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BY
because she was not sufficiently engaging; but they thoroughly hated Sacha Elaguine because she was too fascinating.
"A nasty, ignorant, frivolous little woman," said Mrs
Spencer, who was the spokeswoman of the party; "a woman with no sense
of responsibility whatever. Did you hear the way in which she spoke of
those horrible French painters? That she actually dared to talk to papa
about that Monsieur Page, vulgar, base creature that he is!"
And the older people, and the women of the æsthetic
world--the spinsters with dishevelled locks and overflowing hearts,
who kept little garlanded lamps before the photographs of puny English
painters and booted and red-shirted American poets, all agreed with
her. But the younger men merely laughed, and neglected the solemn,
smut-engrained parlours of Bloomsbury, the chilly, ascetic studios
of Hampstead, for Madame Elaguine's curious, disorderly, charming
house in Kensington--the house patched up with old
lodging-house
furniture and all manner of Eastern stuffs and brocades, crowded with a woman's nick-nacks, strewn with French novels and poems, and redolent of cigarettes and Russian perfumes. For there was in this delicate, nervous little creature, eaten up with love of excitement, something which acted as a spell upon most men; and it was curious to see how she managed to make them all in love with her, and at the same time excite no jealousy.
"Do you think Circe's pigs were jealous of each
other?" asked Mrs Spencer, when this peculiarity was pointed out to
her by Chough. "Reduce people to a certain level, and they will be
satisfied with equality."
Lewis explained it as being due to Madame Elaguine's magnetic
power. Whether the Russian had been fully converted to his spiritualistic
theories, or, indeed, whether it was possible to make her believe seriously
in anything, it is impossible to say. But she had caught the spiritualistic
infection from Lewis as a tinder catches fire. Nothing in the world
could suit her better: spiritualism appealed to her love of excitement and mystery, to an idealistic and mystical strain which made her hanker after strange supersensuous contacts and occult affinities; moreover, if ever there was a woman of whom one might believe that she could vibrate with disembodied passion, and come in contact with an uncorporeal world, it was this emaciated, nervous, hysterical creature, who lived off coffee and cigarettes, and lived, as it seemed, only with her restless mind, and not at all with her frail, incapable body.
"I feel sometimes," she would say to her friends, "as
if I mixed with the living as smoke mingles with air--seeing them move
before me, but unable to clutch them or be clutched by them, coming in
contact only with their passions. I feel as if I could more easily live
with the dead--mix more easily with them. It is terrible. I sometimes
fancy that I shall fall in love with some dead creature, and my life be
sucked away by him,"--and she gave a little shudder.
Cosmo Chough listened spell-bound with admiration, twisting and
untwisting his long black whiskers. What a woman was this! And he ruminated
over a new chapter of his Triumph of Womanhood, of which Sacha
Elaguine--"Sacha quite short," as she bade her friends
call her--should be the heroine.
Edmund Lewis smiled his sensual lazy smile, which one knew that he
imagined to be the prototype of the cruel and lustful mysterious smile of
the men and women, and creatures neither one nor the other or both, who
came from beneath his fantastic pencil.
"Has it never occurred to you," he said, in his luscious
voice, stooping over Madame Elaguine's chair, "that you may
rather be a dead creature yourself--a vampire come to suck out some
one's life-blood?"
"Confound that Lewis!" thought Chough. "Why must such
ideas occur to him, a mere damned painter, and not to me, who am a
poet?" and he made a note of the vampire.
Hamlin was standing by, smoking his cigar-
ette sullenly. He did not like these sort of liberties which Lewis took with his cousin; he had even of late warned her that, although his friend was an excellent fellow, too great intimacy with him might prove disagreeable to her.
"What a carrion-feeding fancy you have, Lewis!" he
exclaimed, frowning. "One would think you lived on corpses, in order
to be more in harmony with those beasts of spirits of yours."
Lewis laughed triumphantly; but Madame Elaguine, to his amazement, cut
him short by saying--
"Your idea may be very amusing, Mr Lewis; but I don't think
it is exactly the style of thing for a man to say to a woman."
Lewis, who was never abashed, merely raised his eyebrows.
"I thought you were superior to your sex," he answered.
"If Lewis dare to talk to you like that," whispered Hamlin
to Sacha, "I shall horsewhip him one of these days."
Madame Elaguine pressed his fingers in her little hot hand.
"You are good," she answered, in what was like the buzz of a
gnat, but infinitely caressing; "but poor Lewis means no harm:
he is very bon enfant. You are too pure and
proud to understand other men. Ah, Anne is a happy woman!"
The last words were scarcely more than a little sigh to herself; but
Hamlin caught them, and reddened.
"Anne is very cold," he said briefly; then added, as if to
justify himself in his own eyes--"I suppose all very passionate
natures are."
Sacha shook her little thin childish head.
"Oh no--not all."
Miss Brown went but rarely to the house of Hamlin's cousin. She
was extremely sorry for the poor little woman's misfortunes; and
asking herself what she would have been had she had Madame Elaguine's
past, she often admired how the Russian had kept her independence and
self-respect, and serenity and cheerfulness.
Yet, while she believed herself fully to appreciate Sacha, and invariably defended her against the jealous prudery of Mrs Spencer and her clique, Anne somehow felt no desire to see much of her. She set it down to her own narrowness and coldness of temper. "I am too one-sided to have friends," she used to say to Mary Leigh; "I feel that I don't do justice enough to people, however much I try, and that my heart does not go out to meet them enough. I think I would do my best for them; but I can't love them or be loved."
Poor Mary Leigh was silent. Anne--this beautiful noble, distant,
somewhat inscrutable Anne--was the idol of the enthusiastic Irish
girl. She had often longed to tell her so; she longed, at this moment, to
put her arms round Anne's neck, and say quite quietly--"I
love you, Anne;" but she had not the courage. How much may this sort
of cowardice, called reticence, cheat people of? The knowledge that there
is a loving heart near one, that there is a creature whom one can trust,
that the world
is not a desert,--all this might be given, but is not. And the other regrets, perhaps throughout life, that word which remained unspoken, that kiss which remained ungiven, and would have been as the draught of water to the wearied traveller.
Anyhow Anne, while thinking that she liked Madame Elaguine, somehow did
not care to see much of her. What she could do for her she did willingly.
Madame Elaguine wanted the child to learn English, but made a fuss about
letting her have a governess.
"My child's mind must be my own mind," she said. But
as she went on grieving at little Helen's ignorance, and her own
incapacity, from want of schooling and want of strength, to teach her, Anne
offered to teach the child together with the little Chough girls, who were
still her pupils. Madame Elaguine was rapturously grateful; but Helen was
so completely spoilt, that she could be brought to Anne only when she
fancied it herself, and Anne found her so demoralised that she really
did not like to bring her in contact with the Choughs. "When poor little Helen is ten, then you must moralise her," Madame Elaguine would say; and Helen was within week of being ten, and Anne, much as she disliked asking Madame Elaguine anything, urged that she should begin to be taught. Moreover, Anne's time was too much taken up reading under Richard Brown's directions, and her thoughts were too much preoccupied to make her feel at all sociable, even had she not felt an instinctive repugnance to the sort of company, headed by Edmund Lewis, which she knew she would meet at Madame Elaguine's.
However, one evening she could not refuse Sacha's invitation, more
especially as the latter, evidently to please Anne, had invited her friends
the two Leighs. It was a grand spiritualistic
séance. Madame Elaguine was in great
excitement, and Edmund Lewis was radiant. But Hamlin looked bored and
pressed.
"I hate all this vulgar twaddle of
spiritual-
ism," he said impatiently to Anne. Anne loathed it: the triviality disgusted her, the giving up of one's will to another revolted her, and she could not understand how a woman could endure to be handled and breathed upon by a man like Lewis. Mary Leigh was half excited and half amused; Marjory, the strong-minded scoffer, had determined to unmask some sort of trickery. The séance, to which Edmund Lewis had brought a famous professional medium, was very much like any other séance: a darkened room, a company of people partly excited, partly bored; expectation, disappointment, faith, incredulity; moving of tables and rapping, faint music, half visible hands.
"The whole boxful, machinery complete, all the newest tricks,
eighteenpence," as little Thaddy O'Reilly fiippantly remarked
to Anne. How could Madame Elaguine have patience with such rubbish?
wondered Miss Brown. What excitement could that excitement-loving
little woman, with a real mystery in her own life, find in all this stale
shibboleth?
"You can't think what a strange, delightful sensation I have
at these moments," said Sacha to Hamlin, as her little soft hand
touched his. "I seem to feel the whole current of your life streaming
through me, and mingling with mine. It is like an additional sense. Do you
understand that, Anne?"
"No," answered Anne, briefly. "I feel Mr
Hamlin's fingers touching mine, and that's all."
Hamlin somehow admired Anne's answer; he was glad it was
so,--had she felt like his cousin, something would have spoilt in an
ideal of his; and yet Anne's coldness annoyed him.
"The spirits are reluctant; there are too many sceptics in the
room," said Edmund Lewis, angrily. "Great as is the power of
some of us--as, for instance, of Madame Elaguine--I feel that
there is something acting as a non-conductor,--some very chilly
nature here."
But nevertheless, when the company was giving up the
séance as spoilt, mysterious sounds
were heard, and something luminous, which was immediately identified as a
pair
of spirit-hands, was seen to float over the table.
"Spirit-hands!" whispered Edmund Lewis.
"Wash-leather gloves painted over with luminous
paint," whispered Thaddy O'Reilly.
"A wreath!" whispered Madame Elaguine.
Something round, like a wreath, did seem to float, supported by the
spirit-hands. Some said it was oak, others cypress, others myrtle;
but it soon became apparent that it was bay.
"For Hamlin!" whispered the guests to each other.
The wreath floated unsteadily over the heads of the party; but, as it
passed Marjory Leigh, that evil-minded young materialist quickly
snatched at it, but it was whisked away by the indignant spirits. There was
a murmur of indignation; but indignation turned into triumph when suddenly
the wreath reappeared, and hovered for two good minutes over Hamlin's
head. There was a cry of admiration, and Madame Elaguine clapped her
hands.
But Marjory Leigh struck a light, and lit the candle by her side. She
could see faintly the excited faces all round, and among them the pale face
of Anne Brown, scornful and angry, fixed upon that of Hamlin, who was
flushed, hesitating, surprised.
