“Has Lady Ingleton gone?” she asked, directly she was inside the room.
“No, not yet. You remember I wrote to you that she would stay on for a few days.”
“But she might have gone unexpectedly.”
“She is still here.”
“I believe I shall have to see her,” Rosamund said, with a sort of hard abruptness and determination.
“Go to see her,” said Father Robertson firmly. “Perhaps she was sent here.”
“Sent here?” said Rosamund, with a sharpness of sudden suspicion.
“Oh, my child,”—he put his hand on her arm, and made her sit down,—“not by a human being.”
Rosamund looked down and was silent.
“Before you go, if you are going,” Father Robertson continued, sitting down by the deal table on which he wrote his letters, “I must do what I ought to have done long ago; I must speak to you about your husband.”
Rosamund did not look up, but he saw her frown, and he saw a movement of her lips; they trembled and then set together in a hard line.
“I know what he was, not from you but from others; from his mother, from your sister, and from Canon Wilton. I’m going to tell you something Wilton said to me about you and him after you had separated from him.”
Father Robertson stopped, and fidgeted for a moment with the papers lying in disorder on his table. He hated the task he had set himself to do. All the tenderness in him revolted against it. He knew what this woman whom he cared for very much had suffered; he divined what she was suffering now. And he was going to add to her accumulated misery by striking a tremendous blow at the most sacred thing, her pride of woman. Would she be his enemy after he had spoken? It was possible. Yet he must speak.
“He said to me—‘Leith has a great heart. When will his wife understand its greatness?’”
There was a long silence. Then, without changing her position or lifting her head, Rosamund said in a hard, level voice:
“Canon Wilton was right about my husband.”
“He loved you. That’s a great deal. But he loved you in a very beautiful way. And that’s much more.”
“Who told you—about the way he loved me?”
“Your sister, Beatrice.”
“Beattie! Yes, she knew—she understood.”
She bent her head a little lower, then added:
“Beattie is worth more than I am.”
“You are worth a great deal, but—but I want to see you rise to the heights of your nature. I want to see you accomplish the greatest task of all.”
“Yes?”
“Conquer the last citadel of your egoism. Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat—Send the insistent I to sleep. I said it to you long ago before I knew you. I say it to you now when I do know you, when I know the deep waters you have passed through, and the darkness that has beset you. Fetter your egoism. Release your heart and your spirit in one great action. Don’t let him go down forever because of you. I believe your misery has been as nothing in comparison with his. If he has fallen—such a man—why is it?”
“I know why,” she almost whispered.
“You can never mount up while you are driving a soul downwards. Do you remember those words in the Bible: ‘Where thou goest I will go’?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps they might be changed in respect of you and the man who loved you so much and in such a beautiful way. You were linked; can the link ever be broken? You have tried to break it, but have you succeeded? And if not, wouldn’t it be true, drastically true, if you said—Where thou goest I must go? If he goes down because of you I think you’ll go down with him.”
Rosamund sat absolutely still. When Father Robertson paused again there was not a sound in the little room.
“And one thing more,” he said, not looking towards her. “There’s the child, your child and his. Is it well with the child?”
Rosamund moved and looked up. Then she got up from her chair.
“But—but—Robin’s——”
She stopped. Her eyes were fixed on Father Robertson. He looked up and met her eyes, and she saw plainly the mystic in him.
“What do we know?” he said. “What do we know of the effects of our actions? Can we be certain that they are limited to this earth? Is it well with the child? I say we don’t know. We dare not affirm that we know. He loved his father, didn’t he?”
Rosamund looked stricken. He let her go. He could not say any more to her.
That evening Lady Ingleton called in Manxby Street and asked for Father Robertson. He happened to be in and received her at once.
“I’ve had a note from Mrs. Leith,” she said.
“I am not surprised,” said Father Robertson. “Indeed I expected it.”
“She wishes to see me to-morrow. She writes that she will come to the hotel. How have you persuaded her to come?”
“I don’t think I have persuaded her though I wish her to see you. But I have told her of her husband’s infidelity.”
“You have told her——!”
Lady Ingleton stopped short. She looked unusually discomposed, even nervous and agitated.
“I said you might,” she murmured.
“It was essential.”
“If Cynthia knew!” said Lady Ingleton.
“I mentioned no name.”
“She must have guessed. It’s odd, when I told you I didn’t feel treacherous—not really! But now I feel a brute. I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s against all my code. I’ve come here, done all this, and now I dread meeting Mrs. Leith. I wish you could be there when she comes.”
She sent him a soft glance out of her Italian eyes.
“You make me feel so safe,” she added.
“You and she must be alone. Remember this! Mrs. Leith must go out to Constantinople.”
“Leave the Sisterhood! Will she ever do that?”
“You came here with the hope of persuading her, didn’t you?”
“A hope was it? A forlorn hope, perhaps.”
“Bring it to fruition.”
“But Cynthia! If she ever knows!”
Suddenly Father Robertson looked stern.
“If what you told me is true——”
“It is true.”
“Then she is doing the devil’s work. Put away your fears. They aren’t worthy of you.”
As she took his hand in the saying of good-by she said:
“Your code is so different from ours. We think the only possible thing to do—where a friend is concerned—is to shut the eyes and the lips, and to pretend, and to keep on always pretending. We call that being honorable.”
“Poor things!” said Father Robertson.
But he pressed her hand as he said it, and there was an almost tender smile on his lips.
“But your love of truth isn’t quite dead yet,” he added, on the threshold of the door, as he let her out into the rain. “You haven’t been able to kill it. It’s an indomitable thing, thank God.”
“I wish I—why do you live always in Liverpool?” she murmured.
She put up her little silk umbrella and was gone.
There was a fire in her sitting-room on the following-morning. The day was windy and cold, for March was going out resentfully. Before the fire lay Turkish Jane on a cushion, blinking placidly at the flames. Already she had become reconciled to her new life in this unknown city. Her ecstasy of the journey had not returned, but the surprise which had succeeded to it was now merged in a stagnant calm, and she felt no objection to passing the remainder of her life in the Adelphi Hotel. She supposed that she was comfortably settled for the day when she heard her mistress call for Annette and give the most objectionable order.
“Please take Jane away, Annette,” said Lady Ingleton.
“Miladi!”
