Loss of faith in all through the faithlessness of one is a common and a
tragic phenomenon. It is vain for the robust-minded to prove the illogic
of the conclusion, which is one arrived at more from the emotional than
the logical faculties of the brain. The phenomenon occurs only in men of
a certain temperament. They are endowed with powers of intense individual
passion, but lack that universality of sympathy which makes for breadth
of judgment. To narrow the proposition to a particular case, they take
one woman, not after long and patient deliberation,--that is the supreme
pity of it,--but haphazard, on the impulse of a great emotion, and
glorify her as the queen of all women. She becomes inevitably the test
of a sex. The poor human touchstone fails, and a whole sex is condemned.
To the commoner sort this loss of faith matters little, for the nobility
of a great faith was never in them; they cultivate an easy-going
cynicism, and that is all. But the men whose lives are broken, who feel
within them the horrible weight of a dead ideal, are of nobler mould,
and therein lies the piteousness of the tragedy.
Sylvester walked slowly homewards from his partner's house in St. John's
Wood, where he had been dining. For Dr. Frodsham, who had ample means
and a large family, had taken the opportunity of moving from the
house in Weymouth Street into the purer air of the N. W. district,
on Sylvester's entrance into partnership, and only retained a
consulting-room, where he attended at certain hours. The sense of his
loss hung heavy upon Sylvester. He had left a home that glowed with a
happiness for ever beyond his reach. He had seen love, trust, sympathy,
reflected from face to face of husband and wife. The house was glad with
the laughter of youth. The somewhat intellectual atmosphere was softened
by an indescribable tenderness of human relation. Faith in themselves as
men and women, in humanity in general, gave a largeness to their social
intercourse. And he had sat there recognising, wondering; envying, until
the door had closed behind him and he was left to his loneliness on the
silent pavement.
A boy and girl of the lower class passed slowly by, she with her head on
his shoulder, he with his arm round her waist. They were saying
nothing, probably were maintaining a half-hour's silence, but they were
undeniably happy, and, for the moment, Sylvester envied them. Vulgar as
may have been their affection, they, like the Frodshams, possessed that
which he had lost for ever,--faith. And faith meant love and love meant
life. He had seldom felt so keenly the abomination of his desolation,
and the craving for a woman's touch grew to a pang like hunger. And yet
his whole nature rejected the idea of fulfilment. He shuddered as he
walked, and strove to turn his thoughts into another channel. But the
elemental dominates a man's will. Unconsciously he returned to the
subject. Ella had been much in his mind since Roderick's announcement.
Her yielding to such a lover had strengthened his conviction of the
contemptibility of a woman's nature. Cynically he congratulated himself
on his escape. He set down nothing in extenuation. He only saw, on the
one side, a woman of apparent refinement whom he had once thought worthy
of being his wife, on the other side a blatant, sensual, mercenary cad.
The refined woman had thrown herself into the cad's arms. What was
the need of looking further? Any woman would have done the same. The
so-called virtuous were merely the untempted. The kindly matron at whose
table he had been dining had only maintained her position by a series
of lucky accidents. And what living soul could tell whether she had been
true to Frodsham? But he envied Frodsham his unclouded faith and the
happiness that love brought to his hearth.
Thus Sylvester walked homewards, his thoughts revolving in a vicious
circle. At Baker Street Station he passed through a crowd that was
gathering around two fringed and feathered coster-girls shrieking and
biting and cursing in a policeman's grip. They were too much for one
man, for your coster-girl in drink is a she-devil, and possessed
of extraordinary activities. One escaped, and as her companion was
struggling with the constable, she rushed at his face with a gigantic
hat-pin held dagger-wise.
In an instant Sylvester had dropped his light coat and had seized
the fury by the arms from behind. And there he held her pinioned. She
kicked, she butted, she poured out torrents of filth, she struggled,
she tried to lie down, to the great excitement of the crowd, who, out of
respect for the hat-pin, kept at a reasonable distance off, and expected
to see a battle royal in which the slight man in evening dress would get
the worst of it. But they were not prepared for such an exhibition of
sheer strength on the part of the slight man. He stood like a figure
of bronze, holding the foul and frenzied Amazon almost at arm's length,
lifting her like a child when she tried to fall, forcing her down when
she tried to leap into the air. The tussle, as far as Sylvester was
concerned, did not last long; for two policemen, forcing their way
through the throng, speedily relieved him of his charge and the lady of
the hat-pin. Whereupon Sylvester, cheered by the crowd, coolly took
his overcoat from a man who was holding it, and walked away down Baker
Street.
