A wave--such waves are tidal-periodic, and after they have passed leave
the sea quite calm again--a wave of interest in the simplification of
life swept over London towards the end of this season. A Duchess gave up
meat and took to deep-breathing instead; somebody else had lunch on
lentils only and drank hot water, and said she felt better already; some
half-dozen took a walk in the Park in the very early morning without
hats, and met half-a-dozen more who wore sandals; and they all agreed
that it made the whole difference, and so the movement was started.
Simplification of life: that was the real thing to be aimed at; it made
you happy, and also made any search for pleasure unnecessary, for you
only sought for pleasure--so ran the gospel, which was very swiftly and
simply formulated--because you were looking for happiness, and
mistakenly grasped at pleasure. But with the simplification of life,
happiness came quite of its own accord. You breathed deeply, you ate
lentils, you wore no hat (especially if there was nobody about), and
under the same condition you wore sandals and walked in the wet grass,
to reward you for which happiness came to you, and you ceased to worry.
Indeed, in a few days, for London flies on the wings of a dove to any
new thing, the gospel was so entrancing and so popular that hatless folk
were seen in the Park at far more fashionable hours, and Gladys
Ellington actually refused to go to a ball for fear of not getting her
proper supply of oxygen. She, it may be remarked, was never quite among
the first to take up any new thing, but was always among the foremost of
the second.
The other Lady Ellington, it appeared, had known it "all along." It was
she, in fact, so the legend soon ran, who had suggested the
simplification of life to Tom Merivale, who now lived in the New Forest,
ate asparagus in season, but otherwise only cabbage, and had got so
closely into touch with Nature that all sorts of things perched on his
finger and sang. The devotees, therefore, of the doctrine were intent on
things perching on their fingers and singing, and wanted to go down to
the New Forest to see how it was done. But while they wanted, Lady
Ellington went. If the simplification of life were to come in, it was
always best to be the first to simplify; in addition, it would save her
so much money in her autumn parties. And she could always have a chop
upstairs.
Her expedition to the New Forest took place a couple of days after
Philip had given his first sitting to Evelyn Dundas. Madge at this time
was looking rather pale and tired, so her mother thought, and, in
consequence, she proposed to Madge that she should come with her. This
pallor and lassitude, as a matter of fact, was a reasonable excuse
enough, though had Madge looked bright and fresh it would not have stood
in her way, since in the latter case the reason would have been that
Madge enjoyed the country so much, and had the "country-look" in her
eyes. In any case Lady Ellington meant that Madge should go with her,
and if she meant a thing, that thing usually occurred.
To say that she was anxious about Madge would be over-stating the
condition of her mind with regard to her, for it was a rule of her life,
with excellent authority to back it, to be anxious about nothing. To say
also that she thought there was any reason for anxiety would be still
over-stating her view of her daughter, since if there had been any
reason for it, though she would still not have been anxious, she would
have cleared the matter up in some way. But her hard, polished mind, a
sort of crystal billiard-ball, admitted no such reason; merely she meant
to keep her daughter under her eye till she, another billiard-ball, it
was to be hoped, went into her appointed pocket. Then the man who held
the cue might do what he chose--she defied him to hurt her.
Yet Lady Ellington knew quite well what, though not the cause of any
anxiety on her part, was the reason why she kept Madge under her eye,
and that reason was the existence of an artist. Madge had cancelled an
appointment she had made with him; the day after he had called, while
she and her daughter were having tea alone together, and Madge had sent
down word, insisted indeed on doing so, that they were not at home. She
had at once explained this to her mother, saying that she had a
headache, and meant to go to her room immediately she had had a cup of
tea, and was thus unwilling to leave the guest on Lady Ellington's
hands. That excuse had, of course, passed unchallenged, for Lady
Ellington never challenged anything till it really assumed a threatening
attitude. She reserved to herself, however, the right of drawing
conclusions on the subject of headaches.
The idea, however, of the expedition to the New Forest Madge had hailed
with enthusiasm. They were to go down there in the morning, lunch with
the Hermit on lentils--she had particularly begged in her letter,
otherwise rather magisterial, that they might see his ordinary mode of
life--spend the afternoon in the forest, sleep at Brockenhurst,
returning to London next day. His reply was cordial enough, though as a
matter of fact Lady Ellington would not have cared however little
cordial it was, and they travelled down third-class because there were
fewer cushions in the third-class, and, in consequence, far fewer
bacteria. The avoidance of bacteria just now was of consequence, hence
the windows also were both wide open, and there would have been
acrimonious discussion between Lady Ellington and another passenger in
the same carriage, who had a severe cold in the head, had she not
refused to discuss altogether.
