Madge lunched alone next day, a thing that seldom happened to her and a
thing that was always in a childish way rather a "treat." For in order
to counteract the natural tendency of mankind to gobble over the
solitary meal, or else to eat nothing at all, it was her custom to bring
some book down with her, prop it up against the mustard-pot, and intend,
anyhow, to read slowly and to eat slowly. These sensible results seldom
happened, since, as a matter of fact, the result was that she read two
pages of her book, and then took a dozen rapid mouthfuls. And to-day not
even that result was attained, for she read nothing, not even opening
the book she had brought down with her, and ate hardly more. For in
spite of all that lay before her, the rupture with Philip, his
inevitable pain and sorrow, his natural and justified indignation and
contempt of her, all of which were scarcely faceable if she faced them
only, in spite, too, of all that her mother would feel and no doubt say,
in spite of the fear she felt in the face of that, in spite of all that
the world in general would say, she was too happy to read, and too happy
to eat. For the birthday of her life, she knew, had come: this
afternoon, in an hour or two, she would be face to face with the man who
loved her, the man she loved, and in front of that tremendous fact, the
fact that swallowed up the rest of the world in a gulp, nothing else
could really count for anything. Everything else was like minute type of
some kind, while in the middle was just the one sentence, in huge,
glowing capitals.
Everything had fallen out so conveniently, too: Lady Ellington had told
her at breakfast that she was going to be out for lunch, and engaged
after lunch, and she did not inquire into Madge's plans at all. She had
received no reply to her note to Evelyn, and the very fact that there
was none seemed to bring her into more intimate relations with him. Then
after lunch she had to change to her white evening dress, over which
she put a long dark cloak, her maid arranged her hair, for it was best
to go complete, and she took with her, in case of need, the scarlet
opera cloak. And all this preparation was so much joy to her, she felt
in her very bones that it was while he was looking at her dressed thus
that he first knew he loved her, and thus dressed she would come back to
him to-day. Above all, the long riddle of these days was solved now;
here was the answer, she was the answer.
Yet though all her heart leaped forward, it did not accelerate her
actual movements; the four-wheeler also was rather slow, and it was some
ten minutes after three when she arrived at the door of the studio in
the King's Road. Just beyond it was drawn up a motor-car, beside which
stood a footman. As she stepped out of her cab, he went to the door of
the motor and opened it. And within a yard or two of her stood her
mother.
Instantly all the passion and love in Madge's heart was transformed into
mere resolve, for she knew that a struggle, the matching of her will
against her mother's lay in front of her. But all the strength of her
love was there; it lost nothing of that. Lady Ellington had crossed the
pavement more quickly than she, and stood in front of the door.
"Where are you going to, Madge?" she asked.
Madge turned not to her but to the footman, holding out a florin.
"Pay my cab, please," she said.
Then she turned to her mother.
"I have made an appointment to sit to Mr. Dundas this afternoon," she
said. "It is absurd for you to tell me that you didn't know that. But I
ask you how you knew?"
"Philip told me," said Lady Ellington.
"Philip!" cried Madge. Then she controlled that sudden ebullition, for
every fibre within her knew that her incredulity, which only
half-believed this, had done him wrong.
So, calming herself, she spoke again.
"I don't believe that," she said.
That was the declaration of war; quiet, tranquil, but final. The point
between the two was vital, it reached downwards into the depths of
individuality where compromise cannot live, being unable to breathe in
so compressed an atmosphere. And Lady Ellington knew that as well as
Madge; there was war. She and her daughter stood in unreconcileable
camps, diplomacy was dumb, the clash of arms could alone break the
silence. She pointed to the motor-car, for the modernity of setting was
inevitable, even though primeval passions were pitted against each
other.
"It does not make the slightest difference whether you believe it or
not," she said quietly. "Get into the motor, as you have sent your cab
away."
Madge seemed hardly to hear this.
"Philip never told you," she repeated, "because he promised me he would
not."
Lady Ellington judged that it would be mere waste of energy or
ammunition to contest this, for it was now immaterial to her campaign.