The incident, although not tending to raise the Eternal Feminine in his
esteem, broke the train of his morbid imaginings. He glowed with
the sense of victory and chuckled quietly to himself. The successful
application of one's own brute force brings exultation to the primitive
savage in a man.
“I'm not in such bad training, after all,” he said to himself
pleasantly.
So he sprang up the steps of the house in Weymouth Street in a much
healthier frame of mind than that in which he had descended them some
hours before. The sudden stirring of the blood had done him good.
“Mr. Lanyon is here, sir,” said a servant, meeting him in the hall. “He
said he would wait until you came home.”
Sylvester disregarded the letters lying on the hall table, and ran
upstairs to the drawing-room, where somewhat breathlessly he expressed
his delight and wonder at seeing his father. But he was struck almost
immediately with dismay at the look of illness on the old man's face.
“You have no business to be here,” he exclaimed. “You ought to be in
bed. For God's sake, father, what is wrong with you?” He looked at him
keenly. “It is the heart, isn't it?”
“Yes, that and other things,” Matthew admitted; “I have been a bit seedy
lately. But I'll look after myself; don't fret. And I didn't come here
to talk about my inside. I had to come up to town on business, so I
thought I'd look in instead of writing. I haven't been waiting long. You
see, your man has made me quite comfortable.”
He pointed to a tray by his side with whisky, soda, and glasses, and a
box of cigars. Sylvester poured himself out a drink and bit off the end
of a cigar.
“What's gone wrong?” he asked, striking a match.
“This confounded marriage of Ella's.”
“I wouldn't worry about it, father, if I were you. They are just worth
one another. She has proved she's on his level by accepting him.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said the old man. “That shows you know nothing
of women. It is one of the most astounding facts about an astounding
sex, that women of absolute refinement will throw themselves away upon
the most obvious cad, be utterly blind to his coarseness, if once he
gets a hold upon them. It's a kind of helpless infatuation. It doesn't
at all argue the degeneration of the woman.”
“Well, you can withhold your consent, and in the mean time try to open
her eyes.”
“I have already given my consent, and there are reasons why I can't open
her eyes,” said Matthew, rather slowly, looking at his finger tips.
Sylvester swung a straight-backed chair from its place and sat down near
his father.
“Then you are not going to interfere at all? Don't you think that is
the best thing you can do? Let them work out their own salvation or
damnation, as the case may be.”
“I love Ella as my own daughter, Syl, and I would save her if I could.”
“Then I don't understand,” said Sylvester. “Forgive my being
impertinent, Syl, but this is a serious matter. Weren't you fond of Ella
yourself, some time ago?”
The eyes of father and son met, and the eyes of each were very keen.
“I would rather not answer the question,” said Sylvester.
“You needn't,” replied Matthew, taking a sip of his whisky and soda.
There was a short silence. Sylvester smoked on, his glance fixed on his
father's face, his mind more concerned with the traces of illness and
suffering that he read there than with the subject under discussion.
“Syl,” said the old man, at last, looking at his son, “we are neither of
us sentimental people.”
“I suppose we're not,” assented Sylvester, with a short laugh.
“Good. So what I want to say to you is serious. You have been a good son
to me. I've tried to do my duty by you. But I've never asked you to do
a thing for my sake during the whole course of your life. Do you think I
should be justified in starting now?”
“It stands to reason,” said Sylvester.
Matthew rose from his chair and put his hand on his son's shoulder. With
all the tenderness of his heart, he was a man singularly little given to
outward demonstrations of affection.
“Then do everything in your power,” said he, “to stop this marriage. For
my sake.” He turned and walked away. “I can do nothing,” he added.
“Very well,” replied Sylvester, quietly; “I'll stop it.”
“Don't undertake too much. I only asked you to try.”
“I've said I'll stop it, and I will. Even if it comes to--”
“What?”
“To marrying her myself,” said Sylvester, grimly.