"I am glad the spirits have such good taste in poetry," said
Marjory Leigh, quietly; "but it is a pity that they should not have
crowned Mr Hamlin, like Petrarch and Corinne, with real laurels." And
she stretched out something in the palm of her hand. Every one crowded
round, and took it up by turns.
It was a leaf, torn and broken, of green laurel which she had pulled off
when the crown had passed over her; but the green laurels were masses of
stamped paper, and left a green stain in the hand.
"It does smack a little of a French pensionnat
de demoiselles distribution of prizes; you will get the little
book dorésur tranches, 'Avec
l'approbation de Monseigneur l'Archevêque de
Tours,' and 'Prix décerné à M. Walter
Ham-
lin,' written inside, at the next séance," cried Thaddy O'Reilly. "Well, it is consoling to see how our beloved dead keep up the simple habits of the living."
There was a titter. Madame Elaguine burst out laughing. Hamlin laughed,
but he looked black as thunder.
"You brought that piece of green paper with you!" cried
Lewis furiously at Marjory Leigh. "You brought it to insult and
delude us! It is disgraceful."
"My dear Lewis," said Thaddy O'Reilly, gently,
"remember that you are still a gentleman, and not yet a
spirit."
"Had I known that there was to be any crowning, I should certainly
have brought something better than paper laurels," said Marjory,
fiercely. "I never thought spirits were reduced to such expedients as
these."
The séance came to an end. The
lamps were lit. The medium dismissed with considerable contumely. Edmund
Lewis went away in a huff; and Madame Elaguine, who
cared in spiritualism only for those strange thrills which she had before described, laughed a great deal about the matter, and settled down to make music with Cosmo Chough.
Hamlin looked as if he wished himself a thousand miles away. He would
speak with no one; he was angry with his cousin for having let him in for
such a ridiculous scene, and angry with the rest of the company for having
witnessed it; he had no command over his looks; and while Madame
Elaguine's curious, warm, childish voice throbbed passionately
through Schumann's songs, or while people took their tea and talked,
he sat aside, in the doorway of the next room, like a whipped child.
"What a baby Walter is!" whispered Madame Elaguine,
laughing, to Chough.
But Anne did not laugh. She felt the humiliation not of the paper
laurels, but of that radiant look which she had seen in Hamlin when the
lights had first been lit. And she was indignant with Hamlin for
tak-
ing this ridiculous business so tragically, and at the same time sorry for his poor, wounded, unsympathised-with vanity. She left the piano, where she had been sitting near Sacha, and went to him where he sat disconsolately looking over a heap of newspapers in the next room.
She did not allude to the scene. What use was it chiding him? He could
never understand. She talked to him about the picture which he was
painting, about the people, anything to make him feel that she was sorry
for him. Hamlin was bitter against his friends; he began once more his
tirades against modern art and poetry, its lifelessness and weakness; he
again declared himself longing for a different life; he again, passionately
and delicately, called upon Anne, in his veiled way, to redeem him. Anne
listened sadly. She knew it all so well by heart, this vain talk which was
to be the daily bread of her soul.
Suddenly Hamlin's eye fell upon Marjory
Leigh, who was seated talking with Thaddy O'Reilly in the recess of a window.
"I wonder you can endure that girl, Miss Brown!" he cried,
"much less make her your friend."
"Marjory may sometimes be rude, and it was perhaps not very good
manners to interrupt the séance as she
did, although I quite sympathise with her; but she is a capital girl, and
just one of the most trustworthy persons I know."
"She is a humbug!" exclaimed Hamlin, crossly and violently.
"Doesn't she set up for philanthropy, and
self-sacrifice, and all that? and then she goes to parties dressed
in that way--a fit beginning for the wife of an East End curate, for a
man like Harry Collett!"
"Marjory's dress does not cost more than Harry
Collett's coats," answered Anne, quietly. "You men never
understand such things, and think because a girl's dress is showy
that it is expensive. Of course Marjory doesn't wear æsthetic
things, and it would be absurd if she
did; but I happen to know that she made that particular dress entirely with her own hands."
"I know nothing about the dress, except that a wife of Harry
Collett's should not go about like a peacock. But I do know,"
cried Hamlin, fiercely, "that it is disgraceful for a girl engaged to
marry, and to marry a man like Harry, to sit the whole evening in a corner,
letting a jackanapes like O'Reilly make love to her."
"Marjory has been sitting with Mr O'Reilly only about ten
minutes," answered Anne, indignantly, "and she has known him
ever since they were babies. I think it is too ridiculous if a girl
can't talk to a young man at a party without being treated as if she
were committing an infidelity."
"I don't say that any other girl talking to any other young
man is to blame," said Hamlin, still hotly; "but I say that a
woman who can let O'Reilly flirt with her throughout the evening is
no wife for Collett; and I have
a good mind to write and tell him so," and Hamlin looked dignified.
Anne did not answer at first. She was filled with contempt for this vain
childish ill-humour, which was taking the proportions of rabid
hatred.
"Marjory is my friend," she at last said, "and I think
that the less you talk such nonsense as about writing to Mr Collett, the
better."
"I will, upon my word!" exclaimed Hamlin. "Marjory
Leigh is a friend of yours, but she is an infamous flirt all the
same!"
"Why does Mr Hamlin glare at me like that?" asked Marjory of
Anne a little later. "One would think it was my fault that the
spirits crowned him with paper laurels and not with
bay-leaves."
"What is the matter, Mary?" asked Anne, wondering at her
flushed face, which was usually so quiet.
"Nothing--nothing," said Mary Leigh, looking
impatiently at some visitors who were present. "I spoilt two copper
plates this morning, and shall have no etchings worth exhibiting. I suppose
that has put me out of sorts."
But the visitors had scarcely turned their backs, when Mary Leigh turned
suddenly towards Miss Brown.
"Oh Anne dear, a dreadful, shameful thing has happened! and I have
come to you to know what it means, because I can't help thinking that
Mr Hamlin has had something to do with it, and poor Marjory is so
miserable."
"What is it?" asked Anne, a vague terror coming over
her.
"Why, Marjory got this letter to-day from Harry Collett; he
has been staying with his mother at Wotton for the last week. Read it, and
you will understand."
Miss Brown took the letter, evidently much pulled about and read and
re-read, from Mary Leigh, and smoothed it out and read it slowly;
while her friend sat by, looking anxiously at her face.
The letter was from Marjory's intended. Harry Collett told her,
with a dignity and gentleness, a desire not to hurt the one who had hurt
him, and an incapacity of hiding his great pain, which nearly made Anne
cry, that his eyes had at length been opened to the undesirableness of a
mar-
riage which, however much wished for by him, could not satisfy all the claims of a nature llke Marjory's.
"Much as I have looked forward to our marriage," wrote poor
Harry, "I could not possibly be happy if I suspected that it did not
give you everything which you have a right to require from life. I thank
God for having sent me a warning in time, for having let me understand what
your generosity and my infatuation would have hidden to me--namely,
that your thoughts have, despite your will, turned elsewhere; that your
nature requires a life of greater cheerfulness and variety than I could
hope to give it. And, indeed, I am beginning also to understand that I was
trying to reconcile the irreconcilable--that a man who has elected a
life among the poor, has no right to share its privations with any one,
much less with any one dear to him; and I see that I was on the verge of
committing the sin of sacrificing your happiness to my vocation, or rather
to my unmanly desire to
have the hardness of my vocation sweetened at your expense. Please do not fancy that I think at all badly of you; I think badly only of my own blindness."
But the poor curate's angelic nature could not resist the
temptation of a fling at his supposed rival.
"I am only surprised--but my surprise may be due to my
ignorance," he added, "at the person who engrosses your
thoughts. I should never have thought you could seriously care for a
shallow creature like O'Reilly. I wish you to be happy, but I fear
you will not be solidly happy with him."
"Do you understand?" cried Mary Leigh, impatiently;
"some one has written to Harry some horrid lies about Marjory and
Thaddy O'Reilly. Oh, I think it is too shameful! Marjory, who has not
seen Thaddy O'Reilly more than twice in the last six months;
and," added Mary Leigh, with an agony in her voice, "I
fear--oh, I fear--Anne, that it must have been Mr Hamlin who did
it."
Anne did not look up from the letter. She was very white, and her face
full of shame.
"I fear it must," she answered, half audibly.
"But what is the meaning of it?" cried Mary. "What can
Mr Hamlin know about the matter? Why, he scarcely ever sees Marjory. I
don't believe he had seen her for nearly six weeks before that party
at Madame Elaguine's. Oh, Anne, do you think it is Madame Elaguine,
that horrid little Russian, who did it?"
"Oh no," answered Anne, quickly, "I know Sacha
Elaguine has not done it; I don't believe she is capable of doing
it."
"Then you think? . . ."
"I fear--I fear Mr Hamlin did it."
There was a dead silence. Poor Mary Leigh was torn by her indignation
for her sister, and her pain at the shame cast upon her admired Hamlin, and
through him upon her adored Anne.
"What can I do? If only I knew the grounds of the
accusation," she said desper-
ately, "I know I could explain them away to Harry. I know that Marjory could, but she won't."
"Has Marjory not answered Mr Collett?"
Mary Leigh shook her head.
"Marjory is too proud and self-willed. She is disgusted
with Harry. She won't hear his name mentioned; it is useless. Oh, it
is dreadful to see people who care for each other so much separated in this
way, by a mere vile groundless calumny, which one cannot even
refute."
Anne passed her hand across her forehead.
"Mr Hamlin has done it," she said slowly, and with an
effort, "and he must undo it."
"How can one make him undo such a thing?" cried
Mary, hopelessly.
"I will tell him that he was wrong, and make him write to Harry
Collett."
"Oh Annie dear, you are good"--and Mary Leigh threw
herself on Anne's neck--"for I know how dreadful, how
terrible it must be for you to tell him that he has acted badly."
"It is not the first time," answered Anne, mournfully.
"Leave me the letter, will you, Mary dear?"
Mary Leigh left the letter with Miss Brown; and that evening, as Anne
was sitting with Hamlin after dinner, she suddenly dashed into the
subject.
"Do you remember saying, the other night, at your cousin's,
that you would write to Harry Collett about the flirtation which you took
it upon yourself to imagine between Marjory Leigh and Mr
O'Reilly?" asked Anne.
Hamlin looked puzzled.
"I remember something or other," he said evasively.
"Did you write to Harry Collett?"
