"What"s the good of a mind if you can"t change it? I don"t feel in a mood for wild beasts to-day, and I know you don"t care to see me fooling about with them. I would much rather sit quiet and talk to you."
With a woman who wants to sacrifice herself there is no disputing.
Besides, I had no desire to dispute. I acquiesced. We agreed to continue our drive.
"We"ll go round by Hampstead Heath," she said to the chauffeur. As soon as we were in motion again, she drew ever so little nearer and said, in her lowest, richest notes, and with a coquetry that was bewildering on account of its frankness:
"What were we talking of before we pulled up?"
"I don"t know what we were talking of," I said, "but we seem to have trodden on the fringe of a fairy-tale."
"Can"t we tread on it again?" She laughed happily.
"You have only to cast the spell of your witchery over me again."
She drew yet a little nearer and whispered: "I"m trying to do it as hard as I can."
An adorable softness came into her eyes, and her hand instinctively closed round mine in its boneless clasp. The long pent-up longing of the woman vibrated from her in waves that shook me to my soul. My senses swam. Her face quivered glorious before me in a black world. Her lips were parted. Careless of all the eyes in all the houses in the Avenue Road, St. John"s Wood, and in the head of a telegraph boy whom I only noticed afterwards, I kissed her on the lips.
All the fulness and strength of life danced through my veins.
"I told you I was quite alive!" I said with idiotic exultation.
She closed her eyes and leaned back. "Why did you do that?" she murmured.
"Because I love you," said I. "It has come at last."
Where we drove I have no recollection. Presumably an impression of green rolling plain with soft uplands in the distance signified that we pa.s.sed along Hampstead Heath; the side thoroughfare with villa residences on either side may have been Kilburn High Road; the flourishing, busy, noisy suburb may have been Kilburn: the street leading thence to the Marble Arch may have been Maida Vale. To me they were paths in Dreamland. We spoke but little and what we did say was in the simple, commonplace language which all men use in the big crises of life.
There was no doubt now of my choice. I loved her. Love had come to me at last. That was all I knew at that hour and all I cared to know.
Lola was the first to awake from Dreamland. She shivered. I asked whether she felt cold.
"No. I can"t believe that you love me. I can"t. I can"t."
I smiled in a masterful way. "I can soon show you that I do."
She shook her head. "I"m afraid, Simon, I"m afraid."
"What of?"
"Myself."
"Why?"
"I can"t tell you. I can"t explain. I don"t know how to. I"ve been wrong--horribly wrong. I"m ashamed."
She gripped her hands together and looked down at them. I bent forward so as to see her face, which was full of pain.
"But, dearest of all women," I cried, "what in the world have you to be ashamed of?"
She paused, moistened her lips with her tongue, and then broke out:
"I"ll tell you. A decent lady like your Eleanor Faversham wouldn"t tell.
But I can"t keep these things in. Didn"t you begin by saying I was a seductress? No, no, let me talk. Didn"t you say I could make a man do what I wanted? Well, I wanted you to kiss me. And now you"ve done it, you think you love me; but you don"t, you can"t."
"You"re talking the wickedest nonsense that ever proceeded out of the lips of a loving woman," I said aghast. "I repeat in the most solemn way that I love you with all my heart."
"In common decency you couldn"t say otherwise."
Again I saw the futility of disputation. I put my hand on hers.
"Time will show, dear. At any rate, we have had our hour of fairyland."
"I wish we hadn"t," she said. "Don"t you see it was only my sorcery, as you call it, that took us there? I meant us to go."
At last we reached Cadogan Gardens. I descended and handed her out, and we entered the hall of the mansions. The porter stood with the lift-door open.
"I"m coming up to knock all this foolishness out of your head."
"No, don"t, please, for Heaven"s sake!" she whispered imploringly. "I must be alone--to think it all out. It"s only because I love you so. And don"t come to see me for a day or two--say two days. This is Wednesday.
