Lady Joan went up to her town house at the end of the summer, but her
philanthropic campaign was not a success. The field of philanthropy was
overcrowded just then with people like herself, who had too little
wealth and too much energy to be of any practical use to the great
organizers of charity, who never wanted anything from their devotees but
subscriptions and obedience; a reformer does not want to be interfered
with by a penniless nobody who has independent views concerning his
method of reform. And Lady Joan soon found that she was not in a set
that troubled itself much about the suffering poor. The people she met
in Digby's studio were mostly theoretical Socialists, who complained
that the cause of Socialism was being ruined by the enthusiasts who
tried to make it work before its principles had been properly
disseminated among the people; and amongst her other friends were some
who had a small and private charity of their own, but were so jealous of
it when they had that she found it impossible to work with them; or else
they were quite willing to use her house and her carriage and her time,
if she would meekly give them all these without being allowed a voice in
the arrangements or a particle of credit for what she did. And she found
that as much sweating went on in the administration of charity as its
administrators were in the habit of exposing in the slums; she met jaded
gentlewomen in the employ of philanthropists, who spent their lives in
addressing envelopes at something less than the market price, and
footsore secretaries who walked the slums to verify the abuses which
their chiefs were to denounce in the newspapers. She had never had a
high opinion of philanthropy, but it was considerably lowered by her
new experiences of it. She humbly offered to sing a ballad at a people's
concert in the East End; but her offer was politely refused on the
ground that several of the leading singers of the day had offered their
services free for the same concert; and she was asked if she would dance
the skirt dance instead, at a titled lady's 'At Home' for another
charitable object. Sundry hard-working clergy came to hear of her
estimable intentions, and wrote to ask her for subscriptions and to
offer her district-visiting in their parishes; but as it was the
æsthetic side of philanthropy alone that had attracted her, she declined
their offers promptly and with a shudder.
Once, in an impetuous mood, she joined a Ladies' League for the supply
of soup and bread to a select company of the deserving poor in a West
End parish. There were more ladies altogether than there were afterwards
recipients of their charity; and they all met weekly in one another's
houses to organize their system of relief during the cold weather. The
cold weather came along before the preliminaries were arranged. There
were no gentlemen at these meetings until after the business had been
transacted, when afternoon tea was brought in, and a _recherché_
reception followed. But the frost continued, and there seemed no
prospect of the sufferers ever receiving their bread and their soup.
Just before Christmas, it came to Lady Joan's turn to hold the meeting
in her house. It took place in a dingy old library that day, and there
was no reception afterwards, and no afternoon tea. Lady Joan herself
moved three resolutions at the opening of the sitting: the first was
that there should be no more meetings; the second, that all future
business should be transacted by a committee of gentlemen only; and the
third, that the charity, if given at all, should be administered to all
sufferers, irrespective of character. All three motions were thrown out
indignantly, and their proposer sent in her resignation the next day.
"Philanthropy is the selfish pastime of the great, and I was an owl to
meddle with it," she said gloomily to Sir Marcus, who happened to be
lunching with her one day about that time. Sir Marcus always came to see
her whenever he came to town, and told her of his last letter to the
papers, or his last effort to improve the condition of the
working-man;--she had loved his boy, and she always listened without
laughing at him; these were the two ideas he vaguely connected with her
in his mind. Another man, a less easily impressed one, might have been
killed by the suddenness of Jack's death; but Sir Marcus, although his
infatuation for his scapegrace son had been the deepest attachment he
had ever felt for any one, had been really more affected by the tragedy
of his end than by his actual death; and so it came about that he was
considerably aged by the shock, and yet was able to return again to his
books and his hobbies.
"Philanthropy in town is all a mistake, my dear," he answered her,
hotly; "it's nothing but a trumped-up job among the swells, that's what
it is, of course. In my time, you know, before there were such a lot of
them in the nursery, and when I was pitching my thousands right and
left,--_that_ was philanthropy if you like! But now philanthropists are
merely commercial contractors,--you mark my words, my dear, commercial
contractors running the whole concern for profit; and what good can come
out of that, eh? Ah, you must come down into the country for morals;
Londoners are the biggest thieves in existence."
"Not so bad as that, Sir Marcus," she remonstrated; "I don't think
philanthropists are commercial contractors exactly, at least not the
ones I've met. They are mostly egoists and mostly unbusinesslike, but
not thieves, no."
"Isn't that what I said?" said Sir Marcus, testily. It was not; but she
did not wish to risk her reputation with him, and she listened patiently
while he poured out his own schemes for the education of the country
laborer, or rather of the Murville laborer, until she repeated her first
remark to herself with a yawn, and wrote round to Digby, after Sir
Marcus had left, to come and tell her what to do next.
