“Certainly, dear,” she said when I came the following morning with my request. “You can have my boudoir all to yourselves.”
“I am grateful,” said I, “and for the first time I forgive you for calling it by that abominable name.”
It was an old quarrel between us. Every lover of language picks out certain words in common use that he hates with an unreasoning ferocity.
“I'll change it's title if you like,” she said meekly.
“If you do, my dear Agatha, my gratitude will be eternal.”
“I remember a certain superior person, when Tom and I were engaged, calling mother's boudoir—the only quiet place in the house—the osculatorium.”
She laughed with the air of a small bird who after long waiting had at last got even with a hawk. But I did not even smile. For the only time in our lives I considered that Agatha had committed a breach of good taste. I said rather stiffly:
“It is not going to be a lovers' meeting, my dear.”
She flushed. “It was silly of me. But why shouldn't it be a lovers' meeting?” she added audaciously. “If nothing had happened, you two would have been married by this time—”
“Not till June.”
“Oh, yes, you would. I should have seen about that—a ridiculously long engagement. Anyhow, it was only your illness that broke it off. You were told you were going to die. You did the only honourable and sensible thing—both of you. Now you're in splendid health again—”
“Stop, stop!” I interrupted. “You seem to be entirely oblivious of the circumstances—”
“I'm oblivious of no circumstances. Neither is Eleanor. And if she still cares for you she won't care twopence for the circumstances. I know I wouldn't.”
And to cut off my reply she clapped the receiver of the telephone to her ear and called up Eleanor, with whom she proceeded to arrange a date for the interview. Presently she screwed her head round.
“She says she can come at four this afternoon. Will that suit you?”
“Perfectly,” said I.
When she replaced the receiver I stepped behind her and put my hands on her shoulders.
“'The mother of mischief,'” I quoted, “'is no bigger than a midge's wing,' and the grandmother is the match-making microbe that lurks in every woman's system.”
She caught one of my hands and looked up into my face.
“You're not cross with me, Simon?”
Her tone was that of the old Agatha. I laughed, remembering the policeman's salute of the previous night, and noted this recovery of my ascendancy as another indication of the general improvement in the attitude of London.
“Of course not, Tom Tit,” said I, calling her by her nursery name. “But I absolutely forbid your thinking of playing Fairy Godmother.”
“You can forbid my playing,” she laughed, “and I can obey you. But you can't prevent my thinking. Thought is free.”
“Sometimes, my dear,” I retorted, “it is better chained up.”
With this rebuke I left her. No doubt, she considered a renewal of my engagement with Eleanor Faversham a romantic solution of difficulties. I could only regard it as preposterous, and as I walked back to Victoria Street I convinced myself that Eleanor's frank offer of friendship proved that such an idea never entered her head. I took vehement pains to convince myself Spring had come; like the year, I had awakened from my lethargy. I viewed life through new eyes; I felt it with a new heart. Such vehement pains I was not capable of taking yesterday.
“It has never entered her head!” I declared conclusively.
And yet, as we sat together a few hours later in Agatha's little room a doubt began to creep into the corners of my mind. In her strong way she had brushed away the scandal that hung around my name. She did not believe a word of it. I told her of my loss of fortune. My lunacy rather raised than lowered me in her esteem. How then was I personally different from the man she had engaged herself to marry six months before? I remembered our parting. I remembered her letters. Her presence here was proof of her unchanging regard. But was it something more? Was there a hope throbbing beneath that calm sweet surface to which I did not respond? For it often happens that the more direct a woman is, the more in her feminine heart is she elusive.
