She had prayed to God that he might be kept away from her; but immediately afterward, as has already been stated, when she began to think over the situation of the hour, she came to the conclusion that she had been a little too precipitate in her petition. She felt that she would like to ask him how it had come about that he had played that contemptible part. Such a contemptible part! Was it on record, she wondered, that any man had ever played that contemptible part? To run away! And she had designed and worn that wonderful toilet; such a toilet as Helen might have worn (she thought); such a toilet as Cleopatra might have worn (she fancied); such a toilet as—as Sarah Bernhardt (she was certain) would wear when impersonating a woman who had lost her soul for the love of a man. Oh, had ever woman been so humiliated! She thought of the way Sarah Bernhardt would act the part of one of those women if her lover had run away from her outstretched arms,—and such a toilet,—only it was not on record that the lover of any one of them had ever run away. The lovers had been only too faithful; they had remained to be hacked to pieces with a mediaeval knife sparkling with jewels, or to swallow some curious poison out of a Byzantine goblet. She would have a word or two to say to Herbert Courtland when he returned. She would create the part of the woman whose lover has humiliated her.
This was her thought until her husband told her that he had sent that letter to Herbert Courtland, and he would most likely dine with them on the evening of his return.
Then it was it occurred to her that Herbert Courtland might by some curious mischance—mischances occurred in many of Sarah Bernhardt’s plays—have come to hear that she had paid that rather singular visit to Phyllis Ayrton, just at the hour that she had named in that letter which she had written to him. What difference did that make in regard to his unparalleled flight? He was actually aboard the yacht Water Nymph before she had rung for her brougham to take her to Phyllis’. He had been the first to fly.
Then she began to think, as she had thought once before, of her husband’s sudden return,—the return of a husband at the exact hour named in the letter to a lover was by no means an unknown incident in a play of Sarah Bernhardt’s,—and before she had continued upon this course of thought for many minutes, she had come to the conclusion that she would not be too hard on Herbert Courtland.
She was not too hard on him.
He had an interview with Mr. Linton at the city offices of the great Taragonda Creek Mine. (The mine had, as has already been stated, been discovered by Herbert Courtland during his early explorations in Australia, and he had acquired out of his somewhat slender resources—he had been poor in those days—about a square mile of the wretched country where it was situated, and had then communicated his discovery to Stephen Linton, who understood the science and arts necessary for utilizing such a discovery, the result being that in two years everyone connected with the Taragonda Mine was rich. The sweepings of the crushing rooms were worth twenty thousand pounds a year: and Herbert Courtland had spent about ten thousand pounds—a fourth of his year’s income—in the quest of the meteor-bird to make a feather fan for Ella Linton.) And when the business for which he had been summoned to London had been set en train, he had paid a visit to his publishers. (They wondered could he give them a novel on New Guinea. If he introduced plenty of dialect and it was sufficiently unintelligible it might thrust the kail yard out of the market; but the novel must be in dialect, they assured him.) After promising to give the matter his attention, he paid his visit to Phyllis, and then went to his rooms to dress; for when Stephen Linton had said:
“Of course you’ll dine with us to-night: I told Ella you would come.”
He had said, “Thanks; I shall be very pleased.”
“Come early; eight sharp,” Mr. Linton had added.
And thus it was that at five minutes to eight o’clock Herbert found himself face to face alone with the woman whom he had so grossly humiliated.
Perhaps she was hard on him after all: she addressed him as Mr. Courtland. She felt that she, at any rate, had returned to the straight path of duty when she had done that. (It was Herbert Courtland who had talked to Phyllis of the modern philosopher—a political philosopher or a philosophical politician—who, writing against compromise, became the leading exponent of that science, and had hoped to solve the question of a Deity by using a small g in spelling God. On the same principle Ella had called Herbert “Mr. Courtland.”)
He felt uneasy. Was he ashamed of himself, she wondered?
“Stephen will be down in a moment, Mr. Courtland,” she said.
He was glad to hear it.
“How warm it has been all day!” she added. “I thought of you toiling away over figures in the city, when you might have been breathing the lovely air of the sea. It was too bad of Stephen to bring you back.”
“I assure you I was glad to get his letter at Leith,” said he. “I was thinking for the two days previous how I could best concoct a telegram to myself at Leith in order that I might have some excuse for running away.”
“That is assuming that running away needs some excuse,” said she.