The simplification of life had not at present in Lady Ellington's case
gone so far as to dispense with the presence of a maid. She was sent on
to the inn to engage rooms for them, and a separate table at dinner that
evening, and the two took their seats in the cab that Merivale had
ordered to meet them. He had not been at the station himself, and though
Lady Ellington was secretly inclined to resent this, as somewhat wanting
in respect, she had self-control enough to say nothing about it. Indeed,
her own polished mind excused it; "physical exercises for the morning,"
she said to herself, probably detained him.
But the Hermit proved somehow unnaturally natural. He did not give them
lentils to eat, but he gave them cauliflower _au gratin_ and brown bread
and cheese, and to drink, water. Somehow he was not, to Lady Ellington's
mind, the least apostolic, for these viands were indeed excellent, and,
what was worse, he made neither an apology nor a confession of faith
over them. It was all perfectly natural, as indeed she had begged it
should be. Therefore the leanness of her desire went deep. After lunch,
too, cigarettes were offered them, and she wanted one so much that she
took one. True, he did all the waiting himself, but he did it so deftly
that one really did not notice the absence of servants. Then, worst of
all, when lunch was over, he put his elbow on the table, and was
serious.
"What did you come down into the wilderness for to see, Lady Ellington?"
he asked. "It is only a reed shaken by the wind. There is really nothing
more. I cannot say how charming it is to me to see you and Miss
Ellington. But I can't _tell_ you anything. You wanted to see a bit of
my life, how I live it. This is how. Now, what else can I do for you? I
am sure you will excuse me, but I am certain you came here to see
something. Do tell me what you want to see."
This was quite sufficient.
"Ah, if there happened to be a bird of some kind," said Lady Ellington.
Merivale laughed.
"What Evelyn called a conjuring trick?" he asked. "Why, certainly. But
you must sit still."
On the lawn some twenty yards off a thrush was scudding about the grass.
It had found a snail, and was looking, it appeared, for a suitable stone
on which to make those somewhat gruesome preparations for its meal,
which it performs with such vigorous gusto. But suddenly, as Merivale
looked at it, it paused, even though at that very moment it had
discovered on the path below the pergola an anvil divinely adapted to
its purpose. Then, with quick, bird-like motion, it dropped the snail,
looked once or twice from side to side, and then, half-flying,
half-running, came and perched on the balustrade of the verandah. Then
very gently Merivale held out his hand, and next moment the bird was
perched on it.
"Sing, then," he said, as he had said to the nightingale, and from
furry, trembling throat the bird poured out its liquid store of repeated
phrases.
"Thank you, dear," said he, when it paused. "Go back to your dinner and
eat well."
Again there was a flutter of wings and the scud across the grass, and in
a few moments the sharp tapping of the shell on the stone began. On the
verandah for a little while there was silence, then the Hermit laughed.
"But there is one thing I must ask you, Lady Ellington," he said,
"though I need not say how charmed I am to be able to show you that,
since it interests you; it is that I shall not be made a sort of show.
Evelyn Dundas was down here a few days ago, and he told me that all
London was going in for the simplification of life. Of course it seems
to me that they could not do better, but I really must refuse to pose as
a prophet, however minor."
Lady Ellington gave no direct promise; indeed from the Hermit's point of
view her next speech was far from reassuring.
"It is too wonderful," she said, "and now I can say that I have seen it
myself. But do you think, Mr. Merivale, that you have any right to shut
up yourself and your powers like that when there are so many of us
anxious to learn? Could you not--ah, well, it is the end of the season
now, but perhaps later in the autumn when people come to London again,
could you not give us a little class, just once a week, and tell us
about the new philosophy? I'm sure I know a dozen people who would love
to come. Of course we would come down here"--this was a great
concession--"not expect you to come up to London. You would charge, of
course; you might make quite a good thing out of it."
Merivale tried to put in a word, but she swept on.
"Of course that is a minor point," she said, "but what is, I think,
really important, is that one should always try to help others who want
to learn. There is quite a movement going on in London; people
deep-breathe and don't touch meat; the Duchess of Essex, for
instance--perhaps you know her----"
Here he got a word in.
"I am so sorry," he said, "but it is absolutely out of the question. To
begin with, I have nothing to tell you."
"Ah, but that thrush now," said she. "How did you do it? That is all I
want to know."
He laughed.
"But that is exactly what I can't tell you," he said, "any more than you
can tell me how it is that when you want to speak your tongue frames
words. I ask it to come and sit on my finger--hardly even that. I know
no more how I get it to come than it knows, the dear, why it comes."
