"Supposing," he argued, "supposing Rainham had given signs of a desire to marry my sister, or my cousin, or any other girl in whom I was interested, or, in short, whom I knew, it would obviously have been my duty, before giving my consent or approval, to find out all about his relations with that girl, that person whom I saw with him in the park—ah, yes! Kitty, that was her name. And, in a way, don't I owe far more to society in general than I do to any of my immediate friends in particular? Well, then I ought to know more about Kitty, so as to be prepared in case—that is, for emergencies.... Why, for all I know, I may have been suspecting Rainham all this time quite unjustly. I'm sure I hope so." Here he shook his head sorrowfully. "But I'm afraid there's not much chance of that. The question remains, how am I to find out anything? It's no good asking Rainham; that goes without saying. It would be equally useless to try Lightmark: they're as thick as thieves, and he's not the sort of man to be pumped very easily. And yet, if Rainham's friends are out of the question, what's to be done? He hasn't got any enemies—that sort of man never has, except himself. How can I get hold of the girl? I suppose some people would set a detective to watch Rainham, and so on; but that's not to be thought of, in this case." He stopped close to Cleopatra's Needle, and frowned abstractedly over the stone parapet, absently following the struggles of a boy who was laboriously working a great, empty lighter across the wide, smoke-coloured river at a narrow angle with the shore. An idea suggested itself in flattering colours for a moment: he might pay a visit to the little restaurant or club in Turk Street, the shady place with a foreign name which he had forgotten. At the expense of a little tact, he might very probably succeed in inducing some of the careless, disreputable young artists who formed the frequentation of the place to talk about Rainham's amours. It even occurred to him that at a late hour Kitty herself might be seen there, dancing a can-can with Rainham, or singing songs with a riotous chorus. But in spite of this prospect, the notion was not sufficiently attractive. He had not enjoyed his introduction to the eccentric fraternity, on the occasion when he had been fired by Lightmark's early enthusiasm about the place to request to take him there to dine. He had felt, almost as much as the men to whom he was introduced, that he had no business there, that he was an outsider; he had even been snubbed. "And, after all," he said impatiently, resuming his homeward direction, "though I've got enough evidence to damn him twice over in the eyes of any man in the world, I suppose it wouldn't be enough to convince a woman, if she believed in him. I must get hold of Kitty—it's the only way to arrive at a certainty."

After much deliberation to the same effect, he determined, somewhat reluctantly, that there was nothing for it but to endeavour to enlist the sympathies of one of Rainham's more intimate friends. He had recurred by this time to the unstable hypothesis that he was acting primarily in Rainham's interest, that his real motive was to arrive at the truth on the chance that it might be favourable to his unadmitted rival. It only remained for him to select out of the limited material at his disposal the man whom he should invite to enter upon this alliance. And when he reached the gloomy library of the eminently respectable club, where he was accustomed, before dining, to study the evening papers and to write his letters, the choice had been made; and after one or two abortive efforts, he composed to his satisfaction a diplomatic epistle, which he addressed to Oswyn (with whom he enjoyed a nodding acquaintance) at the restaurant in Turk Street.

Late in the afternoon of the next day Sylvester sat alone and expectant before a pile of temporarily neglected papers, telling himself that Rainham ought to be very grateful for these strenuous efforts in the interests of his injured reputation. He was beginning to wonder nervously whether Oswyn would fail him, when he heard a knock at the outer door, followed by an unfamiliar step, and the clerk announced that a gentleman wished to see him by appointment on private business. The barrister rose from his seat with a portentous display of polite, awkward cordiality, and motioned his guest into a chair.

"It's extremely good of you to take the trouble to come," he said tentatively.

"That depends upon what you want of me," answered Oswyn shrewdly. "You said in your note that it was on a matter of vital importance to a friend of mine. I haven't so many friends that I can afford to shirk a little trouble in a matter which vitally concerns one of them. May I ask, in the first place, who is the friend?"

Sylvester picked up the open brief which lay before him on the table, and folded it scrupulously.

"Philip Rainham," he answered, and then shot a quick glance at Oswyn.

"Rainham?" echoed the other with an air suggestive at once of surprise and relief, as if, perhaps, he had been expecting to hear another name. "You are right, he is a friend," he added simply. "What can I do for him?"

"Well, the fact is, I'm afraid he's got into difficulties—a scrape, an imbroglio, with a woman!"

The painter lifted his expressive eyebrows incredulously.

"Since I last saw him—three days ago?"

"Oh, dear, no; the thing's been going on, I should say, for quite a long time—more than a year to my knowledge."

Oswyn reflected for a moment, gazing at Sylvester with some suspicion.

"I don't think it troubles him much," he said brusquely. "Is it any business of mine—or of yours? Has he spoken to you about it?"

Sylvester uttered a hasty negative.

"Oh, no! He is not the sort of man who would. But other people talk. You see, I'm afraid there's some sort of black-mail going on, and he oughtn't to submit to it. His friends oughtn't to allow it. If—if one could see the woman and frighten her a little——"

"Is that what you wanted me for?" asked Oswyn impatiently. "If so, allow me——"

The other hastened to reassure him.

"Oh, no, not at all. But I thought you might be able to tell me where the person is to be found, her address, or something about her. I understand that she was a model; you probably know her...."

The painter shrugged his shoulders.

"Who is she? What is her name?"

"Kitty—that's all I know."

"Kitty? Kitty Crichton, I suppose."

A light dawned on him; the name opened a door to many forgotten trivial incidents. He did not speak again for a minute, and when he broke the silence there was a harder tone in his voice, and he rose from his chair at the same time.

"I don't see how this can concern me, or you, either. You must pardon me if I say that I dislike meddling, and people who meddle."

Sylvester blushed hotly.

"You don't suppose I want to do him anything but good," he said diplomatically, trying to convince himself that he was not damaging the reputation for perfect candour which he hoped that he enjoyed. "It's not a pleasant task, but there are circumstances in which one has to sacrifice one's scruples—one's feelings."

Oswyn glanced at him again, with some contempt in the lines of his worn face.

"Excuse me if I refrain from sounding your motives."

Then he paused, fingering his soft felt hat. Suddenly his face was illumined by a remarkably grim smile, and it became evident to the man who was watching him so anxiously that there had occurred some change in his mental perspective.

"I don't quite understand why you brought me into this," he added, the smile still hovering very lightly on his lips. "However, under the circumstances, I think I can't do much harm by putting you in the way of finding Mrs. Crichton. Let me recommend you to inquire for her at the office of the Outcry, the newspaper—she used to work for it, I believe—in Took's Court. They will know her address there. Took's Court—it's only a few minutes' walk from here. Thanks, I can find my way out...."

"I suppose that was rather a stupid thing to do," he said regretfully, as he stopped in the doorway below to light a cigarette, "though not such a betise as his, mon dieu!... But I couldn't resist the temptation. Now, I wonder if he's clever enough to find out the truth?"



CHAPTER XXI

The night was dark and still—so dark that above the tree-tops all was a soft, abysmal blank, so still that the Japanese lanterns scarcely swung on their strings among the apple-trees, and the leaves almost forgot to rustle. From the tent in the corner of the little garden (little, but large for a garden in London) the quaint, rapturous music of the Hungarian band floated in fitful extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously accompanying the murmur of many voices, the mingled pace of feet, and the lingering sweep of silken skirts upon the shadowed grass. The light streamed in broad, electric rays from the open windows of the low, wide house, and from the tall double doors of the studio, which had been added at the side, broken continually by the silhouettes of guests who entered the rooms or sought the cooler air outside, and dulling to the quiet glow of old stained glass the rich radiance of the fantastic coloured lanterns.

It was one of the series of summer evenings on which, according to the cards which had been so widely circulated, Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark were "at home" to their friends and to their friends' friends; and Rainham, who was a late arrival at the elaborate house in Grove Road, was able after a time to recognise many familiar faces, some of them almost forgotten, among those who had elected to be present. The rooms, in spite of the outlet afforded by the garden, were all surprisingly full; and after a hurried exchange of greetings, which Eve's duties as hostess had compelled her to curtail, he had passed through a jungle of brilliant toilettes and unfamiliar figures into the newly-built, bright studio, where he had been told that he would find his friend. He had abundant leisure to corroborate the first impression of a splendour for which he was hardly prepared, which had seized him when he entered the hall and surrendered his coat to a courteous servant in livery, before Lightmark, radiant and flushed with success, singled him out in the corner to which he had retreated in loneliness.

