Liverpool has a capacity for looking black which is perhaps, only
surpassed by Manchester’s, and it looked its blackest on a day at the
end of March in the following year, as the afternoon express from London
roared into the Lime Street Station. The rain was coming down; it was
small rain, and it descended with a sort of puny determination; it was
sad rain without any dash, any boldness; it had affinities with
the mists which sweep over stretches of moorland, but its power of
saturation was remarkable. It soaked Liverpool. It issued out of
blackness and seemed to carry a blackness with it which descended into
the very soul of the city and lay coiled there like a snake.
Lady Ingleton was very sensitive to her surroundings, and as she lifted
the rug from her knees, and put away the book she had been reading,
she shivered. A deep melancholy floated over her and enveloped her. She
thought, “Why did I come upon this adventure? What is it all to do
with me?” But then the face of a man rose up before her, lean, brown,
wrinkled, ravaged, with an expression upon it that for a long time had
haunted her, throwing a shadow upon her happiness. And she felt that
she had done right to come. Impulse, perhaps, had driven her; sentiment
rather than reason had been her guide. Nevertheless, she did not regret
her journey. Even if nothing good came of it she would not regret it.
She would have tried for once at some small expense to herself to do a
worthy action. She would for once have put all selfishness behind her.
A white-faced porter, looking anxious and damp, appeared at the door of
the corridor. Lady Ingleton’s French maid arrived from the second class
with Turkish Jane on her arm.
“Oh, Miladi, how black it is here!” she exclaimed, twisting her pointed
little nose. “The black it reaches the heart.”
That was exactly what Lady Ingleton was thinking, but she said, in a
voice less lazy than usual.
“There’s a capital hotel, Annette. We shall be very comfortable.”
“Shall we stay here long, Miladi?”
“No; but I don’t know how long yet. Is Jane all right?”
“She has been looking out of the window, Miladi, the whole way. She is
in ecstasy. Dogs have no judgment, Miladi.”
When Lady Ingleton was in her sitting-room at the Adelphi Hotel, and had
had the fire lighted and tea brought up, she asked to see the manager
for a moment. He came almost immediately, a small man, very smart, very
trim, self-possessed as a attache.
“I hope you are quite comfortable, my lady,” he said, in a thin voice
which held no note of doubt. “Can I do anything for you?”
“I wanted to ask you if you knew the address of some one I wish to send
a note to--Mr. Robertson. He’s a clergyman who--”
“Do you mean Father Robertson, of Holy Cross, Manxby Street, my lady?”
“Of Holy Cross; yes, that’s it.”
“He lives at--”
“Wait a moment. I’ll take it down.”
She went to the writing-table and took up a pen.
“Now, please!”
“The Rev. George Robertson, Holy Cross Rectory, Manxby Street, my lady.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Can I do anything more for you, my lady?”
“Please send me up a messenger in twenty minutes. Mr. Robertson is in
Liverpool, I understand?”
“I believe so, my lady. He is generally here. Holidays and pleasure are
not much in his way. The messenger will be up in twenty minutes.”
He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and went softly out, holding
himself very erect.
Lady Ingleton sat down by the tea-table. Annette was unpacking in the
adjoining bedroom, and Turkish Jane was reposing in an arm-chair near
the hearth.
“What would Carey think of me, if he knew?” was her thought, as she
poured out the tea.
Sir Carey was at his post in Constantinople. She had left him and come
to England to see her mother, who had been very ill, but who was now
much better. When she had left Constantinople she had not known she was
coming to Liverpool, but she had known that something was intruding upon
her happiness, was worrying at her mind. Only when she found herself
once more in England did she understand that she could not return to
Turkey without making an effort to do a good deed. She had very little
hope that her effort would be efficacious, but she knew that she had to
make it.
It was quite a new role for her, the role of Good Samaritan. She smiled
faintly as she thought that. How would she play it?
After tea she wrote this note:
“ADELPHI HOTEL, Tuesday
“DEAR MR. ROBERTSON,--As you will not know who I am, I must explain
myself. My husband, Sir Carey Ingleton, is Ambassador at Constantinople.
Out there we have made acquaintance with Mr. Dion Leith, who had the
terrible misfortune to kill his little boy nearly a year and a half ago.
