Isaacson did not visit Mrs. Chepstow again before he left London for his
annual holiday. More than once he thought of going. Something within him
wanted to go, something that was perhaps intellectually curious. But
something else rebelled. He felt that his finer side was completely
ignored by her. Why should he care what she saw in him or what she
thought about it? He asked himself the question. And when he answered
it, he was obliged to acknowledge that she had made upon his nature a
definite impression. This impression was unfavorable, but it was too
distinct. Its distinctness gave a measure of her power. He was aware
that, much as he disliked Mrs. Chepstow, much as he even shrank from
her, with a sort of sensitive loathing, if he saw her very often he
might come to wish to see her. Never had he felt like this towards any
other woman. Does not hatred contain attraction? By the light of his
dislike of Mrs. Chepstow, Isaacson saw clearly why she attracted Nigel.
But during those August days, in the interior combat, his Jewishness
conquered his intellectual curiosity, and he did not go again to the
Savoy.
His holiday was spent abroad on the Lake of Como, and quite alone. Each
year he made a "retreat," which he needed after the labours of the year,
labours which obliged him to be perpetually with people. He fished in
the green lake, sketched in the lovely garden of the almost deserted
hotel, and passed every day some hours in scientific study.
This summer he was reading about the effects of certain little-known
poisons. He spent strange hours with them. He had much imagination, and
they became to him like living things, these agents of destruction.
Sometimes, after long periods passed with them, he would raise his head
from his books, or the paper on which he was taking notes, and, seeing
the still green waters of the lake, the tall and delicate green
mountains lifting their spires into the blue, he would return from his
journey along the ways of terror, and, dazed, like a tired traveller, he
would stare at the face of beauty. Or when he worked by night, after
hours during which the swift action of the brain had rendered him deaf
to the sounds without, suddenly he would become aware of the chime of
bells, of bells in the quiet waters and on the dreaming shores. And he
would lift his head and listen, till the strangeness of night, and of
the world with its frightful crimes and soft enchantments, stirred and
enthralled his soul. And he compared his two lives, this by the quiet
lake, alone, filled with research and dreams, and that in the roar of
London, with people streaming through his room. And he seemed to himself
two men, perhaps more than two.
Soon the four weeks by the lake were gone. Then followed two weeks of
travel--Milan, Munich, Berlin, Paris. And then he was home again.
He had heard nothing of Nigel, nothing of Mrs. Chepstow.
September died away in the brown arms of October, and at last a letter
came from Nigel. It was written from Stacke House, a shooting-lodge in
Scotland, and spoke of his speedy return to the South.
"I am shooting with Harwich," he wrote, "but must soon be thinking about
my return to Egypt. I didn't write to you before, though I wanted to
thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow. You can't think how she
appreciated it. She was delighted by your brilliant talk and sense of
humour, but still more delighted by your cordiality and kindness. Of
late she hasn't had very much of the latter commodity, and she was quite
bowled over. By Jove, Isaacson, if men realized what a little true
kindness means to those who are down on their luck, they'd have to 'fork
out,' if only to get the return of warm affection. But they don't
realize.
"I sometimes think the truest thing said since the Creation is that
'They know not what they do.' Add, 'and what they leave undone,' and you
have an explanation of most of the world's miseries. Good-bye, old chap.
I shall come to Cleveland Square directly I get to London. Thank you for
that visit. Yours ever, Nigel Armine."
Nigel's enthusiasm seemed almost visibly to exhale from the paper as
Isaacson held the letter in his hands. "Your cordiality and kindness."
So that had struck Mrs. Chepstow--the cordiality and kindness of his,
Isaacson's manner! Of course she and Nigel were in correspondence.
Isaacson remembered the occasional notes almost of triumph in her
demeanour. She had had letters from Nigel during his absence from
London. His letters--the hope in her face. Isaacson saw her on the
balcony looking out over the river. Had she not looked out as the human
soul looks out upon a prospect of release? In the remembrance of them
her expression and her attitude became charged with more definite
meaning. And he surely grasped that meaning, which he had wondered about
before.
Yet Nigel said nothing. And all this time he had been away from Mrs.
Chepstow. Such an absence was strange, and seemed unlike him, quite
foreign to his enthusiastic temperament, if Isaacson's surmise was
correct. But perhaps it was not correct. That well-spring of human
kindness which bubbled up in Nigel, might it not, perhaps, deceive?
"Feeling is woman's knowledge." Isaacson had said that. Now mentally he
added, "And sometimes it is man's." He felt too much about Nigel, but
he strove to put his feeling away.
Presently he would know. Till then it was useless to debate. And he had
very much to do.
Not till nearly the end of October did Nigel return to London. The
leaves were falling in battalions from the trees. The autumn winds had
come, and with them the autumn rain, that washes sadly away the last
sweet traces of summer. Everywhere, through country and town, brooded
that grievous atmosphere of finale which in England seldom or never
fails to cloud the waning year.
