robin had been enjoying himself quite stupendously during these last few weeks in london, but to-day, when he woke, he was not disposed to regret that he was going back to cambridge that afternoon, to pass a quiet and more or less studious month there. for the last month he had dined out every night, and gone to balls afterwards, except when he was down at grote for week-ends, or had other evening engagements of his own, of a kind both less public and less decorous than the ball-rooms of the great world. day and night the mad rush had gone on, for a boy of nineteen, handsome, vivid, a genius at enjoying himself, and a son of lady grote had not far to look to find companions to enjoy himself with and houses to welcome him. he had flirted prodigiously, he had eaten and drunk and danced, and had not given a single thought except to the delightful diversion that happened to be going on at any particular minute. and some of his experiences had been very diverting indeed.
one of the less decorous nights had ended for him at dawn to-day, about the same time that the little london fog had looked out from his brocaded curtains, and, waking some five hours later, he had lain drowsily for twenty minutes more, thinking on the whole that he{154} was not sorry to go back to cambridge. at the same time he licked the chops of memory; chop after chop he licked of last night’s happenings.... in this serene morning sunshine, and in the white coolness of his bed they seemed almost incredible ... he almost wondered if he had dreamed them.
he had dropped into bed at dawn this morning, not troubling to put on pyjamas, but rolling himself up cocoon-wise in a sheet, and had slept with the sound tranquillity with which youth so speedily repairs the effects of its extravagant freaks. now he uncurled himself, and raising his arms above his head and spreading out his legs, he stretched himself till he heard his joints crack. drowsily he could smell the tea and the bacon which his servant had brought up on a tray for his breakfast, drowsily he could see that there were some letters for him, and interest in correspondence and food made him gradually slip the sheath of slumber off. the bacon smelt delicious, for he was hungry, but mingled with it was an odour of stale smoke, not so pleasant, and one of stale scent. he could conjecture something of the origin of both of these from his memories of last night, but from where now, at this moment, did those reminders come? his servant had taken away the clothes he had worn yesterday evening; there was nothing in his room but himself that could carry these keepsakes about with him. then, with a touch of disgust, he perceived that these odours undoubtedly lurked in his own hair, and his pillow where his head had rested smelled of them.
he instantly got out of bed and went into the bathroom next door, where the cool water was ready for him, and he jumped bodily into it, letting it go right over his head in a wave of cleansing refreshment. then, spluttering from his immersion, he soaped his yellow crop till it{155} became hoary with suds, and washed out with his sponge the remnants of the sordid legacy of the night. there were limits, and one of them was that his hair should smell of stale things.
as he rubbed himself into a glow of healthy heat again, he could not help grinning at the recollections that fluttered in and out of his mind. badsley had been there, slightly intoxicated at first and very full of human affections, but as the hours went by he got more intoxicated and far less sociable. eventually poor badders became like mr. wordsworth’s heroine, “for no motion had he now, no force;” and they had crowned him with a wreath of flowers round his top-hat, put him into robin’s car, and told the chauffeur to drive him about quietly until the night air and carriage exercise enabled him to get over the effects of the lobster salad. when he had recovered and been deposited at the hotel he was staying at, the chauffeur might go home. but not long afterwards badders had turned up again, having made a remarkable recovery, and full of fresh plans as to the proper way to spend an evening. he had given his flowers, so he told them, to a man coming out of the athen?um club, whom he took to be a bishop. then robin had a rather indistinct notion of having had to walk home a long way, and—well, here he was in a glow from his cold bath, with a nice clean red tongue, quite ready for his breakfast, and not smelling of stale things any longer. but in order to get quite rid of them, he ate his breakfast and read his letters, sitting in the sun by his open window, with nothing more than a bath-towel on him.
his mother’s room was just opposite his, and presently he put on a dressing-gown and slippers and went to pay her a short call.
“good morning, darling,” she said, as he kissed her.{156} “robin, you look like a rose-leaf and smell of soap. what a nice clean thing a boy is.”
“this one wasn’t such a nice clean thing half an hour ago,” said he, taking up his mother’s tortoiseshell brushes, and reducing his hair to some sort of order.
“wasn’t it? what did you do last night? i heard you come upstairs about four o’clock.”
“well, we had what you might call a pleasant evening,” said robin discreetly. “a quiet, pleasant evening.”
“i like mr. badsley,” said lady grote (he had dined there a few nights ago).
robin bubbled with laughter.
“lor! i wonder if you’d have liked him about two o’clock this morning?” he said. “oh, we had such a rag, but i don’t think i’ll tell you all about it.”
“oh, tell me some,” said she.
“well, we put a wreath of flowers round his hat, and he thinks he gave them to a bishop.”
