← catalogue

Cleo The Magnificent; Or, The Muse of the Real: A Novel

by Louis Zangwill · English · Gutenberg #29207 · 469,447 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cleo The Magnificent; Or, The Muse of the Real: A Novel
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Cleo The Magnificent; Or, The Muse of the Real: A Novel

Author: Louis Zangwill


        
Release date: June 23, 2009 [eBook #29207]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29207

Credits: E-text prepared by David Edwards, Stephanie Eason, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital material generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLEO THE MAGNIFICENT; OR, THE MUSE OF THE REAL: A NOVEL ***


E-text prepared by David Edwards, Stephanie Eason, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from
digital material generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian
Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)



Note: Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
      http://www.archive.org/details/cleomagnificento00zanguoft





CLEO THE MAGNIFICENT

by

LOUIS ZANGWILL

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. LOUIS ZANGWILL'S WORKS.


A Drama in Dutch.

_Spectator:_ Certainly a book which has not merely cleverness but real
vitality.

_Speaker:_ Deliciously original ... and told with great spirit, humor
and dramatic vigor.

"T. P." in _Weekly Sun:_ What a delightful creation Mrs. de Griendt
is! Indeed I should have personally been glad if we had had more of
her.... I think the reader will agree with me that I have not
exaggerated the literary merit of this exquisitely-described scene.


The World and a Man.

_Academy:_ A masterful novelist.

_Illustrated London News:_ One of the cleverest novels of the day.

_Pall Mall Gazette:_ Finely told.... It is an achievement in a high
form of art.

_Daily Chronicle:_ It contains many passages which the greatest
masters in the same _genre_ might have been proud to have written.


The Beautiful Miss Brooke.

_Brooklyn Eagle:_ A brilliant bit of work.

_Detroit Free Press:_ He has analyzed with ability and finish.... This
is a story to be admired for its discernment and its originality.

_Boston Beacon:_ The story is thoroughly entertaining and well done,
... and in analysis of character, force, and directness, it exceeds
the author's previous essays in fiction.

_Chicago Record:_ Very few recent novels which have come out of
England will compare with this story in two points--absolute
conciseness of form and analysis of motive.... Here is a theme of
vital truthfulness and Mr. Louis Zangwill has dealt with it with the
hand of a master of form....


A Nineteenth Century Miracle.

_Academy:_ As tantalizing a problem as was ever bound in cloth.

_Pall Mall Gazette:_ As tangled a skein as ever the brain of Gaboriau
evolved.

_Daily Chronicle:_ We have seldom read a better piece of
mystification.

_Morning Leader:_ It would probably defy the most ingeniously
imaginative reader to make in the course of the story even an
approximate leap toward the heart of the miracle that Louis Zangwill
has wrought for his astonishment.

       *       *       *       *       *


CLEO THE MAGNIFICENT

Or

The Muse of the Real

A Novel

by

LOUIS ZANGWILL

Author of "The Beautiful Miss Brooke," "The World and a Man," Etc., Etc.







New York: G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers.
London: Wm. Heinemann.
MDCCCXCVIII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1897, by G. W.
DILLINGHAM CO., In the office of the Librarian of Congress at
Washington, D. C.

_Cleo the Magnificent._




BOOK I.




CLEO THE MAGNIFICENT


CHAPTER I.


It was past midnight, and both men were smoking leisurely by the study
fireside. Morgan Druce sat just on the edge of a low chair, his long,
slim body bent forward, his clean-shaven boyish face well within the
glow of the fire. Though he appeared to be looking at it, he was only
conscious of its warmth.

Robert Ingram, middle-aged and bearded, lolled back in sensuous
comfort. "The long and the short of it is," he resumed, "you've a
soul-crisis on just at present. Crises are bad for the digestion, and
I took care to grow out of them long ago."

"Our temperaments are very different," said Morgan.

"That's what makes your case so difficult to meet," returned Ingram.
"It's your infernal temperament. One never knows how to take it. In
fact, you're the sort of person in whose existence I never really
believed; for though, as you know, I once had ideals and a literary
conscience, I was always aware they would go as soon as I had a market
for everything I could manufacture. You are the genuine incorruptible
artist, to whom art is sacred. I really don't know whether to be
doubtful of my cynicism or your sanity."