"So glad to see you, old man! we were hoping you would turn up. Better late than never. Isn't it a crush? I assure you our evenings are becoming quite an institution. You will find scores of people you know here. Excuse my leaving you. Not much like the old studio days, eh? Afternoon tea with Copal's cups and saucers, and Mrs. Thingumy's tea-cakes. Your friend Lady Garnett is here somewhere—I'll be shot if I know where. Try the garden; you can get out this way. See you again later."

"All right, Dick," he answered with equanimity, smiling with a little inward amusement; "you look after your people. I will find my way about."

As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the trees, or disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn, feeling himself vaguely exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of the posturing fiddlers, his eyes caressed by the soft glow of the Japanese lanterns, strung like antique jewelled necklets against the almost tangible blackness of the night, he found himself listening with an half-malicious amusement to the commonplace of the conversational formulae affected by the young world of society, the well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers. It was very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated himself from the dreary bondage of such functions. It was croquet then, lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different. Presently he encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like himself, and they found themselves seats before long in the darkest corner of the garden, where a few chairs had been placed, outside the radius of the lanterns, underneath a weeping willow.

"And they say painting doesn't pay," said the Scotchman, extending his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in this world. But if a man's clever and canny, and has the sense to see on which side his bread's buttered ... why, it's just easier than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't even an Associate."

"Yes. I suppose he's getting on pretty well," suggested Rainham, with a lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.

"Getting on! Doesn't it look like it? Isn't he entertaining his friends like—like a Rothschild? You know, of course, that he has sold his Academy picture, and next year's as well—and four figures for each of them?"

"Yes; and he's commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the Hereditary Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst—an undertaking, by the way, for which I don't envy him. Oh, Dick's all right! What have you got in the Academy this year, by the way? I'm ashamed to say I haven't been there yet."

"You haven't! But you have seen Lightmark's picture? No? Well, it's a fine thing, and just as clever as—— But, mind you, I'm not prepared to say that Oswyn wouldn't have made something better out of it."

"Yes," said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving about his heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock, with the haunting shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed as an offence against his loyalty. "It seems to me that Oswyn has more real genius in his little finger than Dick has in his whole body; I am sure of it. It was a pity that they should both have chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, as to colour and treatment and so on, are so much the same. But, of course, Dick had a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing."

McAllister assented hastily.

"No doubt, no doubt; though Oswyn was just wild about it—you know his uncivilized ways—and I must admit I was a bit astonished myself, at first, when I saw the picture at Burlington House with Lightmark's signature to it. But then I didn't know anything of the rights of the case. He's a queer, cantankerous devil, and he's always being wronged, according to his own accounts, and not only by the critics. No one pays much attention to what he says nowadays. It's just that absinthe and the cigarettes that are the ruin of him, day and night. Poor devil! why can't he stick to whisky and a pipe, like a decent Christian!"

"His queerness is all on the surface," said Rainham gravely. "You have to dig pretty deep to find out what he's really worth."

Just then Eve hurried towards them through the trees, looking about her with an air of hesitation, carrying the train of her pale-gray brocade dress over one bare, girlish arm.

"Is that you, Mr. McAllister?" she asked, recognising first in the darkness the gaunt figure and tawny beard of the Scotchman. "Oh, and Mr. Rainham too! This is really very wrong of you, monopolizing each other in this way. And don't you know," she added laughingly, "that this corner is especially dedicated to flirtations? You must really come and do your duty. Mr. McAllister, won't you take Miss Menzies in to have some supper? You know her, I think—a compatriot, isn't she? You will find her close to the tent. And you," she pursued, turning to Rainham, "you must take some one in, you know. Will you come this way, please, and I will introduce you to somebody. I am so sorry I was not at home when you called the other day," she said conventionally, as they edged their way by degrees towards the house.

"Yes; I seem to have an unfortunate capacity for missing you nowadays. At Bordighera, for instance. I have certainly had no luck at all lately. I haven't even had an opportunity of telling you how charming I find your house."

"Ah!" said Eve vaguely, her eyes wandering over the people who were grouped upon the gravel walk and under the veranda outside the windows of the supper-room, "we really seem to see nothing of you now. Oh, let me introduce you to Mrs. Gibson—Mrs. Everett P. Gibson. She's American; you'll find her very amusing."

Rainham followed her obediently, thinking, with a quickly repressed passion of regret, of the child who would have confided to him her latest impressions of sorrow, of joy; finding something, which hardly emanated from himself, which made it seem difficult for him to gather up the threads of the old, charming intimacy with this new Eve—this woman, with her pretty, dignified bearing, and self-possessed, almost cold attitude. The introduction was duly effected, and for the next half-hour Rainham devoted himself heroically to the mental and physical entertainment (he was not obliged to do much talking) of the American lady, who hailed from the Far West, and lectured him volubly, with an exorbitant accent and a monotony of delivery, which began to tell on his nerves to an alarming degree, on her impressions of Europe, and especially England; the immense superiority of gas as a cooking and heating agent; the phenomenal attainments of her children; and the antiquities of Minneapolis.

After supper he found himself listening to the band in the garden with a sentimental young lady, who made him fully conversant with her adoration of moonlit nights, waltzing, the latest tenor, and the scenery of Switzerland.

It was already growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it struck him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a certain complaisant indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the briefest of greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only a glimpse had been vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the crowded supper-room. He wandered into the studio, where a little, intimate party had assembled around an easel, and he was fortunate enough in a few minutes to find himself invited to take possession of a vacant seat precisely by Mary's side.

"Oh, you wicked person!" said Mary reproachfully. "Why do you never come to see us? and where have you been hiding yourself all the evening?"

Rainham laughed gently.

"I feel rather guilty, I own; but you know there is an execrable proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music didn't fill me with a passionate desire to dance! And how good it is to be with a person who doesn't ask you whether you play much lawn-tennis, or whether you prefer London to the country on the whole. Ah, Mary! I consider myself a model of self-denial; but I am rewarded now."

"That's rather pretty for you," answered the girl approvingly; "and you are forgiven, though you have still to make your peace with Aunt Marcelle. Tell me what you have been doing, and what you have been reading...."

The conversation drifted on, now and again becoming general, and including the rest of the circle, but always recurring and narrowing into the deeper stream of their old intimacy.

"You are the only really satisfactory people I know," he said presently—"the only people who know how to enjoy life, so far as it is to be enjoyed."

"You mustn't give me any credit for it; it's all Aunt Marcelle's doing. But I don't think I know what you mean exactly. Perhaps we oughtn't to feel flattered?"

"I mean, you are the only people who understand that happiness doesn't depend on what one does or doesn't do—that it all depends on the point of view."

"The way of looking at life generally?" she hazarded.

"Precisely. True philosophy only admits one point of view—from outside. Aren't we always being told that life is only a play? Well, we clever people are the spectators, the audience. We look at the play from a comfortable seat in the stalls; and when the curtain drops at the end, we go home quietly and—sleep."

Mary looked at him for a moment silently.

"I'm not at all sure that we ought to feel flattered! You consider that you and I and her ladyship are spectators, then. Isn't it very selfish?"

"More or less. Of course, it's impossible to do the thing thoroughly without being absolutely selfish—a hermit, in fact. I sometimes think I was intended for a hermit."

Mary sighed covertly, though the smile still lingered in her brown eyes.

"I'm afraid I only take a kind of sideways view of things. I should like to—to——"

"To go up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly, "and get a bird's-eye view of life?"

"Exactly; and drift about. Only then one would never get really interested in anything or anybody. I should want someone else in the balloon."

"You must take me," said Rainham, still smiling.

Mary looked at him quickly, and then turned away, shivering a little.

"What nonsense we are talking!" she said suddenly. "And I'm afraid it isn't even original nonsense. We don't, really, want to be selfish, and we're not; you needn't pretend you are. And isn't it getting very, very late? Don't you think Mrs. Lightmark looks as if we ought to go? I don't mean that she looks inhospitable. But isn't she rather pale and tired? This sort of thing doesn't seem to suit her as well as her husband. Yes, I must really go."

When Miss Masters had deserted him, after extracting a promise that he would take an early opportunity of paying his over-due respects to her aunt, and had gone with Mrs. Lightmark in search of the old lady, Rainham made his adieux, leaving Lightmark still radiant, and protesting hospitably against such early hours; and as he walked homewards, with a cigar unlighted between his lips, he smiled rather bitterly, as he thought how little he was able to adhere to the tenets of his philosophy. Why else should he regret so much and so often the act which had been rung down when ... And how many more acts and scenes were there to be?