“did he indeed? why?” asked lady grote, deeply interested. “and what bishop?”
“oh, any bishop,” said robin, “and then he came back.”
“had he perhaps had a little supper?” asked she. “and had you?”
“oh, i wasn’t screwed, if you mean that,” said he.
she looked at him a minute, her motherhood finding itself somehow in opposition to her intense delight in being a “pal,” a chum to him. but she was his mother, too....
“robin, dear,” she said. “don’t think me a cross-grained old woman if i lecture you. but i’m so glad you weren’t screwed. it’s a dreadful habit to get into. i hope you’ll tell mr. badsley what a pig he made of himself. of course, it’s dreadfully funny, the thought{157} of his giving his flowers to a bishop, but it’s rather rowdy, isn’t it?”
“oh yes, it was rowdy,” said robin.
she was longing to hear all about it, but nobly suppressed her curiosity.
“my dear, don’t be rowdy. it isn’t that i don’t love your being young, but being rowdy and getting drunk are bad form, you know. i adore your coming in like this, and telling me about it, and i can’t bear to be unsympathetic, but i am rather unsympathetic over riots. and it is such a waste of time to get tipsy, tell mr. badsley so.”
robin began to laugh again.
“shall i tell it him with your love, mother?” he asked. “he’s madly devoted to you. he thinks you’re the most wonderful female he ever saw. if father was dead he would propose to you to-morrow. then he’d become my step-father, if you accepted him. lord! fancy having badders as a step-father!”
lady grote tried hard to feel as old as she was, and utterly failed to accomplish that ridiculous feat.
“oh, did he like me, robin?” she said. “that was nice of him.”
robin had an awful twinkle in his guileless eyes.
“yes, i thought i should have found him serenading you when i got home,” he said. “i expect he’ll write to you.”
“i wish he would. but let’s go back to our subject. your party last night.”
robin had finished brushing his hair, and came to perch himself on the arm of her chair. this action exposed a good deal of white, firm leg, up to a lean knee-joint. somehow the sight of that took his mother back to those lovely days when she was a young mother, and he a little dimpled baby. how well she remembered{158} kissing every inch of him, and under the impulse of that memory she could not forbear to kiss that exposed knee, and then cover it up again with the fold of his dressing-gown, as if to shut her kiss in. he was still so tremendously hers.
“i’ll tell you all about the party, if you like,” he said.
“oh, you darling. but i don’t want to know anything about it, since you are willing to tell me. i really only care that you should be willing to do so. it was rowdy, and were there by any chance a few young ladies there?”
“well, naturally. you didn’t think badders and i would go and sit in the café londres all alone? but i’m rather sick of that sort of thing. i shan’t be sorry to go back to cambridge.”
“but are you going back, dear?” she said.
“yes, i thought i told you.”
“then you won’t come down to grote to-morrow? i’m going there for the sunday.”
“i think i won’t. i promised jim to go up to cambridge to-day, in fact i promised him to go up yesterday, but then badders suggested an evening on the rampage. have you got a party?”
“no; last sunday was the end of them for this year. lord thorley is coming, and i think gracie massingberd. i had forgotten you were going back.”
she hesitated a moment; it was probable that if she urged robin to come, he would do so, and leave cambridge to take care of itself till monday. on the other hand, if he would not come, she must see about getting a fourth to make their party square. perhaps....
“i’ll come if you really want me, mother,” he said. “jim will be furious, but after all he and i shall be there together till half-way through august.”
while he spoke she had made up her mind.{159}
“no, dear,” she said, “i don’t want you more than i always want you, and if you’ve settled to go to cambridge, why should you change your plans? in any case, it will be a very short stay at grote, for i shan’t get down there till after the opera on saturday night, and gracie and lord thorley aren’t coming down till sunday morning. very likely i shan’t go down till sunday morning either.”
robin got up.
“all right, then i shall go up this afternoon,” he said. “what’s the opera?”
“tristan: the last tristan of the season; kuhlmann is singing.”
“a deplorable composition,” remarked robin.
she began to laugh.
“do explain why.”
“it’s so dreary; they’re so deadly serious. do people really fall in love as mournfully as that? i prefer to do it more gaily.”
“everyone falls in love in the same key as they do other things,” said she. “tristan and isolde weren’t gay.”
“no, not exactly what one ordinarily means by it. but most people in operas would be terribly depressing to live with. think of living with all those beggars in the ring. awful! perhaps i had better go and dress, if i’m going to begin the day. lord! it’s after eleven. i say, mother, you’ve had your italian stainer and polisher, haven’t you? but you’re not so red as he’s stained you, are you?”
lady grote smoothed her hand over her new titian hair, rather piqued.