She had seen a good deal of Digby lately; he knew all about her
ambitious schemes and her failure to carry them out, and he was eager to
sympathize with her whenever she would allow him; while she accepted his
sympathy as one who did not want it particularly, but liked to command
it at will. And during the growth of his baby's teeth, which rendered
both conversation and work difficult in the flat in Victoria Street, the
musician often found his way to Lady Joan's house in Pont Street in the
hours that he would otherwise have spent in writing music. It is true
that he honestly tried for some time to write classical lullabies to his
daughter in the pantry, that being the corner in the flat furthest
removed from the nursery, while his wife sang her to sleep in the
cradle to the homely ditty of "Hush-a-by-baby," and that he always
nursed her when he was asked, and did not swear when he made her cry and
was blamed for his clumsiness but after a time he made no objection when
his wife sent him round to take her excuses and to dine alone with Lady
Joan, until it became no uncommon thing for him to spend his evenings
with her, while Norah stayed at home and nursed the baby. They were all
three totally regardless of public opinion in the matter, though it
might well have come to their ears that Norah was being very generally
pitied by the musician's lady friends, not for her loneliness, but for
her neglect of the treasure she seemed so unconscious of possessing, and
that the musician was allowed to go scathless as he always was, and that
Lady Joan was hated without exception. But the musician, who had done
what he liked since his infancy, meant to go on doing it now in defiance
of all the scandals that were about; and Lady Joan, for her part,
always went out of her way to add to them if she could; while Norah only
ignored them altogether, and smiled to herself, and so deceived every
one who knew her, including her husband.
"Yes?" she said to Mrs. Reginald Routh, when that lady remarked one day,
during a short call, that Mr. Digby always seemed to be in Pont Street,
"it is very unfortunate he should miss you so often; but Joan has wanted
him a good deal lately, and I have been only too glad, when baby has
been fretful, to send him round to see her. There is such a platonic
friendship between them, you know."
"Platonic, do you call it, Mrs. Digby?" said her visitor, with her
accustomed smile. "Do you know, my dear Mrs. Digby, that from what _I_
know of Plato,--and I attended all Mr. Digby's lectures on Plato and
Schopenhauer, and their relation to music and Socialism, which was
before you knew him, of course,--I don't _fancy_ he would have
countenanced such goings on in his ideal Republic? Of course you know
best, and I should not dream of interfering between a wife and a
husband; but I should certainly say myself, if I were asked, that that
young woman's behavior in Pont Street is more fit for the Old Testament
than for Plato. Perhaps you have not read any Plato, though?"
"No; only the Old Testament; and that I was obliged to do for myself,
you see, because there were no lectures upon it," rejoined Norah,
gravely; and she bore the swift scrutiny of Mrs. Reginald Routh without
flinching. Mrs. Reginald changed the subject; it was the only thing left
her to do, and she did it well.
"Of course I should not speak so strongly, dear Mrs. Digby, if I had not
known your husband so well and so intimately before he met you at all.
And perhaps if I had had your good fortune," here she glanced in a
telling manner at the baby on Norah's knee, "and could have had a small
soul to develop, I, too, should have become a womanly woman, with no
desire for intellectual improvement. Ah, Mrs. Digby, you have in your
child what we childless wives have failed to find in our search after
wisdom. I frankly own that you are to be envied."
And she had her revenge, for Norah believed her.
Digby came in when she had gone.
"Joan has sent round for me to help her out of a difficulty. Any
message, childie? I shall be back to dinner. And have you seen my warm
gloves?"
"I mended them and put them in your drawer, dear. That's just like a man
to be surprised at finding them in the right place! Oh, I wish you would
write about the bath-room pipe--"
"Damn," said Digby, audibly.
"Don't, Digby. It really is important, because the wall is getting damp,
and--"
"That doesn't matter, does it? I've moved the piano."
"But it is coming through into the nursery, Digby."
"Oh, all right. I'll do it when I come in."
"Mrs. Reginald has been here."
"I know; that's why I haven't. What did she say?"
"She seemed to think that you and Joan were enacting an Old Testament
episode without the sanction of inspiration."
"What awful cheek!"
"Oh, she only meant to be friendly, I think. She seemed to admire baby."
"Deuced clever woman, Mrs. Reginald. I'll write about the pipe when I
come in."