Matthew sat down again, and then passed one of the long silences, so
common between these two, who seemed to understand each other better
when no words were spoken. Each man kept his own life's secrets hidden
in his heart, would have gone through torture rather than reveal them to
the other, or indeed to any human being, and yet each was dearer to the
other than any being on earth. Speech, then, on intimate matters was
dragged reluctantly and painfully from their souls, which preferred
to hold a silent and mysterious communion. Even what he had said to
Sylvester this evening seemed to Matthew an indecency, an exposure of an
integral part of himself that the proud man kept hidden under a usually
inscrutable veil of reserve. It was characteristic of both that the
subject received no further allusion.
“I must think about turning in,” said Matthew at last.
“I'll go and see if they've made things comfortable for you,” said
Sylvester.
“But, bless you, man, I'm not billeting myself on you and turning your
house upside down. I'm putting up at the Charing Cross Hotel.”
“You'd better stay here for two or three days and let me doctor you a
bit,” said Sylvester.
But the old man pooh-pooh'd the idea. He did not want doctoring. He had
had some worrying intricate business lately. These confounded landed
proprietors,--they got their affairs into the most disastrous muddles,
and when once they had put them into a lawyer's hands thought themselves
relieved of all responsibilities and gaily went off to borrow more
money. God may have made man in his own image, but he certainly forgot
to supply the majority of the images with brains. However, he had set
things straight by now and could take it easy for a bit. When he wanted
Sylvester to doctor him, he would say so.
Against his will and better judgment, Sylvester had to let him go.
He announced his intention of walking to Charing Cross, but Sylvester
anticipated him by whistling up a hansom at the street door. Matthew
protested. He had always walked home.
“Do something for my sake,--for a change,” said Sylvester, with a touch
of humour.
The old man laughed, entered the cab, and drove off.
Sylvester went upstairs to finish his cigar. The world seemed a more
ironical place than it had appeared some hours before. He felt certain
aches in his fingers and sundry tinglings in his shins. He stooped and
rubbed the latter with a meditative smile. There was another young woman
between whom and her desires he was about to come. He speculated on the
prospect of rubbing his shins after that encounter.
“I wonder how it is to be done,” he said, lying back in his chair.
His promise was given. He would have unquestioningly married his fair
antagonist of Baker Street had his father so commanded. But all the same
it was not without uneasiness that he contemplated his mission. And as
for the girl he had undertaken to save, he assured himself that he took
no interest whatever in her destiny.
*****
To celebrate the engagement, Lady Milmo held a great reception to which
came crowds of distinguished and undistinguished persons, but it was
characteristic of her gatherings that the former far outnumbered the
latter. The air hummed with congratulations and with laudations of Art.
Sylvester, moving sardonically through the press, felt like a visitor
dazed by the whirl of a great unfamiliar factory. He confessed the
feeling to an acquaintance who fluttered between the two worlds of art
and science.
“The manufactory of artificial ideals,” laughed the latter, having also
to maintain a reputation for epigram.
The wit stayed to speak with a friend, and Sylvester tried to edge his
way towards the further end of the room where Ella stood talking with a
couple of men. From where he was he could see that she looked more than
usually beautiful. Her face was flushed, her eyes held the light of
enthusiasm, her young figure in a simple white silk dress stood out
proud and defiant against the darkness of an open window. It
recalled vividly to his mind her attitude when long, long ago she had
passionately expressed her faith in the glory of the world. His
lips twitched in a half-smile. All around him he heard snatches of
conversation in which the engagement was alluded to. A man cast doubts
on Roderick's solvency. A girl declared she would just as soon marry a
steam-organ. A lean, anxious woman with a mechanical grin ecstaticised
over the union. The Art Colony was discussed on all sides.
Presently Roderick, resplendent in a great white bow that fell half over
his shirt-front and almost hid a topaz solitaire, caught sight of him
and hailed him with a southern wave of his hand.
“My dear comrade,” he cried as soon as he was within hand-shaking range
of Sylvester, “it does my heart good to see you here to share our joy.
Have you spoken to her yet? There she is--
'Oh, she is fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!'
Isn't she? A throbbing moment, _amigo_.”
“I'm glad to see you so much in love,” said Sylvester. “It's
refreshing.”
“Cynic!” said Roderick. “That's why your hair is turning grey. Look at
mine,--fresh as a rose in June. And I'm older than you.”
“How's the Utopia?”
“Colossal. Come, I'll introduce you to Sir Decimus Bland. Lady Derring
has fixed me with her glassy eye, and I must obey her call. Sir Decimus,
let me present my oldest and most valued friend, Dr. Sylvester Lanyon,
the terror of bacilli.”