“yes, darling,” she said, “it’s been exactly like that for three days, and this is the first time you’ve been kind enough to notice your poor old mother.{160}”
robin giggled.
“badders saw,” he said. “he told me you had the most wonderful coloured hair of any girl—he did say ‘girl’—he’d ever seen, except one. lucky for you i hadn’t noticed it before, or i should have had to tell badders all about the stainer. wasn’t he funny when he came into your room at grote one sunday morning, and i thought he was the undertaker? i shall tell badders about him.”
“you are a very rude, disagreeable sort of boy,” said lady grote. “and who was the one girl, i think you said, who was more decorative than me?”
“i forget. one of badders’s. shall i see you again before i go to cambridge?”
lady grote instantly forgave those rude remarks about her colour.
“my darling, of course. will you be in to tea or lunch or dinner? if not, i shall have to come and see you wherever you are. i hope it’s not disreputable, or an a.b.c. shop.”
“no, i’ll be in at half-past four and we’ll have tea together, shall we?”
“yes, dear; that will be lovely,” said she, wondering exactly who she would have to put off. she knew the day was fitted together like a mosaic. “half-past four, then.”
for a long time after robin had left her she sat in a state of belated indecision. she knew that he would have come down to grote with a word of urging from her, and even while he had said as much, she had made up her mind that she would not utter it. she had quite forgotten, if she had ever known it, that he was going back to cambridge to-day, and fully expected that he would come down to grote with her. but he{161} was not going to do that, and the moment she knew that, she knew also whom she was meaning to ask there. of course she was to be at the opera on saturday night and after the opera it would be very pleasant to have that hour’s cool drive down to grote, instead of stopping in london that night and driving down on sunday morning.
robin would have driven down with her had he been coming, and they would have had a morning on the river together, while the other two amused themselves or each other. but robin was not coming, it was therefore perfectly reasonable for her to find somebody who would drive down with her on saturday night, or on sunday morning, and complete the quartette.
that all sounded reasonable enough, but she knew that from beginning to end of it there lurked in it an essential insincerity. with two such old friends as lord thorley and gracie, she was perfectly well aware that there was not the smallest need to look for a fourth, as far as companionship for any of them went. how often, she wondered, had they three spent a sunday together perfectly content with each other? naturally, robin would come, if he had nothing else to do, but if he had, there could not be a more gratuitous proceeding than to look for somebody else merely for the sake of an even number. should she still ask him to put off going to cambridge till monday and so deprive herself of her excuse for asking somebody else? it was not yet too late; he would still be in his room opposite, dressing. but she knew she was meaning to do nothing of the kind.
obstinate questionings.... why was it that he could have a rowdy supper-party, getting home at four in the morning, after goodness only knew what adventures, and yet somehow have no trace of it all in the{162} morning, except what a cold bath and some soap would remove? if anything, it was rather suitable than otherwise, according to the code of the world in general, that a boy should go rampaging about, and wipe the whole affair off his mouth like a fringe of froth. no one with any sense would dream of blaming him for it, anyhow; it did not make his nature the least less wholesome. was it just the lightness, the gaiety of youth that passed such things through the filter of itself, so that when they reached his real self they were clear and unmuddied. or was it because a man, by some curious device of nature’s, could, within reason, do what he chose, and yet retain his own colour, whereas a woman was like a chameleon, and took on, at any rate in a much higher degree than a man, the colour of her conduct? women were flesh and blood, no less than men, and if by the limitations of a loveless marriage she was uncared for and unsatisfied, must she acquiesce in so unreasonable a verdict? of course she had to care; there was nothing so odious or so degrading as passion in cold blood. but passion in hot blood was a vastly different thing; to desire was a test of being alive.
she had no idea why she hesitated. some scruple hitherto quite foreign to her nature seemed to have germinated within her. was it connected with that moment just now, when, with robin seated on the arm of her chair, and showing a good deal of leg, she had had so undimmed a vision of herself as a young mother, and of him as that adorable soft little burden, fruit of her rapture and her pain.
and then—well, so soon after that, such passion as there had ever been between herself and her husband grew as cold as the extinct craters of the moon. what was the use of trying to warm yourself by moonlight?{163} neither of them had attempted so preposterous a proceeding. and yet warmth was the prime essential of life to those who had the temperament for loving, and for being desired. it puzzled her to know why, after so many years of taking these things for granted, she should suddenly begin to question their validity.