Clean-built, clean-hearted, clean-eyed, of that clean complexion which suggests the open air, Eleanor impressed you with a sense of bodily and mental wholesomeness. Her taste in dress ran in the direction of plain tailor-made gowns (I am told, by the way, that these can be fairly expensive), and shrank instinctively from the frills and fripperies to which daughters of Eve are notoriously addicted. She spoke in a clear voice which some called hard, though I never found it so; she carried herself proudly. Chaste in thought, frank in deed, she was a perfect specimen of the highly bred, purely English type of woman who, looking at facts squarely in the face, accepts them as facts and does not allow her imagination to dally in any atmosphere wherein they may be invested. To this type a vow is irrefragable. Loyalty is inherent in her like her blood. She never changes. What feminine inconsistencies she had at fifteen she retains at five-and-twenty, and preserves to add to the charms of her old age. She is the exemplary wife, the great-hearted mother of children. She has sent her sons in thousands to fight her country's battles overseas. Those things which lie in the outer temper of her soul she gives lavishly. That which is hidden in her inner shrine has to be wrested from her by the one hand she loves. Was mine that hand?
It will be perceived that I was beginning to take life seriously.
Eleanor must have also perceived something of the sort; for during our talk she said irrelevantly:
“You've changed!”
“In what way?” I asked.
“I don't know. You're not the same as you were. I seem to know you better in some ways, and yet I seem to know you less. Why is it?”
I said, “No one can go through the Valley of the Grotesque as I have done without suffering some change.”
“I don't see why you should call it 'the Valley of the Grotesque.'”
I smiled at her instinctive rejection of the fanciful.
“Don't you? Call it the Valley of the Shadow, if you like. But don't you think the attendant circumstances were rather mediaeval, gargoyley, Orcagnesque? Don't you think the whole passage lacked the dignity which one associates with the Valley of the Shadow of Death?”
“You mean the murder?” she said with a faint shiver.
“That,” said I, “might be termed the central feature. Just look at things as they happened. I am condemned to death. I try to face it like a man and a gentleman. I make my arrangements. I give up what I can call mine no longer. I think I will devote the rest of my days to performing such acts of helpfulness and charity as would be impossible for a sound man with a long life before him to undertake. I do it in a half-jesting spirit, refusing to take death seriously. I pledge myself to an act of helpfulness which I regard at first as merely an incident in my career of beneficence. I am gradually caught in the tangle of a drama which at times develops into sheer burlesque, and before I can realise what is going to happen, it turns into ghastly tragedy. I am overwhelmed in grotesque disaster—it is the only word. Instead of creating happiness all around me, I have played havoc with human lives. I stand on the brink and look back and see that it is all one gigantic devil-jest at my expense. I thank God I am going to die. I do die—for practical purposes. I come back to life and—here I am. Can I be quite the same person I was a year ago?”
She reflected for a few moments. Then she said:
“No. You can't be—quite the same. A man of your nature would either have his satirical view of life hardened into bitter cynicism or he would be softened by suffering and face things with new and nobler ideals. He would either still regard life as a jest—but instead of its being an odd, merry jest it would be a grim, meaningless, hideous one; or he would see that it wasn't a jest at all, but a full, wonderful, big reality. I've expressed myself badly, but you see what I mean.”
“And what do you think has happened?” I asked.
“I think you have changed for the better.”
I smiled inwardly. It sounded rather dull. I said with a smile:
“You never liked my cap and bells, Eleanor.”
“No!” she replied emphatically. “What's the use of mockery? See where it led you.”
I rose, half-laughing at her earnestness, half-ashamed of myself, and took a couple of turns across the room.
“You're right,” I cried. “It led me to perdition. You might make an allegory out of my career and entitle it 'The Mocker's Progress.'” I paused for a second or two, and then said suddenly, “Why did you from the first refuse to believe what everybody else does—before I had the chance of looking you in the eyes?”
She averted her face. “You forget that I had had the chance of searching deep beneath the mocker.”
I cannot, in reverence to her, set down what she said she found there. I stood humbled and rebuked, as a man must do when the best in him is laid out before his sight by a good woman.
A maidservant brought in tea, set the table, and departed, Eleanor drew off her gloves and my glance fell on her right hand.
“It's good of you to wear my ring to-day,” I said.