"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One isn't obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep their seats until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early disturbs the other spectators."

While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to her years and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a square, wainscoted little room, hung with pale grass matting, and decorated brightly with quaint Breton faience and old brass sconces.

"I was so glad to see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for him!"

"Almost as bad as too much society."

"Yes; it's only another form of dissipation."

"I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other people's society than too much of one's own."

"I don't think I ever regarded him from a—a society point of view. You know what I mean—like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I was a child I always thought of him as a sort of fairy godmother—a person who was always dropping from the clouds to take one for drives in the country, or with a box for the pantomime."

Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her curiously for a moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness or disdain in the clear voice and the pretty, childish face.

"Philip was always like that, the kindest—— He has always been quite a hero for me—a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off rather suddenly, finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly. "Isn't it curious that we should both have known him so long without knowing each other?"

"I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't think Philip talks about his friends very much...."

Lady Garnett interrupted the tete-a-tete conversation at this point, and when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late guests had left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few minutes in the deserted drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty chairs, meditating, with her chin resting on one hand, and her eyes absently contemplating the scattered petals of a copper-coloured rose, which had fallen from some dress or bouquet upon one of the Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet floor.

"Dick," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against the rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it ever strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?"

Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window wonderingly, almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh.

"Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely.

"I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display of mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?"

"Not much. I was only thinking.... What a pity Charles wasn't here to-night!"

"Oh, you little enigma! Is it that dear Charles who is to be pitied, or who? We, for instance?"

But Eve assumed a superior air, and Lightmark, who hated riddles, dismissed the subject and the end of his cigarette simultaneously.



CHAPTER XXII

One afternoon, three months later, Rainham, finding himself in the neighbourhood of Parton Street, took the occasion of knocking at Lady Garnett's door, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that the two ladies were returned. Introduced into their presence—they were sitting in the library, in close proximity to a considerable fire—he learnt that their summer wanderings that year had been of no extensive nature, and that they had come into residence a week ago.

They had spent a month in a country house in Berkshire, the old lady told him presently, adding, with an explanatory grimace, that it was a house which belonged to a relation—the sort of place where one had to visit now and again; where a month went a very long way; where one had to draw largely on one's courtesy—on one's hypocrisy (if he preferred the word), not to throw up the cards at once, and retire after the first week.

Rainham gathered from her resigned animadversions that the relations must be by marriage only: there was no Gallic quality in the atmosphere she described.

It was a very nice house—Jacobean, she believed—or, rather, it would have been nice if they had had it to themselves. Unfortunately, it was very full: there were a great many stupid men who shot all day, and as many stupid women who talked scandal and went to sleep after dinner; also there were several pairs—or did one say "brace"?—of young people who flirted, but they lived in the conservatories. When one did not go to sleep after dinner, one played round games, or baccarat. She herself had refused to play, although they had wished to make her; personally, she preferred to go to sleep, or to listen to Mary's music. Yes, Mary was more fortunate: they had a very good piano, and an organ. Mary's music was a great success, although her admirers were apt to confuse Offenbach with Chopin; and some of the women appeared to think it was not quite ladylike to play so well, with such a professional manner. Still, Mary's music was a success, and that was more than could be said of her own conversation. That had been a distinct failure! They seemed to think she wished to make fun of things—of sacred things, the game laws, and agriculture, and the Established Church. Of course, she had no such intention: it was only that she wished for information, for instruction in these difficult national institutions, which, long as she had made her home in England, she feared she would never thoroughly comprehend.

Mary had sat silently, with her hands clasped across her knees, while her aunt placidly poured forth these and similar comments (which were interspersed by questions and sympathetic monosyllables from Rainham), not so much acrimoniously, as in the tone of the humorous reporter, who is too indifferent to be actuated by a sense of injury.

The girl struck him as having grown tired and listless—more listless than a merely physical fatigue would warrant. He interrupted now to ask her with a touch of compassion if she too had been very much bored.

Her fine eyes were averted as she answered him, smiling a little:

"I am rather glad to be back. It was a pretty place, and the gardens were charming, when it did not rain."

Lady Garnett was overheard to murmur into the black ear of Mefistofele that it always rained.

"But on the whole—yes, I was rather bored," the girl continued abruptly.

"The rain and the round games and the people?" Rainham echoed. "You have my sympathy."

"I believe I rather liked the round games," said Mary, with a little laugh. "They were less tiresome than the rest; and the organ was a great solace; it was very perfect."

"Ah, yes, she liked the round games," put in Lady Garnett; "and if two of her admirers had played them more, and turned over her music less, the organ might have been a greater solace."

"They were very foolish," sighed the girl rather wearily.

"Mr. Sylvester was there for the last fortnight," continued Lady Garnett, with some malice. "He succeeded Lord Overstock, as Mary's musical acolyte. In revenge, Lord Overstock wished to teach her baccarat, and Mr. Sylvester remonstrated. It was sublime! It was the one moment of amusement vouchsafed me."

Mary flushed, locking her hands together nervously, with a trace of passion.

"It was ridiculous! intolerable! He had no right——!"

Lady Garnett bent forward, taking her hand.

"Forgive me, cherie! I did not mean to annoy you.... You can imagine how glad we were to see you," she added, with a sudden turn to Rainham. "It was charming of you to call so soon; you could hardly have expected to find us."

"You must not give me too much credit. I happened to be quite near, in Harley Street. I could not pass without inquiring."

"Ah, well," she said, "since you are here——"

She was looking absently away from him into an antique, silver basket which lay on the little table by her side, in which were miscellaneous trifles, odd pieces of lace, thimbles which she never used, a broken fan, a box of chocolates.

"Mary, my dear," she said quickly, "I am so stupid! The old bonbonniere, with the brilliants? I must have left it on my dressing-table, or somewhere. That new housemaid—we really know nothing about her—it would be such a temptation. Would you mind——"

"Is this——" Rainham began, and stopped short.

Lady Garnett's brilliant eyes, and a little admonitory gesture of one hand, restrained him. When the girl had shut the door behind her, the elder lady turned to him with a quaint smile.

"Is that it? Of course it is, my friend. You are singularly obtuse: a woman would have seen through me at once."

"I beg your pardon," said Rainham, somewhat mystified. "You mean it was a pretext?"

"It was for you that I made it," she replied with dignity. "What was it you came to say?"

The other was silent for a moment, cogitating. When he looked up at last, meeting her eyes, it was with something like a shiver, in a tone of genuine dismay, that he remarked:

"Dear lady, there are times when you terrify me. You see too much. It is not—no, it is not human. I had meant to tell you nothing."

He stopped short, lowering his voice, and looking from the depths of his low chair into the red fire.

"It is not necessary, Philip," she continued presently, "that you should tell me; only, if you will be so secret, you should wear smoked glasses. Your eyes were so speaking that I was afraid—yes, afraid—when you came into the room. They looked haunted; they had the air of having seen a ghost!"

"It was a very respectable ghost," he said grimly, "with a frock-coat and a bald head. You know Sir Egbert, I suppose?"

"Only by name. I imagined that he was your spectre, when you spoke of Harley Street. Does he send you South again?"

"No," said Rainham shortly; "he thinks it would be inexpedient—that was his phrase, inexpedient—in an hotel, you know, and all that.... I was obliged to him, because in any case it would have been inconvenient to me to be abroad this year. I suppose, though, that if it would have done me any good I should have gone; but I have a great deal to arrange."

He went on composedly to tell her of the most important of these arrangements—the disposal of his business. He had systematically neglected it for years, he explained, and it had ended by going to the dogs. So long as his foreman was there, that had not mattered so much; but Bullen had decided to desert him, and very wisely. He had accepted an offer to manage the works of a firm of North-Country shipbuilders; he was to shake the dust of Blackpool from off his feet in a very few months, and would probably make his fortune. And as he himself was not equal to bearing his incubus alone, he had put it in the market. A brand new company had bought it—that is to say, they had made him an offer—a ridiculously inadequate one, he was told, but which he was determined to accept; at any rate, it would leave him enough, when everything was paid, to live upon, for the rest of his life. The legal preliminaries were now being settled: they appeared to be interminable; but as in the meantime the dock-gates were shut, and the clerks had departed, he could not, so far as he saw, be losing money; that was a consolation.