what was the nature of this scruple that troubled her? surely it was not conscience, but cowardice masquerading in a black coat and parson’s tie. she was desperately serious in this bewildering attraction the man had for her, and she was afraid she was really nothing more than a toy to him, a great, beautiful toy with which he diverted himself. sometimes she felt herself not even to be that to him, he was weary of her already. yet the image of a toy did not wholly represent what she felt herself to be to that gross, savage creature that played with her. he played with her not so much as a toy, but as a prey: she was like a mouse encircled by the velvet paws of a drowsy cat, not hungry, but pleased to have her in its power. was that, then, the reason of her scruple, of her hesitation to ask him to come down to grote with her after he had sung tristan, that she wanted to escape? possibly that had its part in her scruple, and yet the fact that she felt herself to be his toy—his prey, heightened and intensified her desire. she wanted not so much to escape as to prove herself more than that. she must make him want her, he must at least be hungry.... and in the stress of that need, all question of scruple, whether conscience-born or cowardice-begotten, vanished utterly.
she rang him up at his hotel, and knew that he answered the call himself, for there was no mistaking the timbre of that soft, purring voice, even when passed through the wires and drum of the instrument which would blur a less individual utterance into a mere metallic gabble.{164} he recognized her voice, too, for in answer to her question if he was in, he said at once, “ah, is it you, gracious lady?” and it seemed to her that there was something ironic in the phrase. she could almost see the half-smile round his red, sensual mouth as he said it. and was there something ironic, too, in his answer to her suggestion that he should come down to grote with her after the opera next day? “a rapturous plan,” he had purred, “you are too kind: you spoil me. and shall i have the joy of knowing that you hear your poor tristan for the last time to-morrow?”
she had fully intended to go to tristan first, and then call for him at the stage-door, but when he suggested that, suddenly her whole mind veered round. she felt she could not bear to see him share the love-potion with another, even though that other was the huge, misshapen borinski; she wanted to have no warnings from brangaene in her tower: she wanted no lime-lit forest of stage-trees, no theatrical representation, even though the most wonderful love-music in the world, and that superb and passionate voice interpreted it. above all, she did not want to see the tragedy and bitterness of love, but rather to know the triumph of its sweetness.... all this went through her mind with the vividness and speed of some scene suddenly illuminated in the darkness by a flash of lightning.
“no; i shan’t come to the opera,” she said. “i will just call for you afterwards, and we will drive down.”
there was a moment’s pause.
“all things shall be as you will, gracious and adored lady,” he said.
“till to-morrow, then,” said she.
well, that was settled, and instantly she plunged into{165} the myriad engagements and employments that awaited her. she wanted to take her mind completely away from to-morrow, to occupy and distract all her conscious self, to employ all her conscious energies, and let that which she had determined on, seethe quietly in the shut darkness of her inmost self. she wanted to imagine nothing, to anticipate nothing, lest by reflecting, she should dull the keenness of her force when it should come into play. she was to be a mouse no longer, a toy no longer, but a queen who dominated, not a slave who served. all day and all the next that storage of force went on, while like a separate entity, she went from house to house, to a luncheon party here, to an hour of an afternoon concert afterwards, coming home, as arranged, to have tea with robin before he went to cambridge. she entertained people at dinner that night, and went to a drawing-room afterwards, with half herself, and that the essential and really living part, shut up in the darkness of her inmost soul.
sometimes if she let her interest in the pageants round her flag for a moment, she could hear something tapping at the door behind which she had locked her real self in, but she refused to listen, above all, she refused to hold communication with her prisoner. to-morrow night, london would be left behind, and the prisoner should come out and enter into her kingdom....
on saturday afternoon she sent such servants as would be needed down to grote, with instructions that she and mr. kuhlmann would come down that night, and two more guests would join them next morning. there must be supper ready for them: for they would not be down till somewhere about {166}one in the morning. there was no need to open any of the big rooms ... and suddenly the unreality of all those great parties struck her. what did they all come to? had they been anything more than a rather gorgeous and expensive way of passing the time until something real came along? how many of those who composed that brilliant crowd mattered at all to her? perhaps there were half a dozen at one party whom she cared for, and who, perhaps, cared for her, but all the rest were hardly more than pretty dresses that moved and talked on topics as evanescent as gossamer on a dewy morning.
she dined on saturday night at a restaurant with three friends, mrs. lockwater, geoffrey bellingham, and the ubiquitous mr. boyton, who was their host. next them was a larger gathering, all known to her, all visitors, when she cared to ask them, to grote, all part of the usual pageant of life. there were topics abroad that should have been interesting, the threat, scarcely veiled, of austria to serbia, a race-meeting at which the wealthiest and most miserly commoner in england had won a hundred thousand pounds, trouble in ireland, the marvellous party at lady gurtner’s two nights ago, all the froth and bubble which the world makes as it spins through space on its hazardous and unconjecturable journey. there was nothing of an arresting quality in any of these; it was all the kind of thing that london has perennially “on tap.” geoffrey bellingham was inclined to be involved and allusive about serbia, but he might equally well have chosen as his topic the race-meeting and arrived at no less a pitch of picturesque obscurity.