Come on Friday. You think it over as well. And if it"s really true--I"ll know then--when you come. Good-bye, dear. Make Gray drive you wherever you want to go."
She wrung my hand, turned and entered the lift. The gates swung to and she mounted out of sight. I went slowly back to the brougham, and gave the chauffeur the address of my eyrie. He touched his hat. I got in and we drove off. And then, for the first time, it struck me that an about-to-be-shabby gentleman with a beggarly two hundred a year, ought not, in spite of his quarterings, to be contemplating marriage with a wealthy woman who kept an electric brougham. The thought hit me like a stone in the midriff.
What on earth was to be done? My pride rose up like the _deux ex machina_ in the melodrama and forbade the banns. To live on Lola"s money--the idea was intolerable. Equally intolerable was the idea of earning an income by means against the honesty of which my soul clamoured aloud.
"Good G.o.d!" I cried. "Is life, now I"ve got to it, nothing but an infinite series of dilemmas? No sooner am I off one than I"m on another.
No sooner do I find that Lola and not Eleanor Faversham is the woman sent down by Heaven to be my mate than I realise the same old dilemma--Lola on one horn and Eleanor replaced on the other by Pride and Honour and all sorts of capital-lettered considerations. Life is the very Deuce," said I, with a wry appreciation of the subtlety of language.
Why did Lola say: "Your Eleanor Faversham?"
I had enough to think over for the rest of the evening. But I slept peacefully. Light loves had come and gone in the days past; but now for the first time love that was not light had come into my life.
CHAPTER XXI
"The Lord will find a way out of the dilemma," said I confidently to myself as I neared Cadogan Gardens two days after the revelatory drive.
"Lola is in love with me and I am in love with Lola, and there is nothing to keep us apart but my pride over a matter of a few ha"-pence." I felt peculiarly jaunty. I had just posted to Finch the last of the articles I had agreed to write for his reactionary review, and only a couple of articles for another journal remained to be written in order to complete my literary engagements. Soon I should be out of the House of Bondage in which I had been a slave, at first willingly and now rebelliously, from my cradle. The great wide world with its infinite opportunities for development received my liberated spirit. I had broken the shackles of caste. I had thrown off the perfumed garments of epicureanism, the vesture of my servitude. My emotions, once stifled in the enervating atmosphere, now awake fresh and strong in the free air. I was elemental--the man wanting the woman; and I was happy because I knew I was going to get her. Such must be the state of being of a dragonfly on a sunny day. And--shall I confess it?--I had obeyed the dragon-fly"s instinct and attired myself in the most resplendent raiment in my wardrobe. My morning coat was still irreproachable, my patent leather boots still gleamed, and having had some business in Piccadilly I had stepped into my hatter"s and emerged with my silk hat newly ironed. I positively strutted along the pavement.
For two days I had not seen her or heard from her or written to her. I had scrupulously respected her wishes, foolish though they were. Now I was on my way to convince her that my love was not a moment"s surge of the blood on a spring afternoon. I would take her into my arms at once, after the way of men, and she, after the way of women, would yield adorably. I had no doubt of it. I tasted in antic.i.p.ation the bliss of that first embrace as if I had never kissed a woman in my life. And, indeed, what woman had I kissed with the pa.s.sion that now ran through my veins? In that embrace all the ghosts of the past women would be laid for ever and a big and l.u.s.ty future would make glorious beginning. "By Heaven," I cried, almost articulately, "with the splendour of the world at my command why should I not write plays, novels, poems, rhapsodies, so as to tell the blind, groping, loveless people what it is like?
"Take me up to Madame Brandt!" said I to the lift-porter. "Madame Brandt is not in town, sir," said the man.
I looked at him open-mouthed. "Not in town?"
"I think she has gone abroad, sir. She left with a lot of luggage yesterday, and her maid, and now the flat is shut up."
"Impossible!" I cried aghast.