Although Nigel Armine was an enthusiast, and what many people called an
"original," he was also a man of the world. He knew the trend of the
world's opinion, he realized clearly how the world regarded any actions
that were not worldly. The fact that often he did not care did not mean
that he did not know. He was no ignorant citizen, and in his
acquaintance with Mrs. Chepstow his worldly knowledge did not forsake
him. Clearly he understood how the average London man--the man he met at
his clubs, at Ranelagh, at Hurlingham--would sum up any friendship
between Mrs. Chepstow and himself.
"Mrs. Chepstow's hooked poor old Armine!"
Something like that would be the verdict.
Were they friends? Could they ever be friends?
Nigel had met Mrs. Chepstow by chance in the vestibule of the Savoy. He
had been with a racing man whom he scarcely knew, but who happened to
know her well. This man had introduced them to each other carelessly,
and hurried away to "square things up with his bookie." Thus casually
and crudely their acquaintance was begun. How was it to continue?
Or--was it to continue?
Nigel was a strong man in the flower of his life. He was not a saint.
And he was beginning to wonder. And Isaacson, who was again in town, was
beginning to wonder, too.
During the season the Doctor was very busy. Many Americans and
foreigners desired to consult him. He adhered to his rule, and never
admitted a patient to his house after half-past five had struck, yet his
work was seldom over before the hour of seven. He could not see Nigel
often, because he could not see any one often; but he had seen him more
than once, more than once he had heard gossip about him, and he
realized, partly through knowledge, and partly through instinct, his
situation with Mrs. Chepstow. Nigel longed to be frank with Isaacson,
yet told him very little, held back by some strange reserve, subtly
inculcated, perhaps, by the woman. Other men told Isaacson far too much,
drawing evil inferences with the happy laughter of the beast and not of
the angel.
And the Doctor drew his own conclusion.
From the very first, he had realized that the acquaintance between this
socially ruined, no longer young, yet still fascinating woman, and this
young, enthusiastic man would be no slight, ephemeral thing. The woman
had willed it otherwise. And perhaps the almost ungovernable
root-qualities of Nigel had willed it otherwise, too, although he did
not know that. Enthusiasm plies a whip that starts steeds in a mad
gallop it is not easy to arrest. Even the vigorous force that started
them may be unable to pull them up.
Where exactly was Nigel going?
Smiling and sneering men in the clubs said, to a crude liaison. They
said more. They said the liaison was a fact, and marvelled that a fellow
like Armine should be willing to be "a bad last." Isaacson knew the
untruth of this gossip. There was no liaison. But would there ever be
one? Did Mrs. Chepstow intend that there should be one? Or had her
intention from the beginning been quite otherwise?
Isaacson did not know in detail what Nigel's past had been. He imagined
it, from the man's point of view, to have been unusually pure. But he
did not suppose it stainless. His keen eyes of a physician read the
ardour of Nigel's temperament. He made no mistake about his man. Nigel
ought to have married. That he had never done so was due to a sorrow in
early life, the death of a girl whom he had loved. Isaacson knew nothing
of this, and sometimes he had wondered why no woman captured this nature
so full of impulse and of sympathy, so full of just those qualities
which make good women happy. If Mrs. Chepstow should capture it, the
irony of life would be in flood.
Would she win the love as well as the pity and the chivalry of Nigel,
which she already had? Would she awaken the flesh of this man as well
as the spirit, and through spirit and flesh would she attain his soul?
And then?
Isaacson's sincerity was sorely tested by his friendship at this period.
Original though he was, and full of the sensitive nature's distaste for
marching with the mob, he was ranged with the mob against Nigel in this
affair of Mrs. Chepstow. Yet Nigel claimed him as an ally, a kindred
spirit. He was not explicit, but in their fugitive intercourse he was
perpetually implying. It was "You and I," and the rest of the world shut
out. Pity was working within him, chivalry was working, the generosity
of his soul, but also its fighting obstinacy. There was something in
Nigel which loved to have its back against the wall. He wanted to put
Isaacson into the same pugnacious position, facing the overwhelming
odds. But the overwhelming odds were on the same side as the Doctor. On
the whole, Isaacson was not sorry that he had so few hours to spare. For
he did not know what to do. Professional secrecy debarred him from
telling Nigel what Mrs. Chepstow had said of herself. What others said
of her would never set Nigel against her, but would always incline him
towards her.
