Lady Ingleton looked swiftly at the woman coming in at the doorway clad
in the severe, voluminous, black gown and cloak, and black and white
headgear, which marked out the members of the Sisterhood of St. Mary’s.
Her first thought was “What a cold face!” It was succeeded immediately
by the thought, “But beautiful even in its coldness.” She met Rosamund
near the door, took her hand, and said:
“I am glad you were able to come. I wanted very much to meet you. I
came here really with the faint hope of seeing you. Let me take your
umbrella. What a day it is! Did you walk?”
“I came most of the way by tram. Thank you,” said Rosamund, in a
contralto voice which sounded inflexible.
Lady Ingleton went to “stand” the umbrella in a corner. In doing
this she turned away from her visitor for a moment. She felt more
embarrassed, more “at a loss” than she had ever felt before; she even
felt guilty, though she had done no wrong and was anxious only to do
right. Her sense of guilt, she believed, was caused by the fact that
in her heart she condemned her visitor, and by the additional, more
unpleasant fact that she knew Rosamund was aware of her condemnation.
“It’s hateful--so much knowledge between two women who are strangers to
each other!” she thought, as she turned round.
“Do sit down by the fire,” she said to Rosamund, who was standing near
the writing-table immediately under a large engraving of “Wedded.”
She wished ardently that Rosamund wore the ordinary clothes of a
well-dressed woman of the world. The religious panoply of the “sister’s”
attire, with its suggestion of a community apart, got on her nerves, and
seemed to make things more difficult.
Rosamund went to a chair and sat down. She still looked very cold, but
she succeeded in looking serene, and her eyes, unworldly and pure, did
not fall before Lady Ingleton’s.
Lady Ingleton sat down near her and immediately realized that she had
placed herself exactly opposite to “Wedded.” She turned her eyes away
from the large nude arms of the bending man and met Rosamund’s gaze
fixed steadily upon her. That gaze told her not to delay, but to go
straight to the tragic business which had brought her to Liverpool.
“You know of course that my husband is Ambassador at Constantinople,”
she began.
“Yes,” said Rosamund.
“You and I met--at least we were in the same room once--at Tippie
Chetwinde’s,” said Lady Ingleton, almost pleading with her visitor. “I
heard you sing.”
“Yes, I remember. I told Father Robertson so.”
“I dare say you think it very strange my coming here in this way.”
In spite of the strong effort of her will Lady Ingleton was feeling with
every moment more painfully embarrassed. All her code was absolutely
against mixing in the private concerns of others uninvited. She had a
sort of delicate hatred of curiosity. She longed to prove to the woman
by the fire that she was wholly incurious now, wholly free from the
taint of sordid vulgarity that clings to the social busybody.
“I’ve done it solely because I’m very sorry for some one,” she
continued; “because I’m very sorry for your husband.”
She looked away from Rosamund, and again her eyes rested on the
engraving of “Wedded.” The large bare arms of the man, his bending,
amorous head, almost hypnotized her. She disliked the picture of
which this was a reproduction. Far too many people had liked it; their
affection seemed to her to have been destructive, to have destroyed any
value it had formerly had. Yet now, as she looked almost in despite of
herself, suddenly she saw through the engraving, through the symbol,
to something beyond; to the prompting conception in the painter’s mind
which had led to the picture, to the great mystery of the pathetic
attempt of human beings who love, or who think they love, to unite
themselves to each other, to mingle body with body and soul with soul.
She saw a woman in the dress of a “sister,” the woman who was with her;
she saw a man in an Eastern city; and abruptly courage came to her on
the wings of a genuine emotion.
“I don’t know how to tell you what I feel about him, Mrs. Leith,” she
said. “But I want to try to. Will you let me?”
“Yes. Please tell me,” said Rosamund, in a level, expressionless voice.
“Remember this; I never saw him till I saw him in Turkey, nor did my
husband. We were not able to draw any comparison between the unhappy man
and the happy man. We were unprejudiced.”
“I quite understand that; thank you.”
“It was in the summer. We were living at Therapia on the Bosporus. He
came to stay in a hotel not far off. My husband met him in a valley
which the Turks call Kesstane Dereh. He--your husband--was sitting there
alone by a stream. They talked. My husband asked him to call at our
summer villa. He came the next day. Of course I--I knew something of
his story”--she hurried on--“and I was prepared to meet a man who was
unhappy. (Forgive me for saying all this.)”
“But, please, I have come to hear,” said Rosamund, coldly and steadily.
“Your husband--I was alone with him during his first visit--made an
extraordinary impression upon me. I scarcely know how to describe it.”
She paused for a moment. “There was something intensely bitter in his
personality. Bitterness is an active principle. And yet somehow he
conveyed to me an impression of emptiness too. I remember he said to me,
‘I don’t quite know what I am going to do. I’m a free agent. I have no
ties.’ I shall never forget his look when he said those words. I never
knew anything about loneliness--anything really--till that moment. And
after that moment I knew everything. I asked him to come on the yacht to
Brusa, or rather to Mudania; from there one goes to Brusa. He came.