He had not come to the end of his disquisition before he discovered that he spoke to deaf ears. The old lady for once was inattentive: she had sat screening her face from the fire with a large palm fan while he unburdened himself, and she began now with a certain hesitation:

"My pretext, Philip! When I said that I made it for you it was only half true. In effect, my dear, I had something to tell you—something disagreeable."

"Concerning me?" he asked.

"Certainly," she said—"something I have heard."

He looked vaguely across at her, finding her obscurity a little strained, waiting for her to speak. The silence that intervened was beginning to harass him, when she said suddenly:

"I will be quite plain. I think you ought to know. There is a scandal abroad about you—about you and some woman."

"Some woman!" he repeated blankly. "What woman?" He leant back in his chair, laughing his pleasant, low laugh. "I am sorry," he said, "I can't be as seriously annoyed as I ought; it is too foolish. My conscience really does not help me to discover her—this woman. Do you know any more?"

She shook her head.

"It is not a nice story," she said. "No, I have heard no name; only the story is current. I have heard it from three sources. I thought you had better know of it."

"Thank you," he answered, rising to go. "Yes, it is a thing one may as well know. It is very kind of them, these people, to take such trouble, to be sufficiently interested. Upon my honour, I do not know that I very much care. After all, what does it matter?"

"Nothing to me," said Lady Garnett, with a little shrug of disdain—"nothing, Dieu me pardonne! even if it were true."

"Well, good-bye," he said.

As he held her hand for a moment between his own he thought it trembled slightly.

"Ah, no!" she said quickly; "it is a phrase I decline. Come and see me soon. I am an old woman, my friend, and I have outlived my generation. I have said too many good-byes in my time. It is au revoir."

"With all my heart," he said, smiling. "Au revoir."

Her quaint intimation—that was the manner in which he characterized it—was already dismissed from his mind when he emerged into the street.

He had too many graver preoccupations to be greatly troubled by this grotesque slander. Going on his way, however—a temporary cessation of the soft, persistent rain which had been falling for most of the day suggested a walk—a chance recollection brought him to a sudden stop, changing his indifference for a moment into the shadow of pale indignation. How dull of him not to have guessed at once! it must be that unfortunate girl, Kitty Crichton, with whom busybodies were associating his name. He wondered how they had discovered her, and by whom the stupid story had been set afloat. The baselessness of the scandal, conjoined with his immense apathy just then as to anything more that the malice of men could do, inclined him to amusement, the more so as he reflected how many months it was since the girl and her wretched history had passed from his ken. He had found her gone on his return from Italy in the spring, leaving no address and but the briefest acknowledgment of his good-will in a note, which stated that she had no longer any excuse for imposing on his kindness—had found friends. The letter closed, as he imagined, a painful history, which, since his service had been, after all, so fruitless, he could see ended with relief. To his interpretation, the girl had recovered her scoundrel journalist, or at least compelled him to contribute to her support; and after all, as it seemed, he had not done with her yet, though the fashion of her return was ghostly and immaterial enough. The subject galled him; there were always dim possibilities lurking in the background of it which he refused to contemplate; he dismissed it. His meditation had carried him through the bustle of Oxford Street to the Marble Arch, and, the weather still encouraging him, he decided to turn into the Park. Many rainy days had made the air exceedingly soft, and in his enjoyment of this unusual quality, and of the strangely sweet odour of the wet earth and mildewing leaves, he forgot for a while a certain momentous sentence of Sir Egbert Rome's, which had jingled in his head all that afternoon. Presently it tripped him up again, like the gross melody of a music-hall song, and caused him to drop absently upon the first seat, quite unconscious that it was in an unwholesome condition of moisture. He had turned his back on the brilliant patches of yellow and copper-coloured chrysanthemums on the flower-plots facing Park Lane, and he looked westwards over a wider expanse of grass and trees: the grass bestrewed with bright autumnal leaves, the trees obscured and formless, in a rising white mist, through which a pale sun struggled and was vanquished. He had never been in a fitter mood to appreciate the decay of the year, and suddenly he was seized, in the midst of his depression, with an immense thrill, almost causing him to throw out his arms with an embracing gesture to the autumn, the very personal charm, the mysterious and pitiful fascination of the season whose visible beauty seems to include all spiritual things. It cast a spell over him of a long mental silence, as one might say, in which all definite thought expired, from which he aroused himself at last with a shrug of self-contempt, to find inexplicable tears in his eyes. And just then an interruption came, not altogether unwelcome, in the greeting of a familiar voice. It was Lightmark, who had discovered him in the course of a rapid walk down the Row, and had crossed over the small patch of intervening grass to make his salutations.

"I knew you by your back," he remarked, after they had shaken hands—"the ineffable languor of it; and, besides, who else but you would sit for choice on an October evening in such a wretched place?"

He looked down ruefully at his patent leather shoes, which the damp grass had dulled.

Rainham smiled vaguely; he needed an effort to pull himself together, to collect his energies sufficiently to meet the commonplace of conversation, after the curious detachment into which he had fallen; and he wondered aimlessly how long he had been there.

"I suppose, like everyone else, Dick," he remarked after a while, "it is the weather which has brought you home at such an unfashionable date."

"Yes," answered Lightmark; "it was very poor fun yachting. I shall stay in town altogether next year, I think. And you—you are not looking particularly fit; what have you done with yourself?"

"Oh, I am fit enough," said Rainham lightly; "I have been in London, you see."

"Well, I can't let you go now you are here. Won't you dine with us? Or rather—no, I believe we dine out. Come back and have some tea; Eve will be enchanted. I really decline to sit in that puddle."

Rainham rose slowly.

"Perhaps I will," he said. "I would have called before, if I had thought there was the least chance of finding you. And how do things go?"

As they strolled along through the deserted Park, and Lightmark entertained his friend with an extravagant narration of their miseries on the Lucifer, the chronic sea-sickness of the ladies, the incapacity and intoxication of the steward, and the discontent of everybody on board—he spoke as if they had entertained a considerable party—Rainham's interested eyes had leisure to note a change in him, not altogether unexpected. He presented the same handsome, well-dressed, prosperous figure; and yet prosperity had in some degree coarsened him. The old charm of his boyish carelessness had been succeeded by a certain hard assurance, an air of mundane, if not almost commercial shrewdness, which gave him less the note of an artist than of a successful man of business. And where the old Lightmark, the Lightmark of the Cafe Grecco days, broke out at times, it was less pleasantly than of old, in a curious recklessness, a tendency, which jarred on Rainham's susceptible nerves, to dilate with a vanity which would have been vulgar, had it not been almost childish, on his lavish living, the magnitude of his expenditure.

"You must find that sort of thing rather a tax?" he asked tentatively, after a description which struck him as unnecessarily exuberant of a hospitality in the summer.

"Oh, it pays in the long run," remarked the other easily, "to keep open house and go everywhere. Thank Heaven, the uncle is liberal! I admit we have been going at rather a pace lately. But, then, I can knock off a couple of pictures as soon as I have a little time, which will raise the wind again. I know what the public wants, bless it!"

Rainham shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.

"Poor public! If it wants art made in that spirit, it is worse than I believed."

Lightmark looked askance at him, frowning a little, pulling at his long moustache. He was absorbed for some time—they had turned into the Edgware Road, and the soft rain had begun again—in ineffectual pursuit of cabs. When at last he had caught a driver's eye, and they had settled themselves on the cushions of a hansom, he turned abruptly to his companion to ask him if he had seen the Academy before it closed.

"You recognised your domain?" he asked lightly, when the other had responded in the affirmative—"in my picture, I mean?"

He spoke quickly, in his accustomed blithe habit; it might have been merely a morbid fancy of Rainham's which traced a note of anxiety, of concealed uneasiness, in his accent, that the bare question scarcely justified.

Rainham paused a moment: it was not only a passing thought of Oswyn's acrimony, and of the difficult minutes during which he had been thrown across Lightmark at the Dock, that constrained him; it was rather the recollection of his own careful scrutiny of the disputed canvas, when he had at last dragged himself with a disagreeable sense of moral responsibility into Burlington House, and had come away at last strangely dissatisfied. Acquitting Dick of any conscious plagiarism, of a breach of common honesty, he was disagreeably filled with a sense of the work's immeasurable inferiority to Oswyn's ruined masterpiece. It was clever, and audacious, and striking; it had had the fortune to be splendidly hung, and that was all, for all his goodwill, he could say. And since, after all, that was so little, would strike his friend as but a cold tribute after the panegyrics of the morning papers, he preferred to say nothing, deftly dropping the subject, and responding to the first half of his friend's question alone.