There was a considerable pause before he said, in a low tone:
“Ella, Ella, I know everything—that night. We were saved.”
At this moment Mr. Linton entered the room. He was, after all, not late, he said: it wanted a minute still of being eight o’clock. He had just been at the telephone to receive a reply regarding a box at Covent Garden. In the earlier part of the day none had been vacant, he had been told; but the people at the box office promised to telephone to him if any became vacant in the course of the afternoon. He had just come from the telephone, and had secured a good enough box on the first tier. He hoped that Ella would not mind “Carmen”; there was to be a new Carmen.
Ella assured him that she could not fail to be interested in any Carmen, new or old. It was so good of him to take all that trouble for her, knowing how devoted she was to opera. She hoped that Herbert—she called him Herbert in the presence of her husband—was in a Carmen mood.
“I’m always in a mood to study anything that’s unreservedly savage,” said he.
“There’s not much reservation about our little friend Carmen,” said Mr. Linton. “She tells you her philosophy in her first moment before you.”
He hummed the habanera.
“There you are: Misteroso e l’amore—that’s the philosophy of your pretty savage, Herbert.”
“Yes,” said Herbert; “it’s that philosophy which consists in an absence of philosophy—not the worst kind, either, it seems to me. It’s the philosophy of impulse.”
“I thought that the aim of all philosophy was to check every impulse,” said Ella.
“So it is; that’s why women do not make good philosophers,” said her husband.
“Or, for that matter, good mothers of philosophers,” said Herbert.
“That’s rather a hard saying, isn’t it?” said the other man.
“No,” said his wife; “it’s as transparent as air.”
“London air in November?” suggested her husband.
“He means that there’s no such thing.”
“As air in London in November? I’m with him there.”
“He means that there’s no such thing as a good philosopher.”
“Then I hope he has an appetite for dinner. The man without philosophy usually has.”
The butler had just announced dinner.
There was not much talk among them of philosophy so long as the footmen were floating round them like mighty tropical birds. They talked of the House of Commons instead. A new measure was to be introduced the next night: something that threatened beer and satisfied no party; not even the teetotalers—only the wives of the teetotalers. Then they had a few words regarding George Holland’s article in the Zeit Geist. Mr. Linton seemed to some extent interested in the contentions of the rector of St. Chad’s; and Herbert agreed with him when he expressed the opinion that the two greatest problems that the Church had to face were: How to get people with intelligence to go to church, and what to do with them when they were there.
In an hour they were in their box at Covent Garden listening to the sensuous music of “Carmen,” and comparing the sauciness of the charming little devil who sang the habanera, with the piquancy of the last Carmen but three, and with the refinement of the one who had made so great a success at Munich. They agreed that the savagery of the newest was very fascinating,—Stephen Linton called it womanly,—but they thought they should like to hear her in the third act before pronouncing a definite opinion regarding her capacity.
Then the husband left the box to talk to some people who were seated opposite.
“You know everything?” she said.
“Everything,” said Herbert. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“For running away? Oh, Bertie, you cannot have heard all.”
“For forcing you to write me that letter—can you ever forgive me?”
“Oh, the letter? Oh, Bertie, we were both wrong—terribly wrong. But we were saved.”
“Yes, we were saved. Thank God—thank God!”
“That was my first cry, Bertie, when I felt that I was safe—that we both had been saved: Thank God! It seemed as if a miracle had been done to save us.”
“So it was—a miracle.”
“I spent the night praying that you might be kept away from me, Bertie—away for ever and ever. I felt that I was miserably weak; I felt that I could not trust myself; but now that you are here beside me again I feel strong. Oh, Bertie, we know ourselves better now than we did a week ago—is it only a week ago? It seems months—years—a lifetime!”
“Yes, I think that we know each other better now, Ella. That night aboard the yacht all the history of the past six months seemed to come before me. I saw what a wretch I had been, and I was overwhelmed with self-contempt.”
“It was all my fault, dear Bertie. I was foolish—vain—a mere woman! Do not say that I did not take pride in what I called, in my secret moments, my conquest. Oh, Bertie! I had sunk into the depths. And then that letter! But we were saved, and I feel that we have been saved forevermore. I feel strong by your side now. And you, I know, feel strong, Bertie?”
“I have awakened from my dream, Ella. You called her your good angel too. Surely it was my good angel that sent me to her that evening!”
Ella was staring at him. He said that he knew everything. It appeared that she was the one who was not in the fortunate position of knowing all.