“it is,” he said, “as i figure it to myself, as if a big boy, some athletic creature like our dear robin, though without the chivalrous sense that size should give, had a small boy gripped by the ear in an inexorable{167} forefinger and relentless thumb, while the menacing boot is poised before its painful application. but our interesting international group is not complete yet: for to my probably pessimistic eye, another big boy, cousin and chivalrous cousin to the scarcely adolescent menaced, says, in fact, ‘hands off!’ and is there, or is there not, some even more completely equipped youth standing behind the boot that menaces and the hand that grips? are, in fact, those who watch by the rhine—in short, is germany drinking beer or brewing trouble? what, to borrow our metaphor from the financial transactions which to-day have made a perfect danae, in point not, i may say, of motherhood, but of gold, of our friend who has now another hundred thousand pounds to devote to schemes of stinginess—what is the betting on germany being behind all this?”
mr. boyton had been smoothing his honey-coloured hair with a slight air of impatience. he had not yet been able to get a word in, though it was his own party, so substantial were the periods with which bellingham had been regaling them. it was true that his resonant, booming voice made everybody in the room look in his direction, where they could behold boyton entertaining the two most beautiful women in london, but as host he wanted to talk too, and plunged into the very rapids of bellingham’s eloquence.
“the best grounds for betting against germany being, as you say, behind all this,” he said, “was a delightful party given two days ago, at which i had the felicity to meet my dear neighbour on my right. our timorous friend, lady grote, should have been there, should he not, and have seen the cordiality between certain of our fellow-guests? his absence marred the perfection of the evening.{168}”
lady grote had to think a moment before she could remember what party her host alluded to. there had been such lots of parties, all just the same sort of thing. two nights ago? what a long time ago that must have been! she could remember that robin had been out till four in the morning, but ... what else had happened? then she remembered.
“yes, yes,” she said. “we were an anglo-germanic society, weren’t we? i loved that symphonic poem by saalfeld, and then nijinski as endymion; really, i looked round to be sure that robin was not there. i should not have been able to face him afterwards.”
she paused a moment.
“and i thought mr. kuhlmann sang so well,” she added, feeling suddenly real again. “he is singing in tristan to-night. if i was not here, mr. boyton, i should like to be there.”
“dear lady,” thundered mr. bellingham, “one, at least, and i see i speak for two others, are enraptured at the fact that you prefer this for me delicious rendez-vous to that of the ship that continued, i may say, interminably not coming. it continues, does it not, not to come far longer than any belated liner yet known to the wife of the expectant mariner, or, as it so curiously happened in this case, to the husband, in the sight of god, of the marineering wife. in fact, i thought that that ship would never cease not coming, and that my departure from covent garden would be delayed till the day of judgment, unless i made my inconspicuous exit before it came. and to the best of my recollection, an equally interminable herdsman continued to pipe on an interminable flute of the reediest order, during the whole period of its non-arrival. tristan, so i faintly remember, accompanied the meanderings of the flute with writhings in a species of{169} brown dressing-gown, indigenous, i suppose, to some sparsely-inhabited district of cornwall, and so correct, but unlikely to enhance his chances in the eyes of his long-tarrying mistress. had some hint, so i put it to myself, subaqueously or telepathically reached that abandoned princess of the unbecoming dishabille of her, what i must call, husband, or did she eventually arrive in order to put an end, once for all, we must hope, to the pipings of the flute-player? but she came, did she not? i seem to see a corpse of amazingly muscular build but already moribund, disappearing under a landslide, an avalanche of buxom charms, a soprano mountain, may we call it?—a mountain of the most vocal kind. the mountain came to mohammed, in fact, and i understood that the opera was over. someone, probably an evangelist, for his name was mark, said a sort of grace over the perfidious couple!”
lady grote gave a great explosion of laughter. all her conscious self delighted in this ludicrous travesty of tristan as it appeared to the unbaptized. but from the imprisoned self within there came no answering merriment; it sat quite still in its darkness, tolerating, but no more, this chattering of an ape, who spoke in a language scarcely human, but made an obscene kind of gabble that yet somehow amused her enormously. but the amused part of her was the actor on this stage of an unreal restaurant, and it had its part to play. the rest of the actors, or the audience (it did not matter which), were amused, too; they gabbled and chuckled, and it all meant nothing. there they continued sitting round their table, while other parties broke up and went away: bellingham was being amusing, and boyton was getting his share of the talk, and mrs. lockwater was listening, and she herself was merely waiting till it was time to go down to covent garden.{170} the opera would be over by half-past eleven, and she had told her friends that she was going to drive down to grote that night, and had ordered her car for eleven or thereabouts.