You may think, perhaps, that he was eager for society, for pleasure,
distraction. It wasn’t that. He was making a tremendous, a terrible
effort to lay hold on life again, to interest himself in things. He was
pushed to it.”
“Pushed to it!” said Rosamund, still in the hard level voice. “Who
pushed him?”
“I can only tell you it was as I say,” said Lady Ingleton, quickly and
with embarrassment. “We were very few on the yacht. Of course I saw a
good deal of your husband. He was absolutely reserved with me. He
always has been. You mustn’t think he has ever given me the least bit
of confidence. He never has. I am quite sure he never would. We are only
acquaintances. But I want to be a friend to him now. He hasn’t a friend,
not one, out there. My husband, I think, feels rather as I do about him,
in so far as a man can feel in our sort of way. He would gladly be more
intimate with your husband. But your husband doesn’t make friends. He’s
beyond anything of that kind. He tried, on the yacht and at Brusa. He
did his utmost. But he was held back by his misery. I must tell you
(it’s very uninteresting)”--her voice softened here, and her face
slightly changed, became gentler, more intensely feminine--“that my
husband and I are very happy together. We always have been; we always
shall be; we can’t help it. Being with us your husband had to--to
contemplate our happiness. It--I suppose it reminded him----”
She stopped; she could not bring herself to say it. Again her eyes
rested upon “Wedded,” and, in spite of her long conviction of its
essential banality--she classed it with “The Soul’s Awakening,”
“Harmony,” and all the things she was farthest away from--she felt what
it stood for painfully, almost mysteriously.
“One day,” she resumed, speaking more slowly, and trying to banish
emotion from her voice, “I went out from the hotel where we stayed at
Brusa, quite alone. There’s a mosque at Brusa called Jeshil Jami,
the Green Mosque. It stands above the valley. It is one of the most
beautiful things I know, and quite the most beautiful Osmanli building.
I like to go there alone. Very often there is no one in the mosque.
Well, I went there that day. When I went in--the guardian was on the
terrace; he knows me and that I’m the British Ambassadress, and never
bothers me--I thought at first the mosque was quite empty. I sat down
close to the door. After I had been there two or three minutes I felt
there was some one else in the mosque. I looked round. Before the Mihrab
there was a man. It was your husband. He was kneeling on the matting,
but--but he wasn’t praying. When I knew, when I heard what he was doing,
I went away at once. I couldn’t--I felt that----”
Again she paused. In the pause she heard the gale tearing at the
windows. She looked at the woman in the sister’s dress. Rosamund was
sitting motionless, and was now looking down. Lady Ingleton positively
hated the sister’s dress at that moment. She thought of it as a sort
of armor in which her visitor was encased, an armor which rendered her
invulnerable. What shaft could penetrate that smooth black and white,
that flowing panoply, and reach the heart Lady Ingleton desired to
pierce? Suddenly Lady Ingleton felt cruel. She longed to tear away from
Rosamund all the religion which seemed to be protecting her; she longed
to see her naked as Dion Leith was naked.
“I didn’t care to look upon a man in hell,” she said, in a voice which
had become almost brutal, a voice which Sir Carey would scarcely have
recognized if he had heard it.
Rosamund said nothing, and, after a moment, Lady Ingleton continued:
“With us on the yacht was one of my husband’s secretaries of Embassy,
Cyril Vane, who had just become engaged to be married. He is married
now. In his cabin on the yacht he had a photograph of the girl. One
night he was walking up and down on deck with your husband, and your
husband--I’d just told him about Vane’s engagement--congratulated him.
Vane invited Mr. Leith into the cabin and showed him the photograph.
Vane told me afterwards that he should never forget the look on your
husband’s face as he took the photograph and gazed at it. When he put it
down he said to Vane, ‘I hope you may be happy. She looks very kind, and
very good, too; but there’s no cruelty on earth like the cruelty of a
good woman.’” (Did the sister’s dress rustle faintly?) “Vane--he’s only
a boy--was very angry for a moment, though he’s usually imperturbable.
I don’t know exactly what he said, but I believe he made a rather strong
protest about knowing his fiancee’s character _au fond_. Anyhow, your
husband took hold of his arm and said to him, ‘Don’t love very much
and you may be happy. That’s the only chance for a man--not to love the
woman very much.’ Vane came to me and told me. I remember it was late at
night and my husband was there. When Vane was leaving us Carey said to
him, ‘Forget the advice that poor fellow gave you. Love her as much
as you can, my boy. Dion Leith speaks out of the bitterness that is
destroying him. But very few men can love as he can, and very few men
have been punished by their love as he has been punished by his. His
sorrow is altogether exceptional, and has made him lose the power of
moral vision. His soul has been poisoned at the source.’ My husband was
right.”
“You came here to tell me that?” said Rosamund, lifting her head and
speaking coldly and very clearly.
“I didn’t know what I was going to tell you. At the time I am speaking
of I had no thought of ever trying to see you. That thought came to me
long afterwards.”