I want very much to speak to you about him. I will explain why when I
see you if you have the time to spare me an interview. I would gladly
welcome you here, or I could come to you. Which do you prefer? I am
telling the messenger to wait for an answer. To be frank, I have come to
Liverpool on purpose to see you.--Yours sincerely,
“DELIA INGLETON”
The messenger came back without an answer. Father Robertson was out, but
the note would be given to him as soon as he came home.
That evening, just after nine o’clock, he arrived at the hotel, and sent
up his name to Lady Ingleton.
“Please ask him to come up,” she said to the German waiter who had
mispronounced his name.
As she waited for her visitor she was conscious of a faint creeping of
shyness through her. It made her feel oddly girlish. When had she last
felt shy? She could not remember. It must have been centuries ago.
The German waiter opened the door and a white-haired man walked in.
Directly she saw him Lady Ingleton lost her unusual feeling. As she
greeted him, and made her little apology for bothering him, and thanked
him for coming out at night to see a stranger, she felt glad that she
had obeyed her impulse and had been, for once, a victim to altruism.
When she looked at his eyes she knew that she would not mind saying to
him all she wanted to say about Dion Leith. They were eyes which shone
with clarity; and they were something else--they were totally incurious
eyes. Perhaps from perversity Lady Ingleton had always rebelled against
giving to curious people the exact food they were in search of.
“He won’t be greedy to know,” she thought. “And so I shan’t mind telling
him.”
Unlike a woman, she came at once to the point. Although she could be
very evasive she could also be very direct.
“You know Mrs. Dion Leith,” she said. “My friend Tippie Chetwinde, Mrs.
Willie Chetwinde, told me she was living here. She came here soon after
the death of her child, I believe.”
“Yes, she did, and she has been here ever since.”
“Do you know Dion Leith, Mr. Robertson?” she asked, leaning forward in
her chair by the fire, and fixing her large eyes, that looked like an
Italian’s, upon him.
“No, I have never seen him. I hoped to, but the tragedy of the child
occurred so soon after his return from South Africa that I never had an
opportunity.”
“Forgive me for correcting you,” she said, gently but very firmly. “But
it is not the tragedy of a child. It’s the tragedy of a man. I am going
to talk very frankly to you. I make no apology for doing so. I am what
is called”--she smiled faintly--“a woman of the world, and you, I
think, are an unworldly man. Because I am of the world, and you, in
spirit”--she looked at him almost deprecatingly--“are not of it, I can
say what I have come here to try to say. I couldn’t say it to a man of
the world, because I could never give a woman away to such a man. Tell
me though, first, if you don’t mind--do you care for Mrs. Dion Leith?”
“Very much,” said Father Robertson, simply and warmly.
“Do you care for her enough to tell her the truth?”
“I never wish to tell her anything else.”
Suddenly Lady Ingleton’s face flushed, her dark eyes flashed and then
filled with tears, and she said in a voice that shook with emotion:
“Dion Leith killed a body by accident, the body of his little boy. She
is murdering a soul deliberately, the soul of her husband.”
She did not know at all why she was so suddenly and so violently moved.
She had not expected this abrupt access of feeling. It had rushed upon
her from she knew not where. She was startled by it.
“I don’t know why I should care,” she commented, as if half ashamed of
herself.
Then she added, with a touch of almost shy defiance:
“But I do care, I do care. That’s why I’ve come here.”
“You are right to care if it is so,” said Father Robertson.
“Such lots of women wouldn’t,” she continued, in a quite different,
almost cynical, voice. “But that man is an exceptional man--not in
intellect, but in heart. And I’m a very happy woman. Perhaps you wonder
what that has to do with it. Well sometimes I see things through my
happiness, just because of it; sometimes I see unhappiness through it.”
Her voice had changed again, had become much softer. She drew her chair
a little nearer to the fire.
“Do you ever receive confessions, Mr. Robertson--as a priest, I mean?”
she asked.
“Yes, very often.”
“They are sacred, I know, even in your church.”
“Yes,” he said, without emphasis.
His lack of emphasis decided her. Till this moment she had been
undecided about a certain thing, although she herself perhaps was not
fully aware of her hesitation.
