Lord Henry could have flown amid the foliage of the trees, he could have
leaped from branch to branch,--aye, he could have pranced from the tip
of each leaf of bracken on his way,--so elated did he feel that now, at
least, the worst was over, the worst was known, and what remained to be
done was within the compass of his own powers, and free from any
treacherous element of luck or accident.
But his joy at the comparatively harmless outcome of Cleopatra's action
was nothing compared to his delight at that action itself, and even the
knowledge that he had read her character aright did not gratify him as
completely as the positive realisation that such characters as hers
still existed. It was chiefly this fact that dazzled him, and almost
choked him with a sensation of all too abundant ecstasy.
"One touch of Nature!" Yes, indeed; and in England of the twentieth
century it was terrifying in its intensity. Those tame people who talked
glibly of "Nature" and of "a return to Nature," as if this were
something they could contemplate with blissful equanimity, imagined
belike that Nature was all humming bees, smiling meadows, nodding
blooms and sporting butterflies, the Nature of the most successful
Victorian poets. It was their back-parlour misinterpretation and
belittlement of Nature that made these modern Philistines worship her.
Even the most sanguine could hardly suspect them of having the courage,
the good blood and the taste, to worship Nature as she really
was,--Nature with all her intoxicating joys, staggering immorality and
tragic passions.
Thus did Lord Henry meditate as he picked his way eagerly back to the
spot where Cleopatra lay, and for the first moment that day he began to
feel proud of his work at Brineweald.
When he reached the girl again she was just recovering consciousness,
and, as her frightened eyes began to take in the scene about her, and
recognised him, he noticed that she shuddered.
He knelt down and took her hand, but she shrank from him with a look of
such concentrated terror that he allowed her fingers to slip slowly
away.
"My poor dear girl!" he murmured, wiping the beads of perspiration from
her brow. "My poor brave Cleo!"
Her teeth chattered a little, and again the frightened look entered her
tired eyes, and she appeared to swoon once more.
He threw off his rain-coat and laid it on her, supported her head on his
knee, and waited thus for some time.
After a little while, however, it occurred to him that someone might
come across them if they remained so close to the house, and picking up
his charge, he penetrated further into the wood in the direction of the
morning's walk.
The movement seemed to restore Cleopatra a little, and laying her down
on a gentle slope, he succeeded in making her sip a little brandy from
his flask.
"You are breathing too quickly," he said. "You have just had a most
terrific shaking and your head is agitated. Try breathing more slowly
and deeply, as if nothing had happened; and soon your body will be
persuaded that nothing has happened."
He spoke sternly, but with just that modicum of tenderness which made
his words at once a command and an entreaty.
"Try it," he said again. "Breathe as if nothing had happened." He held
her hand, and gazed sympathetically into her face. "As a matter of
fact," he added, "so little has happened that it's not worth while being
agitated about it."
She looked about as if in search of someone.
"It's all right," he said, "no one can find us here. We are a long way
from where I first came across you."
She closed her eyes, and seemed to be trying to do as he directed, for
her nostrils dilated as if in an effort to breathe deeply. He wished she
would speak. He dreaded that her mind might be unhinged.
"When you are well enough to walk," he said, "we shall go to Sandlewood.
We'll have some tea or dinner there, and then you can get back to 'The
Fastness' after dark and go straight to bed. That will be excellent, and
nobody will be any the wiser."
Patiently he waited while her breathing became by degrees more normal,
and faint traces of returning colour began to fleck her cheeks. He still
held her hand, and now and again he would press it gently as an earnest
of his sympathy. It seemed a long and anxious wait, and as his will and
desire for her return to strength grew more intense, he hoped that she
was profiting from his silent co-operation with her struggle for
recovery.
Suddenly her eyes opened, and she looked anxiously round.
"It's all right," he repeated, "you are not where you were when I first
found you. We have moved since then."
"Where are the others?" she gasped, the terrified look returning to her
eyes.
"They went back to the house over an hour ago," he replied.
"Is he dead? Did I kill him?" she demanded defiantly.
"Dead? No! He's not even badly wounded," he answered.
"Where was he wounded?"
"In the shoulder,--a slight flesh wound."