"That my case _is_ a pretty bad one I've already admitted," put in
Morgan.

"Now, if you were only some poor devil who was alone in the world,"
went on Ingram without heeding his remark, "I could take you in hand
and make something of you, for you've quite brains enough. Poor devils
are generally more reasonable in their views than you, even when
they're geniuses. You simply keep on wearing out your heart day after
day. Why? For fame? What is it worth? Well, I won't answer the
question--I deal quite enough in platitudes."

"You don't understand, Ingram. What do you really know of me?"

"Well, if I don't know you by this time, you must be an uncommonly
deep person--or perhaps I am an uncommonly shallow one."

Morgan Druce did not answer. His last remark had been more of a
reflection than an interrogation. What did Ingram really know of him,
he asked himself again, despite the five years of the indefinable
relation between them? Admitting that the man beneath the cynic was
kindly and sympathetic, yet he could not but be aware that Ingram's
treason to the aspirations of his youth had destroyed the finer edge
of feeling. His vision did not respond to subtler vibrations; his
judgment was broad and coarse.

Such was Morgan's intuition about Robert Ingram. He believed the man
to be sincere with him and he trusted him. And yet, as he looked up
now and saw Ingram, relapsed into his luxurious arm chair, blowing
rings of smoke, he seemed to detect something in his expression that
filled him with a vague distrust about the genuineness of his
professed interest in him. There was a sort of swagger in his whole
posture, a slickness about his well-dressed, well-fed body, and a
self-satisfaction in his somewhat burly face, nay, even in the manner
his fat fingers held his fat cigar, that set Morgan wondering for the
first time whether Ingram's attitude to literature did not in truth
sum up the whole man; whether that popular novelist and dramatist
could really have a place in his heart for anything that was of
unimportance to his own personal existence--for a poor devil of a
poetaster, for instance.

It was one of those sudden doubts that are created by a chance glimpse
from an accidental new point of view; and Morgan thrust it from him as
absurd and unjust. It could have no foundation, else why had Ingram
responded to his appeal at the beginning? Why had he tolerated his
calls all these years? Why were they talking together in that room
now?

He had often been puzzled about this relation between them, though, as
with his friendship with Lady Thiselton, its very strangeness and
originality pleased him. His relation to that charming woman was, he
felt, both indefinable and incredible; and his relation to the man
beside him, though less odd, could be included neither in the category
of acquaintanceship nor in that of friendship. Morgan was ignorant of
Ingram's personal life, even as Ingram was ignorant of such a large
fact in his own as Lady Thiselton. Their coming together had been
always on the ground of their one common interest; otherwise there was
the most absolute mutual exclusiveness between their existences.
True that Morgan's periodical appearance at this Albert Gate flat, of
which Ingram had made for himself a luxurious bachelor's home, had
eventually resulted in a certain frankness of speech and familiarity
of manner between them. But here their intercourse began and ended.

Perhaps Morgan had all along seen the position a little bit out of
perspective; the very freedom with which Ingram had come to unmask
himself before him and the intimacy with which they addressed each
other had perhaps misled him. The cheery breeziness of Ingram had
attracted him a good deal from the first, and he had liked the man for
the ready good nature he had displayed towards him. And altogether it
had been easy for him to think that he had done more than just rub up
against the surface of Ingram's life, the depth and fullness of which
he had scarcely realised.

At the beginning he had looked upon his being allowed to come and see
the older man now and again as a privilege. It had never struck him to
look at these visits of his from the other's point of view. It was
precisely this point of view that now forced itself upon him as he
struggled with the suspicion that had come to him. Had Ingram looked
upon him merely as somebody who deserved to be good-humouredly
tolerated? And was his openness only due to the consciousness of his
(Morgan's) being an outsider, into whose ears he had got into the
habit of speaking thoughts he would have told to no other living
person, pretty much as he might have written them in a diary? Such a
habit was easy to acquire with regard to an outsider whom one came
into contact with periodically, and with whom one had a long talk
each time.