“I don’t want her here this morning. I’m expecting a visitor, and Jane might bark. I don’t wish to have a noise in the room.”
Annette, who looked decidedly sulky, approached the cushion, bent down, and rather abruptly snatched the amazed doyenne of the Pekinese from her voluptuous reveries.
“We shall probably leave here to-morrow,” Lady Ingleton added.
Annette’s expression changed.
“We’re going back to London, Miladi?”
“I think so. I’ll tell you this afternoon.”
She glanced at her watch.
“I don’t wish to be disturbed for an hour. Don’t leave Jane in my bedroom. Take her away to yours.”
“Very well, Miladi.”
Annette went out looking inquisitive, with Turkish Jane on her arm.
When she was gone Lady Ingleton took up “The Liverpool Mercury” and tried to read the news of the day. The March wind roared outside and made the windows rattle. She listened to it and forgot the chronicle of the passing hour. She was a women who cared to know the big things that were happening in the big world. She had always lived among men who were helping to make history, and she was intelligent enough to understand their efforts and to join in their discussions. Her husband had often consulted her when he was in a tight place, and sometimes he had told her she had the brain of a man. But she had the nerves and the heart of a woman, and at this moment public affairs and the news of the day did not interest her at all. She was concentrated on woman’s business. Into her hands she had taken a tangled love skein. And she was almost frightened at what she had ventured to do. Could she hope to be of any use, of any help, in getting it into order? Was there any chance for the man she had last seen in Stamboul near Santa Sophia? She almost dreaded Rosamund Leith’s arrival. She felt nervous, strung up. The roar of the wind added to her uneasiness. It suggested turmoil, driven things, the angry passions of nature. Beyond the Mersey the sea was raging. She had a stupid feeling that nature and man were always in a ferment, that it was utterly useless to wish for peace, or to try to bring about peace, that destinies could only be worked out to their appointed ends in darkness and in fury. She even forgot her own years of happiness for a little while and saw herself as a woman always anxious, doubtful, and envisaging untoward things. When a knock came on the door she started and got up quickly from her chair. Her heart was beating fast. How ridiculous!
“Come in!” she said.
A waiter opened the door and showed in Rosamund
CHAPTER XI
Lady Ingleton looked swiftly at the woman coming in at the doorway clad in the severe, voluminous, black gown and cloak, and black and white headgear, which marked out the members of the Sisterhood of St. Mary’s. Her first thought was “What a cold face!” It was succeeded immediately by the thought, “But beautiful even in its coldness.” She met Rosamund near the door, took her hand, and said:
“I am glad you were able to come. I wanted very much to meet you. I came here really with the faint hope of seeing you. Let me take your umbrella. What a day it is! Did you walk?”
“I came most of the way by tram. Thank you,” said Rosamund, in a contralto voice which sounded inflexible.
Lady Ingleton went to “stand” the umbrella in a corner. In doing this she turned away from her visitor for a moment. She felt more embarrassed, more “at a loss” than she had ever felt before; she even felt guilty, though she had done no wrong and was anxious only to do right. Her sense of guilt, she believed, was caused by the fact that in her heart she condemned her visitor, and by the additional, more unpleasant fact that she knew Rosamund was aware of her condemnation.
“It’s hateful—so much knowledge between two women who are strangers to each other!” she thought, as she turned round.
“Do sit down by the fire,” she said to Rosamund, who was standing near the writing-table immediately under a large engraving of “Wedded.”
She wished ardently that Rosamund wore the ordinary clothes of a well-dressed woman of the world. The religious panoply of the “sister’s” attire, with its suggestion of a community apart, got on her nerves, and seemed to make things more difficult.
Rosamund went to a chair and sat down. She still looked very cold, but she succeeded in looking serene, and her eyes, unworldly and pure, did not fall before Lady Ingleton’s.
Lady Ingleton sat down near her and immediately realized that she had placed herself exactly opposite to “Wedded.” She turned her eyes away from the large nude arms of the bending man and met Rosamund’s gaze fixed steadily upon her. That gaze told her not to delay, but to go straight to the tragic business which had brought her to Liverpool.
“You know of course that my husband is Ambassador at Constantinople,” she began.
“Yes,” said Rosamund.
“You and I met—at least we were in the same room once—at Tippie Chetwinde’s,” said Lady Ingleton, almost pleading with her visitor. “I heard you sing.”
“Yes, I remember. I told Father Robertson so.”
“I dare say you think it very strange my coming here in this way.”
In spite of the strong effort of her will Lady Ingleton was feeling with every moment more painfully embarrassed. All her code was absolutely against mixing in the private concerns of others uninvited. She had a sort of delicate hatred of curiosity. She longed to prove to the woman by the fire that she was wholly incurious now, wholly free from the taint of sordid vulgarity that clings to the social busybody.
“I’ve done it solely because I’m very sorry for some one,” she continued; “because I’m very sorry for your husband.”
She looked away from Rosamund, and again her eyes rested on the engraving of “Wedded.” The large bare arms of the man, his bending, amorous head, almost hypnotized her. She disliked the picture of which this was a reproduction. Far too many people had liked it; their affection seemed to her to have been destructive, to have destroyed any value it had formerly had. Yet now, as she looked almost in despite of herself, suddenly she saw through the engraving, through the symbol, to something beyond; to the prompting conception in the painter’s mind which had led to the picture, to the great mystery of the pathetic attempt of human beings who love, or who think they love, to unite themselves to each other, to mingle body with body and soul with soul. She saw a woman in the dress of a “sister,” the woman who was with her; she saw a man in an Eastern city; and abruptly courage came to her on the wings of a genuine emotion.
“I don’t know how to tell you what I feel about him, Mrs. Leith,” she said. “But I want to try to. Will you let me?”
“Yes. Please tell me,” said Rosamund, in a level, expressionless voice.
“Remember this; I never saw him till I saw him in Turkey, nor did my husband. We were not able to draw any comparison between the unhappy man and the happy man. We were unprejudiced.”
“I quite understand that; thank you.”
“It was in the summer. We were living at Therapia on the Bosporus. He came to stay in a hotel not far off. My husband met him in a valley which the Turks call Kesstane Dereh. He—your husband—was sitting there alone by a stream. They talked. My husband asked him to call at our summer villa. He came the next day. Of course I—I knew something of his story”—she hurried on—“and I was prepared to meet a man who was unhappy. (Forgive me for saying all this.)”