She realised also that she needed all the energy and ammunition that she
possessed to enable her to carry out her main movement. She knew, too,
that Madge had long been accustomed to obey her mere voice; the instinct
of obedience to that was deeply rooted. But how wholly it was uprooted
now she did not yet guess.
"Get into the motor, Madge," she said. "Are we to wait all day here?"
Then Madge came a step nearer.
"Yes, that used to frighten me," she said, "but now it does not. And
Philip never told you what you said he did. Who was it, then? Nobody
else knew."
Again she took one more step closer.
"Mother, have you been tampering with my letters?" she asked. "For how
could you have known otherwise? It is ridiculous to say that Philip told
you. What else have you done, I wonder? Now, stand away, please, and let
me ring the bell. Or do you propose that you and I, you and I, should
fight like fishwives on the pavement?"
The old instinctive right of fighting for one's own, obscured by
centuries of what is called civilisation, obscured, too, in Madge's own
instance by years of obedience, broke out here. She was herself, and
nobody else was she. It did not matter one penny-worth who stood between
her and the bell; if all the apostles and prophets had stood there she
would have fought them all. And Lady Ellington knew that this particular
engagement was lost; the bell would be rung. But her plan was not
defeated yet, so far as she knew. What she did not know was that mere
scheming, mere brain-wrought work on her part, had no chance at all
against its adversary. No clever person can understand that until it is
enacted under his eyes, and the cleverer he is, the less he will
conceive it possible that his spider-weavings can fail to hold their
fly. But when passion comes along, it is a bumble-bee that blunders
through them all, without knowing that there has been any opposition.
"I certainly do not resemble a fishwife," she said, "nor have I any
intention of acting as one. There is the bell--ring it."
Madge looked at her for a moment in wide-eyed astonishment, feeling sure
that by some trick--anyhow, something underhand--her mother had got her
knowledge.
"And for my mother to do that!" she said.
Lady Ellington may or may not have felt the depth of the well from which
this sprang. In any case it was beside her purpose to waste a volley on
what was merely rhetorical. And the faint tinkle of the electric bell
was the only response.
A maid-servant opened the door.
"Miss Ellington," said Madge, and passed in. But the door was not so
open to the other.
"Mr. Dundas said he was at home only to Miss Ellington, ma'am," said
she.
"Then kindly tell Mr. Dundas that Lady Ellington has come with her,"
said she.
The fight was in grim earnest now. Both Madge and her mother were
disposed to fight every yard of ground. But the former had some remnant
of duty, of compassion left. Horrible to her as had been the scene on
the doorstep, convincing as it had been to her of some breach of faith,
of honour, on her mother's part, she did not want to expose that.
"Ah! is it wise of you?" she said. "Had you not better go home? You can
do no good, mother."
"We will go upstairs," said Lady Ellington.
The studio was at the top of the house, and two landings had to be
passed and three staircases surmounted before it was reached. On the
second of these Madge had fallen back behind her mother, throwing the
dark cloak which she wore on to a chair. The scarlet opera cloak she had
on her arm. The maid had preceded them both, and threw the door of the
studio open without announcement of names. Lady Ellington entered
first, a moment afterwards came Madge, dressed as for the portrait, with
the cloak over her arm.
Now Evelyn had been through an emotional crisis not less vital than that
of Madge. Indeed, the changes that had passed for him since he had
received her note were wider than was anything that had come to her. She
had passed only from the uncertainty as to the manner in which he and
she would come face to face again; while he had passed from the
certainty that all was over to the certainty that all was yet to come.
Yet when the door opened and Lady Ellington appeared, he felt as if
death on the white horse was there. But a moment afterwards, before he
had even time to greet her, came life with the eyes he loved and the
face and form that he loved. And he stood there silent a moment, looking
from one to the other.
"I learned that my daughter was going to sit to you again, Mr. Dundas,"
said Lady Ellington, "and I came with her, met her here rather, in order
to forbid it. After what you said to her on that day down in the New
Forest, it is not conceivable that she should sit to you again. You must
have known that. Yet you allowed her to come here, alone, for all you
knew. I only ask you if you think that is the act of a gentleman?"
Evelyn flushed.
