A Comedy of Masks Part 26

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 G.o.d!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders, and turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impa.s.siveness.

"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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 suns.h.i.+ne of his expansive, elaborate presence into the limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby const.i.tuents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who wors.h.i.+pped 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," a.s.sented 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 a.s.sure 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 a.n.a.lyse, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 surrept.i.tiously as they pa.s.sed, 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-fellows.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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 a.s.sociation 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes from the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the balmy, s.h.i.+mmering 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 G.o.dmother? 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.

CHAPTER XXVI

If Eve could have mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so that for the outward world it would still present the same uncompromising surface, so that no inquisitive or bungling touch could bring to light the grim, disfiguring fracture which it had sustained, it is probable that she would have chosen this part, and hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of all save those who were so inseparably connected with the tragedy of that autumnal afternoon. But it was so completely shattered, the pieces were so many; and, worst of all, some of them were lost. To forget! What a world of bitter irony was in the word! And she could not even bury her illusions quietly and un.o.bserved of uncharitable eyes; there was the sordid necessity of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts to be fas.h.i.+oned, and the half-truths to be uttered, which bore an interpretation so far more d.a.m.ning than the full measure which it seemed so hard to give.

Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on the alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than before, had soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere; an explanation had been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat in its least attractive features by Eve's natural reticence, had gone to swell the volume of similar experiences recorded in Mrs.

Sylvester's brain. That she felt a genuine sorrow for Rainham is certain, for the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral atmosphere, as she emerged from the door of her daughter's house after this momentous interview, drawing her furs about her with a little s.h.i.+ver before she stepped into her well-appointed brougham.

She had the air of saying to herself, "Dear me, dear, dear! it's very sad, it's very terrible; but I! how clever I have been, and how beautifully I behaved!" There was nothing particularly novel from her point of view in the story which she had just extracted from her reluctant daughter; the situation called for an edifying, comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what might have been expected--though this (which was somewhat hard) did not render the episode any the less reprehensible.

And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's homeward drive, and the half hour's _tete-a-tete_, before dinner, which she had utilized for an exchange of confidences with her son.

"I didn't know that there had been an--an exposure," he said, as he stood, a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little drawing-room. "But I had an idea that it was inevitable from--from certain information which I have received. In fact, I have been rather puzzled. You must do me the justice to remember that I never liked the man--though he had his good points," he added a little awkwardly, as inconvenient memories of the many kindnesses which he had received at Rainham's hands thrust themselves upon him. "But I'm afraid he's hardly the sort of person one ought to be intimate with.

Especially you, and Eve. Of course, for her it's out of the question."

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Sylvester decisively; "and they haven't seen him since, I need hardly say. In fact, they haven't even heard of him. They haven't told a soul except me, and of course I sha'n't tell anybody," the lady concluded with a sigh, as she remembered how difficult she had found it to drive straight home without breaking the vow of secrecy which her daughter had exacted from her.

Whatever Mrs. Sylvester may have thought, it is certain that the interview, from which she enjoyed the impression of having emerged so triumphantly, had brought anything but consolation to her daughter, whose first impulse was to blame herself quite angrily for having admitted to her secret places, after all so natural a confidante.

Nor had Eve repented of this feeling. As time went on she found her mother's somewhat too obviously complacent att.i.tude more and more exasperating, and she compared her want of reserve very unfavourably with her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his reasons for a certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also, she cherished something of resentment, for he, too, more especially in collaboration with her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly, moral reflections, which, although for the most part no names were mentioned, were evidently not directed generally and at hazard against the society of which the Colonel and Mrs. Sylvester formed ornaments so distinguished.

Upon one afternoon, when Christmas was already a thing of the past, and the days were growing longer, it was with considerable relief that Eve heard the outer door close upon her mother, leaving her alone in the twilight of the smaller portion of the double drawing-room. She was alone, for Mrs. Sylvester had been the last to depart of a small crowd of afternoon callers, and d.i.c.k was interviewing somebody--a frame-maker, a model, or a dealer--in the studio. She sat with a book unopened in her hand, gazing intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her face, giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd.

Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs.

Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by sharp-eyed journalists at the play-houses on "first nights"; her carriage-horses performed extensive nightly pilgrimages in the regions of Kensington and Mayfair; and she had made a reputation for her dressmaker. And already she realized that her efforts to live outside herself were futile; moments like these must come, and the knowledge that, in spite of her countless friends and voluminous visiting list, she was alone.

Her mother? d.i.c.k? After all, they were only in the position of occupying somewhat exceptionally prominent places on the visiting-list.

As for her husband, after all these long months of married life, she could not say that she knew him. She regarded him with a kind of admiration of his personal, social attractions, in which she recognised him as fully her equal, with a kind of envy of the genius, which she could not entirely comprehend, but which seemed to make him so vastly her superior. And yet there was a shadow of doubt about it all: there had been sinister flashes, illumining, dimly enough, depths which the marital intimacy still left unfathomed, making her wonder whether her husband's candour might not mask something more terrible than forgotten follies, something that might prove a more real and irremovable barrier between them than even that indefinable want of a mutual horizon, of common ground upon which their traditions could unite themselves.

So long as d.i.c.k had remained cheerfully masterful, and picturesquely _flamboyant_, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part for which he had obviously been cast--of a good-humoured, ornamental, domestic tyrant, to be openly obeyed and covertly coerced. A husband who a.s.sisted her acquisition of social laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses--yes, her mother certainly had reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there was a sting in this) where success was somewhat more difficult of achievement?

Now, moreover, he had begun to carry an aggrieved air--an air which suggested that he pitied himself, that he considered that he had been unfairly dealt with, that he was ent.i.tled to a.s.sume the att.i.tude of an innocent, injured victim of some blindly-dealt retribution. What did that mean? The only explanation which his wife could find for this symptomatic manifestation had its origin in the unhappy episode of which the memory was always on the threshold of her solitary thoughts, and, perhaps, of his. She began to feel, with a certain compunction, that d.i.c.k must resent the circ.u.mstances which obliged him practically to sever his acquaintance with a man who had indisputably figured for so many years as his nearest friend; and she asked herself sometimes whether the circ.u.mstances in question did not, in effect, centre in herself.