"My domain, Dick? Ah, I forgot; you can hardly have heard that it is my domain no longer—or ceases to be very shortly. That has come to an end; I have sold it."

Lightmark whistled softly.

"Well, you surprise me! Of course I am glad; we will be glad too. We shall see more of you now, I suppose? or will you live abroad?"

"Abroad?" echoed Rainham absently. "Oh, yes, very probably. But tell me, how is—Eve?"

"As we seem to be arriving, I think I will let her tell you herself."

They descended, and Rainham waited silently while his friend discharged the cabman, and let him in with his latch-key into the bright, spacious hall. Then, after glancing into the empty drawing-room, Lightmark preceded him up the thick carpeted stairs, on which their footsteps scarcely sounded, and stopped at the door of Eve's boudoir, through which a woman's voice, speaking rather rapidly, and, as it struck him, in a key of agitation, fell upon Rainham's ear with a certain familiarity, though he was sure it was not Eve's, and could not remember when or where he might have heard it. After a moment they went in.



CHAPTER XXIII

There are occasions when thought is terribly and comprehensively sudden: the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and syllogism, so slow and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an occult vision, immediate and complete, into the obscure manner of life, and crowd an infinity of discovery into a very few seconds. It was so with Philip Rainham now. Lightmark had scarcely closed the door, against which he now stood in a black silence, with the air of a man turned to stone; Rainham's eyes had only fallen once upon the two figures on the sofa—Eve crushed in a corner, a sorrowful, dainty shape in the silk and lace of her pretty tea-gown, with the white drawn face of a scared child; Kitty Crichton, in her cloak and hat, bending forward a little, the hectic flush of strong excitement colouring her checks, that were already branded by her malady—when he underwent a moral revolution. He had no more to learn. He glanced at Lightmark curiously, almost impartially, his loathing strangely tempered by a sort of self-contempt, that he should have been so deluded. The clumsy lies which this man had told him, and which he in his indolent charity had believed! All at once, and finally, in a flash of brutal illumination, he saw Lightmark, who had once been his friend, as he really was, naked and unclean. It stripped him of all his superficial qualities; the mask of genial good-nature, the air of good-fellowship, under which his gross egoism lay concealed that it might be more securely mischievous when it went loose. His amiability was an imposture, a dangerous harlequinade; the man was bad. It was a plausible scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a handsome face and a few cheap talents—had he not been reduced to stealing the picture of his friend?—whom these two women had loved, to whom one of them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good or bad, he was Eve's husband, and she was his wife, bound to him until the end. And then, for the first time, seeing her there, helpless and terrified, in her forlorn prettiness, he deceived himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for the woman, his angry pity for her misery that was coming, in no false terms. Such self-deception, honest as it had been, was no longer possible. He knew now that he loved her, and all that his love had been—the very salt and savour of life to him, the one delicious and adorable pain relieving the gray ennui of the rest of it, to remain with him always (even, as it seemed now, in the very article of death) as a reminder of the intolerable sweetness which life, under other conditions, might have contained. And inexplicably, in the midst of his desolation, his heart sang a sort of fierce paean: as a woman, delivered of a man-child, goes triumphing to meet the sordidness of death, so was there in Rainham's rapid acceptance of his fruitless and ineffectual love a distinct sense of victory, in which pain expired—victory over the meanness and triviality of modern life, which could never seem quite mean and trivial again, since he had proved it to be capable of such moments; had looked once—and could so sing his "Nunc Dimittis"—upon the face of love. And it all happened in a second, and in a further second—for his thought, quickened by the emergency, still leapt forward with incredible swiftness—a great audacity seized Philip Rainham, to save the beloved woman pain. The devil would be at him later, would beset him, harass him, madden him with hint and opportunity of profiting by Lightmark's forfeiture. But the devil's turn was not yet; he was filled only with his great and reverent love, his sublime pity for the little tragical figure in front of him, whose house of painted cards tumbled. Well! he might save it for her for a little longer—at least, there was one desperate chance which he would try.

He had lived too long, unconsciously, in the habit of seeking her happiness, that it should fail him now in her evil hour, in the first flush of his new consciousness (ah, yes, there was beauty in that, and victory!), for any base personal thought or animosity against the man. He would have given her so easily his life; should he grudge her his reputation? The reputation of a man with one foot in the grave—what did it matter? And it all came about in a few seconds.

Before any one of that strange company had found time to speak, Rainham had grasped the situation, knew himself at last and the others, and was prepared, scarcely counting the cost, with his splendid lie. He made a step forward, then stopped suddenly, as if he were bracing himself for a moral conflict. His face was very white and rigid, his mouth set firmly; and the other three watched him with a strange expectancy depicted on all their countenances, amidst the various emotions proper to each of them; for he alone had the air of being master of the situation. And his resolve had need to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty, distressed face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly anguish, with some of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs instinctively in its extremity to the person whom it knows best; and she gave him her two little trembling hands, which he held for a moment silently.

"Philip," she said, in a low, constrained voice—"Philip, I have known you all my life—longer than anyone. You were always good to me. Tell me whether it's true or not what this woman has told me. Philip, I shall die if this be true!"

He bent his head for a moment. He had a wild longing to give up, simply to clasp her in his arms and console her with kisses and incoherent words of tenderness, as he had done years ago, when she was a very small child, and ran to him with her tear-stained cheeks, after a difficulty with her governess. But he only put her away from him very quietly and sadly.

"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your husband."

The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote.

"I tell you it is not true. Lightmark," he added sternly, "there has been a mistake—you see that—for which I apologize. Wake up, for God's sake! Come and see after your wife; some slander has upset her. This woman is—mine; I will take her away."

The girl trembled violently; she appeared fascinated, terrified into a passive obedience by Rainham's imperious eyes, which burnt in his white face like the eyes of a dying man. She followed, half unconsciously, his beckoning hand. But Eve confronted her before she reached the door.

"Whom am I to believe?" she cried scornfully. "Why did you say it? What was the good of it—a lie like that? It is a lie, I suppose?"

"Yes, yes!" said the girl hysterically, "it seems so. Oh, let me go, madam! I'm sorry I told you. I'll trouble nobody much longer. Call it a lie."

She threw out her hands helplessly; she would have fallen, but Rainham caught her wrist, drew her toward him, supporting her with an arm.

"Come," he said firmly, "this is no place for us."

