And yet why not! Suddenly Nigel checked himself, as he generally did when he found himself swiftly subscribing to the general opinion of the great ma.s.s of men. Why not? The shoulder to the wheel; it was nearly always the shoulder of love--love of an idea, love of a woman, love of humanity, love of work, love of G.o.d. All the men he knew, or very nearly all, would laugh at the idea of Mrs. Chepstow being sincerely loved. But the fact that they would laugh could have no effect on a manly heart or a manly spirit.
He felt almost angry with her for the loneliness and the immobility which pained his chivalry and struck at his sense of pity. If he could think of her as going away, too, as wandering, in Switzerland, in Italy, in some lovely place, he would feel all right. But always he saw her seated in that room, alone, deserted, playing the piano, reading, with no prospect of company, of change. Mrs. Chepstow had acted her part well. She had stamped a lonely image upon the retina of Nigel"s imagination.
He was still walking about his room in bare feet. But his cigar had gone out, though it was still between his lips. The hour was very late. He heard a distant clock strike two. And just after he had listened to its chime, followed by other chimes in near and distant places of the city, the night idea of a strong and young man came to him.
If he could not be friends with Mrs. Chepstow, could he be--the other thing to her!
He put up his hand to his lips, took away the cigar, and flung it out of the window violently. And this physical violence was the echo of his mental violence. She might allow such a thing. Often, if half of what was said of her was true, she had entered into a similar relation with other men. He would not believe that "often." He put it differently.
She had certainly entered into a similar relation with some men--perhaps with two or three, multiplied by scandal--in the past. Would she enter into it with him, if he asked her? And would he ever ask her?
He threw himself down again in his arm-chair, and stared at his bare feet planted firmly on the floor. But he saw, not his feet, but the ugly spectre of love, that hideous, d.a.m.nable ghost, that most pretentious of all pretensions. She had lived with the ghost till she had become pale like a ghost. In the picture of "Progress," which he loved, there was a glow, a glory of light, raying out to a far horizon. It would be putting a shoulder to the wheel to set a glow in the cheeks of a woman, not a glow of shame but of joy. And to be--and then Nigel used to himself that expression of the laughing men in the clubs--"a bad last!" No, that sort of thing was intolerable.
Suddenly the ghost faded away, and he saw his brown feet. They made him think at once of the sun, of work, of the good, real, glowing life.
No, no; none of those intolerable beastlinesses for him. That thought, that imagination, it was utterly, finally done with. He drew a long breath, and stretched up his arms, till the loose sleeves of his night-suit fell down, exposing the strong, brown limbs. And as he had looked at his feet, he looked at them, then felt them, thumped them, and rejoiced in the glory of health. But the health of mind and heart was essential to the complete health of the body. He felt suddenly strong--strong for more than one, as surely a man should be--strong for himself, and his woman, for her who belongs to him, who trusts him, who has blotted out--it comes to that with a woman who loves--all other men for him.
Was he really condemned to an eternal solitude because of the girl who had died so many years ago? For his life was a solitude, as every loveless life is, however brilliant and strenuous. He realized that, and there came to him a thought that was natural and selfish. It was this: How good it must be to be exclusively loved by a woman, and how a woman, whom men and the world have abandoned, must love the man who comes, like a knight through the forest, and carries her away, and takes her into his life, and gives her back self-respect, and a place among women, and, above all, the feeling that of all feelings a woman holds dearest, "Somebody wants me." It must be good to be loved as such a woman would love. His generosity, which instinctively went out to abandoned things, walked hand in hand with man"s eternal, indestructible selfishness that night, as he thought of Mrs. Chepstow for the first time as married again to some man who cared not for the world"s opinion, or who cared for it so much as to revel in defying it.
How would she love such a man?
He began to wonder about that part of her nature dedicated to, designed for, love.
With him she was always perfectly simple, and seemed extremely frank.
But he felt now that in her simplicity she had always been reserved, almost strangely reserved for such a woman. Perhaps that reserve had been her answer to his plainly shown respect. Just because of her position, he had been even more respectful to her than he was to other women, following in this a dictate of his temperament. What would she be like in the unreserve of a great love?
And now a fire was kindled in Nigel, and began to burn up fiercely. He felt, very consciously and definitely, the fascination of this woman. Of course, he had always been more or less subject to it. Isaacson had known that when he saw Nigel draw his chair nearer to hers at the supper-table in the Savoy. But he had been subject to it without ever saying to himself, "I am in subjection." He had never supposed that he was in subjection. The abrupt consciousness of how it was with him excited him tremendously. After the long interval of years, was he to feel again the powerful fever, and for a woman how different from the woman he had loved? She stood, in her young purity, at one end of the chain of years, and Mrs. Chepstow--did she really stand at the other?