"And what else can you do?" continued Lady Ellington, abandoning for the
present the idea of a class.
Merivale got up without the least sign of impatience or ruffling of his
good-humour.
"I can show you over the house," he said, "or walk with you in the
forest, as you are so kind as to take an interest in what I do and how I
live, and, if you like, I will talk about the simple life and what we
may call the approach to Nature. But I must warn you there is nothing in
the least startling or sensational about it. Above all, as far as I
know, it is not possible to make short cuts; one has to tune oneself
slowly to it."
This was better than nothing, for Lady Ellington had an excellent
memory, and could recount all the things which Merivale told her as if
she had suggested them to him and he had agreed. Also, if there was to
be no simplification class, it would at least be in her power to say
that he saw absolutely no one, but had been too charming in allowing
Madge and her to come down and spend the day with him. Indeed, after a
little reflection, she was not sure whether this was the more
distinguished _rôle_, to be the medium between the Hermit and the rest
of aspiring London. Thus it was with close attention that she made the
tour of the cottage, and afterwards they walked up through the
beech-wood on the other side of the stream on to the open heath beyond,
to spend the afternoon on these huge, breezy uplands.
Now, it so happened that on this morning Evelyn, after rather a
sleepless, tossing night, had gone up to his studio after breakfast to
find there that, when he tried to paint, he could not. Somebody, as he
had said once before, had turned the tap off; no water came through,
only a remote empty gurgling; the imaginative vision was out of gear.
There were three or four pictures in his studio over which he might have
spent a profitable morning, but he could do nothing with any of them. He
had only the afternoon before thought out a background for the picture
he was doing of Philip, thought it out, too, with considerable care and
precision, and all he had to do was to set a few pieces of furniture,
arrange his light as he wished it over the corner which was to be
represented, and put it in. Yet he could not do anything with it; his
eye was wrong, and his colours were harsh, crude, or merely woolly and
unconvincing. He could not see things right; it seemed to him that what
he painted was in the shadow, or as if something had come between him
and his canvas.
There was still one picture at which he could work, which he had not
looked at yet, nor even turned its easel round from the wall, and he
stood for some time in front of it, unable apparently to make up his
mind as to whether he would touch it or not. Then suddenly, with a
sharp, ill-humoured sort of tug, he wheeled it round. Yes, this was why
he could not touch Philip's portrait; here in front of him, dazzling and
brilliant, stood that which came between him and it. And as he looked
his eye cleared; it was as if a film, some material film, had been drawn
away from over it, and he examined his work with eager, critical
attention. Though ten minutes ago he could not paint, now he could not
help painting. He starved for the palette; his hands ached for the slimy
resistance of the paint dragged over the canvas. On the convex mirror,
which was to be on the wall behind the girl, reflecting her back and the
scarlet shimmering of her cloak, he had, like a child saving the
butteriest bit of toast till the end, reserved for the end the big
touches of light on the gilt frame. The more difficult, technical
painting of the mirror itself he had finished, putting the reflections
in rather more strongly than he wished them eventually to appear, for he
knew, with the artist's prescience, exactly how the lights on the gold
frame would tone them down. And it was with a smile of well-earned
satisfaction that he put these in now; he almost laughed to see how
accurately he had anticipated the result. Then, after some half-hour of
ecstatic pleasure--for at this stage every stroke told--he stepped back
and looked at it. Yes, that too was as he meant it--that too was
finished.
Slowly his eye dwelt next on the figure of the girl. Was Philip right
after all? Did it indeed need nothing more? He felt uncertain himself.
In ninety-nine other cases out of a hundred, if he had really not been
certain, there was no one's judgment which he would have more willingly
have deferred to than Philip's; but here he could not help connecting
his insistence that nothing more should be done with the subsequent
revelation that Madge did not wish to sit again to him. It was
impossible to disconnect the two; coincidences of that sort did not
happen.
Then the whole world of colour, of drawing, of his own inimitable art,
went grey and dead, and from its ashes rose, so to speak, the thought
that filled the universe for him, Madge herself. What, in heaven's name,
did it all mean? What had he done that she should treat him like this?
Search as he might, his conscience could find no accusation against him;
yet he could not either believe that this was a mere wilful freak on her
part. Then, again, he had called two days ago at an hour when she was
almost always in, and the man had not given him a "Not at home" direct;
he had gone upstairs. He felt absolutely certain that she had been in
and had refused to see him.