“But, please, I have come to hear,” said Rosamund, coldly and steadily.
“Your husband—I was alone with him during his first visit—made an extraordinary impression upon me. I scarcely know how to describe it.” She paused for a moment. “There was something intensely bitter in his personality. Bitterness is an active principle. And yet somehow he conveyed to me an impression of emptiness too. I remember he said to me, ‘I don’t quite know what I am going to do. I’m a free agent. I have no ties.’ I shall never forget his look when he said those words. I never knew anything about loneliness—anything really—till that moment. And after that moment I knew everything. I asked him to come on the yacht to Brusa, or rather to Mudania; from there one goes to Brusa. He came. You may think, perhaps, that he was eager for society, for pleasure, distraction. It wasn’t that. He was making a tremendous, a terrible effort to lay hold on life again, to interest himself in things. He was pushed to it.”
“Pushed to it!” said Rosamund, still in the hard level voice. “Who pushed him?”
“I can only tell you it was as I say,” said Lady Ingleton, quickly and with embarrassment. “We were very few on the yacht. Of course I saw a good deal of your husband. He was absolutely reserved with me. He always has been. You mustn’t think he has ever given me the least bit of confidence. He never has. I am quite sure he never would. We are only acquaintances. But I want to be a friend to him now. He hasn’t a friend, not one, out there. My husband, I think, feels rather as I do about him, in so far as a man can feel in our sort of way. He would gladly be more intimate with your husband. But your husband doesn’t make friends. He’s beyond anything of that kind. He tried, on the yacht and at Brusa. He did his utmost. But he was held back by his misery. I must tell you (it’s very uninteresting)”—her voice softened here, and her face slightly changed, became gentler, more intensely feminine—“that my husband and I are very happy together. We always have been; we always shall be; we can’t help it. Being with us your husband had to—to contemplate our happiness. It—I suppose it reminded him——”
She stopped; she could not bring herself to say it. Again her eyes rested upon “Wedded,” and, in spite of her long conviction of its essential banality—she classed it with “The Soul’s Awakening,” “Harmony,” and all the things she was farthest away from—she felt what it stood for painfully, almost mysteriously.
“One day,” she resumed, speaking more slowly, and trying to banish emotion from her voice, “I went out from the hotel where we stayed at Brusa, quite alone. There’s a mosque at Brusa called Jeshil Jami, the Green Mosque. It stands above the valley. It is one of the most beautiful things I know, and quite the most beautiful Osmanli building. I like to go there alone. Very often there is no one in the mosque. Well, I went there that day. When I went in—the guardian was on the terrace; he knows me and that I’m the British Ambassadress, and never bothers me—I thought at first the mosque was quite empty. I sat down close to the door. After I had been there two or three minutes I felt there was some one else in the mosque. I looked round. Before the Mihrab there was a man. It was your husband. He was kneeling on the matting, but—but he wasn’t praying. When I knew, when I heard what he was doing, I went away at once. I couldn’t—I felt that——”
Again she paused. In the pause she heard the gale tearing at the windows. She looked at the woman in the sister’s dress. Rosamund was sitting motionless, and was now looking down. Lady Ingleton positively hated the sister’s dress at that moment. She thought of it as a sort of armor in which her visitor was encased, an armor which rendered her invulnerable. What shaft could penetrate that smooth black and white, that flowing panoply, and reach the heart Lady Ingleton desired to pierce? Suddenly Lady Ingleton felt cruel. She longed to tear away from Rosamund all the religion which seemed to be protecting her; she longed to see her naked as Dion Leith was naked.
“I didn’t care to look upon a man in hell,” she said, in a voice which had become almost brutal, a voice which Sir Carey would scarcely have recognized if he had heard it.
Rosamund said nothing, and, after a moment, Lady Ingleton continued:
“With us on the yacht was one of my husband’s secretaries of Embassy, Cyril Vane, who had just become engaged to be married. He is married now. In his cabin on the yacht he had a photograph of the girl. One night he was walking up and down on deck with your husband, and your husband—I’d just told him about Vane’s engagement—congratulated him. Vane invited Mr. Leith into the cabin and showed him the photograph. Vane told me afterwards that he should never forget the look on your husband’s face as he took the photograph and gazed at it. When he put it down he said to Vane, ‘I hope you may be happy. She looks very kind, and very good, too; but there’s no cruelty on earth like the cruelty of a good woman.’” (Did the sister’s dress rustle faintly?) “Vane—he’s only a boy—was very angry for a moment, though he’s usually imperturbable. I don’t know exactly what he said, but I believe he made a rather strong protest about knowing his fiancee’s character au fond. Anyhow, your husband took hold of his arm and said to him, ‘Don’t love very much and you may be happy. That’s the only chance for a man—not to love the woman very much.’ Vane came to me and told me. I remember it was late at night and my husband was there. When Vane was leaving us Carey said to him, ‘Forget the advice that poor fellow gave you. Love her as much as you can, my boy. Dion Leith speaks out of the bitterness that is destroying him. But very few men can love as he can, and very few men have been punished by their love as he has been punished by his. His sorrow is altogether exceptional, and has made him lose the power of moral vision. His soul has been poisoned at the source.’ My husband was right.”
“You came here to tell me that?” said Rosamund, lifting her head and speaking coldly and very clearly.
“I didn’t know what I was going to tell you. At the time I am speaking of I had no thought of ever trying to see you. That thought came to me long afterwards.”
“Why?”
“I’m a happy woman. In my happiness I’ve learnt to respect love very much, and I’ve learnt to recognize it at a glance. Your husband is the victim of a great love, Mrs. Leith. I feel as if I couldn’t stand by and see him utterly destroyed by it.”
“Father Robertson tells me——” said Rosamund.
And then she was silent. All this time she was struggling almost furiously against pride and an intense reserve which seemed trying to suffocate every good impulse within her. She held on to the thought of Father Robertson (she was unable to hold on to the thought of God); she strove not to hate the woman who was treading in her sanctuary, and whose steps echoed harshly and discordantly to its farthest, its holiest recesses; but she felt herself to be hardening against her will, to be congealing, turning to ice. Nevertheless she was resolute not to leave the room in which she was without learning all that this woman had to tell her.