He was not pleased, however, that such a train of thought should have
come to him, and, urged by something akin to remorse, his mind went
travelling back over the past five years in search of arguments in
favour of Ingram.

There was a long interval during which both smoked in silence.

"Do you remember," asked Morgan, at length, "the circumstances under
which we first became acquainted?"

"Perfectly," responded Ingram. "You wrote me a long letter, a rather
pathetic one. That was the first intimation I had of your existence."

"Did you destroy that letter?"

"I never destroy letters--compromising ones, of course, always
excepted."

"Then I may assume it still exists. Would it give you very much
trouble to find it now?"

"I pride myself upon my system," answered Ingram.

"Please put it to the test, then."

"Your system is excellent," admitted Morgan, as at the end of about
five minutes Ingram held up the sheets in triumph. "Now I wonder if
you'd read it to me. I want to hear how it sounds."

"Certainly, you amusing beggar," said Ingram. "You wrote it during
your last crisis and you want to compare your feelings then with now."

"I forget what I wrote," said Morgan, with an attempt at gaiety. "It
must be very dramatic, so please put the proper expression into it,
just as if it were a passage in one of your plays."

"Dear Mr. Ingram," read out that gentleman. "For nearly six years I
have been trying to live by writing verse--ever since I was seventeen.
Six years of passionate hope and longing, failure and failure, all
years of wandering in the desert, of groping in the dark. I know no
one--no one to criticise me--no one to encourage, to blame, or to
praise; only the voice of purpose in my breast. Amid loneliness this
passion for fruitless labour has grown strong, frenzied, blind.
Perhaps one day I shall penetrate--if I live. But for life one must
have food; for work one must have shelter. At twenty-three one does
not want to die; not when one has lived always in the future, when one
has striven and toiled for recognition that may yet come. Not mere
recognition of genius or talent, of knack or gift, but recognition of
Truth as opposed to Imposture, of my right to life, of my right to
give free and full expression of the individuality that is mine.

"As matters are now--I am utterly friendless so far as my inner life
is concerned--I can see no other end than fall. God knows what shape
that fall is destined to take; into what mire my soul must plunge in
the fight for life. I could bear anything if I were not so utterly
alone and helpless. I would do hack-work if I but knew Grub Street. I
would sell my soul to a publisher for fifty pounds a year. Anything to
get my foot on the lowest rung of the ladder! Anything to help me on
the way to freedom!

"If you could see me, speak to me, help me in any way! Believe me, I
do not wish to force my personality on you. I do not want you to give
me any material thing. I only beg of you to aid me in asserting my
claim on life by telling how I may win bread.

"I should be deeply grateful for a word from you. In any case, pardon
this intrusion. Yours, etc., Morgan Druce."

       *       *       *       *       *

Ingram drew a long breath and threw the sheets on to the table.

"Have I read it nicely?" he asked.

"And I wrote that--to you, Robert Ingram!" exclaimed Morgan, brokenly.

"You did," said Ingram, quietly. "And you know what the sequel was."

"You were moved by my appeal. You came to seek me out."

"Well, your letter interested me. It was not the letter of a duffer or
a swindler--the sort of thing you can tell by its ornate pompousness;
and it just caught me when I was somewhat bored by things, so that I
rather welcomed it as an excitement. I expected to find you lodging in
some miserable cottage--a Chatterton in a garret. I came to bring food
to the hungry. Instead----"

"You found me living in a palace standing in a fine park, with no lack
of loaves and fishes, of milk and honey."

"It was the greatest surprise of my life. When I could no longer doubt
that the only people called Druce in the neighbourhood lived in the
magnificent Elizabethan mansion, whose name was that of the supposed
cottage from which you addressed your letter, I began to think the
family kept a skeleton in one of the cupboards. In plain
language----"

"You thought one of the members of the family must be a lunatic."

"Anyway, the champagne was first-class, the cigars were worth
half-a-crown apiece," said Ingram, laughing.

"And when you had gone into the matter you thought that if I wasn't
quite a lunatic, I was not far short of one for disagreeing with my
father."

"Frankly, I did."

"You never really sympathised."

"I did--all the time I conceived of you as a Chatterton."