For another hour he sat idle in his studio; he lay on his divan and took
a volume from the morraine of old _Punches_, but found the wit flat and
unprofitable; he took the violin, played a dozen notes, and put it down
again; he leaned out of the window, and remarked that it was an
extremely fine day. But as to painting any more, he could as soon have
swum through the air over the roofs of the sea of houses below him. The
studio was intolerable; his thoughts, with their dismal circle that
ended exactly where it began and went on tracing the same circle again
and again, were intolerable also; his own company was equally so. But
from that there was no relief; good or bad, it would be with him to the
grave.
Then suddenly an idea occurred to him which held out certain promise of
relief at least, in that he could communicate his trouble, and he
thought of the Hermit Merivale had always an astonishingly cooling
effect on him; it was a pleasure in itself, especially to a feverish,
excitable mind like his, to see anyone, and that a friend, who, with
great intellectual and moral activity, was so wonderfully capable of
resting, of not worrying; restful, too, would be the glades of the
immemorial forest. And no sooner had the idea struck him than his mind
was made up; a telegram to the Hermit, a hurried glance at a railway
guide, and a bag into which he threw the requisites of a night, were all
that was required. He had just time to eat a hurried lunch, and then
started for Waterloo.
The day had been hot and sunny when he left London, and promised an
exquisite summer afternoon in the country, where the freshness would
tone down a heat that in town was rather oppressive. But this pleasant
probability, as the train threw the suburbs over its shoulder, did not
seem likely to be fulfilled, for the air, instead of getting fresher,
seemed to gather sultriness with every mile. Evelyn was himself much of
a slave to climatic conditions, and this windless calm, portending
thunder, seemed to press down on his head with dreadful weight. Even the
draught made by the flying train had no life in it; it was a hot buffet
of air as if from a furnace mouth. Then, as he neared his destination,
the sky began to be overcast, lumps of dark-coloured cloud, with hard,
angry edges of a coppery tinge began to mount in the sky, coming up in
some mysterious manner against what wind there was. This, too, when he
got out at Brockenhurst, was blowing in fitful, ominous gusts, now
raising a pillar of dust along the high road, then dying again to an
absolute calm. Directly to the south the clouds were most threatening,
and the very leaves of the trees looked pale and milky against the black
masses of the imminent storm. Yet it was some vague consolation, though
he hated thunder anywhere, to know how much more intolerable this would
be in London, and he arrived at the cottage glad that he had come.
It was about four when he got there, and the first thing he saw on
entering was a telegram on the table in the hall, still unopened, which
he rightly conjectured to be the one he had himself sent. In this case
clearly the Hermit was out when it arrived, and had not yet returned;
so, leaving his bag at the foot of the stairs, he passed out on to the
verandah. There, looking out over the garden, and alone, sat Madge. She
turned on the sound of his step, and, whether it was that the dreadful
colour of the day played some trick with his eyes or not, Evelyn thought
she went suddenly white.
She rose and came towards him with a miserable semblance of a smile, not
with that smile with which, in the portrait, she laughed at the worries
of the world and all its ups and downs. She was not laughing at them
now; her smile did not rise from within. Her voice, too, was a little
strange; it faltered. And it was clear that speaking at all was an
effort to her.
"This is quite unexpected, Mr. Dundas," she said. "I had no idea, nor,
I think, had Mr. Merivale, that you were coming."
Evelyn said nothing; he did not even hold out his hand in answer to
hers; he but looked at her, but looked with an unquenchable thirst. But
then he found speech and a sort of manners.
"I did not know either till this morning," he said; "but then I
telegraphed. I fancy Tom has not received it--not opened it anyhow;
there is a telegram for him at least on the table inside, which I guess
is mine. I did not know you were here either."
Then his voice rose a little.
"Indeed, I did not," he said.
The girl passed her hand wearily over her brow, brushing back her hair.
She was hatless--her hat lay on the table, where still the platters of
their frugal lunch remained, since they had started on their tour of
inspection as soon as that meal was over.
"Oh, no, I believe you!" she said. "Why should you assert it like that?
But there is a storm coming. I hate thunder. And I was alone."
Certainly the dreadful tension of the atmosphere had communicated itself
to these two. Madge was, at any rate, frightfully aware that her speech
was not wise. But wisdom had gone to the vanishing point. This meeting
had been so unthinkably unexpected. In a way it stunned her, just as the
approaching storm made her unnormal, unlike herself. But she had wits
enough left to laugh--the conventional laugh merely, that is like the
inverted commas to a written speech.
"I suppose I had better explain myself and my presence here," she said.
"My mother asked Mr. Merivale if we might come down and see the
simplification of life on its native heath. So we came and lunched here.