“Yes?” said Lady Ingleton.
And the thought went through her mind:
“Oh, how she is hating me!”
“Father Robertson told me there was someone else.”
“Yes, there is. Otherwise I might never have come here. I’m partly to blame. But I—but I can’t possibly go into details. You mustn’t ask me for any details, please. Try to accept the little I can say as truth, though I’m not able to give you any proof. You must know that women who are intelligent, and have lived long in the—well, in the sort of world I’ve lived in, are never mistaken about certain things. They don’t need what are called proofs. They know certain things are happening, or not happening, without holding any proofs for or against. Your husband has got into the wrong hands.”
“What do you mean by that?” said Rosamund steadily, even obstinately.
“In his misery and absolute loneliness he has allowed himself to be taken possession of by a woman. She is doing him a great deal of harm. In fact she is ruining him.”
She stopped. Perhaps she suspected that Rosamund, in defiance of her own denial of proofs, would begin asking for them; but Rosamund said nothing.
“He is going down,” Lady Ingleton resumed. “He has already deteriorated terribly. I saw him recently by chance in Stamboul (he never comes to us now), and I was shocked at his appearance. When I first met him, in spite of his bitterness and intense misery I knew at once that I was with a man of fine nature. There was something unmistakable, the rare imprint; that’s fading from him now. You know Father Robertson very well. I don’t. But the very first time I was with him I knew he was a man who was seeking the heights. Your husband now is seeking the depths, as if he wanted to hide himself and his misery in them. Perhaps he hasn’t found the lowest yet. I believe there is only one human being who can prevent him from finding it. I’m quite sure there is only one human being. That’s why I came here.”
She was silent. Then she added:
“I’ve told you now what I wished to tell you, all I can tell you.”
In thinking beforehand of what this interview would probably be like Lady Ingleton had expected it to be more intense, charged with greater surface emotion than was the case. Now she felt a strange coldness in the room. The dry rattling of the window under the assault of the gale was an interpolated sound that was in place.
“Your husband has never mentioned your name to me,” she said, influenced by an afterthought. “And yet I’ve come here, because I know that the only hope of salvation for him is here.”
Again her eyes went to “Wedded,” and then to the sister’s dress and close-fitting headgear which disguised Rosamund. And suddenly the impulsiveness which was her inheritance from her Celtic and Latin ancestors took complete possession of her. She got up swiftly and went to Rosamund.
“You hate me for having come here, for having told you all this. You will always hate me, I think. I’ve intruded upon your peaceful life in religion—your peaceful, comfortable, sheltered life.”
Her great dark eyes fixed themselves upon the cross which lay on Rosamund’s breast. She lifted her hand and pointed to it.
“You’ve nailed him on a cross,” she said, with almost fierce intensity. “How can you be happy in that dress, worshiping God with a lot of holy women?”
“Did I tell you I was happy?” said Rosamund.
She got up and stood facing Lady Ingleton. Her face still preserved something of the coldness, but the color had deepened in the cheeks, and the expression in the eyes had changed. They looked now much less like the eyes of a “sister” than they had looked when she came into the room.
“Take off that dress and go to Constantinople!” said Lady Ingleton.
Rosamund flushed deeply, painfully; her mouth trembled, and tears came into her eyes, but she spoke resolutely.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “You were right to come here and to tell me. If I hate you, as you say, that’s my fault, not yours.”
She paused. It was evident that she was making a tremendous effort to conquer something; she even shut her eyes for a brief instant. Then she added in a very low voice;
“Thank you!”
And she put out her hand.
Tears started into Lady Ingleton’s eyes as she took the hand. Rosamund turned and went quickly out of the room.
Some minutes after she had gone Lady Ingleton heard rain beating upon the window. The sound reminded her of the umbrella she had “stood” in the corner of the room when Rosamund came in. It was still there. Impulsively she went to the corner and took it up; then, realizing that Rosamund must already be on her way, she laid it down on the table. She stood for a moment looking from “Wedded” to the damp umbrella.
Then she sat down on the sofa and cried impetuously.
CHAPTER XII
It was the month of May. Already there had been several unusually hot days in Constantinople, and Mrs. Clarke was beginning to think about the villa at Buyukderer. She was getting tired of Pera. She had fulfilled her promise to Dion Leith. She had given up going to England for Jimmy’s Christmas holidays and had spent the whole winter in Constantinople. But now she had had enough of it for the present, indeed more than enough of it.
She was feeling weary of the everlasting diplomatic society, of the potins political and social, of the love affairs and intrigues of her acquaintances which she knew of or divined, of the familiar voices and faces. She wanted something new; she wanted to break away. The restlessness that was always in her, concealed beneath her pale aspect of calm, was persecuting her as the spring with its ferment drew near to the torrid summer.
The spring had got into her veins and had made her long for novelty.
One morning when Sonia came into Mrs. Clarke’s bedroom with the coffee she brought a piece of news.
“Miladi Ingleton arrived at the Embassy from England yesterday,” said Sonia, in her thick, soft voice.
The apparent recovery of Lady Ingleton’s mother had been a deception. She had had a relapse almost immediately after Lady Ingleton’s return from Liverpool to London; an operation had been necessary, and Lady Ingleton had been obliged to stay on in England several weeks. During this time Mrs. Clarke had had no news from her. Till Sonia’s announcement she had not known the date fixed for her friend’s return. She received the information with her usual inflexibility, and merely said:
“I’ll go to see her this afternoon.”
Then she took up a newspaper which Sonia had brought in with her and began to sip the coffee.
As soon as she was dressed she sent a note to the British Embassy to ask if her friend would be in at tea-time.
Lady Ingleton drew her brows together when she read it. She was delighted to be again in Constantinople, for she had missed Carey quite terribly, but she wished that Cynthia Clarke was anywhere else. Ever since her visit to Liverpool she had been dreading the inevitable meeting with the friend whose secret she had betrayed. Yet the meeting must take place. She would be obliged some day to look once more into Cynthia Clarke’s earnest and distressed eyes. When that happened would she hate herself very much for what she had done? She had often wondered. She wondered now, as she read the note written in her friend’s large upright hand, as she wrote a brief answer to say she would be in after five o’clock that day.