He was with Lady Joan for about two hours, and it was quite dark when he
left her house. They had reached that stage in their intercourse when
conversation is rather difficult, but companionship is a matter of
course. They did not discuss the arts now, nor the ethics of Socialism,
nor the position of woman. None of these things seemed to matter half so
much to them as his prospects of getting fresh pupils, or her choice of
a dining-room paper. And sometimes they did not speak at all, though
their silence was never an embarrassed one. This afternoon there had
been more than usual to talk about, for she had resolved to give up her
visions of philanthropy and was thinking of going abroad, and he had
been trying to dissuade her, purely in his character of adviser, without
letting her see that he hoped she would remain in London. He was
beginning to realize how much he liked coming to see her, and how great
a relief it was to escape from the people who had claims upon him, and
for whose bath-room pipes he was legally responsible, to some one who
had no claim upon him, and whose bath-room pipes were in consequence so
much pleasanter to superintend. And he walked down the doorsteps slowly,
with a feeling that he had not persuaded her to remain, and that he was
a fool not to have used the only methods of persuasion that he would
like to have used, and that might have gained his point. There was a
weary vista before him of endless letters to the plumber, of endless
commonplace conversations with his wife, of endless unfulfilled
ambitions, everything that chokes the energy of the artistic enthusiast
who has been married long enough to lose his first illusions, and not
long enough to learn to do without them. He was in the mood to be
exasperated by a triviality, and he swore beneath his breath when a man
with a beard stumbled against him in the portico.
"Digby!" shouted the man with the beard, in a voice that made the
passers-by stop and look.
The musician recoiled, and stammered something. He said afterwards that
the fateful truth flashed upon him in a second of time, but in reality
he stood there for some moments while the existence of the man before
him slowly worked its way to his brain. And with the realization of
Jack's existence came the realization of something he had been trying
for six months to hide from himself. Jack's return from the dead
meant--good heavens! what did it not mean to him now?
And to Joan also?
"You--you must not go into her suddenly like this; it might kill her,
the shock, don't you know," he found himself saying, in a kind of dream,
when the first hurried and incoherent words of greeting had passed
between them. Joan was all he was thinking of just then, Joan and the
last six months of uninterrupted friendship. Yet Digby was not a bad
man, nor a malicious one exactly; but his old affection for his brother,
which had always depended more on habit than on natural affinity, had
been rudely broken by his supposed death, and it was not easy to revive
it again now, nor was it made easier by a concurrence of circumstances
which seemed to demand that he should rather have stayed away
altogether. Why had Jack chosen this moment to come back? A few years
back the musician would have found an occasion for moralizing in the
strange conflict of feelings within him.
"I--I feel quite queer myself," he said, making an effort to grasp his
brother's hand more warmly; "why on earth didn't you let us know that
the wrong man--that the other man was killed? You always did imagine
that we knew all about you without your troubling to write to us, Jack.
Never was so surprised in my life,--delighted, I should say. But what
does it all mean?"
"Eh, what? Why, don't you see, I thought it was all bally rot to write
and explain that they had cabled my name instead of Jack Rackstraw's,
because I meant to come over that next mail. And then, when I got
another berth offered me with an elegant screw, I reckoned I 'd take it
and go on being dead for a space, rather a scheme, don't you twig? And
besides, I thought if I lay low till next fall Joan might find out she
cared for me a bit more than she calculated, eh? Hasn't it been hard
work, though, just sitting tight and not hearing from her! Now, fire
yourself, Digby, and let me freeze on to that bell."
"But look here, old man," urged the musician, desperately, "let me go in
first and explain. You go round to Norah and wait till I come for you.
These--these shocks are too much for women; they can't always stand
them; women can't, you know. Surely you must see the folly of
frightening her--"
"You old woman, Digby; what by all that's holy are you playing at?
Joan's not that sort; besides, if you'd been away three years, old chap,
I guess you'd run the risk of seeing a girl turn pale for you. Eh? So
clear out."
He twisted the musician round with one touch of his hand, and flew up
the steps. But quick as he was, Digby was quicker still, and sprang
before him at the top of the steps, panting, and hardly knowing what he
did. Jack seized him by the arm in slowly dawning amazement.
"'Pon my word, if Joan's half as frightened as you look now, I shall
begin to believe it _is_ a shock to meet some one who's supposed to have
kicked. You want a drink, old man, and if you don't go and get it now
I--"
"I know, I 'm going, I am really, Jack. It's purely for your own good I
am speaking; why should it matter to me? But you're such an unsuspecting
chap, and I don't want to see you made a fool of; and look here, Jack,
I'm a brute to suggest it, I know, but women are fickle, as all the
world knows, and she thought you were dead, and after all no one could
blame her if--don't you see?"
There was a sudden pause then, and a loosening of the strong grip on his
arm, and the musician began to feel something of the brute he had been
so ready to avow himself.
"Of course, I'm not insinuating that there's some one else, I don't know
his name if there is; but knowing their nature as I do, I think it's
wiser not to--not to give them a clean bill of constancy always--eh? At
all events, how would it be for me to meet you at the flat when I've
sounded the ground a bit with Joan? It would only make a delay of
half-an-hour or so, and--my dear fellow!"
Jack had caught him by the coat in a sudden paroxysm of nervous fury,
and Digby found himself half throttled and pinned against the stone wall
of the portico, while a loud peal from the door-bell resounded through
the house.