"A palace is worse than a garret," asserted Morgan, "under the
conditions in which I lived."

"Bah! You know nothing about garrets. And, as I pointed out to you,
even if, in spite of the competition, you did sell your soul to a
publisher for fifty pounds a year, he'd take care to stick to it. You
were hopelessly wrong in your ideas about getting your foot on the
first rung of the ladder."

"I am ashamed of ever having had those ideas--of ever having been
willing to suppress my individuality, if only temporarily, for the
sake of living. It all ought to have ended then. Why did you advise me
to go on?"

"I only advised you to go on writing--I took the other thing for
granted. In the light of my experience of myself at the same age, I
judged it was the only advice you would take. And then having entered
on the adventure, I wanted to finish it; so naturally I set about
making peace between father and son. Excellent man, your father! So
open to reason! You must have been deuced clumsy to irritate him. To
refuse to enter such a business! You'd have been a rich man in a few
years. But I'm sorry to see your last remark implied a sort of
reproach."

"It was a stupid remark," admitted Morgan. "Of course I wanted to go
on. At twenty-three one does not want to die."

"If there is still a prospect of being allowed to write poetry," added
Ingram. "You wanted to be put in the way of earning fifty pounds a
year, and naturally you invoked the assistance of the man who was
reputed to have a weakness for embryo genius. However, at the age of
twenty-eight, it appears, one does want to die. I helped you over the
last crisis; perhaps I may help you over this one. Let us look at the
facts. You've had a good chance and you've been defeated. Your poetry
is not wanted. As I've told you before, I am not competent to say
whether it's great or whether it's downright drivel--it's years since
I discovered my limitations. You've been imprudent enough to pay the
expenses of publishing two small volumes, and certain it is that
nobody found any greatness in them. I admit I couldn't make head or
tail of the bulk of the stuff--I'm satisfied myself to write what
plain folk can understand. To put the matter bluntly, you send work to
market that most people would look on as the ravings of a lunatic.
Now, my advice is--cut poetry. There is plenty in the world for you to
live for. Go and travel awhile. See men and cities, sculpture and
paintings. Study humanity instead of merely thinking about it. Sail
over the wide seas; breathe in the good air; be true to your youth and
fall in love right bravely. You are rich--all this is in your power. I
am sure your father will be pleased."

Morgan was touched by the other's enthusiasm.

"I have always misunderstood you," he cried, remorsefully; "you are
not the mere gross tradesman you boast of being."

"Really, you embarrass me. Anyway, I hope that, now your opinion of me
has gone up, my advice will bear fruit. After which I shall not mind
confessing that that last nice bit is a quotation from my first novel.
I could have invented nothing more apropos."

"You give me advice I am powerless to act on," said Morgan, after some
hesitation. "I spent my last shilling to-day."

"No money!" ejaculated Ingram. "The deuce! Don't you draw a regular
income from your father?"

"That was not the arrangement," said Morgan. "I was the first-born,
and he was mortally offended by my refusal to enter the bank and carry
on the name and the tradition of the house. During all those six years
there had been friction and bitterness between us. At last came an
appalling outbreak, and I was suffering from the full pain of my
wounds when I wrote to you. You were good enough to tell him that
genius sometimes earned quite considerable amounts, and the ultimate
result of your intercession, of which you only knew the happy issue,
not the details, was that he agreed to give me six thousand pounds,
with the understanding I was never to expect another penny from him.
My brother was to take my commercial birthright and I the
responsibility for my whole future. I've earned nothing save an odd
few shillings now and again, and all I had from my father I've somehow
managed to mess away."

"Good God!" shrieked Ingram. "Six thousand pounds in five years! An
exemplary young man of simple habits like you! What could you
have done with it all? You're not a spendthrift. You don't gamble, do
you?"

"I don't know how it has gone," said Morgan, helplessly. "I made bad
investments, I lent some of it away, and I suppose I spent the rest."

"And you wanted to sell your soul to a publisher for fifty pounds a
year! The fact is, I suppose, you don't know the value of money at
all--it just melts away."

"For me money has no value. I don't care a pin about it," said Morgan,
doggedly.