She was troubled by the fact that her visit to Liverpool had not yielded the result she had hoped for. Rosamund Leith had not sought her husband. But she had taken off the sister’s dress and had given up living in the north.
Lady Ingleton knew this from Father Robertson, with whom she corresponded. She had never seen Rosamund or heard from her since the interview in the Adelphi Hotel. And she was troubled, although she had recently received from Father Robertson a letter ending with these words:
“Pressure would be useless. I have found by experience that one cannot hurry the human soul. It must move at its own pace. You have done your part. Try to leave the rest with confidence in other hands. Through you she knows the truth of her husband’s condition. She has given up the Sisterhood. Surely that means that she has taken the first step on the road that leads to Constantinople.”
But now May was here with its heat, and its sunshine, and its dust, and Lady Ingleton must soon meet the eyes of Cynthia Clarke, and the man she had striven to redeem was unredeemed.
She sighed as she got up from her writing-table. Perhaps perversely she felt that she would mind meeting Cynthia Clarke less if her treachery had been rewarded by the accomplishment of her purpose. A useless treachery seemed to her peculiarly unpardonable. She hated having done a wrong without securing a quid pro quo. Even if Father Robertson was right, and Rosamund Leith’s departure from the Sisterhood were the first step on the road to Constantinople, she might arrive too late.
Although she was once more with Carey, Lady Ingleton felt unusually depressed.
Soon after five the door of her boudoir was opened by a footman, and Mrs. Clarke walked slowly in, looking Lady Ingleton thought, even thinner, even more haggard and grave than usual. She was perfectly dressed in a gown that was a marvel of subtle simplicity, and wore a hat that drew just enough attention to the lovely shape of her small head.
“Certainly she has the most delicious head I ever saw,” was Lady Ingleton’s first (preposterous) thought. “And the strongest will I ever encountered,” was the following thought, as she looked into her friend’s large eyes.
After they had talked London and Paris for a few minutes Lady Ingleton changed the subject, and with a sort of languid zest, which was intended to conceal a purpose she desired to keep secret, began to speak of Pera and of the happenings there while she had been away. Various acquaintances were discussed, and presently Lady Ingleton arrived, strolling, at Dion Leith.
“Mr. Leith is still here, isn’t he?” she asked. “Carey hasn’t seen him lately but thinks he is about.”
“Oh yes, he is still here,” said Mrs. Clarke’s husky voice.
“What does he do? How does he pass his time?”
“I often wonder,” replied Mrs. Clarke, squeezing a lemon into her cup, which was full of clear China tea.
She put the lemon, thoroughly squeezed, down on its plate, looking steadily at her friend, and continued:
“You remember last summer when I asked you to be kind to him, and told you why I was interested in him, poor fellow?”
“Oh yes.”
“I really thought at that time it would be possible to assist him to get back into life, what we understand by life. You helped me like a true friend.”
“Oh, I really did nothing.”
“You enabled me to continue my acquaintance with him here,” said Mrs. Clarke inflexibly.
Lady Ingleton was silent, and Mrs. Clarke continued:
“You know what I did, my efforts to interest him in all sorts of things. I even got Jimmy out because I knew Mr. Leith was fond of him, threw them together, even tried to turn Mr. Leith into a sort of holiday tutor. Anything to take him out of himself. Later on, when Jimmy went back to England, I though I would try hard to wake up Dion Leith’s mind.”
“Did you?” said Lady Ingleton, in her most languid voice.
“I took him about in Stamboul. I showed him all the interesting things that travelers as a rule know nothing about. I tried to make him feel Stamboul. I even spent the winter here chiefly because of him, though, of course, nobody must know that but you.”
“Entendu, ma chere!”
“But I’ve made a complete failure of it all.”
“You meant that Mr. Leith can’t take up life again?”
“He simply doesn’t care for the things of the mind. He has very few mental resources. I imagined that there was very much more in him to work upon than there is. If his heart receives a hard blow, an intellectual man can always turn for consolation to the innumerable things of art, philosophy, literature, that are food for the mind. But Mr. Leith unfortunately isn’t an intellectual man. And another thing——”
She had been speaking very quietly; now she paused.
“Yes?” said Lady Ingleton.
“Jimmy came out for the Easter holidays. It was absurd, because they’re so short, but I had to see him, and I couldn’t very well go to England. Well, Jimmy’s taken a violent dislike to Mr. Leith.”
“I thought Jimmy was very fond of him.”
“He was devoted to him, but now he can’t bear him. In fact, Jimmy won’t have anything to do with Dion Leith. I suppose—boys of that age are often very sharp—I suppose he sees the deterioration in Mr. Leith and it disgusts him.”
“Deterioration!” said Lady Ingleton, leaning forward, and speaking more impulsively than before.
“Yes. It is heart-rending.”
“Really!”
“And it makes things difficult for me.”
“I’m sorry for that.”
There was a moment of silence; then, as Mrs. Clarke did not speak, but sat still wrapped in a haggard immobility, Lady Ingleton said:
“When do you go to Buyukderer?”
“I shall probably go next week. I’ve very tired of Pera.”
“You look tired.”
“I didn’t mean physically. I’m never physically tired.”
“Extraordinary woman!” said Lady Ingleton, with a faint, unhumorous smile. “Come and see some Sevres I picked up at Christie’s. Carey is delighted with it, although, of course, horrified at the price I paid for it.”
She got up and went with Mrs. Clarke into one of the drawing-rooms. Dion Leith was not mentioned again.
That evening the Ingletons dined alone. Sir Carey said he must insist on a short honeymoon even though they were obliged to spend it in an Embassy. They had dinner in Bohemian fashion on a small round table in Lady Ingleton’s boudoir, and were waited upon by Sir Carey’s valet, a middle-aged Italian who had been for many years in his service and who had succeeded, in the way of Italian servants, in becoming one of the family. The Pekinese lay around solaced by the arrival of their mistress and of their doyenne.
When dinner was over and Sir Carey had lit his cigar, he breathed a sigh of contentment.
“At last I’m happy once more after all those months of solitude!”
He looked across at his wife, and added:
“But are you happy at being with me again?”
She smiled.