"You brute--you! Why do you want to keep me from her? If you were any
one else standing between her and me I would wipe the floor with you.
There--clear out, can't you? Oh, hang it, I've been half crazed to meet
her all day, and now--that devilish suggestion of yours--ah! can't you
go, you?"
Digby shrank back as he felt himself free. There were steps coming along
the hall inside, and he curbed himself to speak carelessly as he turned
away as if to leave.
"Poor chap, I forgive you when I think of the hash you are going to make
of it. You weren't born to deal with wily women, and when to-morrow
comes, ah!--"
After all, when the man opened the door, it was Digby who entered the
house. A man with a short beard was walking rapidly down the street.
"What is it? Anything wrong?" asked Lady Joan, quickly.
"No, no, nothing. Only I feel as though I had been persuading you
against your will and for my own selfish reasons, and I came back to say
so. There is nothing to keep you in England--nothing. Why not go
abroad--to-morrow?"
"Oh. Is that all? How stupid of you to come back and look tragic just
for that. And as if I should not go without waiting for your permission,
Monsieur! Why, I have just been making out a route. Come and look."
He followed her finger mechanically with his eyes as she traced it over
the map, and he made a great effort to compose himself. She exhausted
France and Germany before she noticed his silence, and then she pushed
away the Baedeker suddenly, and leaned back to try and see his face. He
was standing a little behind her.
"I wish you'd say something, Digby. You look as if you'd seen a ghost."
"I have," he answered quietly, without taking his eyes from the top of
her head.
"Whose was it?" she asked, half puzzled, half amused.
"My brother Jack's. He is in London."
He did not see that the color fled from her face, nor that she gasped a
little as though she had a difficulty in breathing. What he saw was that
she slowly turned round on her chair and looked to him beseechingly.
"Is--it--true?" she asked in a hushed tone. The dull anguish of it lent
a fierceness to his purpose.
"I have spoken to him. Would to God it were not!"
It did not seem strange to her that he should say so, nor that he did
not come and stroke her hair as he so often did when she fancied herself
in trouble. She crossed her arms on the top of the chair, and laid her
cheek on them.
"I've always known that he must come back. Jack could never be dead,"
she murmured in a hopeless tone of voice; "he is overflowing with life,
crude, arrogant life. Why did I believe them when they said he was
dead?"
"Perhaps you wished to believe it," said the musician.
When he found the silence that followed no longer endurable, he moved a
little nearer to her, where he could see the fierce movement of her
shoulders and the curls on the back of her neck.
"Shall we resume our conversation?" he said, and touched the Baedeker.
"How can we? I must wait a little, see Jack, no, no, not see him,
but--but write to him--if it is possible he never had my other letter?
Why has he come back to torment me just when I was beginning to feel
happy? And--oh, drop that book, can't you? Don't you understand that I
cannot go abroad now?"
"Why not?"
"Because, oh, how dense you are! Even if I can get away from Jack, and I
feel as if I never should be free again, but even supposing I can break
his heart and leave him, how can I go away and be by myself
interminably? You don't know me if you think that would do me any good."
"I don't think so. I did not suggest your going alone. You don't know
_me_ if--you think I could let you go."
She raised herself slowly on to her elbows and covered her eyes with her
hands. He was looking down at the scarlet cover of the Baedeker.
"What do you mean?"
"What I have said. You don't want to see Jack. I will take you away from
him. Will you come?"
She did not speak, and a shiver passed swiftly down her frame.
He came nearer to her.
"I believe you like him still," he said, with a curious smile.
She raised her head, and clenched her fists, and laughed harshly. She,
too, looked at the scarlet cover of the Baedeker.
"I should hate him--if he were worth it. But I have never loved him."
"Then answer my question. Will you come?"
She moistened her lips and tried to speak clearly.
"We were so happy as it was. Can't it go on?"
"No, it cannot go on. If you were a man you would not ask that. Will you
come?"
She closed her eyes, and tried not to hear the singing in her ears, and
thought he would come and touch her. But he did not move at all.
"You are frightened, are you not?" he said.
"Of you? No, I don't think I am frightened of you."
He came so near then that she felt his warm breath on her neck.
"Not of me, oh, no. But, all the same, you are frightened, or else you
would not hesitate."
He turned away again, and she dropped her hands quickly from her eyes.
"You are not going?"
"Not if you wish me to stay," he said, and folded his arms and waited.
"I do want you to stay--give me time to think, Digby--I--"
A cab rattled past the house outside, and as the sound died away, she
rose slowly and with difficulty from her chair and looked at him. And he
came and supported her on his arm, and drew his fingers up her throat
and round her face to her forehead, and back again to her chin, and so
forced her to meet his eyes.
"I will come," she said.