"That's scarcely the point," said Ingram. "Whether you care about it
or not, you'll have to raise some of it. Let me interview your father.
The fault is his. He knew you were a poet, and yet he was imprudent
enough to give you capital instead of an income."

"It was my doing. I wanted to be perfectly free and independent of
him--not to be worried by sordid complaints and lectures and warnings
with each quarter's cheque. I told him so frankly, and I so annoyed
him even at the end that he gave me the money, saying he did not care
what I did with it. I certainly intend to stand by the arrangement I
made with him. That money was to be the last, and the last it shall
be."

"You are difficult," said Ingram.

"You must be indulgent."

Ingram lighted a new cigar and appeared lost in reflection a little
while.

"There is only one thing, then, I can suggest," he said at last.

"And that is?" asked Morgan, in a tone that clearly indicated his
belief that he was beyond all suggestions.

"You can be my ghost. Don't be alarmed--you must do some work, you
know, and that is the only work I can think of for you. I have to
refuse very many commissions. Try your hand at some of them and I'll
run over the work and sign. As I've said before, you've got brains
enough if you'll only use them in the right direction."

"You mean it for the best; but I could not be party to a fraud."

"How so? My business in life is to manufacture stories and plays for
the people. My signature merely guarantees the quality just as the
name of a maker on a pianoforte guarantees the instrument. But every
such maker employs others whose names do not appear in connection with
the finished product."

"The whole thing is impossible. Forgive me for ignoring your
arguments. I ought never to have troubled you with my miserable
concerns. It would, perhaps, have been better if I had never written
you this."

And Morgan took up his own letter from the table, morbidly fascinated
by it, and impelled to read again the words that had been wrung from
him five years before by his torturing sense of his position in life.

But, as he began to read, an odour he had been vaguely conscious of
inhaling all along was wafted very perceptibly to his nostrils. Then
he became aware that the letter was subtly scented.

An unreasoning anger came upon him.

"Some woman has had this in her possession," he exclaimed.

Ingram looked at him strangely, hesitated, then seemed finally to
comprehend.

"You are a veritable Lecoq," he said coolly.

Then that conception of Ingram that had before begun to hover in
Morgan's mind now forced itself upon him wholly. He had always
understood that the man had been inclined to take him somewhat as a
good joke, but this he had not minded so much, so long as he believed
that his personality and his aspirations really interested him. Now
his sense of not having been looked upon seriously predominated, and
with it came an exaggerated consciousness of everything in Ingram that
was obnoxious to his spirit. If the re-reading of the letter had been
a torture for him, the knowledge that it had been ruthlessly exposed
to other eyes aggravated the pain tenfold, especially at this
particular moment.

"And so this person, whose vile scent impregnates this, has had my
soul laid bare before her for her amusement!"

"Whose vile scent?" repeated Ingram, angrily. "I must ask you not to
use such language about any friend of mine."

"You went to her, no doubt, to be praised and fawned upon for your
generosity to me, and afterwards----"

"Don't be a fool!" exclaimed Ingram, cutting him short.

"Thank you. I shall take the advice. I have been a fool long enough."

Morgan moved out of the room, leaving Ingram flushed and motionless.




CHAPTER II.


As Morgan had told Ingram, he had that day spent his last shilling. He
had thus no option but to walk home to his rooms in Chester Terrace,
Regent's Park. It was a long walk, and one had already struck, but he
did not hurry. The night was a fine one of early spring, and it suited
his mood to linger in the free air.

He had not really gone to Ingram for advice, though he had been unable
to prevent his despair from showing itself. He was sorry that the
exhaustion of his funds should have come just at the moment when he
had resigned himself to the final abandonment of the ambition that had
determined his whole life. He was sure now that a mind like Ingram's
would inevitably set down his despair to his money difficulties. But
the next moment he told himself it was grotesque on his part to care
just then what inference Ingram might draw about him. Ingram and he
would be concerned with each other but little in the future!

But what was the future to be? Were there not others who would be
fully as astonished as Ingram at learning the truth? And even if it
were possible for him to hide besides there was Margaret Medhurst.
What meaning could the future have for him without her?