Sir Decimus was a portly red-faced man who, from a habit of holding his
hands in front of him, looked as if he were supporting a model of one
of his Art galleries after the self-conscious manner of a “donor,”
supporting his church in the company of various saints in an old Italian
painting. He puffed as he spoke and glared amiably through a single
eye-glass.
“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Dr. Lanyon,” said he. “Your name
is a household word in the domain of science. In our domain we also have
bacilli to fight against,--commercialism, insincerity, all the cankers
that destroy the soul of art.”
“So you are going to choose an environment unsuitable for their
development, I hear,” said Sylvester.
“Yes, the Walden Art Colony. I am, as you may know, guaranteeing the
Director's salary. Our fortunate friend is just the man for the post.”
“When do you think it will take practical shape?” asked Sylvester.
“We hope to start next spring--and under very happy auspices. I look
upon this as a fitting culmination to the poor services I have been able
to render to Art in this country. Are you interested in the movement,
Dr. Lanyon?”
“Not financially. I hardly know enough about it. One thing I don't quite
understand. I thought an artist gave out the experience he had gathered
in his contact with real life. How is he going to get that contact if he
buries himself in what amounts to a desert island?”
“He goes direct to nature,” replied Sir Decimus, platitudinously.
“Does he?” argued Sylvester. “Rocks and trees are all very well
for pretty pictures. But what about love and sorrow and other human
emotions. He seems to get away entirely from the important side of
nature.”
“Yes, yes, so I grant. But it's hardly that,” puffed Sir Decimus,
mopping his forehead. “Ah, here is Urquhart; he will tell you all about
it. Don't you know Urquhart?”
He performed the introduction, stated the case at great length with a
confusion that irritated the scientist's trained mind, and then, with
visible relief, moved away. Bevis Urquhart, a slight young man, with
a tiny silky black moustache and a languid manner, began a patient
explanation. Sylvester had heard of him as a lad of great wealth who
had convulsed a whole county by refusing to ride to hounds and uttering
blasphemy against partridge shooting. It was whispered that he had
invented a new religion and had an oratory in his bedroom fitted with
expensive idols made of chrysoprasus.
“It is the mistake of the crowd,” said he, “to regard Art as an
interpretation of experience. Art has nothing to do with Life. Life
claims all for itself and so kills Art, drains it of its blood. In other
words, Life claims Art, Art does not claim Life. If not, Art would be
unexpressed. The poem would remain a pure crystal in the soul of the
poet, the picture a fair-hued mist in the fantasy of the painter. Art is
the revelation of the Undetermined, and this can only reach its fulness
in the quietude of the soul.”
“Thank you,” said Sylvester; “you have given me a lucid solution of my
difficulty.”
The young man smiled deprecatingly.
“Pardon me. I try to be an artist in words, and lucidity is so brutal
and commonplace. Do you read Mallarmé?”
“No,” said Sylvester. “When I want wholesome unintelligibility I read
Rabelais.”
Urquhart looked pained. There was a slight pause.
“Fond of bicycling?” asked Sylvester, cheerily.
Again came the pitying smile over the face of the young
semi-millionaire.
“I know so little of the things one does with one's body,” he said.
“Better learn,” said Sylvester. “Capital exercise. Shakes up your liver,
you know.”
Here he was carried off by Lady Milmo, who was dying to introduce him to
somebody.
“Do you understand all the things they talk about here?” he asked.
Lady Milmo regarded him with a twinkling eye.
“God bless your soul, no,” she said.
“I suppose they're all exceedingly clever?”
Lady Milmo stood upon the points of her toes and looked around, as if
to take in all her guests in one comprehensive glance. Then she half
whispered into his ear,--“They've all got to talk like that to one
another for the sake of their reputations. But I go round and talk to
each in turn of their cooks or their stomachs, according to sex,--and
they love it!”
“Well, I'd sooner talk to you, Lady Milmo,--though not of my
stomach,--than to any of these people,” said Sylvester, with a laugh.
“Can't you steal five minutes?”
Lady Milmo spied a couple of vacant chairs in a near corner, and sitting
down on one motioned Sylvester to the other. Then she smiled. She was
a kind-hearted woman, and in spite of her false air of youth possessed
much charm of manner.