"When Miss Ellington proposed it, how could I refuse?" he said quickly.
"She had decided to trust me, and from the bottom of my heart I thanked
her for it, and I should not have been unworthy of her trust. Ever since
you wrote to me from Brockenhurst----"
Madge turned to him.
"My mother wrote to you from Brockenhurst?" she asked.
"Yes; surely you knew--you must have known!" he said.
"I had not the smallest idea of it till this minute. What did she say?"
Lady Ellington lost her head a little.
"The letter I wrote you was private," she said; "it was meant only for
your eye."
"It concerns me," said Madge, tapping the table with a nervous,
unconscious gesture. "I must know."
Evelyn and she looked at each other, and it was as if each caught some
light from the other's eyes.
"Yes, that is true," said he. "Lady Ellington forbade me to write or
attempt an interview with you, and I gathered that you acquiesced in
this. I gathered, as was natural, that you were deeply offended----"
He stopped, for the light that shone in Madge's face was that which was
never yet on sea or land, but only on the face of a woman. And Lady
Ellington's presence at that moment was to them less than the fly that
buzzed in the window-pane, or the swallows that swooped and circled
outside in this world of blue and summer. The secret that was breaking
out was to them a barrier impenetrable, that cut off the whole world, a
ring of fire through which none might pass. Dimly came the sounds of the
outer world to them there that which his eyes were learning, that which
her eyes were teaching, absorbed them almost to the exclusion of
everything else. Lady Ellington, perhaps, had some inkling of that; but
she did not yet know how utterly she had lost, and she manned, so to
speak, her second line of defence. The first had been lost; she was
quick enough to see that at once.
"So since Madge was going to give you this sitting," she said, "it was
only reasonable that I should accompany her, to prevent--to prevent,"
she repeated, with biting emphasis, "a recurrence of what happened when
you, Mr. Dundas, last found yourself alone with my daughter."
Then Madge lifted her head a little and smiled, but she still looked at
Evelyn.
"Ask how she knew," she said, "that I was going to sit to you. No, it
does not matter. I am ready, Mr. Dundas, if you are."
She turned and mounted the platform where she had stood before.
"The cloak, shall I put that on?" she asked. "It is by you there."
Lady Ellington was at length beginning to feel and realise the sense of
her own powerlessness; they did not either of them seem to attend to her
remarks, which she still felt were extremely to the point.
"You have not done me the favour to answer me, Mr. Dundas," she said.
Evelyn was already moving the easel into position, and he just raised
his eyebrows as if some preposterous riddle had been asked him.
"No, I have no answer," he said. "It all seems to me very just. You came
here to prevent a repetition of--of what occurred when I was last alone
with Miss Ellington. Was not that it?"
Then suddenly Madge laughed; her head a little back, her eyes
half-closed, and Evelyn, looking at her, gave a great triumphant
explosion of sound.
"That is it--that is what I have been trying for!" he cried. "I never
quite got it. But now I can."
He had been painting before they came in, and he picked up the palette
and dashed to the canvas.
"Hold that if you can for half a minute!" he cried. "I don't ask for
more. Look at me; your eyes have to be on me. Ah, it is a miracle!"
He looked once and painted; he looked and painted again. Then for the
third time he looked, and looked long, but he painted no more.
"I have done it," he said.
There was a long pause; he put his palette down again, and looked at
Madge, as she stood there.
"Thank you," he said. "That will do."
Then Lady Ellington spoke.
"It was hardly worth my daughter's while to come here for half a
minute," she remarked, "or mine either."
Evelyn turned to her; he was conscious of even a sort of pity for her.
"It was not worth your while," he said, "because your presence here
makes no difference. When I said your daughter might have trusted me and
come here alone, I did not know what I know now. I love her. Madge, do
you hear?"
She gave one long sigh, and the scarlet cloak fell to the ground. But
she did not move.
"Oh! Evelyn," she said.
Lady Ellington rustled in her chair, as she might have rustled at a
situation in a play that interested her. She knew what had happened, but
she had not yet fully realised it. But her cool, quick brain very soon
grasped it all, and began forging ahead again. There were a hundred
obstacles she could yet throw in the way of this calm, advancing force.
