"It was whilst you were there that you wrote _Studies in Character_.
Two years ago, I do not know why, you gave up your fellowship and came to London. You took up the editorship of a Review--the _Bi-Weekly_, I think--but you resigned it on a matter of principle. You have a somewhat curious reputation. The _Scrutineer_ invariably alludes to you as the Apostle of aestheticism. You are reported to have fixed views as to the conduct of life, down even to its most trifling details. That sounds unpleasant, but it probably isn"t altogether true.... Don"t interrupt, please! You have no intimate friends, but you go sometimes into society. You are apparently a mixture of poet, philosopher, and man of fashion. I have heard you spoken of more than once as a disciple of Epicurus. You also, in the course of your literary work, review novels--unfortunately for me--and six months ago you were the cause of my nearly crying my eyes out. It was perhaps silly of me to attempt, without any literary experience, to write a modern story, but my own life supplied the motive, and at least I was faithful to what I felt and knew. No one else has ever said such cruel things about my work.
"Woman-like, you see, I repay my injuries by becoming interested in you. If you had praised my book, I daresay I should never have thought of you at all. Then there is one thing more. Every day you sit in the Park close to where I stop, and--you look at me. It seems as though we had often spoken there. Shall I tell you what I have been vain enough to think sometimes?
"I have watched you from a distance, often before you have seen me.
You always sit in the same att.i.tude, your eyebrows are a little contracted, there is generally the ghost of a smile upon your lips.
You are like an outsider who has come to look upon a brilliant show. I could fancy that you have clothed yourself in the personality of that young Roman n.o.ble whose name you have made so famous, and from another age were gazing tolerantly and even kindly upon the folly and the pageantry which have survived for two thousand years. And then I have taken my little place in the procession, and I have fancied that a subtle change has stolen into your face. You have looked at me as gravely as ever, but no longer as an impersonal spectator.
"It is as though I have seemed a live person to you, and the others, mummies. Once the change came so swiftly that I smiled at you,--I could not help it,--and you looked away."
"I remember it distinctly," he interrupted. "I thought the smile was for some one behind me."
She shook her head.
"It was for you. Now I have finished. Fill in the blanks, please."
He was content to answer her in the same strain. The effect of her complete naturalness was already upon him.
"So far as my personal history is concerned," he told her, "you are wonderfully correct. There is nothing more to be said about it. I gave up my fellowship at Oxford because I have always been convinced of the increasing narrowness and limitations of purely academic culture and scholarship. I was afraid of what I should become as an old man, of what I was already growing into. I wanted to have a closer grip upon human things, to be in more sympathetic relations with the great world of my fellow-men. Can you understand me, I wonder? The influences of a university town are too purely scholarly to produce literary work of wide human interest. London had always fascinated me--though as yet I have met with many disappointments. As to the _Bi-Weekly_, it was my first idea to undertake no fixed literary work, and it was only after great pressure that I took it for a time. As you know, my editorship was a failure."
He paused for a moment or two, and looked steadily at her. He was anxious to watch the effect of what he was going to say.
"You have mentioned my review upon your novel in the _Bi-Weekly_. I cannot say that I am sorry I wrote it. I never attacked a book with so much pleasure. But I am very sorry indeed that you should have written it. With your gifts you could have given to the world something better than a mere psychological debauch!"
She laughed softly, but genuinely.
"I adore sincerity," she exclaimed, "and it is so many years since I was actually scolded. A "psychological debauch" is delightful. But I cannot help my views, can I? My experiences were made for me! I became the creature of circ.u.mstances. No one is morally responsible for their opinions."
"There are things," he said, "which find their way into our thoughts and consciousness, but of which it would be considered flagrantly bad taste to speak. And there are things in the world which exist, which have existed from time immemorial, the evil legacy of countless generations, of which it seems to me to be equally bad taste to write.
Art has a limitless choice of subjects. I would not have you sully your fine gifts by writing of anything save of the beautiful."
"This is rank hedonism," she laughed. "It is a survival of your academic days."
"Some day," he answered, "we will talk more fully of this. It is a little early for us to discuss a subject upon which we hold such opposite views."