So far Mrs. Chepstow and he were acquaintances. But already the moment
had come when Nigel was beginning to want of her more than mere
acquaintanceship, and, because of this driving want of more, to ask
himself whether he should require less. His knowledge of the world
might, or might not, have told him that with Mrs. Chepstow an
unembarrassed friendship would be difficult. That would have been
theory. Practice already taught him that the difficulty would probably
prove insurmountable even by his enthusiasm and courage. Were they
friends? Could they ever be friends?
Even while he asked himself the question, a voice within him answered,
"No."
Women who have led certain lives lose the faculty for friendship, if
they ever possessed it. Events have taught them, what instinct seems to
teach many women, to look on men as more physical even than they are.
And such women show their outlook perpetually, in word, in look, in
action, and in the indefinable _nuances_ of manner which make a person's
atmosphere. This outlook affects men, both shames them and excites them,
acting on god and brute. Neither shamed god nor brute with lifted head
is in the mood for friendship.
Mrs. Chepstow had this instinctive outlook on male creation, and not
even her delicate gifts as a _comedienne_ could entirely disguise it.
At last Nigel reached a crisis of restlessness and uncertainty, which
warned him that he must drift and delay no longer, but make up his mind
quite definitely what course he was going to take. He was not a man who
could live comfortably in indecision. He hated it, indeed, as an
attribute of weakness.
He must "have it out" with himself.
It was now July. The season would soon be over. And his acquaintance
with Mrs. Chepstow? Would that be over too? It might come to an end
quite naturally. He would go into the country, presently to Scotland for
the shooting. And she--where would she go? This question set him
thinking, as often in these last days--thinking about her loneliness, a
condition exaggerated and underlined by her to make an impression on
him. She did not seem to dwell upon it. She was far too clever for that.
But somehow it was always cropping up. When he paid her a visit, she was
scarcely ever out. And if she was in, she was invariably alone.
Sometimes she wore a hat and said she had just come in. Sometimes, when
he left her, she would say she was going out. But always the impression
created was of a very lonely woman, with no engagements and apparently
no friends, who passed the long summer days in solitude,
playing--generally "Gerontius"--upon the little rosewood piano, or
reading "The Scarlet Letter," or some sad or high-minded book. There was
no pose apparent in all this. Indeed, sometimes Mrs. Chepstow seemed
slightly confused, almost ashamed, at being so unoccupied, so unclaimed
by any society or any bright engagements. And more than once Nigel
suspected her of telling him white lies when she spoke of dining out
with "people" in the evening, or of joining a "party" for the play. For
he noticed that when she made such statements it was generally after
some remark, some little incident, which had indicated his pity. And he
divined the pride of a well-bred woman stirring within her, the desire
to conceal or to make the least of her unfortunate situation. Far from
posing to gain his pity, he believed her to be "playing up," if
possible, to avoid it. And this belief, not unnaturally, rendered it far
more keen. So he fell in with her intention.
Once or twice when, in mental colloquies, he played, as he supposed, the
part of the ordinary man of the world arguing out the question with the
impulsive, chivalrous man, he said, and insisted strongly, that a woman
such as Mrs. Chepstow, justifiably famous for beauty and scandalously
famous for very different reasons, if she sought to deceive--and of
course the man of the world thought such women compact of
deception--would try to increase her attraction by representing herself
as courted, desired, feted, run after by men. Such women always did
that. Never would she wish it to be known that she was undesired, that
she was abandoned. Men want what other men want. But who wants the
unwanted? The fact that Mrs. Chepstow allowed him to see and to realize
her solitude, so simply and so completely, proved to Nigel her almost
unwise unworldliness. The man of the world, so sceptical, was convinced.
And as to the enthusiast--he bowed down.
Nigel made the mistake of judging Mrs. Chepstow's capacity by the
measure of his own shrewdness, which in such a direction was not great.
What seemed the inevitable procedure of such a woman to Nigel's amount
of worldly cleverness, seemed the procedure to be avoided to Mrs.
Chepstow's amount of the same blessing. She seldom took the obvious
route in deception, as Isaacson had realized almost from the first
moment when he knew her. She paid people the compliment of crediting
them with astuteness, and thought it advisable to be not only more
clever than they were stupid, but more clever than they were clever.
And so Nigel's pity grew; and now, when he was "having it out" with
himself, he felt that when the season was over Mrs. Chepstow must miss
him, not because she had picked him out as a man specially attractive to
her, but simply because he had brought the human element into a very
lonely life. In their last conversation he had spoken of the end of the
season, of the exodus that would follow it.
"Oh--yes, of course," she had said, rather vaguely.
"Where are you going?"