“I want to do a thing that I have never yet done,” she said. “I want to
be treacherous to a friend, to give a friend away. Will you promise to
keep my treachery secret forever? Will you promise to treat what I am
going to tell you about her as if I told it to you in the confessional?”
“If you tell it to me I will. But why must you tell it to me? I don’t
like treachery. It’s an ugly thing.”
“I can’t help that. I really came here just for that--to be
treacherous.”
She looked into the fire and sighed.
“I’ve covered a great sin with my garment,” she murmured slowly, “and I
repent me!”
Then, with a look of resolve, she turned to her white-haired companion.
“I’ve got a friend,” she said--“a woman friend. Her name is Cynthia
Clarke. (I’m in the confessional now!) You may have heard of her. She
was a _cause celebre_ some time ago. Her husband tried to divorce her,
poor man, and failed.”
“No, I never heard her name before,” said Father Robertson.
“You don’t read _causes celebres_. You have better things to do. Well,
she’s my friend. I don’t exactly know why. Her husband was Councillor in
my husband’s Embassy. But I knew her before that. We always got on. She
has peculiar fascination--a sort of strange beauty, a very intelligent
mind, and the strongest will I have ever known. She has virtues of a
kind. She never speaks against other women. If she knew a secret of mine
I am sure she would never tell it. She is thoroughbred. I find her a
very interesting woman. There is absolutely no one like her. She’s a
woman one would miss. That’s on one side. On the other--she’s a cruel
woman; she’s a consummate hypocrite; she’s absolutely corrupt. You
wonder why she’s my friend?”
“I did not say so.”
“Nor look it. But you do. Well, I suppose I haven’t many scruples except
about myself. And I have been trained in the let-other-people-alone
tradition. Besides, Cynthia Clarke never told me anything. No one has
told me. Being a not stupid woman, I just know what she is. I’ll put
it brutally, Mr. Robertson. She is a huntress of men. That is what she
lives for. But she deceives people into believing that she is a purely
mental woman. All the men whom she doesn’t hunt believe in her. Even
women believe in her. She has good friends among women. They stick to
her. Why? Because she intends them to. She has a conquering will. And
she never tells a secret--especially if it is her own. In her last
sin--for it is a sin--I have been a sort of accomplice. She meant me to
be one and”--Lady Ingleton slightly shrugged her shoulders--“I yielded
to her will. I don’t know why. I never know why I do what Cynthia
Clarke wishes. There are people like that; they just get what they want,
because they want it with force, I suppose. Most of us are rather weak,
I think. Cynthia Clarke hunted Dion Leith in his misery, and I helped
her. Being an ambassadress I have social influence on the Bosporus, and
I used it for Cynthia. I knew from the very first what she was about,
what she meant to do. Directly she mentioned Dion Leith to me and asked
me to invite him to the Embassy and be kind to him I understood. But
I didn’t know Dion Leith then. If I had thoroughly known him I should
never have been a willing cat’s-paw in a very ugly game. But once I had
begun--I took them both for a yachting trip--I did not know how to
get out of it all. On that yachting trip--I realized how that man was
suffering and what he was. I have never before known a man capable of
suffering so intensely as Dion Leith suffers. Does his wife know how he
loves her? Can she know it? Can she ever have known it?”
Father Robertson was silent. As she looked at his eyelids--his eyes no
longer met hers with their luminous glowing sincerity--Lady Ingleton
realized that he was the Confessor.
“Sometimes I have been on the verge of saying to him, ‘Go back to
England, go to your wife. Tell her, show her what she has done. Put up
a big fight for the life of your soul.’ But I have never been able to
do it. A grief like that is holy ground, isn’t it? One simply can’t set
foot upon it. Besides, I scarcely ever see Dion Leith now. He’s gone
down, I think, gone down very far.”
“Where is he?”
“In Constantinople. I saw him by chance in Stamboul, near Santa Sophia,
just before I left for England. Oh, how he has changed! Cynthia Clarke
is destroying him. I know it. Once she told me he had been an athlete
with ideals. But now--now!”
Again the tears started into her eyes. Father Robertson looked up and
saw them.
“Poor, poor fellow!” she said. “I can’t bear to see him destroyed. Some
men--well, they seem almost entirely body. But he’s so different!”