"I had occasion to write to Collett about some books I had left at
Wotton, and which I wanted him to bring up to town on his
return."
"But did you mention about Marjory and Mr
O'Reilly?"
"I may have"--Hamlin spoke absently--"yes, I
suppose I did. What of it?"
"What of it?" cried Anne, indignantly; "why, this
much, that you have made two people perfectly miserable, and that
Marjory's marriage with Mr Collett is broken off," and she
handed him the letter.
Hamlin looked at it with an air of puzzled indifference.
"I don't understand what it's all about," he
said, coolly and serenely, returning the letter to Anne.
"Then you did not say anything about Marjory to Mr
Collett?"
"Yes--I did--I certainly think I did. I can't
exactly remember what it was. You know how one writes letters; one forgets
the next day."
Anne looked at him with wonder. So after having, momentarily at least,
made two people as unhappy as was well possible, this was how he took the
revelation of the results of his doings.
"Mr Hamlin," said Anne, sternly, "you know that you
never believed that Marjory Leigh was really flirting with O'Reilly;
and you know that you wrote to Harry Collett, and made him believe that she
cared for another man."
"I don't know anything about Miss Leigh's doings. I
remember noticing her talking very assiduously that evening with Thaddy.
Perhaps it was all fancy of mine; I have no doubt it was. I just mentioned
it to Collett as I might mention anything else. I never dreamed that it
would annoy him."
"You thought it would merely annoy her?" asked Anne,
reproachfully.
"I really know nothing about the matter. I'm not responsible
for what I may have thought or written a week ago, much less for all these
complications, which I never dreamed of."
"Did you suppose, then, that Harry Collett would be utterly
indifferent to being given to understand that Marjory cared for another
man, and was not the fit wife for an East End curate, as you expressed it?"
"I don't know. I wrote, and thought no more about it. If
they have gone and quarrelled about it, I'm very sorry--and
that's all I can say."
Hamlin's tone was bored and slightly impatient. He had evidently
not the smallest shame or regret for what he had done.
"Since you are sorry--since you did write that
to Collett," said Anne, trying to speak as gently as
possible--"you will, I trust, do what you can to repair this
mischief. Marjory Leigh is too indignant with Harry to answer him at all.
Will you write to him and tell him that it was all a mistake--all
owing to your having been annoyed with Marjory on account of that laurel
crown business--and that there was no foundation for all you said? You
will make amends, won't you? Do write at once."
Hamlin had risen from his seat, and his face had taken a curious
obstinate look.
"I'm very sorry I can't obey you, Miss Brown,"
he said, "but it appears to me that you wish me to write myself down
a liar. If these people choose to fall out because of a word of mine, I see
no reason to apologise. It is their concern, not mine."
"Was it your concern to write to Collett, then? Was it your
concern to take such a responsibility?"
"Every one may write whatever passes through his head. I thought
Miss Leigh a flirt last week; I don't now. As to responsibilities, I
repudiate such things."
"No one can repudiate such things," cried Anne. "You
have done mischief, and with a few strokes of the pen you can repair it.
Oh, you must write, Mr Hamlin--you must."
"If I write," answered Hamlin, hotly, "I shall just
tell Collett that I do think Miss Leigh a flirt. I cannot
refuse to write, but I refuse to eat my words. Have you paper and a
pen?"
He had gone to Anne's writing-table. Anne put her arm over
it.
"You have told a falsehood once, you shall not tell it
twice," she said.
"I said that merely to show you how impossible your request was.
After all, my dear Miss Brown, a man does owe something to himself and to
his name, and there is such a thing as proper pride."
"Is there?" answered Anne, and the words were like drops of
freezing water. "I thought," she added, the remembrance of what
he had answered when she had entreated him not to slander himself in those
sonnets "Desire," "that your school considered it
legitimate for a man to say that he had committed no matter what baseness,
even those which he had not. But I see," and Anne's indignation
blazed up, "that you want sometimes to be considered wicked, but that
you succeed only in being mean."
"I think that is a little hard upon me," he answered
mournfully and bitterly, and left the
room. He was thinking of all he had done for Anne--all that he had done and left undone.
Anne remained seated, looking into the fire, for some moments. Then she
went to her desk and took paper and an envelope.
"DEAR MR COLLETT," she wrote slowly, "Mary Leigh has
just shown me your letter to Marjory, which has greatly shocked and grieved
me. As I know that the person who misled you about Marjory and Mr
O'Reilly, between whom there has never been a shadow of a flirtation,
is Mr Hamlin, I feel bound to tell you, not only that to my knowledge
Marjory has not seen Mr O'Reilly except once since your departure;
but also, as having been present on the occasion of the supposed
flirtation, that Mr Hamlin imagined the flirtation, and wrote to you about
it merely because he was in an ill temper, and because Marjory had annoyed
him that evening by detecting a fraud in the spiritualistic
séance in which we were engaged. Mr
Hamlin has himself just told me that he
does not any longer believe in the flirtation, and had no notion of creating any mischief. So, as he is not writing to you himself, I feel bound to tell you the real state of affairs, and I trust you will immediately let Marjory know that your suspicions were groundless, as she is very unhappy, and indignant with your letter.--Believe me, dear Mr Collett, yours sincerely, ANNE BROWN."
Anne stopped several times in course of writing, and read and
re-read her letter. Hamlin had refused to make amends; well, she
must make them for him: the matter was simple, and it was
Anne's character, whenever she saw the right course, to take it
without hesitation, however painful to her. Like many very honest and firm
people, she had something destructive in her temper; she could, as Sacha
Elaguine had said, sacrifice herself and others with a sort of sullen
savage satisfaction. It was a humiliation for Hamlin, but he had deserved
it; it was a bitter humiliation for herself, but her
debt of gratitude towards Hamlin forced her to take the consequences of the bad that was in him as well as the good. To admit that Hamlin had, from mere womanish ill-temper, calumniated a friend, wantonly and thoughtlessly made two loving natures mistrust each other, and that he had then refused to repair the mischief of his own making,--this was intolerably bitter to Anne; still it had to be done. She put the letter on the hall table, and bade the servant post it without delay. Then she felt the full ignominy of the matter; and her whole nature recoiled from Hamlin's. Nay, it did not recoil; there was no reality to shrink from. Anne no longer felt horror as she had done when he had given her that poem about Cold Fremley; she rccognised that his fault was negative, that his moral evil was moral nullity--the utter incapacity in this man, who had acted so chivalrously towards her, of perceiving when he was doing a mean thing. And the thought that she would be chained for ever to the side of a man whose whole
nature was merely æsthetic, who was wholly without moral nerves or moral muscles, filled her with despair.
The next day, Hamlin sent word that he had to go and see some pictures
at Oxford, and would be away for two days. Anne felt a vague hope that he
was ashamed of himself. Madame Elaguine called, and with her came Cosmo
Chough. The conversation, to Miss Brown's annoyance, turned upon the
spiritualistic séance of the previous
week.
"What a fool Walter is!" exclaimed Sacha. "Fancy his
moping in a corner because the spirits crowned him with paper laurels! I
can't understand a man not having more brass, not putting a better
face on things. But Walter is a curious creature: in many respects he
is not a man but a child. He has seen a great deal of life, and yet in many
things he is like a girl of fifteen."
"Mr Hamlin," said Anne, evasively, "has an essentially
artistic nature; the realities of the world don't appeal much to
him."
"Unless an artist feel the realities of the world," said
Madame Elaguine, eating some of the petals of the roses that were at her
elbow, "his art will be very thin. Life must stain the artist with
its colours, or his art will be tintless."
Anne had often said those same words to herself; yet somehow she knew
that in Sacha Elaguine's mouth they had a different meaning; and she
felt it, when, with her curious, half-childlike, and yet infinitely
conscious smile, she turned to Chough.
"Don't you think so, Signor Cosmo?"
Cosmo Chough pretended that he understood, as he always did, whenever he
thought that passion and the Eternal Feminine were in question; he
tightened his black moustachioed lips into a long grimace, and bowed in
deferential agreement.
"Of course," said the little man, sticking his single
eye-glass in his eye, "we all know that our friend Hamlin will
never get out of life all that perfume, that narcotic and
bitter-sweet
fiavour, which some other men taste, to be poisoned for ever, with their first mouthful of honey. Hamlin is, in some respects, a little more and a little less than a man."
"A goose, in short," laughed Sacha.
"He is, purely and simply, an artist. Passions, senses, all the
things which belong to other men's personality, belong to him only as
factors of his art. And this is perhaps not to be regretted, but to be
rejoiced in. There is terrible danger of the artist being swallowed up by
the man. Of the poets whom God sends on earth, two-thirds are lost
to mankind: their passions, which should be merely so many means of
communication between their soul and the universe, eat them up; or rather
they feed themselves on what should become the world's honey. And
even of those who are not lost entirely, how many are there not whose lives
are engulfed by passions; to whom, alas! what they sing is but the wretched
shadow of what they feel!" And Chough sighed, and fixed his eyes on
his
lacquered boot-tips, as much as to intimate that he, who lived on mutton-chops and spent his life nursing an epileptic wife, was of that Caliph Vathek kind.
Madame Elaguine laughed; but Chough thought it was at Hamlin, and
frowned.
"Herein lies Hamlin's advantage; he is the pure artist. And,
mark me," he said, looking fiercely around him, "he is none the
worse for that. No, rather the better. I know no man to compare with Hamlin
as a mere person; to compare with him not merely in genius, but in
kindliness of temper, in purity of soul, in delicacy of thoughts. He is not
merely a great artist, but a work of art; he is like a picture of Sir
Galahad vivified, or like a sonnet of Dante turned into flesh--and I
think Miss Brown will agree with me."
"Mr Hamlin," said Anne, slowly, "is a very generous
man and a very chivalric man, and," she added, feeling as if Madame
Elaguine were looking into her soul, and as if she must read ingratitude
written in it, "I feel that I am
indebted to him not merely for all he has done for me, but for the way in which he has done it--"
"Oh no, no!" exclaimed the polite little poet, to whom Anne
was quite the goddess, "don't say that, Miss Brown; you can
never owe anything to any one. Whatever a man can do, is a tribute which
his nature forces him to lay down at your shrine."
"Yes," mused Madame Elaguine, following out the pattern of
the carpet with her parasol "indebted--that is how one must feel
towards Walter--indebted for the pleasure, &c., &c., of so
charming an acquaintance; but love--one can't love where there
is only artistic instinct to meet one--"
"I know nothing about such matters," said Anne, quietly.