“Yes,” he said, “I know, of course.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“Well, I’m a trained observer, like every competent diplomatist, and—there’s something. I see in the lute of your happiness a tiny rift. It’s scarcely visible, but—I see it.”
“I’m not quite happy to-night.”
“And you won’t tell me why, on our honeymoon?”
“I want to tell you but I can’t. I have no right to tell you.”
“You only can judge of that.”
“I’ve done something that even you might think abominable, something treacherous. I had a great reason—but still!” She sighed. “I shall never be able to tell you what it is, because to do that would increase my sin. To-night I’m realizing that I’m not at all sorry for what I have done. And that not being sorry—as well as something else—makes me unhappy in a new way. It’s all very complicated.”
“Like Balkan politics! Shall we”—he looked round the room meditatively—“shall we set the dogs at it?”
She smiled.
“Even they couldn’t drive my tristesse quite away. You have more power with me than many dogs. Read me something. Read me ‘Rabbi ben Ezra.’”
Sir Carey went to fetch the exorcizer.
The truth was that Lady Ingleton’s interview with Cynthia Clarke had made her realize two things: that since she had come to know Father Robertson, and had betrayed to him the secret of her friend’s life, any genuine feeling of liking she had had for Cynthia Clarke had died; and that Cynthia Clarke was tired of Dion Leith.
That day Mrs. Clarke’s hypocrisy had, perhaps, for the first time, absolutely disgusted, and even almost horrified, Lady Ingleton. For years Lady Ingleton had known of it, but for years she had almost admired it. The cleverness, the subtlety, the competence of it had entertained her mind. She had respected, too, the courage which never failed Mrs. Clarke. But she was beginning to see her with new eyes. Perhaps Father Robertson had given his impulsive visitor a new moral vision.
During the conversation that afternoon at certain moments Lady Ingleton had almost hated Cynthia Clarke—when Cynthia had spoken of trying to wake up Dion Leith’s mind, of his not being an intellectual man, of Jimmy Clarke’s shrinking from him because of his deterioration. And when Cynthia had said that deterioration was “heart-rending” Lady Ingleton had quite definitely detested her. This feeling of detestation had persisted while, in the drawing-room, Cynthia was lovingly appreciating the new acquisition of Sevres. Lady Ingleton sickened now when she thought of the lovely hands sensitively touching, feeling, the thin china. There really was something appalling in the delicate mentality, in the subtle taste, of a woman in whom raged such devastating physical passions.
Lady Ingleton shuddered as she remembered her conversation with her “friend.” But it had brought about something. It had driven away any lingering regret of hers for having spoken frankly to Father Robertson. Cynthia was certainly tired of Dion Leith. Was she about to sacrifice him as she had sacrificed others? Lady Ingleton dreaded the future. For during the interview at the Adelphi Hotel she had realized Rosamund’s innate and fastidious purity. To forgive even one infidelity would be a tremendous moral triumph in such a woman as Rosamund. But if Cynthia Clarke threw Dion Leith away, and he fell into promiscuous degradation, then surely Rosamund’s nature would rise up in inevitable revolt. Even if she came to Constantinople then it would surely be too late.
Lady Ingleton had seen clearly enough into the mind of Cynthia Clarke, but there was hidden from her the greater part of a human drama not yet complete.
Combined with the ugly passion which governed her life, Mrs. Clarke had an almost wild love of personal freedom. As much as she loved to fetter she hated to be fettered. This hatred had led her into many difficulties during the course of her varied life, difficulties which had always occurred at moments when she wanted to get rid of people. Ever since she had grown up there had been recurring epochs when she had been tormented by the violent desire to rid herself of some one whom she had formerly longed for, whom she had striven to bind to her. Until now she had always eventually succeeded in breaking away from those who were beginning to involve her in weariness or to disgust her. There had sometimes been perilous moments, painful scenes, bitter recriminations. But by the exercise of her indomitable power of will, helped by her exceptional lack of scruple, she had always managed to accomplish her purpose. She had always found hitherto that she was more pitiless, and therefore more efficient, than anyone opposed to her in a severe struggle of wills. But Dion Leith was beginning to cause her serious uneasiness. She had known from the beginning of their acquaintance that he was an exceptional man; since his tragedy she had realized that the exceptional circumstances of his life had accentuated his individuality. In sorrow, in deterioration, he had broken loose from restraint. She had helped to make him what he had now become, the most difficult man she had ever had to deal with. When he had crossed the river to her he had burnt all the boats behind him. If he had sometimes been weak in goodness, in those former days long past, in what he considered as evil—Mrs. Clarke did not see things in white and black—he had developed a peculiar persistence and determination which were very like strength.
Looking back, Mrs. Clarke realized that the definite change in Dion, which marked the beginning of a new development, dated from the night in the garden at Buyukderer when Jimmy had so nearly learnt the truth. On that night she had forced Dion to save her reputation with her child by lying and playing the hypocrite to a boy who looked up to him and trusted in him. Dion had not forgotten his obedience. Perhaps he hated her because of it in some secret place of his soul. She was sure that he intended to make her pay for it. He had obeyed her in what she considered as a very trifling matter. (For of course Jimmy had to be deceived.) But since then he had often shown a bitter, even sometimes a brutal, disposition to make her obey him. She could not fully understand the measure of his resentment because she had none of his sense of honor and did not share his instinctive love of truth. But she knew he had suffered acutely in tricking and lying to Jimmy.
On that night, then, he had burnt his boats. She herself had told him to do it when she had said to him, “Give yourself wholly to me.” She was beginning to regret that she had ever said that.
At first, in her perversity, she had curiously enjoyed Dion’s misery. It had wrapped him in a garment that was novel. It had thrown about him a certain romance. But now she was becoming weary of it. She had had enough of it and enough of him. That horrible process, which she knew so well, had repeated itself once more: she had wanted a thing; she had striven for it; she had obtained it; she had enjoyed it (for she knew well how to enjoy and never thought that the game was not worth the candle). And then, by slow, almost imperceptible degrees, her power of enjoyment had begun to lessen. Day by day it had lost in strength. She had tried to stimulate it, to deceive herself about its decay, but the time had come, as it had come to her many times in the past, when she had been forced to acknowledge to herself that it was no longer living but a corpse. Dion Leith had played his part in her life. She wished now to put him outside of her door. She had made sacrifices for him; for him she had run risks. All that was very well so long as he had had the power to reward her. But now she was beginning to brood over those risks, those sacrifices, with resentment, to magnify them in her mind; she was beginning to be angry as she dwelt upon that which distortedly she thought of as her unselfishness.