He seemed to see these two looking at each other across the s.p.a.ce that was set by Time, and for a moment his face contracted. But he had changed while traversing that s.p.a.ce. Then he was an eager boy, in the joy of his bounding youth. Now he was a vigorous man. And during the interval that separated boy from man had come up in him his strong love of humanity, his pa.s.sion for the development of the good that lies everywhere, like the ore in gold-bearing earth. That love had perhaps been given to him to combine the two loves, the altruistic love, and the love for a woman bringing its quick return.
The two faces of women surely softened as they gazed now upon each other.
Such loves in combination might crown his life with splendour. Nigel thought that, with the enthusiasm which was his birthright, which set him so often apart from other men. And, moving beneath such a splendour, how absolutely he could defy the world"s opinion! Its laughter would be music, its sneering word only the signal to a smile.
But--he must think--he must think--
He sprang up, pulled up his loose sleeves to his shoulders, tucked them together, and with bared arms leaned out to the night, holding his hands against his cheeks.
VIII
Mrs. Chepstow had said to Nigel, "Bring Doctor Isaacson--if he"ll come."
He had never gone, though Nigel had told him of her words, had told him more than once. Without seeming deliberately to avoid the visit, he had deliberately avoided it. He never had an hour to spare in the day, and Nigel knew it. But he might have gone on a Sunday. It happened that, at present, on Sundays he was always out of town.
He had said to himself, "_Cui bono?_"
He had the sensitive nature"s dislike of mingling intimately in the affairs of others, and moreover he felt instinctively that if he tried to play a true friend"s part to Nigel, he might lose Nigel as a friend.
His clear insight would be antagonistic to Nigel"s blind enthusiasm, his calm worldly knowledge would seem only frigid cruelty to Nigel"s generosity and eagerness in pity. And, besides, Isaacson had a strong personal repulsion from Mrs. Chepstow, a repulsion almost physical.
The part of him that was Jewish understood the part of her that was greedy far too well. And he disliked, while he secretly acknowledged, his own Jewishness. He seldom showed this dislike, even subtly, to the world and never showed it crudely, as do many of Jewish blood, by a strange and hideous anti-Semitism. But it was always alive within him, always in conflict with something belonging to his nature"s artistic side, a world-feeling to which race-feeling seemed stupid and very small. The triumphs of art aroused this world-feeling within him, and in his love of art he believed that he touched his highest point. As Isaacson"s mental unconventionality put him _en rapport_ with Nigel, his Jewishness, very differently, put him _en rapport_ with her. There is a communion of repulsion as well as a communion of affection. Isaacson knew that Mrs. Chepstow and he could be linked by their dislike. His instinct was to avoid her, not to let this link be formed. Subsequent circ.u.mstances made him ask himself whether men do not often call things towards them with the voices of their fears.
The season was waning fast, was nearly at an end, when one night, very late, Nigel called in Cleveland Square. Isaacson had just come back from dining with the Dean of Waynfleet when the bell rang. He feared a professional summons, and was relieved when a sleepy servant asked if he would see Mr. Armine. They met in a small, upstairs room where Isaacson sat at night, a room lined with books, cosy, but perhaps a little oppressive. As Nigel came in quickly with a light coat over his arm and a crush hat in his hand, a clock on the mantel piece struck one.
"I caught sight of you just now in St. James"s Street in your motor, or I wouldn"t have come so late," Nigel said. "Were you going straight to bed? Tell me the truth. If you were, I"ll be off."
"I don"t think I was. I"ve been dining out, and should have had to read something. That"s why you kept your coat?"
"To demonstrate my good intention. Well!"
He put the coat and hat on a chair.
"Will you have anything?"
"No, thanks."
Nigel sat down in an arm-chair.
"I"ve seen so little of you, Isaacson. And I"m going away to-morrow."
"You"ve had enough of it?"
"More than enough."
Isaacson was sitting by a table on which lay a number of books. Now and then he touched one with his long and sallow fingers, lifted its cover, then let it drop mechanically.
"You are coming back in the autumn?"
"For some days, in pa.s.sing through. I"m going to Egypt again."
"I envy you--I envy you."
As he looked at Nigel"s Northern fairness, and thought of his own darkness, it seemed to him that he should be going to the sun, Nigel remaining in the lands where the light is pale. Perhaps a somewhat similar thought occurred to Nigel, for he said:
"You ought to go there some day. You"d be in your right place there.
Have you ever been?"
"Never. I"ve often wanted to go."
"Why don"t you go?"
Isaacson"s mind asked that question, and his Jewishness replied. He made money in London. Every day he spent out of London was a loss of so much money.
"Some day," Nigel continued, "you must take a holiday and see Egypt."
"This winter?" said Isaacson.
He lifted the cover of a book. His dark, shining, almost too intelligent eyes looked at Nigel, and looked away.