Then we all three went for a walk, but I was tired and headachy, and
turned back. They went on. I knew a storm was coming, though when we set
out it was quite clear. I told them so. And in the last ten minutes it
has come up like the stroke of a black wing. Ah!"
She shut her eyes for a moment as a violent flicker of lightning cut its
way down from the clouds in the south, and waited, still with shut eyes,
for the thunder.
"It is still a long way off," said Evelyn, as the remote growl answered.
"I know, but if you had seen the sky an hour ago. It was one turquoise.
And I daren't go back to Brockenhurst. I must stop here and wait for
them."
"May I take you back?" asked Evelyn.
"No; what good would that do? I may as well be terrified here as on the
road. Also I can keep dry here."
Again she winced as the lightning furrowed its zig-zag path through the
clouds. This time the remoteness of the thunder was less reassuring;
there was an angry, choking clap, which suggested that it meant
business.
By this time Evelyn had recovered himself from the first stabbing
surprise of finding Madge alone here. Her terror, too, of the
approaching storm had drowned his dislike of it; also, for the moment,
at any rate, his ordinary, natural instinct of alleviating the mere
physical fear of this girl drowned the more intimate sense of what she
was to him. If only she might become thoroughly frightened and cling to
him--for this outrageous possibility did cross his mind--how he would
rejoice in the necessity that such an accident would force on him the
necessity, since he knew that he would be unable to offer resistance, of
saying that which he had told Merivale only a few days before he felt he
could not help saying! But to do him justice, he dismissed such a
possibility altogether; that it had passed through his mind he could not
help, but all his conscious self rejected it.
Then, at the moment of the angry answering thunder, a few big splashes
of rain began to star the dry gravel-path below them, hot, splashing
drops, like bullets. They fell with separate, distinct reports on the
leaves of the lilacs and on the path; they hissed on the grass, they
whispered in the yielding foliage of the roses of the pergola, and were
like spirit-rappings on the roof of the verandah.
And Madge's voice rose in suppressed terror:
"Oh, where are they?" she cried. "Why don't they come back? He can't
make the lightning just sit on his finger like the thrush. Shall we go
to meet them? Oh, go to meet them, Mr. Dundas!"
"And leave you alone?" he asked.
Madge's wits had thoroughly deserted her.
"No, don't do that," she cried. "Let's go indoors, and pull down the
blinds and do something. What was that game you suggested once, that you
should go out of the room while I thought of something, and that then
you should come back and try to guess it. Anything, draughts, chess,
surely there is something."
Evelyn felt strangely master of himself. At least, he knew so well what
was master of him that it came to the same thing. He had certainty
anyhow on his side.
"Yes, let us come indoors," he said. "I know my way about the house.
There is a room on the other side; we shall see less of it there; I hate
thunder too. But you need have no earthly anxiety about Lady Ellington.
They may get wet, but that is all. There then, stop yours ears; you will
hear it less."
But he had hardly time to get the words out before the reverberation
came. Again clearly, business was meant, immediate business too; the
thunder followed nervously close on the flash. And at that Madge fairly
ran into the house, stumbling through the darkness in the little narrow
hall, and nearly falling over the bag that Evelyn had left there. True
though it was that she disliked thunder, she did not dislike it to this
point of utterly losing her head in a storm. But, just as her nerves
were physically upset, so, too, her whole mind and being was troubled
and storm-tossed by this unexpected meeting with Evelyn, and the two
disorderments reacted and played upon one another. Had there been no
thunderstorm she would have faced Evelyn's appearance with greater
equanimity; had he not appeared she would have minded the thunderstorm
less. But she braced herself with a great effort, determined not to lose
control completely over herself. And the effort demanded a loan from
heroism--physical fear, the fear that weakens the knees and makes the
hands cold, is hard enough in itself to fight against, but to fight not
only against it but against a moral fear, too, demands a thrice braver
front.
She, too, remembered in their tour over the house the room of which
Evelyn had spoken. It looked out, as he said, in the other direction,
and she would, at any rate, not see here the swift uprush of the storm.
It was very dark, not only from the portentous sootiness of the sky, but
because the big box hedge stood scarcely a dozen yards from the window.
Here Evelyn followed her, and, striking a match, lit a couple of
candles. He also had by now got a firmer hand over himself, but at the
sight of Madge sitting there, a sort of vision of desolateness, his need
for her, the need too that she at this moment had for comfort, almost
mastered him, and his voice was not wholly steady.
"There, you'll be better here," he said, "and candles are always
reassuring, are they not? You will laugh at me, but I assure you that if
I am alone in a storm I turn on all the electric light, shut the
shutters, and ransack the house for candles and lamps. Then I feel
secure."