His old inner life had at length come to an end and he was now to pass
from it into he knew not what--perhaps a raw, cold air. And yet his
feeling now was not so entirely one of despair as when he had that
evening rung Ingram's bell. He seemed to have been stung out of his
terrible apathy. The smart had stirred up his deadened nerves. He was
trying to set in order the jumble that possessed his mind and to think
clear and straight.

The vague figure of a scented woman reading his letter haunted him,
and at moments Ingram was added to the picture, and he saw them
uniting in mockery of him--prosaic, prosperous author, and strange,
romantic serpent-woman!

Though that letter of five years before had been wrung from him, he
had written it with but the vaguest idea of sending it. A romantic
impulse had dictated its form as an appeal to a prominent novelist,
and it was only when he had finished it that the same romantic impulse
urged him to post it. His feeling about it was purely poetic, and he
scarcely realised he was addressing a real, living person. The
commercial world of literature was to him a mysterious, far-off chaos,
and at very bottom he had no belief the letter would be the means of
his getting nearer to it.

So far as he was concerned at the moment, he had sent his bolt flying
into the clouds, and the contingency of its being shown about had
never occurred to him; moreover, if Ingram had left his appeal
unanswered, the fact he now resented so much would never have come
within the sphere of his consciousness. But to become cognisant of it
years later at a moment of despair humiliated him unbearably. The mere
re-reading of the letter had already humiliated him, for the lapse of
time, the change of circumstance, the literary degeneration of Ingram,
and his very acquaintance with the man, had made him feel the words
very differently than when they had come spontaneously out of his
blood. His sense of their futility added to his resentment.

But as he now walked along he was beginning to be conscious that, side
by side with this resentment, had come something fantastic, something
luring, immanent in the far faintness of the scent that had perfumed
his letter.

He found himself repeating Browning's lines with a sense of the thrill
and romance of life.

     "Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
      Of labdanum, and aloe balls,
      Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
      From out her hair: such balsam falls
      Down seaside mountain pedestals,
      From treetops, where tired winds are fain,
      Spent with the vast and howling main,
      To treasure half their island-gain.

     "And strew faint sweetness from some old
      Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud,
      Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
      Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
      From closet long to quiet vowed,
      With mothed and dropping arras hung,
      Mouldering her lute and books among,
      As when a queen, long dead, was young."


If his sense of overwhelming defeat made for despair, he was conscious
of his nature being effectively appealed to from another direction. If
he had that evening determined to throttle his ambition and write
poetry no more, he seemed to have become aware of the stirring of a
new motive for existence. But what it was he could not definitely tell
himself.

And always before him rose the figure of the scented serpent-woman
holding his letter in her long fingers, her white teeth gleaming in
mockery!

"I shall live--live!" he exclaimed, as he entered his own door at
last.

He lighted the gas in his large, comfortable sitting-room, and noticed
there were letters for him on the mantel resting against the clock,
whose hands pointed to half-past two.

But he would not look at them just yet. His was a strange mood just
then and he did not wish his thoughts disturbed. There was something
he had to do at once. Let the letters wait till he had finished.

Again he heard Ingram's voice reading. Every word had branded itself
on him.

Soon he had the large table littered with bundles of manuscript. They
represented his poetic output. Many of them had travelled far and
wide; never again should they be sent forth into the world to bring
him that which his heart had most desired. He took up one here and
there and ran his eye through it. Considering the years he had worked,
the output--for a young man's muse--was perhaps not large. But then he
had only taken up his pen when inspiration had come. Certainly during
the earlier years most of his time had been spent in reading and
study. Otherwise he had had a habit of losing himself in the play of
his imagination, awaking after having lived in worlds innumerable.
Thus the actual amount of verse he had produced in the first years was
really quite small.