the time did not go slowly, and she was rather surprised when the porter came in, and said that her car had come for her. after that she sat for another ten minutes, and then in a mixture of feverish impatience and regret that nothing now lay between her and her desire, she went out of the revolving doors, and boyton, loquacious and important, took her to her motor. she saw the last of him, a compact, tame little man, standing on the edge of the pavement, and already greeting a friend who succeeded her in the revolving cage.
the car slid eastwards; there was but little traffic going in her direction, for all the theatres were pouring out westwards, and she hummed along past one continuous queue of carriages. arc lights and incandescent gas brightly illuminated the crowded pavements, and she never had felt a closer kinship with the seekers of pleasure and the couples who had found it. here and there only was a solitary figure, some man pursuing his puritanical way, or some woman, a little old perhaps to rank herself still among the daughters of joy, fluttering anxiously and uneasily on the edge of the pavement, in search of any who appreciated the charms of maturity. but for the most part there was little anxiety in evidence; it was a singularly gay assemblage that strolled and lounged, and clustered like bees round the islands in the street and to the steps of crowded buses. in the circus some news was being called, and papers were selling rapidly; the news-boards announced the result of a cricket match.{171}
after leaving leicester square the streets lost something of their illumination and their crowds, and as her motor passed up long acre she went, so to speak, key in hand to the locked door in her mind, where since yesterday she had imprisoned the thoughts that were concerned with to-night. they clamoured and rapped within, but she did not let them out till on approaching the opera house she called an order to her chauffeur to turn down the street in which lay the entrance to the royal box and the stage-door. several royal carriages were standing in the road, the third of them being opposite the stage-door. she went past them, turned and came back again to the end of the short queue and stopped. her footman got down and stood on the pavement close to the stage-door, a few yards in front of her motor.
she turned the key and out poured the exulting crowd of imprisoned thought. she could just see her servant standing by the stage-door, and knew that before many minutes were over she would see him touch his hat and come back with the man she was waiting for. he would open the motor door, and she would turn back the light rug that covered her knees. there would be a word of formal greeting, and he would get in. she would not need to tell the footman where to go, and presently they would move off. beneath the rug she would feel his hand grasp hers, and that purring voice would say something. there would be miles of gas-lit streets to traverse, and after that the long, grey riband of the road lying straight between its dusky hedges. there would be silent villages lying along the valley of the river, and presently the climb up the downs, to where the woods of grote met over the road, forming a tunnel of greenery. the lodge gate would open and close behind them, and presently they{172} would stop beneath the ionic pillars of the portico. they would sup together, and she would tell the servants that no one need sit up....
somehow her mind reproduced no other pictures than these concerned with material minuti?. what would they talk about as they drove? she had no idea; among all the liberated prisoners there was not one who had imagined that. perhaps, who knew, they would not talk at all; perhaps he would sing, below his breath, little phrases of the love-duet. no doubt at supper, when the servants were there, they would talk; she would ask him how the opera went, whether borinski was more ponderous than usual; perhaps she would give geoffrey bellingham’s impression of the last act. then supper would be over, and they would be alone again....
she had no idea how time was going, but presently her chauffeur, who had stopped his engines, started them again, and they moved up to opposite the stage-door, and she saw that the royal carriages had gone. the opera was therefore over, and soon the dark, narrow street became flooded with the audience from the upper part of the house, and she heard fragments of their conversation as they passed her open window.
one said: “i didn’t think much of tristan; not a patch on kuhlmann, was he?” that made her smile, since it was kuhlmann that the discontented listener had just been hearing. borinski came in for eulogy; the orchestra was admirable, but once again tristan seemed not to have given satisfaction. perhaps he had not sung as magnificently as usual; he had told her before now that even singing in tristan did not absorb him, if his mind was busy with something else. the explanation thrilled her....
gradually the crowd drained off again, and left the{173} street empty once more. several other motors had come up behind her, and before long she saw borinski come out talking voluble german to her maid, who carried a bag. they got into some motor behind and drove off. then the stage-door grew populous; a group of men came out together, also talking german; probably they were the chorus of sailors. then came others, and, finally, there came brangaene, whom lady grote knew, but did not care about knowing at this particular moment, and so, to escape recognition, she leant back in the darkness of her motor.
she applauded kuhlmann for his discretion in letting the others get away first; certainly it was a thing better to be avoided that he should be seen getting into her motor at the stage-door. it was kind and thoughtful of him. but there was no longer any reason that he should delay his exit. she turned up the light for a moment and saw that her clock pointed to half-past twelve.
from inside the lit passage there came quick steps, and the light was put out. next moment some theatre official, in uniform, appeared at the entrance, and proceeded to shut the door. she called her footman.