“To-day?” she echoed, with the tiniest touch of injury in her voice. “Do you think I put it on to just please you to-day?”
“It would have been gracious of you to do so,” said I.
“It wouldn't,” she declared. “It would have been mawkish and sentimental. When we parted I told you to do what you liked with the ring. Do you remember? You put it on this finger”—she waved her right hand—“and there it has stayed ever since.”
I caught the hand and touched it lightly with my lips. She coloured faintly.
“Two lumps of sugar and no milk, I think that's right?” She handed me the tea-cup.
“It's like you not to have forgotten.”
“I'm a practical person,” she replied with a laugh.
Presently she said, “Tell me more about your illness—or rather your recovery. I know nothing except that you had a successful operation which all the London surgeons said was impossible. Who nursed you?”
“I had a trained nurse,” said I.
“Wasn't Madame Brandt with you?”
“Yes,” said I. “She was very good to me. In fact, I think I owe her my life.”
Hitherto the delicacy of the situation had caused me to refer to Lola no more than was necessary, and in my narrative I had purposely left her vague.
“That's a great debt,” said Eleanor.
“It is, indeed.”
“You're not the man to leave such a debt unpaid?”
“I try to repay it by giving Madame Brandt my devoted friendship.”
Her eyes never wavered as they held mine.
“That's one of the things I wanted to know. Tell me something about her.”
I felt some surprise, as Eleanor was of a nature too proud for curiosity.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because she interests me intensely. Is she young?”
“About thirty-two.”
“Good-looking?”
“She is a woman of remarkable personality.”
“Describe her.”
I tried, stumbled, and halted. The effort evoked in my mind a picture of Lola lithe, seductive, exotic, with gold flecks in her dusky, melting eyes, with strong shapely arms that had as yet only held me motherwise, with her pantherine suggestion of tremendous strength in languorous repose, with her lazy gestures and parted lips showing the wonderful white even teeth, with all her fascination and charm—a picture of Lola such as I had not seen since my emergence from the Valley—a picture of Lola, generous, tender, wistful, strong, yielding, fragrant, lovable, desirable, amorous—a picture of Lola which I could not put before this other woman equally brave and straight, who looked at me composedly out of her calm, blue eyes.
My description resolved itself into a loutish catalogue.
“It is not painful to you to talk of her, Simon?”
“Not at all. There are not many great-hearted women going about. It is my privilege to know two.”
“Am I the other?”
“Who else?”
“I'm glad you have the courage to class Madame Brandt and myself together.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It proves beyond a doubt that you are honest with me. Now tell me about a few externals—things that don't matter—but help one to form an impression. Is she educated?”
“From books, no; from observation, yes.”
“Her manners?”
“Observation had educated them.”
“Accent?”
“She is sufficiently polyglot to have none.”
“She dresses and talks and behaves generally like a lady?”
“She does,” said I.
“In what way then does she differ from the women of our class?”
“She is less schooled, less reticent, franker, more natural. What is on her tongue to say, she says.”
“Temper?”
“I have never heard her say an angry word to or of a human creature. She has queer delicacies of feeling. For instance——”
I told her of Anastasius Papadopoulos's tawdry, gimcrack presents which Lola has suffered to remain in her drawing-room so as not to hurt the poor little wretch.
“That's very touching. Where does she live?”
“She has a flat in Cadogan Gardens.”
“Is she in London now?”
“Yes.”
“I should like very much to know her,” she said calmly.
I vow and declare again that the more straightforward and open-eyed, the less subtle, temperamental, and neurotic are women, the more are they baffling. I had wondered for some time whither the catechism tended, and now, with a sudden jerk, it stopped short at this most unexpected terminus. It was startling. I rose and mechanically placed my empty tea-cup on the tray by her side.
“The wish, my dear Eleanor,” said I, quite formally, “does great credit to your heart.”