"But, perhaps--Hamlin may be a sort of child of genius, and
the man, the man who feels may come later," finished the Russian.
"When people don't feel, they don't feel," said
Anne, sternly; "I mean--morally."
"By the way," exclaimed Chough, "I am reading such a
delightful book--have you ever read it, Madame Elaguine?--The
Letters of Mademoiselle Aïssé--"
"Who was Mademoiselle Aïssé?" asked Anne
absently, forgetting that experience had taught her that it was safer not
to inquire too curiously into Mr Chough's heroines.
"I suppose she was some improper lady or other--all your
poetic ladies were, weren't they?" asked Madame Elaguine.
"Something like your Belle Heaulmière, whom you insisted on
talking about at poor Lady Brady's party, although I kept making
signs to you the whole time."
"Improper?" exclaimed Chough. "Mademoiselle
Aïssé was the soul of virtue--the purest woman--of
the eighteenth century."
"Tell us about this purest woman of--the eighteenth
century," laughed Sacha.
"She was the daughter of kings; her name was originally Ayesha,
like the wife of the Prophet--but she became a slave, and was sold as
a child to M. de Ferréol--I think that was his name--who was ambassador at Constantinople. M. de Ferréol sent her to his sister-in-law in Paris to educate. Aïssé grew up the most refined and accomplished woman,--you should read her letters--perfect gems!--and marvellously beautiful. Life was just opening to her, and love also, when M. de Ferréol returned from Constantinople, and said to this exquisite, proud, and pure-minded creature: 'You are my slave; I bought you, I educated you; now love me.'"
Chough paused and looked round him to watch the effect of his eloquence.
But his eyes fell upon Anne. She was very white.
"Well--and what did Aïssé answer?" asked
Madame Elaguine.
"Aïssé answered--let me see, what did
Aïssé answer?--oh, I should spoil your pleasure were I to
tell it you. I will bring you the book, dear Madame Elaguine, and you shall
tell me what you think of it."
Anne felt that she had betrayed herself. To Sacha, she hoped, she
believed not--but to Chough. The little poet, in his trumpery way, was
really attached to Anne, whom he considered as his guardian angel; and
perhaps his affection had made him understand.
"What became of Mademoiselle Aïssé?" asked Anne,
some time later, as she stood by the piano where Chough was playing.
Chough looked up. "Oh--why--she--in
short--afterwards--she died."
"Would you like to see the book?" asked Madame Elaguine;
"I have some others on hand at present. Mr Chough shall send it to
you--"
"Oh no, thank you," answered Anne, "I have a heap of
books to get through; and--I don't care what happened to
Mademoiselle Aïssé."
"You are very hard-hearted, Anne."
"She would not have objected to M. de Ferréol if she had
remained a mere little Turkish slave-girl; she would have thought
him a sort of God. She had no business to let her education make her squeamish."
"A nasty old ambassador!" said Madame Elaguine.
"I think it was awfully hard upon her, poor thing! And
was she in love with some one else, Mr Chough?"
generosity and delicacy of mind--of the quixotic way in which he had bound himself while leaving her free--of the chivalrous way in which he had dowered her, making her feel almost as if all this money, which placed her on his own level, was her own inheritance, and not his charity. She remembered all the respect, which was more of a brother than of a lover, with which he treated her--the constant manner in which he hid all her obligations to him, never letting any taunt or harsh word of hers get the better of his resolution that Anne should feel that she owed nothing to him, and that he craved for her love as he might have done for that of a queen. And it came home to her how pure, nay, how poetically and romantically noble was the love which he asked for; and she felt almost wicked when she reflected that what he wanted was to make her into the very highest thing which a man can make a woman--a sort of Beatrice, a creature to love whom will be spiritual redemption. All these things did Anne say to herself; but
it cost her an effort, and the strain could not be kept up. The fact was that she had, in her terror of being unjust, refused to listen to her own plea. But it came back to her like an overwhelming flood. She could not love Hamlin; her soul recoiled from contact with his as her body might have recoiled from the forced embrace of a corpse: such a union, it seemed, would mean the death of her own nature. To be Hamlin's wife, to spend all her life by his side, hopelessly watching his growing callousness to everything for which she felt born,--to feel one generous impulse after another gradually waxing feebler, one energy after another for good becoming paralysed by the deathly moral chill of his utter heartlessness,--was this not much worse than any mere dishonour of the body, this prostitution of the spirit? Aïssé's soul at least was free; her Ferréol could not deprive her of her moral freedom, her aspirations, her powers of self-sacrifice; but with her, Anne Brown, it was different. And she repeated to herself with bitterness the
warning words which Richard Brown had spoken in vain so long, long ago: "You will be his to do what he chooses; worse than his slave, his mere chattel and plaything." How little Dick had guessed the much more terrible meaning which these words would come to have for her!
Unconsciously Anne's mind reverted to the business of Marjory and
Harry Collett; and her mind's eye rested for a moment upon those two
lovers, to each of whom, through whatsoever of discrepancy there might be,
the other represented his or her highest ideal, that other's opinion
his or her highest conscience; not passionately in love, like Othello and
Desdemona, or Romeo and Juliet, but persuaded to their inmost soul that in
living by each other's side, and sympathising with and helping in the
other's work, each would be fulfilling his or her best destiny in the
world. Another woman situated like Anne might have let herself be tempted
into cynicism by unconscious envy; but this was not
within Miss Brown's honest, and open-eyed, and stern nature. She never once said to herself--"Marjory and Harry will awake one day from their dream." She had dreamed, alas! and had awakened; but she recognised that these two were broad awake, and that their happiness was a reality. Anne looked at these two lovers for a moment, but without any envy or bitterness. It never even entered her mind to covet their happiness, to imagine that she might have a right to anything similar. Anne, though leaning towards socialism in her theories, was not in the least a communistic mind; she did not ask, "Why should I not get the same advantages as my neighbours?" She envied no one the prize in the lottery; she begged only for a chance. To be the wife of a man whom she loved, and who loved her--to be the companion and helpmate of some one who was striving after her own ideals; such hankerings had never passed through her mind--or, if they had, they had long since been banished. What
Anne longed for, what her soul hungered after, was merely negative freedom. Freedom to sympathise and to aspire--to do whatever little she still might to carve herself out a spiritual life of her own, no matter how mean and insignificant; freedom to live in that portion of her which was most worthy of life. To gain her bread, no matter how harshly; to be of some use, to teach at a school or nurse at a hospital; nay, to be able merely to encourage others to do what she might not,--this was all that Anne asked; and this, in her future as the wife of Hamlin, as the queen of this æsthetic world, which seemed to poison and paralyse her soul, was what she knew she could not have, what she knew she must do without.
"I am a selfish brute," she suddenly said to herself,
"wasting the time which is still mine,"--and she took down
her books of political economy, and tried to fix her attention upon them,
and think out a scheme of the lessons and exercises which she would give to
the shop-girls at the Working Women's Club.
But what was the use of doing this? Hamlin, she knew, loathed the notion of her teaching at the Club; he would never let her teach there; and, once his wife, she understood him sufficiently to be fully aware that he would consider himself completely empowered to make her do or leave alone whatever he chose.
Still Anne tried to work on courageously. In the afternoon she went to
hear one of Professor Richmond's lectures. This was the fervent young
positivist whom Cousin Dick so much admired, and whose intense moral
convictions had done a good deal to keep Anne out of the slough of
desponding pessimism round which she had been some time hovering. Andrew
Richmond was a man who had many slanderers, many of whom he has now left
behind him--their misrepresentations having been more
long-lived than he; for he had passed through many phases of
thought, and, being perfectly honest, he had never been able to become
unjust to any, and thus had made enemies not merely among the men whose
beliefs he had abandoned, but among those also whose beliefs he had accepted without accepting their follies. He stood very alone; and it was perhaps this isolation--this obvious indifference of the man to all save his own reason and conscience--which added to the solemnity of his convictions; and made him appear, more than any one else, in the light of a priest of morality, of a prophet of the advent of justice. Anne had never spoken to Richmond; but she felt that, of all human souls, this one did the most to keep up the courage of her own. This was one of the last discourses which the poor dying positivist ever delivered; and it was the more earnest for the sense of his approaching end. He spoke this time, or, as his ridiculers called it, he preached upon the relation of duty to progress; upon the value of each good impulse carried out, and each evil one resisted, in making morality more natural and spontaneous in the world; and he insisted especially upon the danger, to people whose ideas of right and wrong rested
no longer upon any priestly authority, of the individual sophisticating himself into the belief that in yielding to the preferences of his own nature he was following the highest law, and that any special usefulness ought legitimately to be bought at the expense of departing from the moral rules of the world.
"The danger of our epoch of moral transition," he said,
"lies in the temptation of the individual to say to
himself--'If I am willing to sacrifice myself, have I not a
right also to sacrifice the established opinions of
others?'"
"I detest that man Richmond," Madame Elaguine had once said;
"he puts an end to all self-sacrifice."
"If you mean the sacrifice of one's peace of mind and social
dignity to the passion of another person and to one's own, he
certainly does," Richard Brown had answered sternly.
At the door of the lecture-room Anne met her cousin.
"Are you driving to Hammersmith?" he asked.
"No; I am going to walk."
Anne had made it a rule for the last two or three months to deprive
herself of all luxuries. She did not wish to enjoy everything that she had
a right to; she had also a stern pleasure in doing the things most
repugnant to her; and a walk through the London streets, in murky spring
weather, was to Anne's Italian temper, nurtured with æsthetic
delicacy, one of the most disagreeable of expeditions.
"But it is drizzling and horribly muddy," said Richard
Brown, looking at her as he buttoned her ulster over her massive figure.
"Surely Hamlin will be very much shocked if you come into the house
with mud on your shoes? But if you are really going to walk I will
accompany you, if you don't mind, because I'm going in that
direction."
"Where are you going?"
"To Hammersmith; I have some business there." And Brown
looked once more at his cousin as he opened his umbrella over her.
"Will you take my arm, Anne?" Richard
Brown was not a lady's man, and there was something awkward and unaccustomed in his request.
"I am big enough to take care of myself, I think, Dick. And I know
you hate having women to drag along; I have watched you going into
dinner-parties often enough."
"It is out of my line, you're right."
