The facilities that London offers as a hiding-place are proverbial. A
man in good position may disappear entirely from his friends and yet be
living for many years as a grocer's assistant half a mile away. But when
two acquaintances who belong to the same social class have no particular
reasons for lying hidden, they are bound sooner or later to meet. Now
Sylvester and Ella had not set eyes on each other since the eve of the
former's departure from Ayres-ford, when he had said things which
Ella firmly believed at the time had broken her heart. This was not
unnatural, seeing that he held rigidly aloof from the society in which
Ella moved. Neither did he frequent theatres nor operas nor picture
galleries, nor places of public resort. But he went this year to the
Ladies' Soirée of the Royal Society, first, because he had been unable
to attend the sterner masculine assembly of the former evening, and,
secondly, because he desired to meet two or three scientists of European
reputation who he knew would be there.
Lady Milmo, who went everywhere and was proud of taking everywhere
her beautiful niece, was at the soirée also with Ella. Their progress
through the rooms was slow, as they knew many people, and the crowd was
great. Suddenly Lady Milmo pulled Ella's arm.
“Dear me, if that isn't Sylvester Lanyon!”
Ella looked instinctively in the indicated direction, and as her
eyes fell upon him, her heart gave a great throb. He was in earnest
conversation with an elderly man who wore an order of some kind,
enforcing his argument, according to a familiar trick of his, with
the forefinger of one hand and the palm of the other. His brown,
intellectual face and well-knit figure marked him as a man of some
distinction. To Ella's dismay he appeared to her the one distinguished
personality in the room. His face had grown more worn than she
remembered it, and his hair greyer at the temples. She found herself
pitying him.
“Come,” said Lady Milmo, “I'm going to give him a good talking to.”
Before Ella could resist she had adroitly edged through the press and
arrived within his reach, Ella following mechanically.
“Oh, Dr. Lanyon, fancy meeting you here. Ella and I have jars and jars
of pickled rods for you. Why do you never come near us? Is it because we
're so aggravatingly healthy?” Sylvester murmured an apology. Indeed, he
had no reasons to offer. Lady Milmo was an old friend. He confessed his
rudeness.
“Madame,” said Sylvester's companion, with a low bow.
“Professor Steinthal! I didn't know you were in London. Forgive me.”
She turned to speak to him as Ella and Sylvester confronted each other.
Ella put out her hand.
“I hope you are well,” she said.
“Quite well; and you?”
“You ought to be able to judge.”
“You seem to be in good health,” he said. “What maladies may lurk
beneath the surface, I cannot tell.”
“I don't suppose you can,” she was tempted to say. She saw that he
understood, but he made no reply, and there was an awkward pause.
“I'm going to see Uncle Matthew in August,” she said at last.
“So I have heard. I'm going to Switzerland, so I shall not have the
pleasure of meeting you. Do you know many people here?”
The pointed banality of the question angered her.
“Will you never have a kind word to say to me?” she flashed out in a
quick undertone, then she turned and greeted the professor effusively.
Thus, whatever wild, uncontrollable hopes were newly born at the first
sight of him, they were frozen at once to death. She went home in a
furious rage of humiliation. He was a man of ice and steel, an automaton
equipped with an intellect, scarcely a man at all. She put an imperious
end to her doubts.
Roderick Usher called next day, and spoke as one inspired with lofty
ideals. Before her fascinated vision he seemed to place realities where
hitherto the void had yawned or shadows at the most had shimmered. Life
stretched infinitely in front of her, a lush garden, fertile with a
myriad beauties. Her expanding soul shone out of dewy eyes. All the
blindness, all the weakness, all the deluded nobility of her nature, lay
revealed, pathetically defenceless. It was Roderick's golden hour, when
he knew that he had her at his mercy.
He rose, flung out his arms in a passionate gesture.
“Come to me, Ella. Our destinies demand it.”
She too rose and faced him, her eyes shining like stars, and held out
her hands.
“Yes, I will come,” she said.
Roderick went into the warm June sunshine, thrilled with triumph,
holding his head high. He walked along heedless of direction, turned
into Hans Place and completed an entire circuit of the gardens before he
realised what he had done. He paused, to think of some destination. Then
he laughed aloud.
“Roderick, you must be in love,” he said to himself. A long struggle
with fortune had rendered it a rare occurrence for Roderick not to be
perfectly aware of what he was doing and of what he was about to do. But
the victory had come sooner than he had anticipated, and his immediate
scheme of life, was thrown into confusion. He turned to the right,
and once in Sloane Street, wandered north and found himself again
undetermined at the corner of the Brompton Road. The driver of a
crawling hansom touched his hat inquiringly. It was a brand-new, summer
season cab, with horse and driver well turned out, and it caught his
fancy. He stood upon the step, looked east, looked west, up and down
the surging thoroughfare. Then obeying a sudden impulse, he shouted
laughingly an address over the hood of the cab,--“24 Weymouth Street.”