She had sat for a moment in silence, and he had believed he followed the
movement of her thought. He had felt certain that she was considering
whether she would tell him a lie, recount some happy plan invented at
the moment to deceive him. Feeling this certainty, he had looked at her,
and his eyes had asked her to tell him the truth. And he had believed
that she yielded to them, when at length she said:
"I haven't any special plans. I dare say I shall stay on quietly here."
She had not given him an opportunity of making a rejoinder, but had at
once turned the conversation to some quite different topic. And again he
had divined pride working busily within her.
She must miss him.
She must miss any one who occasionally stepped in to break her solitude.
Sometimes he had wondered at this solitude's completeness. He wondered
again now. Everybody had their friends, their intimates, whether
delightful or preposterous. Who were hers? Of course the average woman
had "dropped" her long ago. But there are other women in London besides
the average woman. There are brilliant women of Bohemia, there are
clever women even belonging to society who "take their own way," and
know precisely whom they choose, whoever interests or attracts them.
And--there are friends, faithful through changes, misfortunes, even
disasters. Where were Mrs. Chepstow's? He did not dare to ask.
He recalled his first visit to her, not with any maudlin sentimentality,
but with a quiet earnestness: the empty room looking to the river, the
open piano and the music upon it, the few roses, and the books. He
recalled "The Scarlet Letter" bound in white, and her partial quotation
from the Bible in explanation of its binding. Abruptly she had stopped,
perhaps suddenly conscious of the application to herself. At tea she had
said of the cakes that were so good, "I ordered them specially for you
and our little festivity." There was a great simplicity in the words,
and in her voice when she had said them. In her loneliness, a cup of tea
drunk with him was a "festivity." He imagined her sitting alone in that
room in August, when the town is parched, dried up, and half deserted.
How would she pass her days?
He compared his life with hers, or rather with a life he imagined as
hers. And never before had he realized the brightness, even the
brilliance, of his life, with its multitudinous changes and activities,
its work--the glorious sweating with the brown labourers in the sand
flats at the edge of the Fayyum--its sport, its friendships, its
strenuous and its quiet hours, so dearly valued because they were rather
rare. It was a good life. It was almost a grand life. London now,
Scotland presently; then the late autumn, the train, the sight of the
sea, the cry of the siren, the throbbing of the engines, and
presently--Egypt! And then the winter of sunshine, and the songs of his
workmen, his smiling fellahin, and the reclaiming of the desert.
The reclaiming of the desert!
Nigel was alone in his bedroom in the Savoy. It was late at night. He
was in pajamas, smoking a cigar by the open window. He looked down to
the red carpet on which his bare feet were set in their red babouches,
and suddenly he realized the beauty of what he was doing in the Fayyum.
He had never really thought of it before in this way--of the reclaiming
of the desert; but now that he did think of it, he was glad, and his
heart bounded, looking forward in affection to the winter.
And her winter? What would that be like?
What an immense difference one honest, believing, and therefore
inspiring affection must make in a lonely life! Only one--that is
enough. And the desert is reclaimed.
He saw the brakes of sugar-cane waving, the tall doura swaying in the
breeze, where only the sands had been. And his brown cheeks glowed, as a
hot wave of blood went through them.
Progress! He loved to think of it. It was his passion. That grand old
Watts's picture, with its glow, its sacred glow of colour, in which was
genius! Each one must do his part.
And in that great hotel, how many were working consciously for the
cause?
Excitement woke in him. He thought of the rows and rows of numbered
doors in the huge building, and within, beyond each number, a mind to
think, a heart to feel, a soul to prompt, a body to act. And beyond his
number--himself! What was he doing? What was he going to do? He got up
and walked about his room, still smoking his cigar. His babouches
shuffled over the carpet. He kicked them off, and went on walking, with
bare, brown feet. Often in the Fayyum he had gone barefoot, like his
labourers. What was he going to do to help on the slow turning of the
mighty wheel of progress? He must not be a mere talker, a mere raver
about grand things, while accomplishing nothing to bring them about. He
despised those windy talkers who never act. He must not be one of them.
That night, when he sat down "to have it out" with himself, he had done
so for his own sake. He had been an egoist, had been thinking, perhaps
not solely but certainly chiefly, of himself. But in these lonely
moments men are generally essentially themselves. Nigel was not
essentially an egoist. And soon himself had been almost forgotten. He
had been thinking far more of Mrs. Chepstow than of himself. And now he
thought of her again in connection with this turning of the great wheel
of progress. At first he thought of her alone in this connection, then
of her and of himself.
It is difficult to do anything quite alone, anything wholly worth the
doing. That was what he was thinking. Nearly always some other intrudes,
blessedly intrudes, to give conscious, or unconscious, help. A man puts
his shoulder to the wheel, and in front of him he sees another shoulder.