"And which of you proposes to tell Philip?" she said.
The effect of this was admirable from her point of view. It brought
both of the others back to earth again. Evelyn winced as if he had been
struck, and Madge came quickly off the platform.
"Philip?" she cried. "Ah, what have we done? What have we said? Philip
must never know. We must never tell him. Ah, but next week!"
The one thought that for this last ten minutes had possessed her, had
possessed her to the exclusion of everything else. There had been no
Philip, no world, no anything except the one inevitable fact. But Lady
Ellington's well-timed and perfectly justifiable observation made
everything else, all the sorrows and the bitternesses that must come,
reel into sight again. But she turned not to her mother, but to Evelyn.
"Oh, poor Philip!" she cried. "He has always been so good, so content.
And Mrs. Home---- Evelyn, what is to be done?"
She laid her hand in appeal on his shoulder; he took it and kissed it.
"Leave it all to me," he said. "I will see that he knows."
"And you will tell him I am sorry?" she said. "You will make him
understand how sorry I am, but that I could not help it?"
"Ah, my darling!" he cried, and kissed her.
* * * * *
Now, Lady Ellington had seldom in all her busy and fully-occupied life
felt helpless, but she felt helpless now, and two young folk, without a
plan in their heads while she was bursting with excellent plans, had
brought this paralysis on her. She also had very seldom felt angry, but
now it would not be too much to say that she felt furious, and her sense
of impotence added to her fury. She got out of her chair and took Madge
by the shoulder.
"You ought to be whipped, Madge!" she cried.
The girl held out her hand to her.
"Ah, poor mother!" she said. "I had forgotten about you, because I was
so happy myself. I am sorry for you, too. It is awful! But what am I to
do?"
"You are to come home with me now," she said.
But Madge no longer looked to her for her orders. It was for this cause,
after all, that a woman also should leave her father and mother, and
her allegiance was already elsewhere.
"No; you had better wait a little," said Evelyn, as her glance appealed
to him. "There are things we must talk about at once, things that you
and I must settle."
Madge took this; this came from the authentic source.
"I am not coming home yet," she said to her mother.
Then Lady Ellington used unnecessary violence; the door banged behind
her. But again her quick, cool brain was right in deciding not to stop,
to wrangle, to expostulate, though a woman more stupid than she might
have done so. Had she been less wise, she would have made a scene, have
talked about the Fifth Commandment, have practically forced Madge, as
she could no doubt have done, to come with her. But she was clever
enough to see that there was no use in that. The fat was in the fire, so
why pretend it was not? She could no doubt delay the actual frizzling
for an hour or a day, but where was the use? If anything could still be
done, the scene of the operations was not here. But she did not believe
that it was all up yet, though here a stupider woman might, perhaps,
have arrived at more correct conclusions. She still clung to her
plotting, her planning, as if plans ever made even steerage-way against
passion. And even for this forlorn hope she had to think, and think
hard, whereas, those she had left behind her in the studio did not have
to think at all. But her destination, anyhow, was clear enough; she had
to go to see Philip. What exactly she should say to him was another
question; that had to be thought out while the motor pursued its
noiseless, shifting way through the traffic, steering, as a fish steers
upstream, avoiding obstacles by a mere turn of the fin, imperceptible to
the eye as was the movement of the steerage-wheel.
But as she went, she thought heavily. Her whole plans up till now had
broken down completely. A very short survey of the last hour or two was
sufficient to convince her of that, and, once convinced, it was contrary
to her whole nature to waste a further ounce of thought on them. The
flaws there had been in them she momentarily deplored; they might
obviously have been better, else they would not have failed, but to
deposit even a regret over them was mere misuse of time. They were
discarded, as an old fashion is discarded, and the dressmaker who
attempts to revive it is a fool. Lady Ellington certainly was not that,
and as the motor hummed eastwards towards the City she cast no thought
backwards, since this was throwing good brain-power after bad, but
forwards. In half an hour she would be with Philip; what was to be her
line? But, puzzle as she might, she could find no line that led
anywhere, for at the end of each, ready to meet her on the platform, so
to speak, stood Evelyn and Madge together.