After Jimmy had left Turkey to go back to Eton, and the summer had died, Mrs. Clarke had fulfilled her promise to Dion. She had settled at Pera for the winter, and she had arranged his life for him. From the moment of Jimmy’s departure Dion had given himself entirely to her. He had even given himself with a sort of desperation. She had been aware of his fierce concentration, and she had tasted it with a keenness of pleasure, she had savored it deliberately and fully in the way of an epicure. The force of his resolution towards evil—it was just that—had acted upon her abominably sensitive temperament as a strong tonic. That period had been the time when, to her, the game was worth the candle, was worth a whole blaze of candles.
Already, then, Dion had begun to show the new difficult man whom she, working hand in hand with sorrow, had helped to create within him; but she had at first enjoyed his crudities of temper, his occasional outbursts of brutality, his almost fierce roughness and the hardness which alternated with his moments of passion.
She had understood that he was flinging away with furious hands all the baggage of virtue he had clung to in the past, that he was readjusting his life, was reversing all the habits which had been familiar and natural to him in the existence with Rosamund. So much the better, she had thought. The fact that he was doing this proved to her her power over him. She had smiled, in her unsmiling way, upon his efforts to do what she had told him to do, to cut away the cancer that was in him and to cut away all that was round it. Away with the old moralities, the old hatred of lies and deceptions, the old love of sanity and purity of life.
But away, too, with the old reverence for, and worship of, the woman possessed.
Dion had taken to heart a maxim once uttered to him by Mrs. Clarke in the garden at Buyukderer. Mention had been made of the very foolish and undignified conduct of a certain woman in Pera society who had been badly treated by a young diplomat. In discussing the matter Dion had chanced to say:
“But if she does such things how can any man respect her?”
Mrs. Clarke’s reply, spoken with withering sarcasm, had been:
“Women don’t want to be respected by men.”
Dion had not forgotten that saying. It had sunk deep into his heart. He had come to believe it. Even when he thought of Rosamund still he believed it. He had respected her, and had shown his respect in the most chivalrous way at his command, and she had never really loved him. Evidently women were not what he had thought they were. Mrs. Clarke knew what they were and a thousand things that he did not know. He grasped at her cynicism, and he often applied it, translated through his personality, to herself. He even went farther in cynicism than she had ever gone, behaving like a convert to a religion which had the charm of novelty. He praised her for her capacities as a liar, a hypocrite, a subtle trickster, a thrower of dust in the eyes of her world. One of his favorite names for her was “dust-thrower.” Sometimes he abused her. She believed that at moments he detested her. But he clung to her and he did not mean to give her up. And she knew that.
After that horrible night when Jimmy had waked up she had succeeded in making Dion believe that he was deeply loved by her. She had really had an ugly passion for him, and she had contrived easily enough to dress it up and present it as love. And he clung to that semblance of love, because it was all that he had, because it was a weapon in his hand, and because he had made for it a sacrifice. He had sacrificed the truth that was in him, and he had received in part payment the mysterious dislike of the boy who had formerly looked up to him.
Jimmy had never been friendly with Dion since the night of their search for his mother in the garden.
His manner towards his mother had changed but little. He was slightly more reserved with her than he had been. Her faint air of sarcasm when, in Sonia’s room, he had shown her his boyish agitation, had made a considerable impression upon him. He was unable to forget it. And he was a little more formal with his mother; showed her, perhaps, more respect than before. But the change was trifling. His respect for Dion, however, was obviously dead. Indeed he had begun to show a scarcely veiled hostility towards Dion in the summer holidays, and in the recent Easter holidays, spent by him in Pera, he had avoided Dion as much as possible.
“That fellow still here!” he had said, with boyish gruffness, when his mother had first mentioned Dion’s name immediately after his arrival. And when he had seen Dion he had said straight out to his mother that he couldn’t “stand Leith at any price now.” She had asked him why, fixing her eyes upon him, but the only reply she had succeeded in getting had been that he didn’t trust the fellow, that he hadn’t trusted Leith for a long time.
“Since when?” she had said.
“Can’t remember,” had been the non-committal answer.
It seemed as if Jimmy had seen through Dion’s insincerity in the garden at Buyukderer. Yet there was nothing to show that he had not accepted his mother’s insincerity in Sonia’s room at its face value. Even Mrs. Clarke had not been able to understand exactly what was in her boy’s mind. But Jimmy’s hostility to Dion had troubled her obscurely, and had added to her growing weariness of this intrigue something more vital. Her intelligence divined, rather than actually perceived, the coming into her life of a definite menace to her happiness, if happiness it could be called. She felt as if Jimmy were on the track of her secret, and she was certain that Dion was the cause of the boy’s unpleasant new alertness. In the past she had taken risks for Dion. But she had had the great reason of what she chose to call passion. That reason was gone now. She was resolved not to take the greatest of all risks for a man whom she wanted to get rid of.
She was resolved; but she encountered now in Dion a resolve which she had not suspected he was capable of, and which began to render her seriously uneasy.
Lady Ingleton’s remark, “you look tired,” had struck unpleasantly on Mrs. Clarke’s ears, and she came away from the Embassy that day with them in her mind. She was on foot. As she came out through the great gateway of the Embassy she remembered that she had been coming from it on that day in June when she had seen Dion Leith for the first time in Pera. A sharp thrill had gone through her that day. He had come. He had obeyed the persistent call of her will. What she had desired for so long would be. And she had been fiercely glad for two reasons; one an ordinary reason, the other less ordinary. A mysterious reason of the mind. If her will had played her false for once, had proved inadequate, she would have suffered strangely. When she knew it had not she had triumphed. But now, as she walked onward slowly, she wished she had never seen Dion Leith in Pera, she wished that her will had played her false. It would have been better so, for she was in a difficult situation, and she foresaw that it was going to become more difficult. She was assailed by that recurring desire which is the scourge of the sensualist, the desire to rid herself violently, abruptly and forever of the possession she had schemed and made long efforts to obtain. Her torch was burnt out. She wished to stamp out the flame of another torch which still glowed with a baleful fire.