Eve regarded them all strangely, vaguely, the terror gradually dying out of her eyes—Lightmark expressionless and silent, as he had been all through the interview; the woman trembling on Rainham's arm, who stood beside her with his downcast eyes, the picture of conscious guilt. A curious anguish too pale to be indignation plucked at her heart-strings—anguish in which, unaccountably, the false charge against her husband was scarcely considered; that had become altogether remote and unreal, something barely historical, fading already away in the dim shadows of the past. What hurt her, with a dull pain which she could not analyse, was the sudden tarnishing of a scarcely-admitted ideal by Rainham's deliberate confession, making life appear for the moment intolerably sordid and mean. Would she have owned to herself that, with an almost unconscious instinct, she had judged these two men all along by a different standard? Hardly: she loved her husband, and her marriage had not yet dissipated the memory of those golden days of illusion preceding it, in which her love had been of a finer kind. Only that time, in which it would have been impossible for her to judge him, in which he could only do right in her eyes, was gone. Occasions had arrived when they had inevitably to differ, on which the girl had gently acquiesced—if not without a touch of scorn—in his action, but had not felt obliged to accept his point of view. There had been times when her pride had suffered—for underneath her childish exterior, her air of being just a dainty little figure of Watteau, she had a very sensitive and delicate pride of her own—and then, if she had succeeded in forgiving Lightmark, it had not been without an effort which had made it difficult for her to pardon herself. Sometimes, though she would scarcely have confessed it, her husband's mere approbativeness had almost shocked her. It was good, no doubt, to be popular, harmless even, to care for popularity—at least, one's traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so exorbitantly as Lightmark appeared to do, to sacrifice so much to one's enthusiasm for pleasing inferior people—people whom, behind their backs, one was quite ready to tear to pieces, allowing them neither intelligence nor virtue—in just that there seemed to her some flaw of taste that was almost like a confession of failure. Surely she loved him, and was ready to forgive him much: not for worlds would she have confessed to disillusion. And yet, now and again, when the rush and ostentation of their new life, with its monotony of dinners and dances—so little like that which she had anticipated as the future lot of a painter's wife—had left her rather weary, a trifle sad, she had thought suddenly of her old friend Philip Rainham, and the thought had solaced her. There is a sort of pleasure, even when one is married to the most amiable of husbands, and is getting quite old—very nearly twenty—in turning from time to time to a person who has known one in the very shortest of frocks, and whose intimate connection with chocolates and "treats" is among one's earliest traditions. She made no contrasts; and yet when occasionally on one of those afternoons—there seemed to be so many of them—when she was "at home," when her bright, large drawing-room was fullest, and she was distracted to find herself confusing, amidst the clatter of teacups, dear Mrs. Henderson, who painted wild-flowers so cleverly, with dear Lady Lorimer, who was going on the stage, she looked up and saw Rainham hovering in the near distance, or sitting with his teacup balanced in one long white hand as he turned a politely tolerant ear to the small talk of a neighbour, she felt strangely rested. Trouble or confusion might come, she told herself, and how suddenly all these charming people, who were so surprisingly alike, and whose names were so exasperatingly different, would disappear. Dear Mrs. Henderson and dear Lady Lorimer, and that odious Mrs. Dollond—what was she saying to Dick now which had to be spoken with an air of such exaggerated intimacy in so discreet an undertone?—how swiftly they would all be gone, like the snows of last year! Only Philip Rainham, she was sure, would be there still, a little older, perhaps, with the air of being a little more tired of things, but inwardly the same, unalterably loyal and certain. The prospect was curiously sustaining, the more in that she had no tangible cause of uneasiness, was an extremely happy woman—it was so that she would have most frequently described herself—only growing at times a little weary of the fashionable tread-mill, and the daily routine of not particularly noble interests which it involved. Catching his eyes sometimes, as he sat there, looking out idly, indifferently, upon it all—this success which was the breath of life to Dick—she found him somewhat admirable; disdainful, fastidious, reserved—beneath his surface good-humour, his constant kindness, he could scarcely be a happy man. In flashes of sudden gratitude, she would have been glad often to have done something for him, had there been anything in the world to do. And then she laughed at herself for such a vain imagination. Had it not been his proper charm all along that he was a man for whom one could do nothing? precisely, because he wanted nothing, was so genuinely indifferent to anything that life could offer? And now all that was at an end; by his own confession he had finished it, admitting himself, with a frankness almost brutal, a man like other men, only with passions more sordid, and a temper more unscrupulous, in that he had ruined this wretched woman, whose coming there had left a trail of vileness over her own life.

"Ah, yes, go!" she said, after a while, answering Rainham's exclamation. "For pity's sake, go!"

Rainham bowed his head, obeyed her; as the door closed behind them he could hear that she cried softly, and that Lightmark, his silence at last broken, consoled her with inaudible words.



CHAPTER XXIV

Rainham turned at random out of Grove Road, walking aimlessly, and very fast, without considering direction. He had passed the girl's arm through his own as they left the house; and in a sort of stupefied obedience she had submitted. To her, too, one way was the same as another, as dreary and as vain. With Rainham, indeed, after the tension of the last few minutes, into which he had crowded such a wealth of suffering and of illumination, a curious stupor had succeeded. For the moment he neither thought nor suffered: simply, it was good to be out there, in the darkness—the darkness of London—after that immense plunge, which was still too near him, that he should attempt to appreciate it in all its relations. By-and-by would be the season of reckoning, the just and delicate analysis, by nicely critical nature, of all that he had deliberately lost, when he might run desperately before the whips of his own thought; now he felt only the lethargy which succeeds strenuous action, that has been, in a measure, victorious; the physical well-being of walking rapidly, vaguely, through the comfortable shadows, allowing the cold rain to pelt refreshingly upon his face and aching temples. And it was not until they had gone so through several streets, whose names were a blank to him, that Rainham bethought him, with a touch of self-reproach, of his companion, and how ill her thin garments and slender figure were calculated to suffer the downpour, which he only found consoling. He drew her into the shelter of a doorway, signalled to a passing cab; and just then, the light of an adjacent street lamp falling upon her face, he realized for the first time in its sunken outline the progress of her malady.

"I beg your pardon," he said gently; "I did not understand that you were ill. You must tell me where you are lodging, and I will take you back." Then, as though he anticipated her hesitation, a tribute to her old ambiguity, become so useless, he added dryly: "You can tell me your address; you have no reason to hide yourself now."

She glanced up at him furtively, shrinking back a little as though she feared his irony.

"I live in Charlotte Street, No. —. But pray let me go alone, sir! It will not be your way."

"I have rooms in Bloomsbury," he answered. "It will be entirely on my way."

And the girl made no further protest, when he handed her into the cab, an inconvenient four-wheeler which had responded to his signal, and, after giving the driver the address which she had indicated, took his place silently beside her. Perhaps something of Rainham's own lethargy had infected her, after a scene so feverish; or perhaps she could not but feel dimly, and in a manner not to be analysed, how that, distant and apart as they two seemed, yet within the last hour, by Rainham's action, between her life and his a subtile, invisible chord had been stretched, so that the order of her going might well rest with him.

She cast furtive glances at him from time to time as he sat back, obscure in his corner, gazing out with eyes which saw nothing at the blurred gas-lamps, and the red flashes of the more rapid vehicles which outstripped them. And now that the first stupefying effect of his intervention was wearing away—it seemed like a mad scene in a theatre, or some monstrous dream, so surprising and unreal—her primitive consciousness awoke, and set her wondering, inquiring, with bewilderment that was akin to terror, into the motives and bearing of their joint conduct. It had seemed to her natural enough then, as do the most grotesque of our sleeping visions when they are passing; but now that she was awake, relieved from the coercion of his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so stupendous a fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this sin of another's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of "Philip!" at his entry recurred to her—the intimate nature of her appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted the idea. Did she not know "gentlemen" and the nature of their love? The girl was hardened by ill-usage, bitter from long brooding over her shame. She was glad when he turned to her at last, breaking a silence which the sullen roar of London outside and beyond them, the dreary rattling of the cab, seemed only to heighten, with a sudden gesture of despair.

"If I had only known! If you had only told me two years ago!"

The suppressed passion in his voice, his air, terrified the girl. She bent forward trembling.

"Ah! what have I done, what have I done?" she moaned. "How did I know that it would all come like this? I meant no harm, sir. He persuaded me to deceive you after I had found out who he really was, to put you off the scent, keeping his name a secret. He said he had a right to ask that. He told me he was married, though he wasn't then. And afterwards he made me move, when you were abroad: he wanted my address not to be known. That was the condition he made of his seeing after the child; he swore he would provide for her then, and bring her up like a lady. And he sent me the money for a bit pretty regular. Oh, it was only for her sake, I promise you that! I wouldn't have touched a brass farthing for myself. But, after all, she was his child. And then, somehow or other, the money didn't come. He went away—he was away all the summer—and he said he had so many calls on him, such expenses."

"Ah, the scoundrel!" cried Rainham, between his set teeth.

The girl took him up, hardly with an echo of his own resentment, rather with a sort of crushed directness, as one who acknowledged a bare fact, making no comment, merely admitting the obscure dreariness of things.

"Yes; he was a scoundrel. He was bad all along. I think he has no heart. And he has made me bad too. I was a good enough girl of old, before I knew him. Only something came over me to-night when I found her there, with that big house and the servants, and all that luxury, and thought how he couldn't spare a few pounds to bring his own child up decent. Oh, I was vile to-night. I frightened her. Perhaps it was best as it happened. It dazed her. She'll remember less. She'll only remember your part of it, sir."

She glanced across at him with timid eyes, which asked him to be so good as to explain: all that had confused her so.

"I don't understand," she murmured helplessly—"I don't understand."

He ignored the interrogation in her eyes with a little gesture, half irritable and half entreating, which coerced her.

"How did you come there?" he asked. "What was the good——"

His question languished suddenly, and he let both hands fall slowly upon his knees. In effect, the uselessness of all argument, the futility of any recrimination in the face of what had been accomplished, was suddenly borne in upon him with irresistible force: and his momentary irritation against the malice of circumstance, the baseness of the man, was swallowed up in a rising lassitude which simply gave up.

The girl continued after a while, in a low, rapid voice, her eyes fixed intently upon the opal in an antique ring which shone faintly upon one of Rainham's quiet hands, as though its steady radiance helped her speech:

"It was all an accident—an accident. I was sick and tired of waiting and writing, and getting never a word in reply. My health went too, last winter, and ever since I have been getting weaker and worse. I knew what that meant: my mother died of a decline—yes, she is dead, thank God! this ten years—and it was then, when I knew I wouldn't get any better, and there was the child to think of, that I wanted to see him once more. There was a gentleman, too, who came——"

She broke off for a moment, clasping her thin hands together, which trembled as though the memory of some past, fantastic terror had recurred.