Lady Ellington was going through quite a series of new sensations this
afternoon, and here was one she had scarcely ever felt before--for in
addition to her impotence and her anger, she was feeling flurried and
frightened. She could not yet quite believe that this crash was
inevitable, but it certainly threatened, and threatened in a toppling,
imminent manner. And thus all her thinking powers were reduced to mere
miserable apprehension.
She had guessed rightly that Philip would still be in the City, and
drove straight to his office. He was engaged at the moment, but sent out
word that he would see her as soon as he possibly could. Meantime, she
was shown into a room for the reception of clients, and left alone
there. In the agitation which was gaining on her she had a morbid
sensitiveness to tiny impressions, and the trivial details of the room
forced themselves in on her. It was a gloomy sort of little well set in
the middle of the big room, with its rows of clerks on high stools with
busy pens. The morning's paper lay on the table. There was an empty
inkstand there also, and a carafe of water with a glass by it. A
weighing machine, with no particular reason to justify its existence,
stood in one corner; against the wall was an empty book-case. The Turkey
carpet was old and faded, and four or five mahogany chairs stood against
the wall. Then, after ten minutes of solitary confinement here, the door
opened and Philip came in, looking rather grave as was his wont, but
strong and self-reliant--the sort of man whom anyone would be glad to
have on his side in any emergency or difficulty. One glance at her was
sufficient to tell him that something had happened, no little thing, but
something serious; and though he had intended to propose that they
should go to his room, he shut the door quickly behind him.
"What is it?" he said. "What has happened? Is it--is it anything about
Madge?"
"Oh! Philip, it is too dreadful," she began.
Philip drummed on the table with his fingers.
"Just tell me straight, please," he said, quite quietly. "Is she dead?"
Lady Ellington got up and leaned her elbow on the chimney-piece, turning
away from him.
"I have just come from Mr. Dundas's studio," she said. "Ah, don't
interrupt me," she added, as Philip made a sudden involuntary
exclamation--"let me get through with it. I left Madge with him. They
have declared their love for each other."
For a moment or two he did not seem to understand what she said, for he
frowned as if puzzled, as if she had spoken to him in some tongue he did
not know.
"I beg your pardon?" he asked.
Lady Ellington's own most acute feelings of rage, indignation,
disappointment, were for the moment altogether subordinated by her pity
for this strong man, who had suddenly been dealt this shattering,
paralysing blow. If he had raged and stormed, if he had cursed Madge and
threatened to shoot Evelyn, she would have felt less sorry for him. But
the quietness with which he received it was more pathetic, all strength
had gone from him.
"What do you recommend me to do?" he asked, after a pause.
"Ah, that is what I have been trying to puzzle out all the way here,"
she said. "Surely you can do something? There must be something to be
done. You're not going to sit down under this? Don't tell me that! Go to
the studio, anyhow--my motor is outside--storm, rage, threaten. Take her
away. Tell him to her face what sort of a thing he has done!"
Philip still exhibited the same terrible quietness, unnatural, so Lady
Ellington felt it, though she was not mistaken enough to put it down to
want of feeling. The feeling, on the other hand, she knew was like some
close-fitting, metal frame; it was the very strength and stricture of it
that prevented his moving. Then he spoke again.
"And what has he done?" he asked. "He has fallen in love with her. I'm
sure I don't wonder. And what has she done? She has fallen in love with
him. And I don't wonder at that either."
Now the minutes were passing, and if there was the slightest chance of
saving the situation, it had to be taken now. In a few hours even it
might easily be too late.
"Just go there," she said. "I know well how this thing has shattered
you, so that you can hardly feel it yet; but perhaps the sight of them
together may rouse you. Perhaps the sight of you may stir in Madge some
sense of her monstrous behaviour. I would sooner she had died on her
very wedding-day than that she should have done this. It is indecent. It
is, perhaps, too, only a passing fancy, she----"
But here she stopped, for she could not say to him the rest of her
thought, which was the expression of the hope that Madge might return to
her quiet, genuine liking for Philip. But she need scarcely have been
afraid, for in his mind now, almost with the vividness of a
hallucination, was that scene on the terrace of the house at Pangbourne,
when she had promised him esteem, affection and respect, all, in fact,
that she knew were hers to give. But now she had more to give, only she
did not give it to him.