Her face became slightly flushed, and he rose and faced her.
"Don't move unless you want to," he muttered. "But I should prefer to go
a little further away. I think it would be a good thing."
"Move away?--is any one after us?" she cried frantically.
"No, no. No one is after us. But I think you would be better alone with
me for a while anyway, and if we can walk a little further on, we shall
be off everybody's track."
She made an effort to rise. He assisted her, and leaning heavily on his
arm she walked with him slowly towards Sandlewood. It was after six.
Neither spoke until the village was in sight, and then he asked if she
knew of any place in it where they could dine. "Not that it really
matters," he added, "because we don't want anything very substantial."
She said that she supposed the inn would be the best place.
To the inn they therefore went, and while the innkeeper's wife prepared
tea for them and boiled a few eggs, they walked over to the village
church.
"Stephen has a flesh wound, no more, in the shoulder. Nobody else is
hurt," he said as they sauntered along. "I have dressed the wound, and a
doctor has been fetched. He was actually able to walk to the house. I
told them it was an accident, that I was not skilled in the use of
rook-rifles. Of course they believed me. Why shouldn't they? I want you
to promise not to show me up. It was all my fault, and I may surely be
allowed to come out of it with only an accident against my name?"
"I don't care who knows. I don't care what happens!" Cleopatra exclaimed
hoarsely. "You needn't imagine I want you to shield me. I did it on
purpose, and they must know I did it on purpose."
Lord Henry frowned. "Yes, quite so," he continued. "You have suffered so
much of late that you disbelieve in anything but unhappiness. You feel
it must be interminable. It was all my fault. You fancy that you are
alone, with a bitter hostile world arrayed against you. And since the
world is your enemy, what do you care what the enemy thinks of you? Very
natural too! That is what you feel. If only, if only, Leonetta had not
been so slow in walking home this morning! It was hard luck on me that
you should have been driven to this, because I was aiming at something
so very different. However, it seems even harder luck that you should
imagine that you were driven to it by me. But fancy! only a flesh wound
in the shoulder, and it's all over! God! how thankful I am. And they
must believe it was my accident. For did I not come to do you good, and
had I not succeeded?"
"Better have left me alone," exclaimed the girl with a bitter smile. "I
wish I could go away. I want to leave this hateful place!"
"Wherever you go, whatever you do, understand," said Lord Henry, "I am
going to stick close to you. So don't imagine you can drive me away."
She stopped a moment. They had reached the churchyard, and she extended
an arm to the nearest tree to steady herself.
"Why don't you leave me?" she demanded. "Can't you see that I have been
tormented enough? I hate everything and everybody! I want to forget; I
want to be alone."
Lord Henry was silent and led the way back to the inn.
"You are doing what hundreds have done before you," he observed after a
while, "and always with disastrous results. You are condemning a man
unheard. Until this morning I was your friend, your most useful ally
here. You knew it, you felt it. I did everything in my power to bring
about a change in the balance of advantages, which was all in your
favour. You saw the proof of this. You drew strength from the very
change I created. You know you did; you cannot deny it. I worked with
zeal and with effect. God! if I worked with the same zeal for all my
patients I should be dead in a fortnight."
"Well?" she cried.
"Then you were told something by third parties,--something that seemed
to destroy in an instant all the careful work of my three days here. You
believed that there was only one interpretation of this thing, and that
was that my purpose all along had been so hazy and my nature so
capricious and irresponsible that I had suddenly resolved to reverse
the whole of the elaborate machinery which I had set in motion to
re-establish your health and spirits;--and what for?--in order, if you
please, to win the flattering smile of a mere child! Do you imagine that
even my love for your wonderful mother would ever have allowed me to
right-about-wheel all of a sudden in that ridiculous fashion? Come,
Cleopatra, be reasonable."
She averted her gaze, and her eyes began to well with tears.
"No, you have known the thing to happen before, and therefore you were
the more readily convinced that it had happened again. You had no faith
because your faith had been cruelly broken. But, believe me, although I
did this action this morning chiefly on your account and Leonetta's, and
partly also on account of a great friend of mine whom you do not yet
know, I swear I should never have undertaken it if I had dreamt for an
instant that it was going to cost you as much as a single tear."