For some time they walked along in silence through the black oozy
streets, crammed with barrows of fruit, round which gathered the draggled
dripping women, their babies huddled up in their torn shawls, their hair
untidy and dank beneath their once lilac or pale-pink
smut-engrained bonnets; the cabs, shining blue-black,
ploughed through the mud; the heavy drays splashed from gutter to gutter;
the houses were black and oozy; the very raindrops on the railings looked
black; the sky was a dirty dull-grey waste; only the scarlet
letter-boxes stood out coloured in the general smutty, foggy,
neutral tint.
"Do you remark that public-houses are the
only places which make an attempt at architecture and ornament?" said Dick grimly, as they passed the ground-glass windows and colonnade and coloured glass globes of one of these establishments. "Did it not strike you, Italian as you are, that in this country, which has invented high art, the only things called palaces, except those inhabited by royalty, are pot-houses? Why do your æsthetic friends keep all their æstheticism for indoors? Why don't they build themselves houses which will be some pleasure to the poor people who pass?"
Always that indirect attack upon Hamlin and his friends: it was
just and reasonable; yet, coming from Brown, it somehow grated upon
Anne.
"That will come later," she said. "The first thing is
that the upper classes become accustomed to beautiful things. You
can't expect them to mind hideous outsides to their houses if they
are indifferent to hideous insides. I don't think," she added
boldly, "that
æstheticism has had much generosity of aspiration in it so far, except in isolated men like Ruskin and Morris; but I am sure it will eventually improve some matters even for the lower classes."
"Nero rebuilt Rome, didn't he," sneered Brown,
"after he had amused himself burning it down?"
They fell to talking about the lecture, and then about Richard
Brown's plans.
"I hope to get into Parliament next elections," he said,
"and then I shall retire from Mr Gillespie's firm."
"Why? They say you can make a big fortune if you keep
on."
"I have quite money enough; I am a rich man. You wouldn't
have thought that possible, would you, Nan, two or three years ago? Almost
as rich as Hamlin, do you know, young woman?" and he turned and
looked at her. There was a curious expression, what she could not
understand, except that it was defiant, in Dick's face.
"I am glad to hear it. It is a fine thing to have money; it
enables one to do generous things--like what Mr Hamlin did for me, for
instance." Anne could not have explained why she felt bound, at this
particular moment, to throw Hamlin's generosity in her cousin's
face.
"Ah, well," answered Brown, suppressing something he had
been about to retort, "of course I could not formerly have done what
he did for you; but I would have gladly spent every shilling I had, Anne,
to educate you, so that your father might have been proud of
you."
"I know you would, Dick--you are very kind." And yet,
thought Anne, until he had been piqued by Hamlin's offer, he had
forgotten all about her. "But why do you intend to leave your
business?"
"Because I want to give myself up entirely to studying social
questions, and my business would suffer if I gave it only partial
attention."
And he proceeded to explain the various questions which he intended
studying, the
various evils into whose reason he wished to look.
"Reform has been too much the leisure-time amusement of
men," he said. "People have thought that it requires less
training to touch, nay, to sound, social wounds, than to set a broken arm
or dress a wound. We must find the scientific basis for our art. And it is
a very, very long art, and life is very, very short. For my part, I feel
that my knowledge is to what it should be what the knowledge you may get
out of a school primer of physiology is to the knowledge required by a
great surgeon. I don't suppose I or any of my generation will succeed
in doing much practical good; but we shall have made the public ready for
certain views on our subjects, and rendered it easier for our practical
followers to get their education. There is nothing very glorious to be done
at present: no giving out of brilliant new ideas or making of
successful revolutions; only patient grubbing at facts and patient working
on the public mind."
"Is that enough for an ambitious man?"
"One must pocket one's ambition. What we want is knowledge,
not conspicuous personalities."
Anne was silent. Dick's words were like military music to her. Oh
to be able to join him, to march by his side, to carry his arms!
"Go on Dick, please. It does one good to hear of these
things."
Dick went on.
"You must not overwork yourself," said Anne, anxiously.
"Just think if you were to break down, as so many men have
done--as poor Richmond is doing."
"Oh, I am strong. The only thing which concerns me is my sight. I
find I am already unable to read of an evening. There's no danger of
blindness, but the doctor says I must not work by candle-light. Oh,
there's no mischief. I shall engage a secretary. I know plenty of
young men who would come, even for a small salary. There is the son of one
of our head workmen, a very intelligent
lad, of whom I am thinking; but perhaps he is not sufficiently educated yet. I must have some one who knows German and French, and so forth."
Anne felt a lump in her throat. Oh that she had been a man, instead of
being this useless, base creature of mere comely looks, a woman, set apart
for the contemplation of æsthetes! If she had been a man, and could
have helped a man like Richard Brown!
"But I am not certain of my plans just yet," added Brown,
and he dropped the subject. They walked on for some moments in silence;
then he began questioning her about Lewis, and Chough, and Dennistoun.
"Chough is a dear good little man," said Anne; "he is
very absurd and vain, and fond of talking and writing about wicked things,
which I am sure he doesn't understand any more than I. But he is so
self-sacrificing, and warm-hearted, and true. Dennistoun,
poor creature, is very morbid and faddy, and, I think, hates me; but I am
very sorry for him.
As to Lewis, he may be a very good man, but I don't like him--"
"I suppose you have heard what people say,--that Mr Lewis had
rather a bad influence upon Hamlin some years ago--in short, made him
take to eating opium, or haschisch, or something similar?"
"No--I had never heard that," and Anne seemed suddenly
to understand her instinctive horror of Lewis.
"Does Hamlin see much of him now?"
"A great deal--more than I can at all sympathise with. Lewis
is rather a sore subject between us; he knows I don't like him, and
yet he is very fond of him."
"I suppose Lewis flatters him very much."
"I suppose so."
Anne resented being thus cross-questioned about Hamlin, but she
was quite unable to prevaricate in her answers--her nature was too
frank, and Richard's questions were too direct.
"You are not very happy with Mr Hamlin," he suddenly asked,
or rather affirmed.
Anne flushed, but did not answer at once. "I have an unlucky
temper," she said, after a moment. "I am too exacting with
people. I can't get out of my own individuality sufficiently, I
fear."
Richard looked at her with pity, and at the same time with that
implacable scrutiny of his.
"You feel your nature narrowed by all this æsthetic world
around you," he said. "You find these men selfish, mean, weak,
shallow--"
"Chough is not selfish. As to Dennistoun and Lewis, I told you I
disliked them."
"You are equivocating, Anne. You know I am not speaking of
Dennistoun, or Lewis, or Chough. You find that Hamlin drags you down,
freezes all your best aspirations."
Anne turned very white and trembled.
"Mr Hamlin is a poet, an artist; he is not a philanthropist or a
thinker. But he has done for me more than I believe any man has ever done
for any woman."
"But--you don't love him?"
Richard had stopped as they walked along the Hammersmith embankment. It
was a very quiet spot, and not a soul was out in the thin, grey, drizzly
fog.
Anne hesitated for a moment.
"I feel very much attached to Mr Hamlin on account of his
generosity towards me--and I feel I can never repay it." She did
not look in Brown's face as she answered, but stared vaguely at the
river, at the dripping trees, the grey willow branches pulled backwards and
forwards by the grey current; at the houses opposite, and the boats dim in
the fog.
"You don't love him?" repeated Richard in a whisper.
"Anne, answer me."
"I don't see what right you have to ask me such a question,
Richard."
"No? Well, I do--and you shall see why. You are not his wife;
why should you try and tell lies? Do you or do you not love Hamlin,
Anne?"
Anne looked for a moment at the swirling waters, at the willow twigs
whirled hither and thither.
"I suppose I do not."
There was a pause.
"You do not love him, and you still contemplate marrying
him?"
"I contemplate nothing at all. Mr Hamlin has not yet asked me to
marry him, and perhaps he never may."
"Nonsense, Anne. And when he does ask you, what will you
answer?"
"I shall answer Yes. I am bound to do it. Mr Hamlin has done all,
all for me. If he wish to marry me, I cannot refuse him the only thing
which I can give in return for his generosity."
Richard Brown burst into a strange shrill laugh.
"The only thing which you can give in return for his
generosity!" he exclaimed, but always in the same undertone.
"Who first made use of those words, Nan? The only
thing which you can give in return for his generosity! Did not some one use those very words to you, long, long ago in Florence, when Mr Hamlin first proposed to educate you, and your cousin said that you were running the risk of selling yourself? But, by God! you shall not sell yourself, Anne. Do you know what you are giving him in return for what you call his generosity?--that is to say, in return for the whim which made him educate a beautiful woman, that he might show her off and have a beautiful wife, if he chose. Do you know what it is? Your love, eh? You have none to give; you have said so yourself. Your body? your honour? Nay, every prostitute, every kitchen slut can give him that. And I suppose such things do not exist for a delicately nurtured lady, a ward of Mr Walter Hamlin's. No; you are giving him your soul, selling it to him, prostituting it as any common woman would prostitute her body."
"Richard," said Anne, hotly, "you are my
cousin, and have been very good to me, but that gives you no right to insult me."
"My words are ugly; and what are the things which you would do?
Anne, you shall listen to me," and he laid his hand heavily on her
arm.
"You can make me stand here," she answered icily, "but
you cannot make me listen."
"I can make you listen. Oh, Anne," and his
voice became suddenly supplicating, "do not be womanish, and refuse
to listen because I speak disagreeable things. Answer me, on your
honour: have I a right to let you sacrifice your happiness, your
honour, your usefulness in the world, to let you defile and ruin all these,
by becoming what is equivalent to a mere legalised mistress--the wife
of a man whom you despise? You have a debt towards Hamlin: I grant
it, though you must be well aware how little real generosity there was in
his choice of you; but you have a debt also towards yourself. You have no
right to pay for Hamlin's kindness by the falsehood, the
degradation, of marrying a man whom you do not love, by the sacrifice of all the nobler part of your nature which that man will crush out in you."
"If there is anything noble in me, Dick, no one can ever crush it
out; and I do not see what real degradation there will be in honestly
carrying out my part of a bargain which has been honestly carried out
towards me."
Richard paused for a minute.
"But," he cried, "you mistake, Anne; you forget what
that bargain was."
"No, I do not. Mr Hamlin promised to marry me whenever I should
ask him to do so, and--"
"And he left you free, perfectly free to marry him or not as you
pleased!"