"I am bound to do anything you think can be of use," he said, "and,
therefore, if you think it can be of use that I should go there, I will
go. I do not myself see of what use it can be."
"It may," said Lady Ellington. "There is a chance, what, I can't tell
you. But there is certainly no chance any other way."
Then his brain and his heart began to stir and move again a little, the
constriction of the paralysis was passing off.
"But if she only takes me out of pity," he said, "I will not take her on
those terms. She shall not be my wife if she knows what love is and
knows it for another."
Then the true Lady Ellington, the one who had been a little obscured for
the last ten minutes by her pity for Philip, came to the light again.
"Ah, take her on any terms," she cried. "It will be all right. She will
love you. I am a woman, and I know what women are. No woman has ever yet
made the absolute ideal marriage unless she was a fool. Women marry more
or less happily; if Madge marries you, she will marry extremely happily.
Take my word for that. Now go."
Through the City the tides of traffic were at their height; all down the
Strand also there was no break or calm in the surge of vehicles, and the
progress of the motor was slow and constantly interrupted. Sometimes for
some fifty or a hundred yards there would be clear running, and his
thoughts on the possibilities which might exist would shoot ahead also.
Then came a slow down, a check, a stop, and he would tell himself that
he might spare his pains in going at all. True, before now it had more
than once occurred to him as conceivable that Evelyn was falling in love
with Madge, but on every occasion when this happened he had whistled the
thought home again, telling himself that he had no business to send it
out on this sort of errand. That, however, was absolutely all the
preparation he had had for this news, and he had to let it soak in, for
at first it stood like a puddle after a heavy storm on the surface of
his mind. This was an affair of many minutes, but as it went on he began
to realise himself the utter hopelessness of this visit which Lady
Ellington had recommended. They might both of them, it was possible,
when they saw him, recoil from the bitter wrong they were doing, the one
to his friend, the other to her accepted lover; but how could that
recoil remain permanent, how could their natural human shrinking from
this cruelty possibly breed the rejection of each by the other? However
much he himself might suffer, though their pity for him was almost
infinite, though they might even, to go to the furthest possible point,
settle to part,--yet that voluntary separation, if both agreed to it,
would but make each the more noble, the more admirable, to the other. Or
Madge again alone, in spite of Evelyn, might say she could not go back
on her already plighted troth, and express her willingness to marry him.
She might go even further, she might say, and indeed feel, that it was
only by keeping her word to him that she could free her own self, her
own moral nature, from the sin and stain in which she had steeped it.
Loyalty, affection, esteem would certainly all draw her to this, but it
was impossible that in her eyes, as they looked their last on Evelyn,
there should not be regret and longing and desire. Whether he ever saw
it there himself or not, Philip must know it had been there, and that at
the least the memory of it must always be there.
How little had he foreseen this or anything remotely resembling it on
that moonlight night. She promised to give him then all that she was,
all that she knew of in herself, and it was with a thrill of love,
exquisite and secret, that he had promised himself to teach her what she
did not know. It should be he who would wake in her passion and the fire
and the flower of her womanhood, and even as he had already given
himself and all he was to her, so she, as the fire awoke, should find
that precious gift of herself to him daily grow in worth and wonder. It
was that, that last and final gift that she had promised now, but not to
him. And with that given elsewhere, he felt he would not, or rather
could not, take her, even if it was to deliver her soul from hell
itself.
Then (and in justice to him it must be said that this lasted only for a
little time), what other people would say weighed on him, and what they
would say with regard to his conduct now. And for the same minute's pace
he almost envied those myriad many to whom nothing happens, who know
nothing of the extremes of joy, such as he had felt, or the extremes of
utter abandonment and despair, such as were his now. Assuredly, in the
world's view, it was now in his power to do something to right himself,
to make himself appear, anyhow, what is called a man of spirit; he could
curse her, he could strike him; he could make some explosion or threaten
it, which would be hard for either of the two others to face. Madge had
sat to Evelyn alone, she had often done that, Evelyn was a friend of
his; and here he could blast him, he could make him appear such that the
world in general would surely decline the pleasure of his acquaintance.