The girl put her handkerchief to her eyes. "I'm afraid I don't
understand," she said. "It all seems so mysterious. I only know that,
one after another, you all seem to go the same way."
Lord Henry sighed. "Come," he said, offering her his arm again; "let me
make myself clear to you."
But she was too convulsed with sobs to move. The situation was certainly
difficult.
He waited, and looked for a while away from her.
"Besides," she cried at last, "you don't really know what I wanted to
do, otherwise--otherwise--Oh! it's too dreadful!"
He swung round. "I know everything," he rejoined.
"You can't really want to keep me beside you then."
He smiled sadly. "And why not, in all conscience!"
She wiped her eyes quickly and frowned darkly at him.
"Lord Henry, are you fooling me?" she ejaculated. "Don't you know that a
moment ago I was intent only on one thing, and that was----"
She choked and could go no further.
He walked up to her and laid a hand on her arm. "I tell you I know
everything," he repeated.
"You pretend that you know," she sneered.
He smiled and bowed his head. "If you mean," he suggested, "that two
hours ago you were firing from that ambush with the definite intention
of doing Leonetta some mortal injury, I need hardly say----"
"Yes," she said fiercely, "I do mean that."
"Of course I knew that," he observed. "Don't imagine I had any doubt
about that. When I first came up to you I was convinced of it. What else
could you have been doing?"
She scrutinised him intently. "Well, then?" she stammered.
"If only you will be good enough to walk back to the inn with me," he
said, again offering her his arm, "I'll explain everything to you."
"All right, walk on!" she said, declining his proffered assistance.
And then, as they walked, he began to unfold to her his reasons for his
behaviour with Leonetta in the woods that morning. He explained how he
had reckoned that he would be back in time to tell her first, and that
had it not been for the fury of Denis's indignation, he would certainly
have succeeded.
They reached the inn and repaired to the bar parlour, and over the
frugal meal he continued his explanation. She listened intently, raised
an objection from time to time, which he deftly parried, and thus
gradually the whole story was made plain to her. She revived visibly
under the effects of the refreshment, and the precise and convincing
manner of his narrative; and when at last the complete chain of
consequence had been revealed to her, he left her very much recovered
while he went in search of some vehicle to convey them back to "The
Fastness."
In about twenty minutes he returned with a broken-down old brougham--the
only vehicle the village possessed,--and in a moment they were rattling
away slowly in the direction of Brineweald.
"Then what made you look for me with such anxiety?" she enquired, once
they were well on their way. "Why did you guess so positively that
something tragic would happen? Why didn't you simply assume that my
fainting fits had returned?"
He caught her hand in his.
"My dear Cleo," he replied, "perhaps I am disgustingly arrogant, perhaps
I am quite unfit for decent society, but it occurred to me that your
fainting fits had been, not the outcome of thwarted passion, but the
result of mortified vanity. You never loved Denis. I felt somehow that
in this instance, not your vanity alone, but your deepest passions were
involved, and that when you would act from thwarted passion, either
against yourself, against me, or against Leonetta, you would proceed to
violence. Was I wrong? Was I hopelessly vain and foolish to imagine that
in this instance, because I was concerned and not Denis, therefore
something more tragic was to be expected?"
She looked away and a smile began to dawn on her tortured features.
"What about Baby?" she demanded after a while. "Did you consider her
feelings?"
"Did I consider her feelings? How can you ask me that, seeing that I was
leaving no stone unturned to save her from the toils of an
arch-flappist?"
She almost laughed.
"But didn't you go unnecessarily far with the poor kid?"
"Only as far as I was obliged to go to effect my purpose. But do you
suppose I am only the second man with whom she has flirted heavily? Do
you suppose I am even the sixth? I took care that she should realise
that it was only a rag. She is deep and she is passionate. She knows
what a good rag is. And she will behave very differently, I can assure
you, when she meets the man with whom she feels she cannot play without
burning her pretty fingers. She won't accept his first overtures so
readily, believe me. She will be too terrified, as all decent women are
when they are truly and deeply moved. She won't even yield so very
quickly to his repeated overtures. She will realise that the affair is
too deep, too committing, too final for that."