And the sight gives him courage.
The thought of strenuous activity made him think of Mrs. Chepstow's
almost absolute inactivity. He saw her sitting, always sitting, in her
room, while life flowed on outside. He saw her pale face. That her face
was carefully made pale by art did not occur to him. And then again he
thought of Mrs. Browning and of the mountain peaks.
What was he going to do?
He made a strong mental effort, as he would have expressed it, to "get
himself in hand." Now, then, he must think it out. And he must "hold up"
his enthusiasm, and just be calm and reasonable, and even calculating.
He thought of the girl whom he had loved long ago and who had died.
Since her death he had put aside love as a passion. Now and then--not
often--a sort of travesty of love had come to him, the spectre of the
real. It is difficult for a young, strong man in the pride of his life
never to have any dealing either with love or with its spectre. But
Isaacson was right. Nigel's life had been much purer than are most men's
lives. Often he had fought against himself, and his own natural
inclination, because of his great respect for love. Not always had he
conquered. But the fights had strengthened the muscles of his will, and
each fall had shown him more clearly the sadness, almost the horror,
imprinted on the haggard features of the spectre of the real.
Mrs. Chepstow for years had been looking upon, had been living with,
that spectre, if what was said of her was true.
And Nigel did not deceive himself on this point. He did not
sentimentally exalt a courtesan into an angel, as boys so often do. Mrs.
Chepstow had certainly lived very wrongly, in a way to excite disgust,
perhaps, as well as pity. Yet within her were delicacy, simplicity, the
pride of breeding, even a curious reserve. She had still a love of fine
things. She cared for things ethereal. He thought of his first visit to
her, the open piano, "Proficiscere, anima Christiana," "The Scarlet
Letter," and her quotation. What had she been thinking while she played
Elgar's curiously unearthly music, while she read Hawthorne's pitiful
book? She had been using art, no doubt, as so many use it, as a means of
escape from life. And her escape had been not into filth or violence,
not into the salons of wit, or into the salons where secrets are
unveiled, but into the airy spaces with the angel, into the forest with
Hester and little Pearl.
Why could they not continue friends?
His body spoke in answer, and he laid the blame for the answer entirely
on himself. He condemned himself at that moment, was angry with himself,
cursed himself. And he cursed himself, not because he was morbid, but
because he was healthy-minded, and believed that his evil inclinations
had been aroused by his knowledge of Mrs. Chepstow's past. And that fact
was a beast, was something to be stamped on. He would never allow
himself comfortably to be that sort of man. Yet he was, it seemed,
enough that sort of man to make friendship with Mrs. Chepstow difficult,
perhaps impossible. If love had led him to such an inclination, he
would, being no prude, have understood it as a perfectly natural and
perfectly healthy thing. But he did not love Mrs. Chepstow. He would
never love, really love, again. For years he had said that to himself,
and had believed it. He said it again now. And even if he could renew
that strange power, to love, he could not love a woman who was not pure.
He felt certain of that. He thought of the dead girl and of Mrs.
Chepstow. But to-night he could not recall the dead girl's figure,
face, look, exactly. Mrs. Chepstow's he could, of course, recall. He
had seen her that very day. And the girl he had loved had been dead for
many years. She lived in his memory now rather as a symbol of purity and
beauty than as a human being.
Mrs. Chepstow, of course, would never find a man sincerely to love her
now.
And yet why not! Suddenly Nigel checked himself, as he generally did
when he found himself swiftly subscribing to the general opinion of the
great mass of men. Why not? The shoulder to the wheel; it was nearly
always the shoulder of love--love of an idea, love of a woman, love of
humanity, love of work, love of God. All the men he knew, or very nearly
all, would laugh at the idea of Mrs. Chepstow being sincerely loved. But
the fact that they would laugh could have no effect on a manly heart or
a manly spirit.
He felt almost angry with her for the loneliness and the immobility
which pained his chivalry and struck at his sense of pity. If he could
think of her as going away, too, as wandering, in Switzerland, in Italy,
in some lovely place, he would feel all right. But always he saw her
seated in that room, alone, deserted, playing the piano, reading, with
no prospect of company, of change. Mrs. Chepstow had acted her part
well. She had stamped a lonely image upon the retina of Nigel's
imagination.
He was still walking about his room in bare feet. But his cigar had gone
out, though it was still between his lips. The hour was very late. He
heard a distant clock strike two. And just after he had listened to its
chime, followed by other chimes in near and distant places of the city,
the night idea of a strong and young man came to him.
