Roderick drove away from Lady Milmo's in a far more comfortable frame
of mind than Sylvester. The evening had been a success. Hitherto, in
spite of his conviction that his hold upon Ella was secure, he had been
puzzled as to the nature of her feelings towards him. Over the life-work
they were to carry out in common she had always glowed; in their purely
personal relations she had exhibited a sad lack of emotionality. His
vanity had often been piqued by her regarding him less as a man than as
the incarnation of an idea. At the same time his own feelings had been
simulated to love. He honestly desired her beauty, youth, and wit. As a
proof thereof, he had abandoned with entire distaste the latest of the
many minor affairs of the heart in which his emotional life had been
spent. A breath of something sweeter, purer, nobler, had stirred his
soul. The train of courtesans shrank back affrighted, and he walked
serene with the higher woman. But desiring her thus uniquely, the man
in him craved response. Until to-night she had given none. To-night,
however, the statue had grown warm woman. She had avowed her pride in
him, had yielded adorably to his caress; before they parted she had
given him her lips.
At last he felt the triumph of possession. At last she was his to mould
and cherish. A little pleading and their wedded life would dawn with the
New Year. He was confident of victory.
Yet his heart sank like lead two days afterwards, when he had dropped a
couple of letters into the pillar-box outside his chambers. He stopped
and gazed abstractedly at the oblong imperturbable mouth of the red,
almost personal thing, to which he had irrevocably intrusted his
destiny. For the letters contained cheques to the amount of over three
thousand pounds, and the balance at his bankers, on whom they were
drawn, consisted mainly of the funds of the Walden Art Colony.
Yet what could he have done? To-morrow the bills, once renewed, with
a foolish youngster's name at the back of them, would fall due. His
father, to whom he had trusted, had refused help. The forcing of the
youngster to pay would at the least create scandal, and scandal
would mean loss of reputation, loss of Ella, and general downfall.
Misappropriation of the funds saved his credit for a season. It would
give him time to urge on his marriage, whilst he cunningly arrested
the progress of the Colony. Once married, he was practically master
of Ella's fortune. A pretext for obtaining a few thousands, so as to
replace the misappropriated sum with his bankers, would easily be found
by a man of his resource. Before posting the letters he had felt the
half-contemptuous exhilaration of the gambler who bets on a certainty.
But now that the bet was entered and made final, doubts and fears began
to assail him. He looked two years older as he walked down St. James's
Street to his club.
A whisky and apollinaris restored his nerves, so that when young
Lathrop, who had backed the bills, came up to him with a long face, he
was able to assume his southern manner.
“Dearest of friends--” he began.
“It strikes me, Usher, _you_'ll be the dearest of friends to-morrow,”
broke in the young man,--“those confounded bills, you know.”
“Bills!” cried Roderick. “What are you talking to me of bills for? Do
you think I am going to let the bloodsuckers feast upon your young and
beauteous form? My child, put aside that pessimism which is sapping your
youth. Behold, Israel is satisfied.”
He drew his cheque-book from his pocket and showed the counterfoils to
the two cheques. Lathrop looked intensely relieved. Then he blushed and
stammered. He was devilish sorry; but the time was getting so close.
Would Usher have a drink? Roderick assented and drank another whisky and
apollinaris.
“You needn't noise abroad the fact of my astounding solvency,” he said,
before they parted. “I hope you haven't told any one about the bills.”
“Only Urquhart. I saw him last night,” said the young man.
“You'll be a Metternich yet, Willie,” replied Roderick. As young Lathrop
belonged to the diplomatic service, he was dimly conscious that his
friend's remark was in some fashion ironical. But Roderick waved him a
flourishing adieu and swaggered out of the club.
A man met him on the steps.
“Seen Willie Lathrop lately?”
Roderick looked him squarely between the eyes.
“He 's a braying jackass,” he said.