He would go and present himself to an astonished Sylvester, acquaint him
with his good fortune, and perhaps learn certain things concerning which
delicacy had forbidden him to make too close inquiries. At any rate,
there was a certain attractive impudence in the adventure. He lit a
cigar and lay back on the soft cushions of the cab and regarded himself
complacently in the strip of mirror. He was wearing well, he thought,
as he caressed his Vandyke beard, and appeared by no means an unromantic
lover. The deepening crows' feet about his eyes gave him a momentary
uneasiness, but he parted his lips, and by way of compensation looked
admiringly at his white, even teeth. The conviction that there was
nothing about him that would be otherwise than physically attractive to
the most fastidious feminine sense brought him an assured content.
He gazed through the blue cigar-smoke up the long vista of clashing
traffic broadening out by Hyde Park Corner, where London at its gayest
displayed itself in the mellow afternoon sunlight. He waved his hand
towards it as if summoning its blithe spirit to hear him.
“Do you think I'm going to give you up?” he said, breaking into a laugh.
For London, to the man of the pavement, the theatres, the studios,
the newspaper offices, the clubs, the restaurants, means the elemental
medium of his being. The deep bosom of Mother Nature would suffocate
him. It is a picturesque thing to talk about, and it may be exploited
by an ingenious contriver to his considerable advantage, but it did
not satisfy the spiritual cravings of Roderick Usher. He had not the
remotest intention of committing himself to lifelong exile with the
Walden Art Colony, if his supple wit could devise other means of
profiting by the enterprise.
“But I nearly lost you!” he apostrophised London again, after a few
moments.
In a certain sense, he had been meditating flight, the summary
abandonment of his broken fortunes too far gone for satisfactory
repairing. For Roderick was a man who demanded more from society than
his talents enabled him to give in return. Not that he was, in the
general sense of the term, an adventurer. He had worked hard all his
life; but he had always just not succeeded in his undertakings. He had
written a play which an enthusiastic young manager had run at a loss for
fifty nights. A second play evoked a chorus of delight among the newer
school of critics, but had fizzled out after a week's unsatisfactory
existence. His succeeding plays went the round of rueful and
head-shaking managers. Professionally he was an artist. He painted
pictures, but prices were low. One immense and ambitious canvas hung at
the Royal Academy was to have brought him everlasting fame and fortune.
It was taken over by a firm of art publishers whose royalties on prints
after two years' waiting amounted to a few paltry pounds. Then for some
reason or the other the Academy refused to hang him. Hence his bitter
hatred of the Academy and all its works. He had written a couple of
novels which were universally belauded and nowhere bought. He was art
critic, dramatic critic, reviewer, short-story writer. This work and
the sale of such pictures as the dealers could be prevailed upon to
purchase, together with private orders for portraits, brought him a
maintenance. It would have been wealth to him who was content with beer,
comfort to him who drank modest claret, but it was penury to the man who
claimed at least 1889 champagne as a divine right. Roderick's career had
therefore been an interminable battle with society. He rode through it
a free lance, plundering it blandly whenever a chance offered. He had
scarcely ever during his life as a man been free from debt. But
his unflagging energy, his suppleness of humour, his buoyancy, his
versatility, by winning popular esteem had saved him many times from
social disaster. He played billiards too well; he played whist and poker
too well. He was too disinterested an adviser of young men in search of
ready money. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, he was welcomed at private
houses, but looked shyly upon in clubs. Yet no one had hinted a
dishonourable action. Twice or three times his father had groaningly
sent him a cheque to cover some of his more pressing debts; but in
justice to him, it must be said that in speaking of them to Matthew
Lanyon, the old man had exaggerated the extent of his culpability. Nor
had Roderick the slightest suspicion that any of Matthew Lanyon's money
had ever found its way into his own pocket.
Once again, however, he found himself more seriously involved than
ever, and his father pleaded empty coffers. There was a billbroking
transaction which might lead to unpleasantness. He had persuaded a
foolish young man to back bills to the amount of two or three thousand
pounds. In two or three months they could be renewed for a further
period. But after that would come the deluge. Exile might save him. But
where should he go? To the Colonies? He was too old. To Boulogne, to
lead a shifty life with compatriot wastrels? “Sooner Death,” said he.
But for some time past, as it happened, the scheme of the Walden Art
Colony had been idly occupying his disinterested attention. Suddenly his
astute mind perceived in the scheme his own social salvation. His energy
quickly brought it into practicable shape. His plausibility staved off
his creditors. His future position as salaried director of the Colony
would secure him an honourable retreat from an untenable position.
But now with the heiress of an ample fortune as his affianced bride, he
could laugh at fears and exultantly send the Colony to the devil. His
luck had turned at last. Now he would get to the heart of life. And Ella
was sweet, great-hearted, and beautiful. It was not only for her money
that he wanted her. Perish the miserable thought! He could conceive
a noble existence, all ideals. His thoughts touched the Empyrean. His
facile nature easily persuaded itself of lofty purpose, and for the
moment he was sincere. For Roderick was a man with wings to fly, but
chained to the earth with fetters of brass; and often his wings fanning
the air gave him the delusion of mounting heavenward.