“I suppose you want to talk about the engagement!” she said.
“No, not particularly. What do you think of this Colony, where Ella
proposes to exile herself?”
“Utter rubbish,” said Lady Milmo.
Sylvester expressed surprise. “I was under the impression that you were
one of its fervent propagandists.”
“Oh, one must do something,” she replied inconsequently. “One bubble
is just as good as another to blow during the season. Whether it's
providing eau de cologne for released criminals, or founding a Garden of
Eden for unsuccessful poets, it all comes to the same thing in the end.
You look puzzled. Well, what is one person's amusement is another's
bewilderment.”
“But all these promoters--Ella and Roderick--they believe in it?”
“Oh, yes, they believe in it. People will believe in anything,--Mr.
Urquhart's new religion, for instance. But the Art Colony is rubbish.
Don't put a penny in it. I haven't. It may be a romantic toy for Ella to
play with for the first two years of her married life, but then she will
come back and settle down to a reasonable existence. You won't give me
away, will you?”
Sylvester promised, and a few moments later found himself standing
alone, wrapped in gloomy wonder at the inanity of life. A voice roused
him from his meditation.
“Good-evening, Sylvester.”
He started and found Ella by his side. She looked at him boldly, with a
little triumphant gleam of defiance. He shook hands, explained that his
object in accepting the invitation was to offer her his congratulations.
Social convention required the formula. Ella's ear, however, detected an
ironical note, and the blood came swiftly to her cheeks.
“For a man who scorns hypocrisy--” she began; then checked herself. His
regard of grave inquiry made her swiftly conscious of a false position,
and her cheeks flamed hotter.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “You don't really congratulate me.”
“Why do you say so?”
“I feel that you are inimical to me, and you have never liked Roderick.”
“One can wish one's enemies well,” he remarked with a half-smile.
“Why should we be your enemies? You should hear how differently Roderick
speaks of you.”
“My dear Ella,” replied Sylvester, “I have not uttered a single word
against Roderick. It would be in very bad taste for me to do so. I have
known him for many years, and we still meet. But he is not an intimate
friend of mine.”
“You dislike him,” said Ella. “I feel that you do.”
The feline that is in the nature of all women--just as its stronger,
tigerish development is in the nature of all men--tingled to her finger
ends. She felt the velvet sheaths stiffen back. The sight of him angered
her. She itched to provoke him to battle, to fall on him tooth and claw
if he took up her challenge. An unreasoning instinct clamoured also for
violent defence of Roderick. It was a psychological moment full of many
feminine complexities which she half understood; and that made her the
more angry.
Sylvester, looking only on the surface, smiled somewhat contemptuously
at her desire to scratch. Certainly he had undertaken a campaign against
her; but he felt that so undignified a skirmish was not the wisest
preliminary to hostilities. He had come here, besides, to reconnoitre.
“Why should I dislike Roderick?” he asked.
“Because you never try to understand anybody. Because Roderick has not
locked himself up in your iron cage of convention; because he hasn't set
himself up on a pillar of impeccability as you have done. You sit
within your own prim parlour of moderation and think the man who goes to
generous extremes is a lost soul. You need not have congratulated me. I
should not have resented it. I should have understood and have given you
credit for honesty.”
But Sylvester was not to be drawn into strife. He replied equably that
he would withdraw his congratulations, if they offended her. Meanwhile
they might talk of something pleasanter. She suggested Shakespeare and
the musical glasses, with a fine air of disdain.
“Or the Walden Art Colony?” said Sylvester.
“What have you to say against the Colony?” she flashed.
“Nothing at all. Do you believe in it?”
“With all my heart. It is a great movement. It is an idea to live for.
It is the first thing I have had to believe in since--since I threw off
the girl and became a woman.”
“And I sincerely hope it won't be the last,” he replied with grave
irony. And as a young man drew nigh to take his leave of Ella, he bowed
and turned away with a saturnine sense of a victory after which there
would be no rubbing of shins. But Ella, although she smiled sweetly on
the young man, felt that she had been foolish in wantonly exposing
herself to Sylvester's cold mockery, and the brightness of her evening
suffered a miserable eclipse. It was only when Sir Decimus Bland came up
and talked Colony with ponderous patronage, and elevated her to the
dignity of high-priestess of the undefined cult of the Higher Art, that
she regained her self-respect and looked more serenely on the universe.