"You are afraid that we might quarrel!"
He shook his head.
"No, not that! Only as I am something of an idealist, and you, I suppose, have placed yourself amongst the ranks of the realists, we should scarcely meet upon a common basis. But will you forgive me if I say so--I am very sure that some day you will be a deserter?"
"And why?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Friends," she repeated, with a certain wistfulness in her tone]
"I do not know anything of your history," he continued gently, "nor am I asking for your confidence. Only in your story there was a personal note, which seemed to me to somehow explain the bitterness and directness with which you wrote--of certain subjects. I think that you yourself have had trouble--or perhaps a dear friend has suffered, and her grief has become yours. There was a little poison in your pen, I think. Never mind! We shall be friends, and I shall watch it pa.s.s away!"
"Friends," she repeated with a certain wistfulness in her tone. "But have you forgotten--what you came for?"
"I do not think," he said slowly, "that it is of much consequence."
"But it is," she insisted. "You asked me distinctly where I wished to be driven to from the theatre, and I told you--home! All the time I knew that I was going to have supper with Mr. Thornd.y.k.e at the Milan!
Morally I lied to you!"
"Why?" he asked.
"I cannot tell you," she answered; "it was an impulse. I thought nothing of accepting the man"s invitation. You know him, I daresay. He is a millionaire, and it is his money which supports the theatre. He has asked me several times, and although personally I dislike him, he has, of course, a certain claim upon my acquaintance. I have made excuses once or twice. Last night was the first time I have ever been out anywhere with him. I do not of course pretend to be in the least conventional--I have always permitted myself the utmost liberty of action. Yet--I had wanted so much to know you--I was afraid of prejudicing you.... After all, you see, I have no explanation. It was just an impulse. I have hated myself for it; but it is done!"
"It was," he said, "a trifle of no importance. We will forget it."
A gleam of grat.i.tude shone in her dark eyes. Her head drooped a little. He fancied that her voice was not quite so steady.
"It is good," she said, "to hear you say that."
He looked around the room, and back into her face. Some dim foreknowledge of what was to come between them seemed to flash before his eyes. It was like a sudden glimpse into that unseen world so close at hand, in which he--that Roman n.o.ble--had at any rate implicitly believed. There was a faint smile upon his face as his eyes met hers.
"At least," he said, "I shall be able to come and talk with you now at the railing, instead of watching you from my chair. For you were quite right in what you said just now. I have watched for you every day--for many days."
"You will be able to come," she said gravely, "if you care to. You mix so little with the men who love to talk scandal of a woman, that you may never have heard them--talk of me. But they do, I know! I hear all about it--it used to amuse me! You have the reputation of ultra exclusiveness! If you and I are known to be friends, you may have to risk losing it."
His brows were slightly contracted, and he had half closed his eyes--a habit of his when anything was said which offended his taste.
"I wonder whether you would mind not talking like that," he said.
"Why not? I would not have you hear these things from other people. It is best to be truthful, is it not? To run no risk of any misunderstandings."
"There is no fear of anything of that sort," he said calmly. "I do not pretend to be a magician or a diviner, yet I think I know you for what you are, and it is sufficient. Some day----"
He broke off in the middle of a sentence. The door had opened. A man stood upon the threshold. The servant announced him--Mr. Thornd.y.k.e.
Matravers rose at once to his feet. He had a habit--the outcome, doubtless, of his epicurean tenets, of leaving at once, and at any costs, society not wholly agreeable to him. He bowed coldly to the man who was already greeting Berenice, and who was carrying a great bunch of Parma violets.
Mr. Thornd.y.k.e was evidently astonished at his presence--and not agreeably.
"Have you come, Mr. Matravers," he asked coldly, "to make your peace?"
"I am not aware," Matravers answered calmly, "of any reason why I should do so."
Mr. Thornd.y.k.e raised his eyebrows, and drew an afternoon paper from his pocket.
"This is your writing, is it not?" he asked.
Matravers glanced at the paragraph.
"Certainly!"
Mr. Thornd.y.k.e threw the paper upon the table.