Having thus conveyed an answer to the implied question and given vent to
his anger at the same time, he hailed a cab and drove to Pont Street. It
was a foggy, murky day. Already the lights had appeared in shop windows,
and, where they streamed, the pavement and roadway glistened in brown
slime. Impressionable to external surroundings, Roderick shivered and
drew his fur coat closer round him. The world wore an air of hopeless
depression. On such a day no human undertaking could prosper. It was
only his intellectual contempt for superstition that restrained him from
turning round and driving back to his club. The dreary stretch of Sloane
Street seemed interminable. At last he arrived and was shown up to the
drawing-room. Lady Milmo, Ella, and a lady visitor were having afternoon
tea. He exerted himself to amuse in his usual way, but his efforts
resulted in failure. When should he be able to see Ella alone? The lady
visitor seemed resolved to outstay him. She plied him with questions
concerning the Colony. He replied vaguely. Realisation of the project
was a long way off. To start such a concern otherwise than on a sound
financial basis was magnificent, but it was not business. He was
thinking of a last appeal to the public. Ella listened, somewhat out of
spirits. Roderick's pessimistic utterances argued loss of faith in the
Colony. He caught her glance fixed upon him with perturbed questioning,
and his depression deepened.
At last they were alone. He cleared his throat and plunged into the
midst of things. Speech restored his confidence. He made an eloquent
appeal. He loved her, worshipped her; the deferring of their marriage to
an indefinite date was making his heart sick, robbing him of energy and
the joy of life. Christmas it must be. He hinted at personages waiting
for their marriage to subscribe largely to the fund. What had the
marriage to do with it? Well, he was an artist, a Bohemian; his very
class did not inspire confidence. But his marriage would set upon him
the seal of irreproachable responsibility. He pleaded desperately,
the restoration of the three thousand pounds being his paramount and
imperative aim. His heart sank at the coldness with which she received
his fervour. His ear detected the note of insincerity, to which he felt
conscious she, too, was sensitive.
“I can't marry you yet, Roderick,” she said, at length, wearily. “I
can't. It means too much.”
“Then you don't love me,” he exclaimed, starting to his feet. The old
dramatic device did not succeed.
“Sometimes I do,” she said. “At others--I don't know--I shall love you
wholly when we realise our dreams.”
“That will be the Great Never Never,” he replied tragically, “for when
did man ever realise his dreams?”
The dressing gong sounded through the house. She rose and put out her
hand.
“You must be patient with me, Roderick. Usually you understand so
finely; can't you understand now?”
“I understand that you are a woman of an imperious will, to which it
will always be my pride to bow,” he responded.
There was no help for it. No more pleading could move her that
afternoon. He had to take his leave. When the drawing-room door shut
behind him, his expression changed, and he descended the stairs cursing
the Colony and all who were concerned therein. He went back to his club,
dined, lost fifty pounds at cards, and went to bed morose and miserable.
The next morning he was greatly surprised by a visit from Sylvester. He
was sitting in the well-lit corner room of his chambers, which he had
converted into a studio, in front of the new picture he was painting
from Ella's conception. His heart was not in it. No good could ever
come from such tame propriety. And there he sat in an armchair, his legs
extended compass-wise, glowering at the picture, when Sylvester came in.
“What fog has driven you here, camarado?” he cried. “You have arrived
in season. This beastly world is standing on its head, and I don't
know what to make of it. Sit down and have some absinthe, the only true
comfort the devil has vouchsafed us.”
He pointed to a glass of the opalescent liquid by his side. Sylvester
declined the consolation.
“I want to have a little talk with you about your marriage,” said he.
“Oh, damn my marriage!” exclaimed Roderick, irritably. “I tell you the
idiot world is gyrating indecently on its occiput; my engagement with
the rest of things.”
“Is it broken off?” inquired Sylvester, hopefully.
“The same thing. Postponed to the Millennium.”
“The Colonial Millennium--?”
“Yes. You are quite right, _fratello mio_, to keep clear of women and
their works. No man can ever fathom their infinite incomprehensibility.