The cab drew up at the dull and decorous door in Weymouth Street, at
half-past six. A decorous man-servant opened it and showed him into the
consulting-room, formally furnished with dark leather chairs and couch,
and a desk on which lay the stethoscope, tongue-depressor, and a few
other ordinary instruments of the physician. Some old prints hung round
the walls. The windows, glazed halfway, to insure privacy from the
street, gave an air of gloom to the not over cheerful apartment.
Roderick compared it with his own light and artistically furnished
chambers, and wondered at the dark soul of the man who could live amid
such depression.
He laughed his gayest laugh, however, when Sylvester came in.
“I'm about as incongruous and unexpected here as you were the other day
in the Park,” said he. “But you'll understand why I've come when I tell
you.”
“I'm very glad to see you,” said Sylvester, politely. “Won't you sit
down?”
He seated himself in the writing-chair and motioned his guest to
another.
“No, thanks, I'll walk about,” said Roderick. “If I sat there I'd feel
too much like a patient, and you'd be wanting to look at my tongue or
pommel my stomach. I've come, my boyhood's friend, to tell you some good
news, to demand your felicitations. I give you a thousand guesses.”
“Have you succeeded in floating your chartered Thelema Company?” asked
Sylvester, with a smile.
“Oh, damn the Colony! That is to say, comparatively damn the Colony.
You behold in me the happiest man on earth, engaged to the sweetest and
loveliest girl in the world. And the Colony's in it for something. So I
ought to have said 'thrice bless the Colony.'” Sylvester started in his
chair.
“You are not referring to Miss Defries?”
“I am so.”
“I must offer you my congratulations,” said Sylvester, recovering
composure. Then despising himself for a momentary pang, which he could
not explain to himself, he added: “I am sure she will make you an
excellent wife.”
“An excellent wife! Hear him, ye gods! As who should say, 'You will find
this a most serviceable umbrella!' She's the dewy dawn of all things
sweet to live for!”
“My habit of mind is more prosaic than yours,” laughed Sylvester. “But
I think I am none the less accurate. Is Miss Defries going also to
Thelema?”
“That is the present intention. But plans are but frail barks upon the
capricious sea of time.”
“I see,” said Sylvester. “Now I understand your condemnation of the
Colony.”
“No, no; I am sure you don't,” put in Roderick, hastily.
“Well, never mind,” said Sylvester. “Have you obtained my fathers
consent?”
“Mr. Lanyon's consent? What for?”
“The marriage.”
“But Ella is overage,--her own mistress.”
“Still, she must not marry without my father's consent, or she loses her
money.”
Roderick swept his hand in a magnificent gesture. “The money's neither
here nor there. But of course your father will consent.”
“He's the dearest old man God ever made,” said Sylvester, in his grave
way; “but he has queer crotchets now and then.”
“But this is the end of the nineteenth century,” laughed Roderick.
“I don't deny it. The other is a fact, all the same. The late Mr.
Defries's will is valid. Appointing my father trustee for his daughter
Ella, it provides for his administration of the estate until either
her marriage with his consent or his own death, whichever is first. On
either of these events, the whole money comes into her own keeping. If
during his lifetime she marries without his written consent, the money
all goes to some specified charity, I forget what it is.”
“Well, I never heard of such a damned silly will in all my life,” said
Roderick, falling, into the vernacular.
“It only shows one man's implicit trust in the honour of another.”
“And how much does it all run to?” asked Roderick, casually.
“I haven't the remotest idea,” replied Sylvester. “It never entered my
head to inquire.”
Roderick took a few quick turns about the room, then he laughed in his
buoyant way.
“Well, if Damon Lanyon is recalcitrant, Pythias Usher will soothe him
down. So it will all come right. And you, camarado, shall dance at
the wedding. I swear it. I must go and dress for dinner with some
Philistines at Cricklewood. I shall be interested to see how God makes
the creatures who live at Cricklewood. By the way, shall I give Ella
your good wishes?”
“Most certainly,” said Sylvester.
He accompanied his guest to the front door; then returning to the
consulting-room, he opened the window, with an exclamation of distaste.
Roderick carried heavy scent about him, and Sylvester, like a wholesome
Briton, detested scent. He also in his heart detested Roderick.
Before preparing for his solitary dinner he went into his laboratory
to examine some tubes of gelatine in which the anthrax bacillus was
thriving. But he gazed at them somewhat absently. Scorn and contempt
were in his heart,--contempt for the woman whom once he thought fit to
be his own wife, and who had now thrown herself away upon this plausible
but vulgar charlatan.
“Like to like,” he muttered cynically.
And putting down his gelatine he went upstairs, apparently satisfied
with the examination he had entirely forgotten to make.