Madge laughed rather dismally.
"Yes, thanks, that makes me feel a little better," she said. "It is
something anyhow to know one has a companion in one's unreasonableness.
I don't know what it is in a thunderstorm that agitates me; I think it
is the knowledge of the proximity of some frightful force entirely
outside the control of man, that may explode any moment."
Evelyn had turned to shut the door as she spoke, but at this a sort of
convulsive jerk went through him, and involuntarily he slammed it to.
There was something of deadly appropriateness in the girl's words;
indeed, there was a force in proximity to her outside her control. He
could not even feel certain that it was within his own, whether he was
able to stop the explosion. But her previous conduct to him, her refusal
to sit again, her saying that he bored her, her refusal even to see him
when he paid an ordinary call, were all counter-explosions, so to speak.
The noise of the door that he had banged startled him not less than her.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I don't know how I did that. It flew out
of my fingers, as servants say when they break something."
The first slow, hot drops of rain that had been the leaking of the
sluices of heaven, had given place to a downpour of amazing volume and
heaviness. In the windless air the rain fell in perpendicular lines of
solid water, as if from a million inexhaustible squirts, rattling on the
roof like some devil's tattoo, and hissing loud in the hedge outside.
The gurgling of the house gutters had increased to a roar, and every now
and then they splashed over, the pipes being unable to carry away the
water. But for the last few minutes there had been no return of the
lightning, and the air was already a little cooler and fresher, the
tenseness of its oppression was a little relieved. And in proportion to
this Madge again rather recovered herself.
"I really am most grateful to you, Mr. Dundas," she said, "for your
arrival. I don't know what I should have done here alone. Did you come
down from London this morning?"
Evelyn drew a chair near her and sat down.
"Yes, I settled to come quite suddenly," he said. "I had meant to work
all day, and I did for half an hour or so, but everything else looked
ugly, I could not see either colour or form properly...."
"Everything else?" said Madge unsuspectingly; his phrase was ambiguous;
she did not even distantly guess what he meant.
"Yes, everything else, except my portrait of you," he said shortly.
There was a pause of unrivalled awkwardness, and the longer it lasted
the more inevitable did the sequel become.
"I must ask you something," said Evelyn at length. "I ask it only in
common justice. Do you think you are treating me quite fairly in
refusing to sit for me again? For I tell you plainly, you cheat me of
doing my best. And when one happens to be an artist of whatever class,
that is rather a serious thing for anybody to do. It means a lot to me."
His words, he knew, were rather brutal; it was rather brutal too to take
advantage of this enforced _tête-à-tête_. But he could not pause to
think of that; he knew only that unless he said these things he could
not trust himself not to say things less brutal, indeed, but harder for
her to hear. He could not quite tell how far he had himself in control.
She had put out one hand as he began, as if to ward off his question;
but as he went on it fell again, and she sat merely receiving what he
said, sitting under it without shelter.
"You have no right to treat me like that," he continued. "We part at my
door, as far as I know, perfectly good friends one day, two days
afterwards I am told that you cannot sit to me again. What can I have
done? Have I done anything? Is it my fault in any way?"
She looked at him once imploringly.
"Please, please don't go on asking me," she said.
But she could not stop him now; his own bare rights justified his
questions, and there was that behind which urged him more strongly than
they.
"Is it my fault in any way?" he repeated.
Then a sort of despairing courage seized the girl; she would nerve
herself to the defence of her secret whatever happened.
"No, it is not your fault," she said.
"Then when you told Philip that it was because I bored you----"
"Did he tell you that?" she asked.
"Yes, he told me. It was not his fault. I made him practically. He could
not have refused me."
She thought intently for a moment, unable to see where her answer would
lead her, or, indeed, what answer to give. In that perplexity she took
the simplest way out, and told the truth.
"Yes, I said that," she said. "But it was not true."
"Then, again, I ask you why?" said he.
She felt that she must break if he went on, and made one more appeal.
"Ah, I beg of you not to question me," she cried. "You talk of justice
too--is it fair on me that you use the accident of finding me alone here
in this way? I can't go away, you know that, there is no one here to
protect me. But if you by a single other question take advantage of it,
I shall leave the house, just as I am, in this deluge, and walk back to
the hotel. I must remind you that I am an unprotected girl, and you, I
must remind you, are a gentleman."
She rose with flashing eyes; it had taxed all her bravery to get this
out, but it had come out triumphant.
But the moment had come; all the force that had been gathering up was
unable to contain itself in him any longer. One terrific second of calm
preceded the explosion, and, as if Nature was following the lines of
this human drama, for that second the downpour of the blinding rain
outside was stayed. Inside and out there was a moment's silence.