"He left me free; and it is just that generosity of
his, in binding himself, and not me, which obliges me, if he wants me, to
say Yes."
"That is an absurd quibble, Anne. If Hamlin's leaving you
free bound you all the more, why, then, he did not leave you free, and you
need not be bound by a piece of magnanimity which never existed."
"On the contrary, you are quibbling, Dick. You know
very well that Mr Hamlin meant to leave me free; and it is for this
intention that I am, more than for anything else, grateful."
Richard turned round.
"Fool that I am!" he cried, "to believe in you and not
see through your woman's tergiversation! You say you do not love
Hamlin, but you do; you may despise him, feel his emptiness--I grant
it all--be dissatisfied with him. Oh, I know it! But you love him all
the same, and you would not for the world give him up, even if he asked you
to."
Anne laughed bitterly. "The usual generalisations about women.
Because I will not do a dishonourable thing, I must needs be a
self-deluding fool. No; I do not love Hamlin. I love
him no more than this!" And Anne broke a twig off a bush and threw it
into the stream.
"You do not? Then, if Hamlin were to release you,--if he were
to say, 'I want to marry some one else,'--would
you--would you not regret him, his poetry, his good looks, his fame,
his fortune?"
"It would be the happiest day of my life!" cried poor Anne,
despairingly.
"Then that day must come. Anne, I cannot see you sacrificed. I
cannot see you lost to yourself and to the world. You must not
marry Hamlin. I will provide for you; I will take care of you. You shall
help me in my work!"
"Poor Dick!" said Anne gently, touched by this enthusiasm,
"you are very good; but I fear--I fear I shall never have any
need of your help; and I would never burden another man--never have a
debt again--if I were remitted this one."
"You would have no debt," cried Brown. "Anne, I am not
a woman's man. I don't know how to say such things. But ever
since I have got really to know you, I have felt if
only I could have such a woman as that always by my side--to tell her all my plans, and be helped in all my work . . ."
Richard looked straight before him: Anne could see his face
quiver. A coldness came all over her: a coldness and a heat. She felt
as if she must cry out. It was too sudden, too wonderful. The vision of
being Richard Brown's wife overcame her like some celestial vision a
fasting saint. But she made an effort over herself. "I am bound,
bound," she said; "but if ever I be released . . . "
She hesitated: the longing for what she knew herself to be
renouncing was too great.
"Anne," cried Richard, seizing her hand, "I love
you--I love you--I want you--I must have you!"
It was like the outburst of another nature, a strange, unsuspected ego,
bursting out from beneath the philanthropist's cool and
self-sacrificing surface.
That sudden contact gave Anne a shock which woke her, restored her to
herself; it
horrified her almost. She made him let go her hand.
"If ever I be released," she said, "I will remain
free. I do not love you, Dick."
She was sorry the moment after she had said it.
"I have gone too far," cried Richard.
"Good-bye," said Anne. "We have been talking
too long--and--you won't resume the subject, will
you?"
There was a command, a threat implied in her voice. Brown somehow felt
ashamed of himself.
"Not since you wish it," he said flatly.
"Good-bye," said Anne. And she walked away and
entered the house--Hamlin's house.
comradeship, the quiet brotherly and sisterly affection had all been a sham, a sham for her and for himself. Was Mrs Macgregor right, and was there, of really genuine and vital in the world, only the desire of the man for the woman and of the woman for the man, with all its brood of vanity and baseness, and all its trappings of poetry and sympathy and self-sacrifice? Anne looked round her, and she saw men like Chough and Dennistoun and Lewis, base or doing their best to become it; Hamlin, her girlish ideal of poetical love, had gone the same way; and now the one man who had remained to her as an object of friendship and respect, her cousin Dick, had preached against selfish æstheticism, had talked her into his positivistic philanthropy--had conjured her to respect her nobler nature, her soul, her generous instincts--had supplicated her not to degrade herself,--nay, had quibbled with right and wrong, had urged her to break her trust,--what for? that he might satisfy his whim of possessing her. The solitude and the
chilliness around Anne had increased; she wished for good, but she disbelieved in its existence. Add to this that she felt she was now no longer at liberty to see so much of Dick as she had formerly done; instead of a consolation and a support, his presence seemed to her now more of a danger and an insult. So she waited, hopeless and solitary, for the hour of the sacrifice to strike; for Hamlin to claim her. To fulfil that debt, to suffer that moral death-blow, seemed to her now the one certainty, the one aim of her life.
Such was the bulk of Miss Brown's condition; but there were
streakings of another colour which made it, on the whole, only more gloomy.
The possibility, the vision which had for a moment been projected on to her
mind, of becoming Richard Brown's wife, of sharing in all those
thoughts and endeavours which were her highest ideal, would return to her
every now and then in strange sudden gleams. And this possibility, or
rather this which was an impossibility, made the
real necessity of her life only the gloomier for the contrast. Anne had vaguely aspired after a life of nobler sympathies and stronger aims, but she had never gone so far as to dream of sharing the life of her cousin; and she thought that, had matters been different, had she been free, had Hamlin not claimed her, had Richard not loved her (for his love, his selfish tempting her away from her duty, seemed to her a sort of dishonour to him and her), she would have had the fulfilment of her most far-fetched desires within her grasp,--merely increased moral numbness, the sullen pain of resignation, towards a fate which was too slow in coming.
Anne did not pay much heed to Hamlin and his doings: it seemed to
her, whose life in the last months had appeared like years, that it was
always the same monotony; Hamlin was waiting for her to fall in love with
him, watching whether she was not in love already; offering her, in those
vague, Platonic, elegiac speeches of his about the necessity of
a higher life of which he no longer had much hope, of a pure passion which he feared he was unworthy to experience, an opportunity for saying "I will teach you how to love." Veiled in Dantesque mysticism, muffled in Shakespearian obscurity, such was, to her who understood and was expected to understand, the gist of all the poems which he wrote. The day would come, Anne saw it clearly, when some trifling quarrel, some trifling jealousy, some rebuff to his vanity, or some sense of more than usual vacuity, would get the better of Hamlin's patience, and when he would say to Anne that he loved her and that her love was his life. She had gone over it all so often in fancy, with the bitter sarcasm of understanding that whole, to her so tragic, little comedy. But had she been a person more observant and penetrating than she was (for her long delusion about her cousin Richard plainly shows that she was neither), or had she been less engrossed in her own conception of events, Miss Brown might have noticed,
as spring turned into summer, that certain slight changes were taking place in Hamlin. He had, without any intentional rupture, taken to seeing much less of Chough and Dennistoun; he scarcely ever visited his old master, Mrs Spencer, or any others of the school; he refused invitations to parties, or if he had accepted, found them too great a bore at the last moment; the only house, except that at Hammersmith, which he frequented, was Madame Elaguine's. He used to attend all her spiritualistic séances, and alternate between finding spiritualism a vulgar fraud and a mystic possibility; he used to quarrel with Edmund Lewis, and at the same time to seek his company more than any other man's. He would vacillate also between the most extreme opinions about his cousin Sacha. One day he would entertain Anne by the hour about her virtues, her talents, her persecution; the next he would be captiously fault-finding, accusing Madame Elaguine of being a brainless little flirt, a mere ordinary Russian, who
cared only for excitement and being perpetually en scène.
"What is the use of asking people to be intense when it is not
their nature?" Anne would ask, not without bitterness in her own
heart. "If you find a pleasant friend, be satisfied and thankful for
your good luck."
Be it as it may, Hamlin was restless, subject to strange ups and downs
of humour, sometimes in a state of vague unaccountable cheerfulness,
sometimes horribly depressed. To any one but Anne it would have occurred
that there must be some novelty in his life. But Anne did not see; indeed,
from a sort of instinct, she observed Hamlin as little as possible:
she had loved him when she had not known him; the less she saw, except his
gentle, chivalric, poetic, idealising surface, the better.
But one day--it might be a fortnight after the memorable walk home
from Richmond's lecture--Anne found among her letters one,
evidently delivered by hand or dropped into the
letter-
box, the address upon which. puzzled her considerably. It was not merely that the handwriting was unknown to her, but that it was so utterly unlike any human handwriting that could be conceived; it was like a child's elaborate copy of print, but executed with a precision, and at the same time a certain artistic chic, of which a child is incapable. Had she been in Italy, Anne would have expected to find within that envelope one of those marvellously written out and illuminated sonnets which certain needy individuals, counts and marquises fallen into bad circumstances and anxious to redeem their only bed from the pawnbroker's, serve up at regular intervals to English and Americans, "the many illustrious qualities of whose mind and heart, as well known as their noble family," are supposed to include munificence to beggars. To Anne's astonishment the letter which she found actually was in Italian. But it was Italian of Stratford-atte-Bow, and her first impulse was to burst out laughing. But the
next moment she reddened with surprise and indignation.
"MADONNA MIA," began this
epistle, which had evidently been concocted with a 'Decameron'
and a Baedeker's travelling phrase-book, and which sounded
like English written by a German waiter who should have taken to Spenser
after the first dozen lessons,--"Inasmuch as it always is the
duty of the honest to warn the unsuspecting, and the most honourable are
always those who suspect least, your true friend and well-wisher
desires you may keep an eye upon the machinations of a base woman; and be
on your guard against the friendship [underlined] of cousins."
Anne turned the note round and round, and read and re-read it,
her heart beating as if she had received a slap in the face. "The
friendship of cousins." Her first thought was that this
was an allusion to herself and Richard Brown; some one had understood what
she had not, and was suspecting what was not true. But then her mind picked
up that other
mysterious phrase, "the machinations of a base woman." The cousins were not herself and Dick, but Hamlin and Sacha Elaguine, and that was the base woman alluded to. It was as if a great light had shone in Anne's face; she was dazzled, dazed. The friendship of two cousins! Was there, then, more than friendship between them? Did Hamlin love Sacha, or Sacha Hamlin? Anne gave a great sigh; but it was a sigh of relief,--the sigh of the drowning wretch who is dragged on shore--the sigh of the hunted fugitive who sees his pursuers turn back. The friendship of cousins? Why, then, she was saved, she was free! But her excitement lasted only a minute. Was she to believe an anonymous letter, evidently malicious, evidently intended to slander an innocent woman, to sow discord or to ruin her own happiness? It was evidently from an enemy of Madame Elaguine's; it could not be from a friend of her own; for a friend would have spoken to her clearly and openly, or would have spared her what, in the eyes of the world,
which regarded her as Hamlin's affianced bride, must have been a horrible revelation. It was an infamous or ridiculous calumny. From whom did it come? Anne thought for a long time; she counted up her own enemies and Madame Elaguine's. At one moment she suspected Edmund Lewis, at another Mrs Spencer; but she was too honest to credit any one of them with such a piece of treachery. Madame Elaguine's mysterious enemies--yes, it must be they! thought Anne; it must be a new trick of theirs, a device for alienating her from her new friends. Anne's heart sank. Why must such terrible temptations be put upon her?