“ask him if mr. kuhlmann is still in the theatre?” she said.
the man was busy putting a padlock on a bar of the door, and in a moment her servant returned to her.
“he says mr. kuhlmann has not been singing to-night, my lady,” he said.
“ask him to speak to me a moment,” she said.
the man left the half-barred door and came to her carriage.
“mr. kuhlmann surely has been singing in tristan to-night,” she said.
“no, ma’am. there was an understudy singing{174} to-night. mr. kuhlmann was here yesterday afternoon, and cancelled his engagements for the rest of the season. there’s been a great to-do at the box-office, for a lot of ladies and gentlemen wanted their money returned.”
“and where is he? what has happened? is he ill?”
“couldn’t say, ma’am.”
the man paused a moment.
“i beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said. “but are you lady grote, or some such name?”
“yes.”
“then mr. kuhlmann left a note for you. it’s on the rack, i think, for i noticed the name, seeing as lady grote wasn’t one of our ladies. i remember his putting it there to be called for. if you are wanting it to-night, my lady, i could step down and fetch it you!”
“i should be very much obliged to you,” said she.
she hustled all the lately released prisoners of her mind back into their dungeon again. she refused to allow herself to think till she knew more. as she herded them in, they chattered together, one saying, “perhaps he is ill”; another: “he would have told her if he was ill.” another wildly, amazingly suggested: “he knew he wouldn’t be able to sing to-night. perhaps he has gone down to grote already; perhaps she will find him there.” another said: “it is all a mistake; he will come out in one moment, and we will all go down to grote together.” but she swept them all into confinement again, and just waited for the note to be brought. in that interval she did not do more than notice trivial things; her chauffeur had got a white smudge on his collar; her footman was about the same height as robin, and had the same low, straight shoulders; she found her purse, and{175} took out of it five shillings to give the porter. then she heard his steps coming up the stone stairs; he stumbled, and came out into the street, dusting his knees, with a note in his hand.
“i am very much obliged to you,” she said, and gave him his tip.
the footman came to the door.
“to grote, my lady?” he asked.
“shut the door and get up,” she said. “i will tell you in a moment.”
she turned on the light again, opened the note and read it.
“gracious lady,
“this will reach you at the stage-door of the opera, and by then i shall be away on the sea, on my return to germany.
“you will wonder why, having agreed to accept your gratifying proposal to drive down to grote alone with you, i have in the lurch left you, and why i put you to the trouble of going down at so inconvenient an hour to the opera, when you would find nobody. the reasons are three:
“the first is that i wish for ever to cast off the dust and the dirt of your disagreeable land, and to do it in as inconvenient and humiliating a manner as possible. believing, as i do, that before but a few weeks are out we good germans will be sinking your ships, and would be battering into pulp your armies, if you had any, i take permission to declare my hostility, before the rest of my nation, and get safe back to my beloved fatherland before i suffer outrage in your barbarous country.
“secondly, i leave you to find out that i have gone without telling you before i am safe away, since i feel sure you would make the scenes, and try to induce me{176} to stop, at least for the satisfaction of your amiable purposes. but a scene with one who is quite indifferent to me lacks all excitement, and is merely a bore. i therefore escape a scene with you, via the hook of holland.
“thirdly, you have often told me that the pleasantest thing in an experience is the anticipation of it. i therefore have taken the opportunity to lengthen your anticipation out to its utmost possible limits. i hope you have had two charming days.
“if further justification for my action was necessary, which it is not, it would lie in the fact that when i accepted your invitation to grote, i had not quite made up my mind. i did so a few hours afterwards, when i decided i would sooner spend sunday in germany than with you. i shall sleep better in my german bed. you have been most useful to me in my stay in england, and the use you have been to me, and your pleasant hospitality and the english gold i so plentifully carry away with me, i consider are the proper tribute to a great artist. i honour you by allowing myself to accept these offerings. i need not speak about your own personal feeling for me, for no man of true kultur willingly alludes to his triumphs, however unsought. i need only say that the continued existence of your husband, your nationality, and my own disinclination prevent my making you into an honest woman. with regard to my sudden departure, i need but say that i trust the hospitable sir gurtner’s judgment more than that of our german ambassador.
“finally, gracious lady, i have met many women more beautiful than yourself, but none more facile. your friends disagree with me about the standard of your beauty, but they are of my mind regarding your facility. pray do not think i state these facts from the desire to insult gratuitously; i base my statements{177} on the ground of the instinct of one of england’s bitterest foes.