Look here--” He rose and marched about the studio, burning with a sense
of his wrongs and led by the instinct of his temperament to give vent
to his grievances. “I love that girl with an imbecile passion. Art is
great, but love is greater. I would make a holocaust of all that is
dear to me in the world in the sacred name of Art. Am I not ready to
expatriate myself? Have I not been working like Sisyphus for months? But
I can't throw my elemental sex into the blaze. Six months' waiting is
enough for all but anchorites. Do I look like an anchorite? I urge her
to fix the marriage at Christmas. She's as hard as your Philistine's
head. We must wait until the Colony is a _fait accompli_. How is it
going to be accomplished without money?”
“I thought the scheme was getting along famously,” interposed Sylvester.
“So did I, but it isn't. It hasn't appealed to the imagination of this
haggis-brained public, and so funds remain stationary. As if this worry
and disappointment isn't enough for a man! _Point d'argent, point de
Suisse_. No money, no colony. No colony, no marriage. The two things
could never be connected save in the ineffable convolutions of the
feminine brain.”
“I see,” said Sylvester. “It is hard lines on you.”
He was intensely relieved by Roderick's confidences; could afford even
to be magnanimous. Since his avowal to Ella of hostile intentions, he
had felt it his duty to inform Roderick of his attitude. He had come
this morning prepared to make a declaration of war. There were several
little things he had learned incidentally of Roderick's past career,
with which he had intended to confront him. The memory of Mr. Snodgrass
informing the small boy that he was going to begin came into his mind as
he mounted the stairs, and he smiled grimly. But, after all, no one had
ever questioned the chivalry of Mr. Snodgrass's motives. His first words
on entering were an announcement of the object of his visit. Roderick
had implicitly declared that object to be futile. To proceed further
would be to attack a fallen man. To express satisfaction would be to
triumph over a foe's discomfiture. He therefore expressed conventional
sympathy. It was hard lines.
Roderick caught up the phrase and wove it into a fugue of indignant
lamentation. Luck never came his way. The stars in their courses had
fought against him since his cradle.
“Some men's touch turns everything to gold; mine to brass and deuced
gimcrack brass at that. I've never loved a dear gazelle; but if I had,
the disastrous animal would have got mange or delirium tremens and
turned round and bitten me and given me hydrophobia. I suppose it's
because of my general nefariousness. I wish I had been an austere
embodiment of the seven deadly virtues like you, _amigo_. Then I should
have waxed fat and prosperous. But there,” he added, lighting a cigar,
“that's enough. I don't know why I'm washing you in this torrent of my
discontent.”
“If it has done you any good, I am not sorry to have heard it,” said
Sylvester. “As for the Colony, I never did think much of the idea, you
know. It is outside the sphere of practical affairs altogether. Besides,
you could never stay more than a month away from Piccadilly.”
“It meant a means of livelihood for this profitless child of nature,
anyway,” said Roderick, watching the wreaths of his cigar-smoke.
“Pardon me if I take a liberty,” said Sylvester, “but I was under the
impression that your father made you a good allowance.”
Roderick stared at him for a moment and then laughed loud.
“You don't know Usher senior. How much the old man has, or where the
devil it all came from, I have no idea; but I don't get any of it. And
when he descends to realms below, he'll bequeath it all to a home for
decayed postage-stamp collectors. No; I get what I earn. The Colony was
a fixed income.”
“Well, you'll have to settle down to something else,” said Sylvester,
consolingly.
“And meanwhile you can go and persuade our fair enthusiast that the
Colony is all a fizzle and that she must shed happiness upon the head of
your devoted friend at Christmas!”
“I don't think I can do that,” said Sylvester, drily. He pulled out his
watch, announced his departure. Roderick shook his hand effusively.
“But, by the way,” said he, “you haven't told me what you came for--my
marriage--?”
“Oh, after what you've said about the matter that can wait,” replied
Sylvester, hurriedly, and he left his friend to his artistic solitude.
Roderick felt somewhat ashamed and somewhat relieved after his burst of
confidence. To cry defeat after the first reverse seemed the part of a
craven. Thus were women not won. He determined to return to the attack,
to choose his time more wisely. A week later he caught Ella in
a brighter mood. He had exerted himself to please, to kindle her
enthusiasms, which shone from cheeks and eyes. He struck the personal
chord, watched eagerly, seemed to perceive it vibrate through her. Then
he urged once more. She changed suddenly, held out a warning hand.