“And Delia has noticed something!” she thought.
The thought was scarcely out of her mind when she came face to face with Dion Leith. He stopped before her.
“Have you been to the Embassy?” he said.
“Yes. Delia Ingleton came back yesterday. You aren’t going to call there?”
“Of course not. I happened to see you walking in that direction, so I thought I would wait for you.”
With the manner of a man exercising a right he turned to walk back with her. A flame of irritation scorched her, but she did not show any emotion. She only said quietly:
“You know I am not particularly fond of being seen with men in the Grande Rue.”
“Very well. If you like, I’ll come to your flat by a round-about way. I’ll be there five minutes after you are.”
Before she had time to say anything he was gone, striding through the crowd.
Mrs. Clarke walked on and came into the Grande Rue.
She lived in a flat in a street which turned out of the Grande Rue on the left not very far from the Taxim Garden. As she walked on slowly she was trying to make up her mind to force a break with Dion. She had great courage and was naturally ruthless, yet for once she was beset by indecision. She did not any longer feel sure that she could dominate this man. She had bent him to her will when she took him; but could she do so when she wished to get rid of him?
When she reached the house, on the second floor of which was her flat, she found him there waiting for her.
“You must have walked very quickly, Dion,” she said.
“No, I didn’t,” he replied bruskly. “You walked very slowly.”
“I feel tired to-day.”
“I thought you were never tired.”
“Every woman is tired sometimes.”
They began to ascend the staircase. There was no lift.
“Are you going out to-night?” she heard him say behind her.
“No. I shall go to bed early.”
“I’ll stay till then.”
“You know you can’t stay very late here.”
She heard him laugh.
“When you’ve just said you are going to bed early!”
She said nothing more till they reached the flat. He followed her in and put his hat down.
“Will you have tea?”
“No, thanks; nothing.”
“Go into the drawing-room. I’ll come in a moment.”
She left him and went into her bedroom.
He waited for her in the drawing-room. At first he sat down. The room was full of the scent of flowers, and he remembered the strong flowery scent which had greeted him when he visited the villa at Buyukderer for the first time. How long ago that seemed—aeons ago! A few minutes passed, registered by the ticking of a little clock of exquisite bronze work on the mantelpiece. She did not come. He felt restless. He always felt restless in Constantinople. Now he got up and walked about the room, turning sharply from time to time, pausing when he turned, then resuming his walk. Once, as he turned, he found himself exactly opposite to a mirror. He stared into it and saw a man still young, but lined, with sunken eyes, a mouth drooping and bitter, a head on which the dark hair was no longer thick and springy. His hair had retreated from the temples, and this fact had changed his appearance, had lessened his good looks, and at the same time had given to his face an odd suggestion of added intellectuality which was at war with the plain stamp of dissipation imprinted upon it. Even in repose his face was almost horribly expressive.
As he stared into the glass he thought:
“If I cut off my mustache I should look like a tragic actor who was a thorough bad lot.”
He turned away, frowning, and resumed his walk. Presently he stood still and looked about the room. He was getting impatient. Irritability crept through him. He almost hated Mrs. Clarke for keeping him waiting so long.
“Why the devil doesn’t she come?” he thought.
He stood trying to control his nervous anger, clenching his muscular hands, and looking from one piece of furniture to another, from one ornament to another ornament, with quickly shifting eyes.
His attention was attracted by something unusual in the room which he had not noticed till now. On a writing-table of ebony near one of the windows he saw a large photograph in a curious frame of ruddy arbutus wood. He had never before seen a photograph in any room lived in by Mrs. Clarke, and he had heard her say that photographs killed a room, and might easily kill, too, with their staring impotence, any affection one felt for the friends they represented. Whose photograph could this be which triumphed over such a dislike? He walked to the table, bent down and saw a standing boy in flannels, bare-headed, with thick, disordered hair and bare arms, holding in his large hands a cricket bat. It was Jimmy, and his eyes looked straight into Dion’s.
A door clicked. There was a faint rustling. Mrs. Clarke walked into the room.
Dion turned round.
“What’s this photograph doing here?” he asked roughly.
“Doing?”
“Yes. You hate photographs. I’ve heard you say so.”
“Jimmy gave it to me on my birthday just before he left for England. It’s quite a good one.”
“You are going to keep it here?”
“Yes. I am going to keep it here. Come and sit down.”
He did not move.
“Jimmy loathes me,” he said.
“Nonsense.”
“He does. Through you he has come to loathe me, and you keep his photograph here——”
“I don’t allow any one to criticize what I do in my own drawing-room,” she interrupted. “You are really childish to-day.”
His intense irritability had communicated itself to her. She felt an almost reckless desire to get rid of him. His look of embittered wretchedness tormented her nerves. She wondered how it had ever been able to interest her, even to lure her. She was amazed at her own perversity.
“I cannot allow you to come here if you are going to try to interfere with my arrangements,” she added, with a sort of fierce coldness.
“I have a right to come here.”
“You have not. You have no rights over me, none at all. I have made a great many sacrifices for you, far too many, but I shall never sacrifice my complete independence for you or for any one.”
“Sacrifices for me!” he exclaimed.
He snatched up the photograph, held it with both his hands, exerted his strength, smashed the glass, broke the frame, tore the photograph in half, and threw it, the fragments of red wood and the bits of glass on the table.
“You’ve made your boy hate me, and you shan’t have him there,” he said savagely.
“How dare you!” she exclaimed, in a low, hoarse voice.
She flung out her hands. In snatching at the ruined photograph she picked up with it a fragment of glass. It cut her hand slightly, and a thin thread of blood ran down over her white skin.
“Oh, your hand!” exclaimed Dion, in a changed voice. “It’s bleeding!”
He pulled out his handkerchief.
“Leave it alone! I forbid you to touch it!”
She put the fragments of the photograph inside her dress, gently, tenderly even. Then she turned and faced him.
“To-morrow I shall telegraph to England for another photograph to be sent out, and it will stand here,” she said, pointing with her bleeding hand at the writing-table. “It will always stand on my table here and in the Villa Hafiz.”
Then she bound her own handkerchief about her hand and rang the bell. Sonia came.