardington’s eyes with eyes full of inquiry.
Lady Cardington looked away. The wistful power that generally seemed a
part of her personality had surely died out in her. There was something
nervous in her expression, deprecating in her attitude.
“Why do you speak about Sir Donald?” Lady Holme said.
“Don’t you know?”
Lady Cardington looked up. There was an extraordinary sadness in her
eyes, mingled with a faint defiance.
“Know what?”
“That Sir Donald is madly in love with you?”
“Sir Donald! Sir Donald--madly anything!”
She laughed, not as if she were amused, but as if she wished to do
something else and chose to laugh instead. Lady Cardington sat straight
up.
“You don’t understand anything but youth,” she said.
There was a sound of keen bitterness in her low voice.
“And yet,” she added, after a pause, “you can sing till you break the
heart of age--break its heart.”
Suddenly she burst into a flood of tears. Lady Holme was so surprised
that she did absolutely nothing, did not attempt to console, to inquire.
She sat and looked at Lady Cardington’s tall figure swayed by grief,
listened to the sound of her hoarse, gasping sobs. And then, abruptly,
as if someone came into the room and told her, she understood.
“You love Sir Donald,” she said.
Lady Cardington looked up. Her tear-stained, distorted face seemed very
old.
“We both regret the same thing in the same way,” she said. “We were both
wretched in--in the time when we ought to have been happy. I thought--I
had a ridiculous idea we might console each other. You shattered my
hope.”
“I’m sorry,” Lady Holme said.
And she said it with more tenderness than she had ever before used to a
woman.
Lady Cardington pressed a pocket-handkerchief against her eyes.
“Sing me that song again,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything more. Just
sing it again and I’ll go.”
Lady Holme went to the piano.
“Torna in fior di giovinezza
Isaotta Blanzesmano,
Dice: Tutto al mondo a vano:
Nell’amore ogni dolcezza.”
When the last note died away she looked towards the sofa. Lady
Cardington was gone. Lady Holme leaned her arm on the piano and put her
chin in her hand.
“How awful to be old!” she thought.
Half aloud she repeated the last words of the refrain: “Nell’amore ogni
dolcezza.” And then she murmured:
“Poor Sir Donald!”
And then she repeated, “Poor--” and stopped. Again the faint cloud of
fear was in her eyes.