“Why?”
“I’m a happy woman. In my happiness I’ve learnt to respect love very
much, and I’ve learnt to recognize it at a glance. Your husband is the
victim of a great love, Mrs. Leith. I feel as if I couldn’t stand by and
see him utterly destroyed by it.”
“Father Robertson tells me----” said Rosamund.
And then she was silent. All this time she was struggling almost
furiously against pride and an intense reserve which seemed trying to
suffocate every good impulse within her. She held on to the thought of
Father Robertson (she was unable to hold on to the thought of God);
she strove not to hate the woman who was treading in her sanctuary, and
whose steps echoed harshly and discordantly to its farthest, its holiest
recesses; but she felt herself to be hardening against her will, to be
congealing, turning to ice. Nevertheless she was resolute not to leave
the room in which she was without learning all that this woman had to
tell her.
“Yes?” said Lady Ingleton.
And the thought went through her mind:
“Oh, how she is hating me!”
“Father Robertson told me there was someone else.”
“Yes, there is. Otherwise I might never have come here. I’m partly to
blame. But I--but I can’t possibly go into details. You mustn’t ask me
for any details, please. Try to accept the little I can say as truth,
though I’m not able to give you any proof. You must know that women who
are intelligent, and have lived long in the--well, in the sort of world
I’ve lived in, are never mistaken about certain things. They don’t need
what are called proofs. They know certain things are happening, or not
happening, without holding any proofs for or against. Your husband has
got into the wrong hands.”
“What do you mean by that?” said Rosamund steadily, even obstinately.
“In his misery and absolute loneliness he has allowed himself to be
taken possession of by a woman. She is doing him a great deal of harm.
In fact she is ruining him.”
She stopped. Perhaps she suspected that Rosamund, in defiance of her
own denial of proofs, would begin asking for them; but Rosamund said
nothing.
“He is going down,” Lady Ingleton resumed. “He has already deteriorated
terribly. I saw him recently by chance in Stamboul (he never comes to
us now), and I was shocked at his appearance. When I first met him, in
spite of his bitterness and intense misery I knew at once that I was
with a man of fine nature. There was something unmistakable, the rare
imprint; that’s fading from him now. You know Father Robertson very
well. I don’t. But the very first time I was with him I knew he was
a man who was seeking the heights. Your husband now is _seeking_ the
depths, as if he wanted to hide himself and his misery in them. Perhaps
he hasn’t found the lowest yet. I believe there is only one human being
who can prevent him from finding it. I’m quite sure there is only one
human being. That’s why I came here.”
She was silent. Then she added:
“I’ve told you now what I wished to tell you, all I can tell you.”
In thinking beforehand of what this interview would probably be like
Lady Ingleton had expected it to be more intense, charged with greater
surface emotion than was the case. Now she felt a strange coldness in
the room. The dry rattling of the window under the assault of the gale
was an interpolated sound that was in place.
“Your husband has never mentioned your name to me,” she said, influenced
by an afterthought. “And yet I’ve come here, because I know that the
only hope of salvation for him is here.”
Again her eyes went to “Wedded,” and then to the sister’s dress and
close-fitting headgear which disguised Rosamund. And suddenly the
impulsiveness which was her inheritance from her Celtic and Latin
ancestors took complete possession of her. She got up swiftly and went
to Rosamund.
“You hate me for having come here, for having told you all this. You
will always hate me, I think. I’ve intruded upon your peaceful life in
religion--your peaceful, comfortable, sheltered life.”
Her great dark eyes fixed themselves upon the cross which lay on
Rosamund’s breast. She lifted her hand and pointed to it.
“You’ve nailed _him_ on a cross,” she said, with almost fierce
intensity. “How can you be happy in that dress, worshiping God with a
lot of holy women?”
“Did I tell you I was happy?” said Rosamund.
She got up and stood facing Lady Ingleton. Her face still preserved
something of the coldness, but the color had deepened in the cheeks, and
the expression in the eyes had changed. They looked now much less like
the eyes of a “sister” than they had looked when she came into the room.
“Take off that dress and go to Constantinople!” said Lady Ingleton.
Rosamund flushed deeply, painfully; her mouth trembled, and tears came
into her eyes, but she spoke resolutely.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “You were right to come here and
to tell me. If I hate you, as you say, that’s my fault, not yours.”
She paused. It was evident that she was making a tremendous effort to
conquer something; she even shut her eyes for a brief instant. Then she
added in a very low voice;
“Thank you!”
And she put out her hand.
Tears started into Lady Ingleton’s eyes as she took the hand. Rosamund
turned and went quickly out of the room.
Some minutes after she had gone Lady Ingleton heard rain beating upon
the window. The sound reminded her of the umbrella she had “stood”
in the corner of the room when Rosamund came in. It was still there.
Impulsively she went to the corner and took it up; then, realizing that
Rosamund must already be on her way, she laid it down on the table. She
stood for a moment looking from “Wedded” to the damp umbrella.
Then she sat down on the sofa and cried impetuously.