She got up and stood by the fire.
“I have seen Mrs. Leith,” she said. “I once heard her sing in London.
She is extraordinarily beautiful. At that time she looked radiant. What
did you say?”
“Please go on,” Father Robertson said, very quietly.
“And she had a wonderful expression of joyous goodness which marked her
out from other women. You have a regard for her, and you are good. But
you care for truth, and so I’m going to tell you the truth. She may be a
good woman, but she has done a wicked action. Can’t you make her see it?
Or shall I try to?”
“You wish to see her?”
“I am ready to see her.”
Father Robertson again looked down. He seemed to be thinking deeply,
to be genuinely lost in thought. Lady Ingleton noticed this and did not
disturb him. For some minutes he sat without moving. At last he looked
up and put a question to Lady Ingleton which surprised her. He said:
“Are you absolutely certain that your friend Mrs. Clarke and Dion Leith
have been what people choose to call lovers?”
“Have been and are--absolutely certain. I could not prove it, but I know
it. He lives in Constantinople only for her.”
“And you think he has deteriorated?”
“Terribly. I know it. The other day he looked almost degraded; as men
look when they let physical things get absolute domination over them.
It’s an ugly subject, but--you and I know of these things.”
In her voice there was a sound of delicate apology. It was her tribute
to the serene purity of which she was aware in this man.
Again he seemed lost in thought. She trusted in his power of thought. He
was a man--she was certain of it--who would find the one path which led
out of the maze. His unself-conscious intentness was beautiful in its
unconventional simplicity, and was a tribute to her sincerity which she
was subtle enough to understand, and good woman enough to appreciate. He
was concentrated not upon her but upon the problem which was troubling
her.
“I am very glad you have come to Liverpool,” he said at length. “Very
glad.”
He smiled, and she, without exactly knowing why, smiled back at him. And
as she did so she felt extraordinarily simple, almost like a child.
“How long are you going to stay?”
“Till I know whether I can do any good,” she said, “till I have done it,
if that is possible.”
“Without mentioning any names, may I, if I think it wise, tell Mrs.
Leith of the change in her husband?”
“Oh, but would it be wise to say exactly what the nature of the change
is? I’ve always heard that she is a woman with ideals, an exceptionally
pure-natured woman. She might be disgusted, even revolted, perhaps,
if--”
“Forgive me!” Father Robertson interrupted, rather abruptly. “What was
your intention then? What did you mean to tell Mrs. Leith if you saw
her?”
“Of his great wretchedness, of his broken life--I suppose I--I should
have trusted to my instinct what to do when I saw her.”
“Ah!”
“But I can leave it to you,” she said, but still with a faint note of
hesitation, of doubt. “You know her.”
“Yes, I know her.”
He paused. Then, with an almost obstinate firmness, a sort of pressure,
he added, “Have I your permission--I may not do it--to tell Mrs.
Leith that her husband has been unfaithful to her with some one in
Constantinople?”
Lady Ingleton slightly reddened; she looked down and hesitated.
“It may be necessary if your purpose in coming here is to be achieved,”
said Father Robertson, still with pressure.
“You may do whatever you think best,” she said, with a sigh.
He got up to go.
“Would you mind very much staying on here for two or three days, even
for a week, if necessary?”
“No, no.”
He smiled.
“A whole week of Liverpool!” he said.
“How many years have you been here?”
“A good many. I’m almost losing count.”
When he was gone Lady Ingleton sat for a long while before the fire.
The sad influence of the blackness of rainy Liverpool had lifted from
her. Her impulse had received a welcome which had warmed her.
“I love that man,” she thought. “Carey would love him too.”
He had said very little, and how loyal he had been in his silence, how
loyal to the woman she had attacked. In words he had not defended her,
but somehow he had conveyed to Lady Ingleton a sense of his protective
love and immense pity for the woman who had been bereft of her child.
How he had conveyed this she could not have said. But as she sat there
before the fire she was aware that, since Father Robertson’s visit, she
felt differently about Dion Leith’s wife. Mysteriously she began to feel
the sorrow of the woman as well as, and side by side with, the sorrow of
the man.
“If it had been my child?” she thought. “If my husband had done it?”