Miss Brown meditated for some time upon what she ought to do. She felt
indignant with the mysterious author of the letter; and she felt that, as
it contained a slander, it was her duty to let those whom it accused know
the whole matter. Should she show that paper to Hamlin? Once in her life,
Anne gave way to a movement of cowardice. That letter,
shown by her to Hamlin, would, she knew, bring the catastrophe. Hamlin would be furious and delighted; he would think she was jealous and unhappy; he would on the spot declare that he loved her, and ask her to be his wife. This consummation of her sacrifice, which, in the dull apathy of the last fortnight, she had almost prayed for, now terrified her. When it came, she was ready; but to hasten it--to bring it down untimely on herself--to do that, Anne had not the heart. After all, it concerned Madame Elaguine most, and she would doubtless have some clue to the writer of the letter, and consequently take the matter less to heart. Anne determined to show the letter to her. She thought she would go to her at once, or write; but a faint, faint, almost unconscious instinct of self-preservation bade her wait awhile; wait till she should have an opportunity of seeing Madame Elaguine in the natural course of events.
Miss Brown had made up her mind that the mysterious letter had no sort
of truth in it; yet despite this decision, which lay, cut and
dry, on the surface of her consciousness, a hidden imperceptible movement was going on within her. She seemed suddenly to remember things which she had not at the time noticed, to see things which had not before existed, and must still have been there yesterday as well as to-day. Things which had been meaningless acquired a meaning; things which had seemed without connection began to group themselves. A change had taken place of late in Hamlin; he had become solitary and morose, and more than usually up and down in spirits--he had seen only Sacha and her. How much had he seen of Sacha? Anne did not know, but she imagined a great deal. Then she remembered how he had taken to finding fault with the little woman, to running her down systematically to himself and to Anne. Could it be that he felt himself tempted to break his engagement? Anne knew Hamlin too well by this time to credit him with that. If such a thing should happen,--if, finding insensibly that
Anne was not what he had imagined, disappointed with her coldness, hurt by her censoriousness, and attracted by a woman who was everything that she was not--Hamlin should ever come to feel for Sacha more than mere friendship, it was not in his nature to perceive his danger and to struggle; he would let himself go to sleep in the pleasantness of a new sensation, he would drift on vaguely, and start up in surprise.
A new love was for him the most poignant of temptations,--a new
love in its still half-unconscious, Platonic, vague condition; and
he was not a man to resist such a temptation; indeed he had gone through
life with the philosophy that a poet may dally with any emotion, however
questionable, as long as he does not actually commit a dishonourable
action. Oh no, Hamlin's ups and downs could not be struggles or
remorse; so Anne decided that it was all fancy, all calumny. And she
determined to give the letter to Sacha on the first opportunity.
Madame Elaguine at last made up her mind that her little Helen ought to
learn something; and with the impulsiveness of her nature, she determined
that she, whom she had always kept under her own eyes, should go to school.
Why there should be such a swing of the pendulum, and why Madame Elaguine
should not rather hire a governess to teach the child in her own house,
Miss Brown could not explain, except by the capriciousness, the tendency
always to be in extremes, of Hamlin's cousin. Anyhow, Sacha had
determined that Helen must soon go to school, and she had written to Anne
begging her, before the child went, to permit her to share for a week or
two the lessons which Miss Brown was giving the little Choughs. "I
know," she wrote, "that my poor little child is not fit to be
turned loose among other children yet; I know she is too ignorant, too
sensitive, too much accustomed to life with her elders. To learn with Mr
Chough's children, to play with them, will take the keen edge off;
and also, I know, my
dearest Anne, that if anything can make this (I fear, alas! alas! to my shame) over-sensitive and self-willed little savage more human, more desirous of being good, and of raising herself, it will be your influence. I have often felt what it would have been for me to have had a friend like you, and I feel what it will be for my child."
Anne was touched by this letter. Poor Madame Elaguine, although she did
care too much for Baudelaire and Gautier, and did tell too many anecdotes
about married women's lovers and married men's
cocottes for Anne's taste, was yet a
good and brave little woman; and she must be helped, if one could help her.
And Anne was doubly indignant about that anonymous letter she put in her
pocket, and went to call on Hamlin's cousin.
Madame Elaguine was in one of her unstrung moments. Anne found her lying
on a sofa, a heap of books about her, reading none, fidgety and vacant. She
brightened up for a moment on Miss Brown's entry, and
received her with a kind of rapturous gratitude, quite out of all proportion; but she speedily relapsed into her depressed condition. Anne thought it better not to introduce the business at once.
"I want to know," she said, "why you are suddenly so
anxious to send your little Helen to school, when you said, only a few days
ago, that you could not bear even that a stranger should have any influence
upon her."
Madame Elaguine hesitated. "Oh, dear Anne," she suddenly
exclaimed, "I am a poor, weak, vacillating creature, always in
excesses. You must have pity on me. I suppose it is just
because I was so horribly selfish about my child that I have been crushed
suddenly with the necessity of sacrificing my feelings completely. It comes
home to me--and oh, you cannot think what it means to me!--that I
am ruining my child, that she will turn out merely another
myself--another wretched, weak, unhappy creature, with just morality
enough to make her utterly
miserable, and just common-sense enough to make her feel her own silliness. It is a terrible thing for a mother to say; but it is true, and I must say it: I am not fit to bring up my own child--I am not worthy to do it."
Anne looked at the Russian, who had raised herself on her sofa
convulsively, and thatched and torn to pieces a flower which was lying on
her, with a great look of pity.
"I am not bad!" cried Sacha--"I am not bad! I
want to be good; but I can't. Oh, and I can't teach my child
anything, not even the multiplication table," and she suddenly burst
out laughing.
Anne did not know whether to cry or to laugh.
"I quite understand your wishing that Helen should get the habit
of work, and should learn something," she said, in her
business-like way; "but I cannot see the advantage of sending
her to school. She is far too nervous and delicate, and far too much
accustomed to indulgence, to get anything but harm from a
school. Were she a mere strong, sturdy, spoilt child, it would do her an immense deal of good; but a child, you admit it yourself, so morbidly and almost physically sensitive, would only be miserable at school, and probably be terrified by unaccustomed discipline and want of sympathy. Don't you think it would be wiser to get Helen a thoroughly good governess, so that she could learn something, and yet be in your house?"
"I won't have a governess; they are all
good-for-nothings. I won't have spies in the
house!" exclaimed Madame Elaguine, vehemently.
"Nonsense!" said Anne; "how can you talk like that?
You know that governesses are just as good as schoolmistresses; and for you
and Helen such a plan would be in every way preferable."
"I won't have any one in the house to pry into my
affairs!" repeated Sacha, hotly. "Helen must go to
school."
Anne felt angry with the little woman.
"Of course it is for you to choose," she said; "but I
confess I can't see why you should not have a governess any more than
other people." She felt as if there were something wrong here.
"And do you forget what my life is?" cried Sacha; "do
you forget that I am the daily, hourly victim of unseen enemies? Would you
have me admit some one to my house, that she might play into their hands,
or, at all events, pry into my misfortune?"
Anne had forgotten that. How unjust she was!
"True," she said; "I think we might find a governess
who, even under your circumstances, might be safely admitted into the
house. But I can understand your unconquerable aversion to the idea, so we
had better look out for a school, and, till one is found, I shall be
delighted if you will send Helen to me. I fear I can't do much for
her, but at all events she will meet the Choughs, who are very good little
girls."
Madame Elaguine rose, and, to Anne's
im-
measurable surprise, she flung herself on her neck, and began to sob.
"Oh Anne, dearest Anne," she said, "you are so good to
me--so good, so very good--and I don't deserve it at
all--indeed I know I don't."
"Nonsense; you are unwell and unstrung about Helen, and you are
just making yourself miserable. Do try and be quiet, and reflect that there
is nothing whatever to be miserable about."
Somehow or other Miss Brown, for all her good-nature, always had
a harsh instinct whenever she saw Sacha in such a condition as
this--an instinct that the Russian could prevent it--that such
fits of tears and abjectness were mere self-indulgence, and
self-indulgence which was utterly incompatible with Anne's
idea of self-respect.
But Madame Elaguine could not be reined in. She fell back in an
arm-chair in an agony of hysterical sobbing, mixed with ghastly
laughing.
"It is not nonsense; it is true--it is true; I don't
deserve it. I deserve that you should hate me. Oh Anne, you must hate me;
but it is not my fault. I hate him! I have always hated him! I have told
him so; but he won't believe. Oh, indeed it is not my fault. But of
course you hate me, you . . ." and she suddenly burst out
laughing.
Anne was very white. She had heard and she had understood; but she had
no right to have heard or to have understood.
Suddenly Sacha started up and looked strangely about her.
"What! you are here?" she asked, with a start as if of
terror. "Oh, what have I been talking about? Oh, I am sure I have
been talking nonsense!"
"Poor little woman!" said Anne; "yes, you
have been talking nonsense; you are afraid of having a
governess for Helen, lest--"
"Ah!" cried Madame Elaguine, with a sigh of relief.
"Oh, you don't know what it is to have such a fit. One feels
one is talking lies,
and yet that one must go on. I never had any such things before they began to persecute me. It is almost the worst part of my misfortune. Fancy seeing, feeling one's self becoming day by day more abject, and being unable to stop it. Oh, I still feel so frightened! something dreadful must have happened while I had that fit just now. Do call for some tea, Anne, darling; I feel so shaken, as if something had happened."
"You will feel all right when you have had some tea," said
Anne. "Tell me, have they, have those people been frightening you of
late?"
Madame Elaguine nodded. "Only last night; you don't know
what happened. I didn't intend telling you--look here--but
it is that that has put me into such a state," and opening the door
of her bedroom, Sachs pointed to the wall opposite.
Over Madame Elaguine's bed hung a painted portrait of little
Helen; but where the face should have been was a dark spot.
"Good heavens! what have they done?" cried Anne.