Madge again, if he was minded on vengeance, how execrable, how rightly
execrable, he could make her conduct appear. There was no end to the
damage, reckoning damage by the opinion of the world, that he could do
to both of them. All this he could easily do; the bakemeats for the
marriage-table were, so to speak, already hot--they could so naturally
furnish the funeral-feast, as far as the world was concerned, of either
Evelyn or Madge. The whole thing was indecent.
Step by step, punctuated to the innumerable halts of the motor-car, the
idea gained on him. Between them there had been made an attempt to wreck
him; wreck he was, yet his wreck might be the derelict in the ocean on
which their own pleasure-bark would founder. At that moment the desire
for vengeance struck him with hot, fiery buffet, but, as it were,
concealed its face the while, so that he should not recognise it was the
lust for vengeance that had thus scorched him, and, indeed, it appeared
to him that he only demanded justice, the barest, simplest justice, such
as a criminal never demands in vain. It was no more than right that
Evelyn should reap the natural, inevitable harvest of what he had done,
and since Madge had joined herself to him, it must be to her home also
that he should bring back the bitter sheaves. Indeed, should Philip
himself have mercy, should he at any rate keep his hand from any deed
and his tongue from any word that could hurt them, yet that would not
prevent the consequences reaching them, for the world assuredly would
not treat them tenderly, and would only label him spiritless for so
doing. For the world, to tell the truth, is not, in spite of its twenty
centuries of Christianity, altogether kind yet, and when buffeted on one
cheek does not as a rule turn the other. More especially is this so when
one of its social safeguards is threatened; it does not immediately
surrender and invite the enemy to enter the next fort. And the
jilt--which Madge assuredly was, though perhaps to jilt him was akin to
a finer morality than to go through with her arranged marriage--is an
enemy of Society. Male or female, the jilt, like the person who cheats
at cards, will not do; to such people it is impossible to be kind, for
they have transgressed one of Society's precious little maxims, that you
really must not do these things, because they lead to so much worry and
discomfort. Wedding-presents have to be sent back, arrangements
innumerable have to be countermanded, subjects have to be avoided in the
presence of the injured parties.
It was the unworthier Philip, as he drove to Chelsea, who let these
thoughts find harbourage in his mind. But somewhere deep down in his
inner consciousness, he knew that there was something finer to be done,
something that the world would deride and laugh at, if he did it. How
much better he knew to disregard that, and to be big; to go there, to
say that his own engagement to Madge was based on a mistake, a
misconception, to accept what had happened, to tell them, as some inner
and nobler fibre of his soul told him, that his own personal sorrow
weighed nothing as compared with the more essential justice of two who
loved each other being absolutely free, however much external
circumstances retarded, to marry. He was capable even in this early
smart of conceiving that; was he capable of acting up to it?
He was but twenty doors from the studio in King's Road when the finer
way became definite in his mind, and he called to the chauffeur to stop,
for he literally did not know if he could do this. But he realised that
otherwise his visit would be better left unpaid; there was no good in
his going there, if he was to do anything else than this. Then he got
out of the car.
"You can go home," he said to the chauffeur.
The man touched his cap in acknowledgment of the tip that Philip gave
him, waited for a lull in the traffic, and turned. Philip was left alone
on the pavement, looking after the yellow-panelled carriage.
Then he turned round quickly; his mind was already made up; he would go
there, he would act as all that was truly best in him dictated. But as
he hesitated, looking back, two figures had come close to him from a
door near, hailing a hansom. When he turned they were close to him.
His eyes blazed suddenly with a hard, angry light; his mouth trembled,
the sight of them together roused in him the full sense of the injury he
had suffered.
"Ah, there you are!" he cried. "I curse you both; I pray that the misery
you have brought on me may return double-fold to you!"
Evelyn had drawn back a step, putting his arm out to shelter Madge, for
it seemed as if Philip would strike her. But the next moment he turned
on his heel again, and walked away from them.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]