"I know all that," he said quietly, "but I can't help myself. It is not
for the picture--that doesn't matter. It is for me. Because I love you."
Madge threw her arms wide, then brought them together in front of her as
if keeping him off, and a sort of cry of triumph that had begun to burst
from her lips ended in a long moan. Then the room for a moment was so
suddenly illuminated by some hellish glare that the candle burned dim,
and simultaneously a crack of thunder so appalling shattered the
stillness that both leaped apart.
"Oh, something is struck!" she cried. "It was as if it was in the very
room: Is it me? Is it you? Oh, I am frightened!"
But Evelyn hardly seemed to notice it.
"That is why--because I love you," he said again.
For the moment Madge could neither speak nor move. That sudden double
shock, the utter surprise of it all, and, deep down in her heart, the
tumult of joy, stunned her. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him.
"You must go away at once, or I," she said. "We can't sit in the same
room."
"But you don't hate me, you don't hate me for what I have said?" cried
he.
"Hate you?" she said. "No, no, I"--and a sob for the moment choked
her--"no, you must not think I hate you."
Just then the sound of a footfall outside and a voice in the hall struck
in upon them, and Madge's name was called. In another moment the door
opened and Lady Ellington entered, followed by Merivale.
"Ah, there you are, Madge!" she said. "Has it not been appalling? A tree
was struck close to---- Mr. Dundas?" she said, breaking off.
Evelyn came a step forward. By a difficult, but on the whole a merciful
arrangement, whatever private crisis we pass through, it is essential
that the ordinary forms of life be observed. The solid wood may be rent
and shattered, but the veneer must remain intact. This is merciful
because our thoughts are necessarily occupied in this way with trivial
things, whereas if they were suffered to dwell entirely within, no brain
could stand the strain.
"Yes, I got here just before the storm began," he said, "and Miss
Ellington and I have been keeping each other company. We both hate
thunder."
Madge, too, played at trivialities.
"Ah, mother, you are drenched, soaking!" she cried. "What will you do?"
"I really urge you not to wait," said Merivale. "Let me show you a room;
get your things off and wrap up in blankets till your maid can come
from Brockenhurst with some clothes. I will send a boy in with a note at
once."
Madge went upstairs with her mother to assist her, and Merivale came
down again to rejoin Evelyn.
"I've only just seen your telegram," he said, "but I'm delighted you
have come. That's a brave woman, that Lady Ellington. A tree was struck
only a few yards from us, and she merely remarked that it was a great
waste of electricity. But I'm glad it was wasted on the tree and not
me."
He scribbled a few lines and addressed them to Lady Ellington's maid,
and went off to get somebody to take the note into Brockenhurst. Then he
came back to Evelyn.
The latter had not gone back to the room where he and Madge had sat
during the storm, but was out on the verandah. Just opposite, on the
other side of the river, was the tree that had been struck, not a
hundred yards distant. One branch, as if in a burst of infernal anger on
the part of the lightning, had been torn off, as a spider tears off the
wing of a fly, and down the center of the trunk from top to bottom was
scored a white mark, where the wood showed through the torn bark. But
the tree stood still, no uprooting had taken place; but even now, in
this windless calm, its leaves were falling--green, vigorous leaves,
that seemed to know that the trunk and the sap that sustained them were
dead. They fell in showers, a continuous rain of leaves, until the
ground beneath was thick with them. All the pride of the beech's summer
glory was done; in an hour or two the tree would be as leafless as when
the gales of December whistled through it. What mysterious telegraphy of
this murderous disaster had passed through the huge trunk, that had sent
the message to the uttermost foliage like this; some message which each
leaf knew to be terribly true, so that it did not wait for the
dismantlement of the autumn, but even now, in full vigour of green
growth, just fell and died? Somehow that seemed to Evelyn very awful and
very inevitable; the citadel had fallen, struck by a bolt from above,
and in the uttermost outworks the denizens laid down their arms.
Something, too, of the sort had happened to himself in the last hour; he
had told Madge the secret of his life, that which made every artery fill
and throb with swift electrical pulsation of rapturous blood, and it had
all passed into nothingness. She had said she did not hate him; that
was all. His recollection, indeed, of what had happened after he had
told her was still rather dim and hazy; there had been a terrific clap
of thunder, she had said she did not hate him; then her mother and
Merivale came in.