"But didn't you kiss her?" Cleopatra enquired.
"Of course I did," replied Lord Henry, chuckling quite heartily now.
"But is not a man entitled to kiss his future sister-in-law?"
Two tears rolled slowly down her face, and she fumbled hurriedly for her
handkerchief.
"Come, come, my beloved Cleo," he exclaimed, taking her into his arms,
"allow me to say that. Allow me to regard that kiss in that light. It
makes it so perfectly innocent. Didn't you feel that that is what I was
driving at? Oh, how easily I could have prevented all this if only
Leonetta hadn't dragged so on the way home!"
And then, as they approached the outskirts of Brineweald, they quickly
decided on their plan of action. It was settled that only Mrs.
Delarayne, Leonetta, and Stephen should ever know the truth about the
accident, and that, even so, Leonetta should not be told until she was
sensible enough to see how inevitable and how "natural" it was.
Meanwhile, everyone was to believe that Lord Henry had made a fool of
himself,--a fact which, as both he and Cleopatra knew, would afford
infinite satisfaction to Miss Mallowcoid, Denis, and the baronet.
* * * * *
Two months later, at about half-past eleven on a drizzly October
morning, there was a small and fashionable-looking crowd assembled near
the edge of one of the quays at the East India docks, and as the huge
Oriental liner moved slowly out into the Thames, five people on its
upper deck waved frantically towards this group. They were Cleopatra,
Lord Henry, the Tribes, and young Stephen Fearwell.
Again and again Lord Henry waved his hat, and again and again, in the
interval of putting it to her eyes, Mrs. Delarayne waved her tiny lace
handkerchief back at him.
He noticed that the brave woman was surviving wonderfully the strain of
losing for a while the beloved son that she had at last found; but as he
turned to call Cleopatra's attention to this, he found that he was
obliged to suppress the intended remark for fear of making an ass of
himself.
The gigantic steamer grew smaller and smaller, the group on the quay
still waved and waved, and then, at last, nothing more could be seen of
the travellers.
"Is it a trying journey to China?" Leonetta asked of Aubrey St. Maur,
jerking her arm which was enlocked in his, as they turned away from the
sight of the oily harbour water.
"Hush!" said St. Maur, glancing ominously at Mrs. Delarayne, who was
staggering along between Sir Joseph and Agatha Fearwell's father. "Poor
Peachy seems very much upset, doesn't she?"
"Yes, you see," Leonetta replied, "Henry always was her star turn."
_VISITORS BY NIGHT_[2]
_At that deep hour 'twixt midnight and the dawn,
When silence and the darkness strive in vain
For mastery, and Morpheus hath withdrawn
His friendly ward, not to return again;
Lo! Fancy's two-winged doorway wide doth yawn
And uninvited guests arrive amain.
A fateful suite they hover into sight--
They are the soul's dread visitors by night._
_First come brave Resolutions unfulfilled;
With each his spouse, Ambition unattained.
They have the furtive look of conscience skilled
In palliating failures unexplained.
Their lips are meek with pride that hath been killed
And confidence that hath in sickness waned.
Oh, steel thy heart, thou hapless, sleepless wight,
Against these cheerless visitors by night._
_Then come thy throng of petty sins and great,
Their sordid secrets branded on their brow.
Still apprehensive of their darksome fate
And craving safe concealment as they bow.
What faithfulness they have to come so late
When thou hadst half-forgotten them by now.
Oh, for a virtue great enough to affright
This ugly brood of visitors by night._
_But these are not the worst; there cometh last
A green-clad lady, viperish and ill.
Her bitter lips she biteth and right fast
She grappleth with what spirit thou hast still.
Her poisoned words transfix thee till aghast
Thou marvellest such aching doth not kill.
Her name is Jealousy, thou wretched wight;
The cruellest of visitors by night._
_Then Fancy's two-winged doorway slow doth close.
The birds begin to twitter and to sing.
All nature waketh and on pointed toes
Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in.
Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose,
And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin!
'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight;
This vigil with these visitors by night._
[Footnote 2: First published in _The New Age_, October 23, 1919.]