"It doesn't matter," she went on presently. "He frightened me, that was all. He had such a stern, smooth-spoken way with him; and he seemed to know so much. He said that he had heard of me and my story, and would befriend me if I would tell him the name of the man who ruined me. Yes, he would befriend me, help me to lead a respectable life."

Her sunken eyes flashed for a moment, and her lip was scornfully curled.

"God knows!" she cried, with a certain rude dignity, "I was always an honest woman but for Cyril—Dick she called him."

The intimate term, tossed so lightly from those lips, caused Rainham to quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete touch giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the girl's old relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present horror, startlingly real and distinct.

"Go on," he said at last, wearily.

"Ah, I didn't tell him, sir," she explained, misinterpreting his silence. "I wouldn't have done that. He sore angered me, though he may have meant well. He was set on seeing the child then, but I wouldn't let him. It came over me after he was gone that that, maybe, was what he came for—the child. Someone might have put him on to take her from me—some society. Oh, I was at my wits' end, sir! for, you see, she is all I have—all—all! Then I made up my mind to go and see him. Bad as he is, he wouldn't have let them do it. Oh, I would have begged and prayed to him on my knees for that."

She stopped for a moment, hectic and panting. She pressed both hands against her breast, as though she sought composure. Then she continued:

"It was all a mistake, you know, my being shown in there to-night! I would never have sought her out myself, being where she is. Oh, I have my pride! It was the servant's mistake: he took me for a fitter, no doubt, from one of the big dressmakers. Perhaps there was one expected, I don't know. But I didn't think of that when I came in and found her sitting there, so proud and soft. It all came over me—how badly he had used me, and little Meg there at home, and hard Death coming on me—and I told her. It seemed quite natural then, as though I had come for that, just for that and nothing else, though, Heaven knows, it was never in my mind before. I was sorry afterwards. Yes, before you came in with him I was sorry. It wasn't as if I owed her any grudge. How could she have known? She is an innocent young thing, after all—younger than I ever was—for all her fine dresses and her grand ladyish way. It was like striking a bit of a child.... God forgive him," she added half hysterically, "if he uses her as bad as me!"

Rainham's hand stole to his side, and for a moment he averted his head. When he turned to her again she was uncertain whether it was more than a pang of sharp physical pain, such as she well knew herself, which had so suddenly blanched his lips.

"For pity's sake, girl," he whispered, "be silent."

She considered him for a moment silently in the elusive light, that matched the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood. His expression puzzled, evaded her; and she could not have explained the pity which he aroused.

"I am sorry," she broke out again, moved by an impulse which she did not comprehend. "You did it for her."

"Oh, for her! What does it matter since it is done? Say that it was an accident—a folly—that I am sorry too."

"No," said the girl softly; "you are glad."

He shrugged his shoulders with increasing weariness, an immense desire to have the subject ended and put away with forgotten things.

"I am glad, then. Have it as you like."

But she resumed with a pertinacity which his irritated nerves found malignant.

"If it was that," she said ambiguously, "you had better have held your tongue. You had only to gain—— Ah, why did you do it? What was the good?"

He made another gesture of lassitude; then, rousing himself, he remarked:

"It was a calculation, then, a piece of simple arithmetic. If it gives her a little peace a little longer, why should three persons suffer—be sacrificed—when two might serve?"

"Oh, him!" cried the girl scornfully; "he can't suffer—he hasn't a heart!"

Rainham looked up at her at last. His fingers ceased playing with his ring.

"Oh, let me count for a little," he murmured, with a little, ghastly laugh.

The girl's eyes looked full into his, and in a moment they shone out of her face, which was suffused with a rosy flush that made her almost beautiful, with the illumination of some transcendent idea.

"Ah, you are a gentleman!" she cried.

In the tension of their nerves they were neither aware that the cab had come to a standstill, and before he could prevent her, she had stooped swiftly down and caught his hand passionately to her lips.

"Heaven forgive me! How unhappy you must be!" she said.



CHAPTER XXV

After all, things were not so complicated as they seemed. For Kitty was nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with its commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of suffering, telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light and so wanting in buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and forgotten, amid the chaos of things broken and ruined.

"I don't want to die," she said, day after day, to the sternly cheerful nurse who had her in charge at the quiet, sunny hospital in the suburbs, where Rainham had gained admission for her as in-patient. "But I don't know that I want to live, either."

And so it had been from the beginning, poor soul, poor wavering fatalist! with a nature too innately weak to make an inception either of good or evil, the predestined prey of circumstance.

As she lay in the long, white room dedicated to those stricken, like herself, with the disease that feeds on youth, her strength ebbing away quite painlessly, she often entered upon the pathless little track of introspection, a pathetic, illogical summing up of the conduct of her life, which always led so quickly to the same broad end of reassurance, followed by unreasoned condemnation—the conventional judgement on her very inability to discover where she had so gravely sinned, how and when she had earned the extreme penalty of reprobation and of death. She was too wicked, she concluded hopelessly, vaguely struggling with the memories of the teaching of her Sunday-school, too wicked to find out wherein her exceeding wickedness lay.

One comfort she took to her sad heart, that Rainham had not condemned her; that he had only pitied her, while he reserved his damnation for the iron-bound, Sabbatarian world which had ruined and spurned another helpless victim. Rainham she believed implicitly, obeyed unquestioningly, with a sense of gratitude which had been largely mingled with self-reproach, until he had told her that, so far as he was concerned, she had nothing to reproach herself with. It never occurred to her for a moment now to question or to resent the part he had made her play on that tragical afternoon in Grove Road. Why should she? The imputation of a lie, what was that to her? Had he not taken it all, all her misery upon himself? Had he not fed, and clothed, and lodged her like the most penitent of prodigals, although she had no claim upon him until he chose to give it to her? Her benefactor could do no wrong, that was her creed; and it made things wonderfully smooth, the future on a sudden strangely simple. She had lied to him at the bidding of the other, and he had not resented it when he came to know the truth: she had brought shame on him, and he had not reproached her. A man like this was outside her experience; she regarded him with a kind of grateful amazement—a wondering veneration, which sometimes held her dumb in his presence.

If she had felt unhappy at first about the future of her child—and there had been moments when this thought had been more bitter than all the rest of her life together—this care was taken from her when Rainham promised to adopt the little girl, or, better still, to induce Mrs. Bullen to open her motherly heart to her. "They'll be only too glad to get her," he had said decisively, interrupting her awkward little speech of thanks. "That will be all right. Mrs. Bullen hasn't known what to do with herself since her son went to sea; she wants a child to care for. You needn't worry yourself about that."

It was after this that Kitty had owned to the nurse that she had no desire to live; and though the shifting of this burden enabled her to carry her life for a time less wearily, the end was not far; and the news of her death came to Rainham just after the first snowfall, in the middle of a dreary, cruel December.

The winter wore on, and still Rainham was to be seen almost nightly in his now familiar corner by the fireside at Brodonowski's, in the seat next that which had become Oswyn's by right of almost immemorial occupation. His negotiations with the company who were to buy him out of his ancestral dock were still incomplete, and now he felt a strange reluctance to hurry matters, to hasten the day on which he should be forced to leave the little room looking out upon the unprofitable river which he loved.

The two men would sit together, sometimes talking, but far more often not, until a very late hour; and when the doors were closed upon them they often wandered aimlessly in the empty streets, dismissing their cares in contemplation of great moonlit buildings, or the strong, silent river, sliding under the solemn bridges; united from day to day more closely by the rare sympathy which asks no questions and finds its chief expression in silence. One thing they both hated—to be alone; but loneliness for them was not what most mortals understand by the name. There was company for them in inanimate things—in books, in pictures, and even in objects less expressive; they were men who did not fear their thoughts, who looked to the past for their greatest pleasures. And now for Rainham the whole of life was a thing so essentially weary and flavourless that the ennui of little things seemed hardly worth consideration. He was dumbly content to let destiny lead him whither it would, without apprehension, without expectation. Oswyn had asked him, one evening, just before they parted on the doorstep of the club, with a certain abruptness which the other had long since learnt to understand, why he was in London instead of being at Bordighera. Rainham sighed, echoing the question as if the idea suggested was entirely novel.