She stared.
“Phyllis Ayrton—you were with her?”
“For half an hour. She was unconscious of the effect her words had upon me,—the words of another woman,—leading me back to the side of those who have gone forever. I listened to her, and then it was that I awoke. She did not know. How could she tell that the light of heaven was breaking in upon a soul that was on the brink of hell? She saved me.”
“She told me nothing of that.” There was a curious eagerness in her voice. “She told me nothing. Oh, how could she tell me anything? She knew nothing of it herself. She looked on you as an ordinary visitor. She told you that I fled to her. Oh, Bertie, Bertie! those hours that I passed—the terrible conflict. But when I felt her arms about me I knew that I was safe. Then Stephen entered. I thought that we were lost—you and I; that he had returned to find you waiting. I don’t know if he had a suspicion. At any rate we were saved, and by her—dear Phyllis. Oh, will she ever know, I wonder, what it is to be a woman? Bertie, she is my dearest friend—I told you so. I thought of her and you—long ago. Oh, why should you not think of her now that you have awakened and are capable of thought—the thought of a sane man?”
He sat with an elbow resting on the front of the opera box, his head upon his hand. He was not looking at her, but beyond her. He seemed to be lost in thought.
Was he considering that curious doctrine which she had propounded, that if a man really loves a woman he will marry her dearest friend? He made no reply to her. The point required a good deal of thought, apparently.
“You hear me, Bertie—dear Bertie?” she said.
He only nodded.
She remembered that, upon a previous occasion, when she had made the same suggestion to him, he had put it aside as unworthy of comment—unworthy of a moment’s thought. How could it be possible for him, loving her as he did, to admit the possibility of another’s attractiveness in his eyes? The idea had seemed ludicrous to him.
But now he made no such protest. He seemed to consider her suggestion and to think it—well, worthy of consideration; and this should have been very pleasing to her; for did it not mean that she had gained her point?
“You will think over it, Bertie?” she said. Her voice was now scarcely so full of eagerness as it had been before. Was that because she did not want to weary him by her persistence? Even the suggestion to a man that he should love a certain woman should, she knew, be made with tact.
“I have been thinking over it,” he said at last; but only after a long pause.
“Oh, I am so glad!”
And she actually believed that she was glad.
“I thought about her aboard the yacht.”
“Did you? I fancied that you would think of——But I am so glad!”
“I thought of her as my good angel. Those words which she said to me—”
“She has been your good angel, and I—”
“Ella, Ella, she has been our good angel—you said so.”
“And don’t you think that I meant it? Some women—she is one of them—are born to lead men upward; others——Ah, there, it is on the stage: Carmen, the enchantress, Michaela, the good angel. But I am so glad! She is coming to stay with us up the river; you must be with us too. You cannot possibly know her yet. But a week by her side—you will, I know, come to perceive what she is—the sweetest—the most perfect!”
Still he made no reply. He was looking earnestly at the conductor, who was pulling his musicians together for the second act.
“You will come to us, Bertie?” she whispered.
He shook his head.
“I dare not promise,” said he. “I feel just now like a man who is still dazed, on being suddenly awakened. I have not yet begun to see things as they are. I am not sure of myself. I will let you know later on.”
Then the conductor tapped his desk, and those of the audience who had left their places returned. Stephen Linton slipped into his chair; his wife took up her lorgnette as the first jingle of the tambourines was heard, and the curtain rose upon the picturesque tawdriness of the company assembled at the Senor Lois Pastia’s place of entertainment.
Ella gave all her attention to the opera—to that tragedy of the weakness of the flesh, albeit the spirit may be willing to listen to good. Alas! that the flesh should be so full of color and charm and seduction, while the spirit is pale, colorless, and set to music in a minor key!
Carmen flashed about the stage under the brilliant lights, looking like a lovely purple butterfly—a lovely purple oriole endowed with the double glory of plumage and song, and men whose hearts beat in unison with the heart-beats of that sensuous music through which she expressed herself, loved her; watched her with ravished eyes; heard her with ravished ears—yes, as men love such women; until the senses recover from the intoxication of her eyes and her limbs and her voice. And in the third act the sweet Michaela came on with her song of the delight of purity, and peace, and home. She sang it charmingly, everyone allowed, and hoped that Carmen would sing as well in the last act as she had sung in the others.
Ella Linton kept her eyes fixed upon the stage to the very end of all.
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