If he could not be friends with Mrs. Chepstow, could he be--the other
thing to her!
He put up his hand to his lips, took away the cigar, and flung it out of
the window violently. And this physical violence was the echo of his
mental violence. She might allow such a thing. Often, if half of what
was said of her was true, she had entered into a similar relation with
other men. He would not believe that "often." He put it differently.
She had certainly entered into a similar relation with some men--perhaps
with two or three, multiplied by scandal--in the past. Would she enter
into it with him, if he asked her? And would he ever ask her?
He threw himself down again in his arm-chair, and stared at his bare
feet planted firmly on the floor. But he saw, not his feet, but the ugly
spectre of love, that hideous, damnable ghost, that most pretentious of
all pretensions. She had lived with the ghost till she had become pale
like a ghost. In the picture of "Progress," which he loved, there was a
glow, a glory of light, raying out to a far horizon. It would be putting
a shoulder to the wheel to set a glow in the cheeks of a woman, not a
glow of shame but of joy. And to be--and then Nigel used to himself that
expression of the laughing men in the clubs--"a bad last!" No, that sort
of thing was intolerable.
Suddenly the ghost faded away, and he saw his brown feet. They made him
think at once of the sun, of work, of the good, real, glowing life.
No, no; none of those intolerable beastlinesses for him. That thought,
that imagination, it was utterly, finally done with. He drew a long
breath, and stretched up his arms, till the loose sleeves of his
night-suit fell down, exposing the strong, brown limbs. And as he had
looked at his feet, he looked at them, then felt them, thumped them, and
rejoiced in the glory of health. But the health of mind and heart was
essential to the complete health of the body. He felt suddenly
strong--strong for more than one, as surely a man should be--strong for
himself, and his woman, for her who belongs to him, who trusts him, who
has blotted out--it comes to that with a woman who loves--all other men
for him.
Was he really condemned to an eternal solitude because of the girl who
had died so many years ago? For his life was a solitude, as every
loveless life is, however brilliant and strenuous. He realized that, and
there came to him a thought that was natural and selfish. It was this:
How good it must be to be exclusively loved by a woman, and how a
woman, whom men and the world have abandoned, must love the man who
comes, like a knight through the forest, and carries her away, and takes
her into his life, and gives her back self-respect, and a place among
women, and, above all, the feeling that of all feelings a woman holds
dearest, "Somebody wants me." It must be good to be loved as such a
woman would love. His generosity, which instinctively went out to
abandoned things, walked hand in hand with man's eternal, indestructible
selfishness that night, as he thought of Mrs. Chepstow for the first
time as married again to some man who cared not for the world's opinion,
or who cared for it so much as to revel in defying it.
How would she love such a man?
He began to wonder about that part of her nature dedicated to, designed
for, love.
With him she was always perfectly simple, and seemed extremely frank.
But he felt now that in her simplicity she had always been reserved,
almost strangely reserved for such a woman. Perhaps that reserve had
been her answer to his plainly shown respect. Just because of her
position, he had been even more respectful to her than he was to other
women, following in this a dictate of his temperament. What would she be
like in the unreserve of a great love?
And now a fire was kindled in Nigel, and began to burn up fiercely. He
felt, very consciously and definitely, the fascination of this woman. Of
course, he had always been more or less subject to it. Isaacson had
known that when he saw Nigel draw his chair nearer to hers at the
supper-table in the Savoy. But he had been subject to it without ever
saying to himself, "I am in subjection." He had never supposed that he
was in subjection. The abrupt consciousness of how it was with him
excited him tremendously. After the long interval of years, was he to
feel again the powerful fever, and for a woman how different from the
woman he had loved? She stood, in her young purity, at one end of the
chain of years, and Mrs. Chepstow--did she really stand at the other?
He seemed to see these two looking at each other across the space that
was set by Time, and for a moment his face contracted. But he had
changed while traversing that space. Then he was an eager boy, in the
joy of his bounding youth. Now he was a vigorous man. And during the
interval that separated boy from man had come up in him his strong love
of humanity, his passion for the development of the good that lies
everywhere, like the ore in gold-bearing earth. That love had perhaps
been given to him to combine the two loves, the altruistic love, and the
love for a woman bringing its quick return.
The two faces of women surely softened as they gazed now upon each
other.
Such loves in combination might crown his life with splendour. Nigel
thought that, with the enthusiasm which was his birthright, which set
him so often apart from other men. And, moving beneath such a splendour,
how absolutely he could defy the world's opinion! Its laughter would be
music, its sneering word only the signal to a smile.