“friedrich kuhlmann.”
helen grote took up the little speaking trumpet, and put the light out.
“straight to grote,” she said.
the gas-lit streets whirled by, and she sat observing with no less intentness than before the pavement that was still aswarm with the saturday night crowd. it was not yet more than an hour since she had passed eastwards through those streets, feeling an ecstatic kinship with the couples that lined the pavements. but now she acknowledged a closer spiritual affinity to the solitary, be-feathered women uneasily flitting about at the street corners, and peering into the faces of passers-by. had they, too, arranged assignations which were not kept, had they been given rendez-vous like her, where one only rendered herself?... in her hands she still held the letter that she had received at the stage-door, but she did not need to read it twice, for every word of it had impressed itself on her brain. but what should she do with it, this last word of a man who for three months past had so dominated her with the effortless force of a savage nature? she held there, in the hand from which, in anticipation, she had already slipped her glove, his final expression of himself, the last and the fullest exhibition of his real nature. up till now, perhaps, he had but treated her, so she had conjectured, as a toy, or perhaps there had been a quickened beat or two of his animal heart for her; but whatever the truth of that might be, there was no doubt now of the unveiled sincerity of his last word. if she had been but a toy, she was a toy which{178} he hated and detested with a virulent, overmastering force. and in the strange ways of her woman’s heart, she felt, in those first moments of her knowledge of him, not so much the sting of an outraged pride, or the saltness of the waters of her humiliation, but a perverse thrill of excitement that at last, one way or another, he felt strongly about her. his avowed contempt and dislike did not wound her as much as his expressed indifference would have done.
the car had left the bright streets and enclosed places behind, and in the isolation of the night and the darkness she let free her imprisoned thoughts again, and wondered at the vagueness of them. an hour ago they had been clamorous and brightly coloured; now they were but indistinct pallors with no firm outline. apart from that one thrill of excitement that at last he felt keenly about her, though the keenness was but an edge of hate and contempt, her conscious mind recorded nothing vivid; the whole outrage that he had committed, in act and word, did not seem to have fallen on her, but was presented to her merely as an external picture. but for some reason her mouth was dry, and for some reason her hand, as it still held his letter, was violently trembling.
something inside her, she supposed, was in tumult, and caused that physical agitation. but at present her mind sat apart, and only contemplated what had been done to her. it was as if some local an?sthetic had been applied, and she sat by, wholly conscious, but feeling none of the pain of the surgeon’s knife. a hideous operation was going on, and she watched it without any touch of pain or of self-pity.
she found herself repeating sentences of his letter in her mind, and imagining him saying them. no conscious effort of imagination was necessary; merely{179} his voice sounded in that inner temple of the ear to which sounds come not from outside but from the brain. “i have seen many women more beautiful, but none more facile,” was one of those sentences with which her ears were ringing. “if it were not for the continued existence of your husband, your nationality, and my own disinclination, i would make an honest woman of you,” was another. but this externally inaudible repetition of them did not hurt her; it was only benumbed tissues that were being cut and slashed and dissected. they and others like them were insults aimed and dealt at herself; but there was another class of insults altogether, aimed not at her personally but at england, the country that had lavished on him wealth and fame, for until he came to london he was not of outstanding distinction in the operatic world. and now he shook the dust of england off his feet, he signed himself the bitterest of her foes; he spoke of war as imminent. like the rest of london, she was aware that the relations between austria and russia were strained over the question of serbia, and, like the rest of london, she had thought of it all only as a temporary tangle which the deft fingers of diplomacy would soon unravel. it was only two days ago that the anglo-german party had met at aline gurtner’s, and not a breath of ruffling rumour had disturbed the settled cordiality. but here was kuhlmann saying that his sudden departure was due to his confidence in hermann gurtner’s judgment. what did it all mean?
her car had turned in at the lodge gates; the moon had risen, and straight in front of her, standing out sharp and clear against the night of stars rose the roofs of grote, with the windows emblazoned by the moonlight, so that it looked as if the whole house was lit from end to end magnificently to welcome her on her{180} home-coming. and just as the car stopped beneath the portico, swiftly as the return of sensation after an an?sthetic, the numbness of her perceptions passed off, and she knew why her mouth was dry and her hand shook. he had flung back in her face, with insults and contempt, all—all she had given him; he had treated her as no decent man would have treated the most mercenary creature of the street-corners.
and yet, deep down in her heart she knew that if, as some wild, disordered fancy suggested to her, he had at that moment come to the door now opening with that firm, quick step and confident carriage, there was her ungloved hand for him, which already would have torn to atoms his infamous letter.