"Oh, they have only cut out Mademoiselle
Hélène's face," said the Swiss maid, who was
sitting in the room, with a shrug. "For my part, I am accustomed to
such tricks, and so, I should think, must be Madame also."
Something cynical and insolent in the woman struck Anne very much.
"How horrible!" she said, leading Sacha back to the
drawing-room. "I can quite understand your being excited
to-day, and feeling anxious about Helen."
"It is because of that," said Sacha, with clenched teeth,
"that I want to send Helen to school. She will be safer there than
here. If things go on as now, I shall have to send Helen to a convent; I am
no protection to her."
"You must marry, and have a husband to take care of you,"
said Anne, quietly.
Madame Elaguine turned scarlet. Was she
afraid of having let out her secret? But to Anne's surprise, instead of looking anxious, a sudden look of triumphant amusement passed over her face, a strange brazen look, and she burst out laughing--
"Ah yes, marry!--that would be a fine idea!--and whom,
pray? Perhaps Lewis or Chough. True--I forgot--he has a wife! Ah
no, a rolling stone like me must always be solitary."
"You need not always be a rolling stone," said Anne, gently.
"But I must go--good-bye, dear Madame
Elaguine."
At the door she met Hamlin. It seemed to her that he looked guilty, and
coloured.
"I have been to see your cousin; she has had another horrid trick
played to her. Go up to her, it will do her good to see you; she is very
lonely, poor little woman."
Hamlin was unnerved by the allusion to the persecution. He stood silent
for a moment, with a long lingering look on Anne, like a man making a
mental comparison.
"You are very good, Miss Brown," he said, slowly;
"there is no other woman in the world like you."
"Sacha has been more tried than I," answered Anne. And
Hamlin went up and Miss Brown went out.
Wait!--but in what a different spirit! Wait, not for the hour of
death, but for the moment of freedom, of complete freedom.
"What has happened to you?" asked Mrs Spencer, meeting her
on her way back from Madame Elaguine's. "Why, you look quite
another being, Anne--as if some one had left you a fortune!"
"No one has left me anything," said Anne. "I feel very
happy, that's all."
"But where in all this wretched London have you been that you
should feel happy?"
Anne laughed.
"I have been to see Madame Elaguine."
Mrs Spencer frowned.
"Well, that wouldn't be enough to make me feel
happy, I confess. Was Walter Hamlin there? I believe it's his safest
address now, isn't it?"
"Mr Hamlin was there," answered Anne, sternly.
"Mark my words!" said Mrs Spencer that evening to her father
and husband, and to one or two of those well-thinking æsthetes
de la vieille roche, whom Hamlin had basely
deserted. "Mark my words! Anne Brown has got impatient with all this
philandering of Walter's about that precious Russian of his. There
has been a grand scene, and Hamlin has come round to reason. I met her
returning from that Elaguine woman's to-day, and
she never looked so happy in her life. She said Hamlin had been there, and I know that she gave them both a bit of her mind. She's a proud woman, Anne Brown, and could squash that little Russian vixen like that!"
"But, my dear Edith," objected her father, seated among an
admiring crowd in his dusty studio at Hampstead, among his ghastly Saviours
on gilded grounds, and Nativities, in despite of
perspective--"how de ye know that there's ever been any
philandering between 'em?"
"Oh papa, really now you are too provoking!"
"Oh, Mr Saunders, how do we know anything?" chorussed the
two or three elderly poetesses and untidy Giottesque painters of the
circle.
"P'raps ye don't know anything, any of ye!"
Mrs Spencer sighed, as much as to say, "See what it is to be the
long-suffering daughter of the greatest genius in the world, and
pity me!"
Cosmo Chough had been reading some of his 'Triumph of
Womanhood,' lying on the hearth-rug in the studio.
"Do you think he has proposed?" he asked, darting up, with
beaming eyes.
"Proposed! I should think so, and been told not to play such
tricks again."
"Ah!" cried Chough, "thank heaven.
I--I--" but he stopped.
"You shall send Anne your Ginevra in the Tomb, papa, as a wedding
present."
"Don't be in too great a hurry," said old Saunders;
whereupon he was jeered at with all the respect due to so great an
artist.
For the first time after so long, Anne felt happy. A load was off her
mind. That Hamlin should love Sacha, and Sacha Hamlin, was the miracle
which alone could release her, and releasing her, put an end at the same
time to the horrible false position into which Hamlin's
self-engagement to a woman so different from himself created for him
also in the future. And now only did it strike Anne that perhaps
she had no right towards Hamlin to pay off her debt of gratitude at the expense of what might be his future misery as well as hers. Had Hamlin been sufficiently infatuated to wish to marry a woman whom he did not really and solidly love, would it have been right on her part to let him have his way? All these doubts, which she had previously put behind her, as mere selfish sophistry to tempt her from her duty, now rushed home to her. But they came no longer to torment, but to add to the relief, the cessation of bondage. Hamlin would never, she said to herself, have been really happy with her as a wife; and now it happened that he had met the woman who, whatever her shortcomings, seemed to suit him. That Sacha Elaguine was an undisciplined, thoughtless, rather sensuous woman, loving excitement and art, and indifferent to abstract good and evil, Anne fully admitted; but were not these the very qualities which would make her appreciate what in Hamlin was original and charming, and blind
her, for her happiness (and added Anne, convinced by sad failure of the futility of trying to change people's nature) and for his, to his weak sides? And Sacha had just that exuberant passionateness, more of the temperament and the fancy than of the heart, which Hamlin required, and which she, Anne, so lamentably lacked. For Sacha also it would mean a new life: it would mean, for the poor, excitable little woman, always defrauded of affection and of an object of adoration, a reality in her life, something to love, to worship, to pet, to flatter--something to make her forget her miserable bedraggled childhood, her wretched married life, her persecution and her maladies. This it would mean to them; and to Anne it would mean . . . Ah! Anne did not dare to think what it would mean for her; she was not yet sure. She might be mistaken, she was still bound to doubt. And still, that great bliss, at which Anne was afraid to look, meant only what to other women would have been a poor gift: liberty
to gain her bread, to feel and think for herself--a life's solitude.
Days passed on; and Anne, instead of being, as she expected,
disappointed, was confirmed by every little thing in her belief. On one
pretext or other, Hamlin was perpetually at Madame Elaguine's. The
latest excuse for seeing her was to paint her portrait; so, for a number of
days, Sacha came every morning to the house at Hammersmith, and spent a
couple of hours at least closeted with Hamlin in the studio. Anne usually
received her, and she frequently stayed to lunch; and Miss Brown could not
help feeling indignant at the coolness with which Hamlin amused himself
playing with two women: he was perpetually trailing after Sacha, he
was perpetually, she felt persuaded, talking about life and love and
himself in a way which was equivalent to making love to the little woman;
and yet, he would still come and sit at Anne's feet, and represent
himself as the dejected and heartbroken creature whom only a strong and
pure
woman could help. Once, Miss Brown had considerable difficulty in restraining herself when, after a day spent with his cousin, he came in the evening to her, and began the usual talk about his soul being shrivelled up.
"I feel I am not worthy to live!" he exclaimed. "I
have become too weak and selfish to enjoy the world; I feel that I am
sinking into a bog of meanness and sensuality; and yet I cannot even become
the mere beast that I ought--the mere beast that would be satisfied
with the mud. I keep looking up, and longing for higher things which I
cannot attain."
"How very sad!" said Anne, icily; "what a pity you
can't make up your mind! it would save you much valuable time. But
then, I suppose, it always comes in usefully for sonnets. That is the great
advantage of being a poet."
Hamlin was silent. He had--she felt sure, and she was indignant as
if at an affront--imagined that he might tempt her into
saying--"I will raise you," while his poor, giddy,
irresponsible cousin was being dragged further and further into a passion which she would never recover from--for she, at least, had a heart and he had none.
"You despise me!" cried Hamlin, after a minute.
"I thought your indecision between the bog and the stars rather
contemptible, certainly, just now. But I now see that such conditions are
as necessary to you as a poet as are your lay figures and studio properties
to you as a painter. It was my ignorance."
Hamlin fixed his eyes on the ground. He looked very weak and miserable,
and like a man who feels that he has dishonoured himself in some way. But
to Anne it was all merely a piece of acting--the climax of that long
and nauseous comedy of self-reproach and self-sympathising,
of pretending to hanker after evil and good, that was equally indifferent
to him,--that comedy which had begun long ago in his letters to her at
Coblenz, which she had watched with admiration, and love, and agony
at first, and with contempt and disgust at last. And she was hardened towards him. She could have said to him--"Go and marry Sacha!" only that at this moment such a notion seemed an insult to his cousin, and that a horrible fear possessed her that he would seize upon that, and try and work her and her anger into this very patchwork of artificial and morbid sentiment over which he was for ever gloating. Once or twice, indeed, it did occur to Anne that perhaps this whole flirtation with Madame Elaguine had been got up by Hamlin for her, benefit; that he was playing with the heart of the foolish little woman (who did not realise that he was making her love him) merely to provoke Anne's jealousy--to move her by this means, since he had failed by every other. But even if it had been thus begun, and Miss Brown shrank from believing that Hamlin would have been so deliberately base, it was clear that the comedy had become reality--that he cared for his cousin and she for him. Perhaps--perhaps--all this remorse was real
after all. But Anne's heart had got hardened against him: she could no longer, do what he liked, believe that there was anything genuine in him.
Meanwhile Hamlin's perpetual attendance on Madame Elaguine had
become apparent to every one; and even Mrs Spencer admitted to her father
that Hamlin could not have proposed that day she had met Anne.
"That is to say--mind you, I daresay he actually did propose;
but that wretched woman somehow contrived to talk him over again. I believe
she's capable of everything!"
"Well, my dear," said her father, "it goes a little
against your theory that Miss Brown looks just as happy as
possible."
"Because she's too honourable to believe!" exclaimed
Mrs Spencer; and forgetting the many acrimonious remarks in which she had
indulged against Miss Brown, and the many times she had sighed at Walter
Hamlin taking up with a "mere soulless Italian" instead of with
this or the other Sappho or Properzia dei Rossi
of her circle, she added--"I always knew that Anne was one of the noblest women in the world; and the nobler women are, the less will they believe in the baseness of men. For my part, I think love and marriage are the greatest curses of a woman's life."
In which sentiment poor Mr Spencer modestly acquiesced.