Then, as the falling leaves from the tree might be gathered and put in a
heap, at any rate, the shattered fragments of the afternoon began to
piece themselves together again. She had confessed that she had said he
bored her, she had confessed also that that was not true. What did that
mean? She had said she did not hate him. What did that mean? And was her
utter disorderment of mind, that hopeless, appealing agitation which had
been so present in her manner throughout, merely the result of the
thunderous air? Or was there something else that agitated her, his
presence, the knowledge that she had behaved inexplicably? And--was it
possible that the tree should live again after that rending furrow had
been scored on it?
Merivale soon returned, still smilingly unruffled, and still in soaking
clothes. But he seemed to be unconscious of them, and sat down in the
verandah by Evelyn. Since that terrific clap there had been no return of
the thunder, but the rain was beginning to fall again, slow, steady, and
sullen from the low and dripping sky. He saw at once that something had
happened to Evelyn; he was trembling like some startled animal. But
since he held that to force or even suggest a confidence was a form of
highway robbery, he forbore from any questioning.
"So you were with Miss Ellington during the storm," he said. "How I love
that superb violence of elements! It is such a relief to know that there
are still forces in the world which are quite untamable, and that by no
possibility can Lady Ellington divert the lightning into accumulators,
which will light our houses."
Evelyn turned on him a perfectly vacant face; he seemed not to have
heard even.
"What did Lady Ellington do?" he asked.
"She attended when I talked to her," said the Hermit, with pardonable
severity.
Evelyn pulled himself together.
"Look here, something's happened," he said briefly. "It's--I've told her
that I love her. And that's all; it's a rope dangling in the air,
nothing more happened. She just said I had better go to another room.
She made no direct answer at all; she wasn't even shocked."
Then the tiny details began to be gathered in his mind, as if a man
swept the fallen leaves from the stricken tree into a heap.
"She gave a sort of cry," he said, "but at the end it was a moan. She
threw her arms wide, and then held them to keep me off. What does it
mean? What does it all mean?"
He got up quickly and began walking up and down the verandah.
"Where is she?" he said. "I must see her again. I must say what I said
again, and tell her she must answer me."
The Hermit, for all his inhuman life, had some glimmerings of sense.
"You must do nothing of the sort," he said. "You don't seem to realise
what you have done already. Why, she is engaged to Philip, to your
friend, and you have told her you love her. Good gracious, is not that
enough to make her moan?"
"I told you I should a week ago," said Evelyn.
"Yes, but you told me that conditionally. You said you would do so when
you saw she loved you. Instead---- Good heavens! Evelyn, you must be
unaware of what you have done. You were left with the girl during a
thunderstorm, a thing that excites you and terrifies her, and you took
advantage of your excitement and her terror to say this. It's ugly; it's
beastly. But I can say it isn't like you."
Evelyn showed no sign of resenting this. As far as the mere criticism of
what he had done was concerned, he appeared merely to feel a
speculator's interest in how it all struck another spectator. Even Lady
Ellington's hard, polished mind could not have presented a surface more
impervious to scratches.
"You speak as if I did it all intentionally," he remarked. "But I never
intended anything less. It had nothing to do with what I could control.
I had no more power over it than I had over the thunderstorm. After all,
you don't blame your thrush for eating worms. If one acts instinctively,
nobody has any right to blame me. Besides, I don't want your moral
judgment. I just want to know what it means. You have called me a Pagan
before now, and I did not deny it. But there I am. I don't happen to
like the colour of your hair, but I accept it. It seems to me buttery,
if you want to know. And I seem to you Pagan, without conscience, you
think I have acted uglily. Very well."
Merivale hesitated a moment; he had no desire to say hard things because
they were hard. On the other hand, he felt that the game must be played,
rules had to be observed, or human life broke up in confusion, as if the
fielders in a game of cricket would not run after the ball or the bowler
bowl. He himself did not go in for cricket, he deliberately stood aside,
but the rules were binding on those who played. Yet it was no use trying
to convince a person who fundamentally disagreed.
"Well, you asked me," he said, "and I have given you my opinion. That's
all. Nobody's opinion is binding on anyone else. But I do ask you to
think it over."
Evelyn gave a little click of impatience.
"Think it over!" he said. "What else do you suppose I should be thinking
about, or what else have I thought about for days?"
Merivale shook his head.
"Try to get outside yourself, I mean, and look at what you have done
from any other standpoint than your own. You say you couldn't help
telling her. Well, there are certain things one has got to help,
else----"
He stopped; it was no use talking. But Evelyn wanted to hear.
"Else?" he suggested.
"Else you had better not mix with other people at all," said Merivale.
"You have better reason for turning hermit than I. You have told a girl
who is engaged to your friend that you love her. Think over that!"
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