"Why, because—— Well, for one thing, because you are in London and the Dollonds are at Bordighera. You don't know Mrs. Dollond?" he added, seeing that the other looked at him with a certain air of wistful distrust, a momentarily visible desire to see behind so obvious a veil.

"No, thank God!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders, and turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impassiveness.

"But you have apparently heard of her," continued Rainham, with an effort toward humour. "And I am afraid people have been slandering her. She is a very excellent person, the soul of good-nature, and as amusing as—as an American comic paper! But in my present state of health I'm afraid she would be a little too much for me. I can stand her in homeopathic doses, but the Riviera isn't nearly big enough for the two of us as permanencies. No, I think I shall wait until next winter now."

Oswyn shot a quick glance at him, and then looked away as suddenly, and after a brief silence they parted.

Rainham was already beginning to consider himself secure from the inconvenient allusions to Lightmark and their altered relations, which he had at first nervously anticipated. Oswyn rarely mentioned the other painter's name, and accepted, without surprise or the faintest appearance of a desire for explanation, the self-evident fact of the breach between the two quondam allies; regarding it as in the natural course of events, and as an additional link in the chain of their intimacy. Indeed, Lightmark had long ceased to be a component element of the atmosphere of Brodonowski's: he no longer brought the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change, something far more significant than the general severance which had gradually been effected between them, the unreclaimed children of the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant society painter; something as to which it seemed that explanation would not be forthcoming, as to which questions were undesirable. The perception of this did not demand much subtlety, and, in accordance with the instincts of their craft, Rainham's reticence was respected.

"It was curious, when you come to think of it," Copal said reflectively one evening after his return from a late autumnal ramble in Finistere, and while the situation was still new to him, "very curious. Rainham and Lightmark were inseparable; so were Rainham and Oswyn. And all the time Lightmark and Oswyn were about as friendly as the toad and the harrow. Sounds like Euclid, doesn't it? Things equal to the same thing, and quite unequal to one another."

"Yes," assented McAllister, thoughtfully stroking his reddish beard. "And there was a time—not so very long ago, either—when Lightmark and Oswyn were on pretty good terms too!"

"Ah, well; most people quarrel with old Oswyn sooner or later. But it certainly does look a little as if—as if Lightmark had done something and the other two had found it out—Oswyn first. However, it's no business of ours. I suppose he's safe to be elected next week,—though he isn't a Scotchman, eh, Sandy old man?"

"Quite," said the other laconically.

And then their conversation was modulated into a less personal key as they resumed their discussion of the colony of American pleinairistes with whom Rathbone had foregathered at Pontaven, and of the "paintability" of fields of sarrasin and poplars.

Rainham found it rather difficult to satisfy his inner self as to his real, fundamental motive for wintering in England. Sir Egbert's orders? They had not, after all, amounted to much more than an expression of opinion, and it was somewhat late for him to begin to obey his doctors. The transfer of his business? That could have been carried out just as well in his absence by his solicitors.

For some time after Kitty's death—and her illness had certainly at first detained him—he was able to assure himself that he was waiting until little Margot (so he called the child) should have secured a firm foothold in the affections of his foreman's family; the fact that the Bullens were so soon to leave him seemed to render this all more necessary. But now, in the face of Bullen's somewhat deferential devotion and his wife's vociferous raptures, there hardly seemed to be room for doubt on this score. For the present, at least, the child ran no risk greater than that of being too much petted.

And at last he was obliged to own that his inability to follow his established precedent was due to some moral deficiency, a species of cowardice which he could only vaguely analyse, but which was closely connected with his reluctance to isolate himself among the loquacious herd of those who sought for health or pleasure. If Oswyn would have accompanied him to the Riviera he would have gone; but Oswyn was not to be induced to forsake his beloved city, and so he stayed, telling himself that each week was to be the last.

On a bright day, when spring seemed to be within measurable distance in spite of the cold, he made an expedition with Margot to Kensington Gardens; and they passed, on their way through the Park, the seat on which he had rested after his interview with Lady Garnett on that far-away October evening—the memory struck him now as of another life. It was frosty to-day, and the seat raised itself forlornly from quite a mound of snow. And when they left the Gardens he hailed a cab, and, before they had reached the Circus on their homeward journey, bade the man turn and drive northward, up Orchard Street and into Grove Road.

It was dusk now, and there were bright touches of light in the windows of the low, white house, which he glanced at almost surreptitiously as they passed, and two carriages waited before the outer door.

"My dear child," he remarked suddenly to the little girl, who was growing almost frightened by his frowning silence, "you should always, always remember that when a man has made a fool of himself, the best thing he can do is to clear out, and not return to his folly like the proverbial dog!"

Margot looked solemnly puzzled for a moment, and then laughed, deciding boldly that this was a new and elaborate game—a joke, perhaps—which she was too little to understand, but which politeness and good-fellowship alike required her at least to appear to appreciate. They were great friends already, these two. Children always recognised an ally in the man who made so few friends among his peers, and for children—especially for pretty children of a prettiness which accorded with his own private views—Rainham had an undeniable weakness.

On slack days—and they were always slack now—loungers about the precincts of the dock often caught a glimpse of the child's fair hair above the low level of the dark bow-window which leaned outwards from Rainham's room; and the foreman had even gone so far as to suggest that his master was bringing her up to the business. "Pays us for looking after her," he confided to his wife, "and looks after her himself!"

Mrs. Bullen laughed and then sighed, being a soft-hearted woman, and inclined to grieve over their impending desertion of their unbusinesslike master.

"Mr. Philip couldn't do more for her if he was her own father," she acknowledged appreciatively.

Whereat Bullen had smiled with the superior air of one who knew—of one who had been down to the sea in ships, and was versed in the mysteries of the great world, of fathers and of children.

"Right you are, old woman," he chuckled, "no more he could. Blessed if he could! And there's no mistake about that. And when you and me go North in the spring, why, it strikes me that we shall have to leave missie behind. Yes, that we shall: though I'd take her, glad enough, without the money."

If at first his association with Margot reminded Rainham of another little girl whom he had loved, and whose place she could never even approximately fill, the memory was not a bitter one, and he was soon able to listen to her childish questioning without more than a gentle pang. In time, he even found a dreary transient pleasure in closing his eyes on the dank dun reality of Blackpool, while the child discoursed to her doll in the nook of the bow-window, and his fancy wandered in another sunnier, larger room, with open windows, and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent snatches from the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint, colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel, sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the dream lasted and recurred: he had always been a dreamer, and every day found him more forgetful of the present, more familiar with the past.

Upon his return, rather late, to the dock, he recognised, with a thrill of pleasure tinged with something of self-reproach, among the little pile of business letters which Mrs. Bullen brought to him with his tea-tray, the delicate angular handwriting of Lady Garnett, and he made haste to possess himself of the secret of the narrow envelope, of a by-gone fashion, secured with a careful seal.

"MY DEAR" (so she wrote): "This is very absurd; yes, at the risk of offending you, I must tell you that it is not clever of you to take things so very much au serieux. I know more than you think, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, who means well, doubtless—but, mon Dieu, what a woman!—Mrs. Sylvester has been here; she has spoken to me, and I am afraid I have scandalized her. 'You don't suppose he has married her,' I said, I confess not altogether disingenuously, and how mystified she looked! You will say that Mrs. Sylvester ought to mind her own affairs, and you will even find me a trifle impertinent, perhaps. But I claim my privilege. Am I not your godmother? Still, I am rather intrigued, I own. I don't want to ask what you have done, or why; whatever it is, I approve of it. What I find fault with is what you are doing, the part you are playing. You must not give me the chagrin of seeing Mrs. Sylvester and the admirable Charles triumphant at your expense, Philip. You must show yourself: you must come and see me; you must come to dinner forthwith, or I shall have to make you a visit at your dock. I must talk to you, mon cher! I am troubled about you, and so is Mary. Come to us, and Mary shall play to you and exorcise your demons. Besides, I am bored—horribly bored. Yes, even Mary bores me sometimes, and I her, doubtless; and we want you. We will own that we are selfish, after all, but you must come!"

Then there was a postscript: "Mary suggests that possibly you are not so incomprehensible as I think; perhaps you are at Bordighera? But you ought to let us know."

Rainham sat with the letter before him until Margot came to bid him good-night. And then he decided to take advantage of the suggestion of the postscript: surely, if he did not answer the dear old lady's letter, she would conclude that he was indeed upon his travels.