There was a short pause, marking an automatic close of the subject. Deeply as I admired both women, I shrank from the idea of their meeting. It seemed curiously indelicate, in view both of my former engagement to Eleanor and of Lola's frank avowal of her feelings towards me before what I shall always regard as my death. It is true that we had never alluded to it since my resurrection; but what of that? Lola's feelings, I was sure, remained unaltered. It also flashed on me that, with all the goodwill in the world, Eleanor would not understand Lola. An interview would develop into a duel. I pictured it for a second, and my sudden fierce partisanship for Lola staggered me. Decidedly an acquaintance between these two was preposterous.
The silence was definite enough to mark a period, but not long enough to cause embarrassment. Eleanor commented on my present employment. I must find it good to get back to politics.
“I find it to the contrary,” said I, with a laugh. “My convictions, always lukewarm, are now stone-cold. I don't say that the principles of the party are wrong. But they're wrong for me, which is all-important. If they are not right for me, what care I how right they be? And as I don't believe in those of the other side, I'm going to give up politics altogether.”
“What will you do?”
“I don't know. I honestly don't. But I have an insistent premonition that I shall soon find myself doing something utterly idiotic, which to me will be the most real thing in life.”
I had indeed awakened that morning with an exhilarating thrill of anticipation, comparable to that of the mountain climber who knows not what panorama of glory may be disclosed to his eyes when he reaches the summit. I had whistled in my bath—a most unusual thing.
“Are you going to turn Socialist?”
“Qui lo sa? I'm willing to turn anything alive and honest. It doesn't matter what a man professes so long as he professes it with all the faith of all his soul.”
I broke into a laugh, for the echo of my words rang comic in my ears.
“Why do you laugh?” she asked.
“Don't you think it funny to hear me talk like a two-penny Carlyle?”
“Not a bit,” she said seriously.
“I can't undertake to talk like that always,” I said warningly.
“I thought you said you were going to be serious.”
“So I am—but platitudinous—Heaven forbid!”
The little clock on the mantelpiece struck six. Eleanor rose in alarm.
“How the time has flown! I must be getting back. Well?”
Our eyes met. “Well?” said I.
“Are we ever to meet again?”
“It's for you to say.”
“No,” she said. And then very distinctly, very deliberately, “It's for you.”
I understood. She made the offer simply, nobly, unreservedly. My heart was filled with great gratitude. She was so true, so loyal, so thorough. Why could I not take her at her word? I murmured:
“I'll remember what you say.”
She put out her hand. “Good-bye!”
“Good-bye and God bless you!” I said.
I accompanied her to the front door, hailed a passing cab, and waited till she had driven off. Was there ever a sweeter, grander, more loyal woman? The three little words had changed the current of my being.
I returned to take leave of Agatha. I found her in the drawing-room reading a novel. She twisted her head sideways and regarded me with a bird-like air of curiosity.
“Eleanor gone?”
Her tone jarred on me. I nodded and dropped into a chair.
“Interview passed off satisfactorily?”
“We were quite comfortable, thank you. The only drawback was the tea. Why a woman in your position can't give people China tea instead of that Ceylon syrup will be a mystery to me to my dying day.”
She rose in her wrath and shook me.
“You're the most aggravating wretch on earth!”
“My dear Tom-Tit,” said I gravely. “Remember the moral tale of Bluebeard.”
“Look here, Simon”—she planted herself in front of me—“I'm not a bit inquisitive. I don't in the least want to know what passed between you and Eleanor. But what I would give my ears to understand is how you can go through a two hours' conversation with the girl you were engaged to—a conversation which must have affected the lives of both of you—and then come up to me and talk drivel about China tea and Bluebeard.”
“Once on a time, my dear,” said I, “I flattered myself on being an artist in life. I am humbler now and acknowledge myself a wretched bungling amateur. But I still recognise the value of chiaroscuro.”
“You're hopeless,” said Agatha, somewhat crossly. “You get more flippant and cynical every day.”
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