The depression that is characteristic of this season sent many people to
doctors. Day after day Isaacson sat in his consulting-room, prescribing
rather for the minds of men than for their bodies, living rather with
their misunderstood souls than with their physical symptoms. And this
year his patients reacted on him far more than usual. He felt almost as
if by removing he received their ills, as if their apprehensions were
communicated to his mind, as germs are communicated to the body, and as
if they stayed to do evil. He told himself that his holiday had not
rested him enough. But he never thought for a moment of diminishing his
work. Success swept him ever onward to more exertion. As his power grew,
his appetite for it grew. And he enjoyed his increasing fortune.
At last Nigel rang at his door. Isaacson could not see him, but sent out
word to make an appointment for the evening. They were to meet at eight
at an orchestral concert in Queen's Hall.
Isaacson was a little late in keeping this engagement. He came in
quickly and softly between two movements of Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic
Symphony," found Nigel in his stall, and, with a word, sat down beside
him. The conductor raised his baton. The next movement began.
In the music there was a throbbing like the throbbing of a heart, that
persisted and persisted with a beautiful yet terrible monotony. Often
Isaacson had listened to this symphony, been overwhelmed by the two
effects of this monotony, an effect of loveliness and an effect of
terror that were inextricably combined. To-night, either because he was
very tired or for some other reason, the mystery of the sadness of this
music, which floats through all its triumph, appealed to him more than
usual, and in a strangely poignant way. The monotonous pulsation was
like the pulse of life, that life in which he and the man beside him
were for a time involved, from which presently they would be released,
whether with or against their wills. The pulse of life! Suddenly from
the general his mind passed to the particular. He thought of a woman's
pulse, strong, regular, inexorable. He seemed to feel it beneath his
fingers, the pulse of Mrs. Chepstow. And he knew that he had thought of
her because Nigel Armine was thinking of her, that he connected her with
this music because Nigel was doing the same. This secretly irritated
Isaacson. He strove to detach his mind from this thought of Mrs.
Chepstow. But his effort was in vain. Her pulse was beneath his fingers,
and with every stroke of it he felt more keenly the mystery and cruelty
of life. When the movement was finished, he did not speak a word. Nor
did he look at Nigel. Even when the last note of the symphony seemed to
fade and fall downwards into an abyss of misery and blackness, he did
not speak or move. He felt crushed and overwhelmed, like one beaten and
bruised.
"Isaacson!"
"Yes?"
He turned a little in his seat.
"Grand music! But it's all wrong."
"Why?"
"Wrong in its lesson."
The artist in Isaacson could not conceal a shudder.
"I don't look for a lesson; I don't want a lesson in it."
"But the composer forces it on one--a lesson of despair. Give it all up!
No use to make your effort. The Immanent Will broods over you. You must
go down in the end. That music is a great lie. It's splendid, it's
superb, but it's a lie."
"Shall we go out? We've got ten minutes."
They made their way to the corridor and strolled slowly up and down,
passing and repassing others who were discussing the music.
"Such music puts my back up," Nigel continued, with energy; "makes me
feel I won't give in to it."
Isaacson could not help smiling.
"I can't look at Art from the moral plane."
"But surely Art often makes you think either morally or immorally.
Surely it gives you impulses which connect themselves with life, with
people."
Isaacson looked at him.
"I don't deny it. But these impulses are like the shadowy spectres of
the Brocken, mere outlines which presently, very soon, dissolve into the
darkness. Though great music is full of form, it often creates chaos in
those who hear it."
"Then that music should call up in you a chaos of despair."
"It does."
"It makes me want to fight."
"What?"
"All the evil and the sorrow of the world. I hate despair."
Isaacson glanced at him again, and noticed how strong he was looking,
and how joyous.
"Scotland has done you good," he said. "You look splendid to-night."
Secretly he gave a special meaning to the ordinary expression. To-night
there was a splendour in his friend which seemed to be created by an
inner strength radiating outward, informing, and expressing itself in
his figure and his features.
"I'm looking forward to the winter."
Isaacson thought of the note of triumph in Mrs. Chepstow's voice when
she said to him, "I don't feel such things this summer." Surely Nigel
now echoed that note.
An electric bell sounded. They returned to the concert-room.
They stayed till the concert was over, and then walked away down Regent
Street, which was moist and dreary, full of mist and of ugly noises.
"When do you start for Egypt?" said Meyer Isaacson.
"In about ten days, I think. Do you wish you were going there?"
"I cannot possibly escape."
"But do you wish to?"
For a moment Isaacson did not answer.
"I do and I don't," he said, after the pause. "Work holds one strangely,
because, if one is worth anything as a worker, its grip is on the soul.
Part of me wants to escape, often wants to escape."