“Not that again, Roderick,” she said. “You must not make me dread your
coming. Some women yield to insistence; it only hardens me. I thought
you knew me better.”
“Then the Colony shall start at Christmas; I swear it,” he cried
magniloquently, and the remainder of the interview flowed more smoothly.
It is all very well to command events. But whether they will obey is a
different matter. During the last few weeks Roderick had succeeded
in his design to quash the Colony in so far as to alienate several
hesitating supporters. To win these back was no easy matter. Moreover,
his old power of persuasion seemed to have failed him. There was a
period when he had deluded himself into the belief that the Colony was
a practicable scheme. But the moment it had appeared contrary to his own
interest and he had regarded it dispassionately, he despised it from the
depths of his soul as an inane chimera. To have to simulate a burnt out
enthusiasm was irksome; he failed to carry conviction. And meanwhile he
was a prey to gnawing anxiety. How was he to replace the three thousand
pounds? He anathematised the feminine temperament.
The feminine temperament, however, was not in that state of
dispassionate, yet unreasoning decision in which he imagined it to be.
These were unhappy days for Ella. She seemed to have become to herself
a vague entity wandering in a land of shadows, forced by some unknown
power therein to wander, and finding her only hope of salvation in one
elusive light that gleamed fitfully in the distance. Her aunt, being
a practical woman, was quick to notice the habitual contraction of her
brow and the wearied preoccupation in her eyes. Nowadays she openly
mocked at the Colony. On such occasions Ella fired up, defended it with
the fierceness of a forlorn hope. Lady Milmo was puzzled. She even went
the length of consulting Sylvester, surprising him considerably by a
morning call in Weymouth Street.
“The Colony's a fraud, and she knows it's a fraud,” she said, in the
vernacular of her class. “And yet she pins her immortal soul to it.
Why doesn't she marry the man and be done with it? But no--she won't do
that. She's making herself ill because the Colony isn't likely to come
off, which is distinctly good business, and what on earth she can find
to interest her in the rubbishy scheme, goodness only knows. If she
only painted, or wrote poetry, or out-Wagnered Wagner in immortal
tunelessness, one could perhaps understand. But she's no more artistic
than you are.”
“I know I'm a Philistine,” smiled Sylvester, at the tribute of the
artless lady. “Is that why you 've come to me?”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” returned Lady Milmo. “Now can't you put some
sense into her, or get that dear Mr. Lanyon to do so? It's my impression
she isn't in love with him one little bit.”
“Then, for Heaven's sake, my dear Lady Milmo,” said Sylvester,
earnestly, “do all you can to impress that fact upon him!”
“I should be glad if the engagement were broken off,” said Lady Milmo,
reflectively.
“So would all the true friends of Ella Defries,” replied Sylvester.
Lady Milmo arched her eyebrows. She looked at him for a moment
quizzically.
“Is that purely a disinterested remark, Dr. Lanyon?”
“I would not marry one single woman that is now living on this earth,”
said Sylvester.
“Why, whatever have we poor creatures done to you? There are some men, I
know, who look upon women as a disease, but I'm sure you 're not one.”
Sylvester scanned his finger nails,--a trick he had caught from his
father.
“One marriage is enough for a man, Lady Milmo,” he said in a low voice.
Lady Milmo was conscious of an indiscretion. She escaped adroitly and
led the talk back to Roderick.
“I think we'd better get this silly affair of Ella's broken off, don't
you?” she said at parting.
“If you could manage it, my father and myself would be exceedingly
grateful to you,” he replied.
Lady Milmo was driving away, her kind head filled with schemes for
Ella's extrication, when, at the block at Oxford Circus, she caught
sight of a news-vendor wearing as an apron the coloured bill of an early
edition of an evening paper. Across it in enormous capitals ran the
startling legend, “Sudden Death of Sir Decimus Bland.”
“The best thing the pompous old idiot has ever done in his life!” said
Lady Milmo.