He could not help dawdling a little before proceeding with the work of
destruction. They were strange products, most of these poems of his;
mirroring vague metaphysical moods, unseizable mystic fancies;
incomprehensible save to one whose own inwardness they suggested, or
to one of infinite emotional sympathy. A blurred, shapeless spirit
brooded behind these melodious masses of words, these outpourings of
disconnected ideas--a spirit invisible for reason and responsive only
to divination, as love responds to love. Sometimes it was hidden amid
a flow of sensuous images; sometimes in an impression of a landscape,
of an atmospheric effect, of a play of light and shade. Such
impression was never pure and complete, such visual effect never
pictured for its own sake; for here and there amid it would lurk a
phrase that was not of it, that struck a note--an elusive
key-note--which set vibrating something haunting in its familiarity,
terrifying in its strangeness; something mocking and meaningless, that
went echoing away into the infinite.

He had not been able to find contentment in the mere presentation of
beauty. Even where he dealt with the concrete there was always
something to destroy the semblance of reality. The world that was
revealed to his vision was a surface-world, for he had not pierced it
by experience, but only dimly through the medium of books, and the
elements it gave him he used freely. But his combinations of them
were seldom along the lines of the possible. Here a colour would flash
out at one; there a jewel would sparkle; now a perfume would be
wafted; now a bird would sing. But all this individual definiteness
was merged into a general blur, or formed itself into a sort of
kaleidoscopic pattern that subtly suggested a meaning to be seized.

And all that Morgan now looked over again gave back to him the spirit
he had put into them. The gaps in his expression of that spirit he was
blind to. Shaped in the mould of his peculiar fantasy, these poems
lived for the mind that had created them, that had been compelled by
its own inner necessity to give them what was to him their particular
form, to others their very formlessness.

His belief that this poetry was of immortal quality was unshaken, but
he had been born into a wrong world, he now told himself. He was aware
that he did not know the world of every-day affairs; that he was not
fitted to know it. The very thought of its swirling incomprehensible
activities turned him giddy; and if he walked amid it daily it was for
him pure visual perception. Beyond that perception he did not seek to
look and so he escaped discomfort.

Well, let him not linger. His old life--the singer's life--was over,
and nothing of it must remain.

The grate was a big one, but even then the work of destruction would
take some time. A fire had been laid that morning, but had not been
lighted. He put back the coals into the vase and filled the grate with
his manuscripts. Then, striking a match, he watched the blaze
blackening and curling up the edges of the sheets.

When eventually the table was bare, he reflected it was strange he
should now feel so little emotion. His predominating sense was one of
physical fatigue, but the figure of the scented woman was still with
him. Would it not be splendid, he asked himself, now that his past
life lay there in a charred heap, to enter with his new life into the
life of this woman--nay, to win her away from Ingram?

He took his letters. There were three of them, and they read as
follows:

     "My Dear Morgan:--This is to let you know I shall be in town
     to-morrow. I want you to come and meet me at Victoria at one
     o'clock and we shall lunch together before I go on to my hotel.
     My chief business is to see friend Medhurst about my eyes. I fear
     my present reading-glasses no longer suit me. By the way, I've
     some splendid ideas for you to work out. It's quite clear to me
     now from whom you inherited your genius. Mind you are in time.
     Your dad, Archibald D.

     "P. S.--The 'Pleiad' to-day publishes that little poem of yours
     about Diana. I feel very proud of being your father. Present my
     regards to Mr. Ingram."


Morgan merely smiled. He had not had a poem published for many months,
and this was his first indication that the one in point had been
accepted. Curious, he reflected, it should just appear that day.


     "Dear Prince Charming," ran the second. "This is to reproach you
     for not coming yesterday afternoon. For two hours I waited
     without giving up hope. Softest-hearted of mortals, for me alone
     is your heart a stone! I had all the sensations of Mariana in
     the moated grange, but whilst you are in the world, I certainly
     shall not wish myself dead.

     "When are you going to take me to Whitechapel? My mind wanders
     longingly from this prosaic Belgrave Square to yon fantastic
     region. It's quite a month since we last got lost together. I
     have next Monday and Thursday free. I wonder whether it will
     occur to you to connect the two last sentences. Either day--or
     both--will suit me. This doesn't count as a letter. I shall write
     you a real one this evening. Helen."


     "Dear Morgan," read the last. "As you have probably heard, your
     father is coming to town to see Mr. Medhurst professionally, and
     of course he is to dine here to-morrow evening. Come in and join
     us; we shall be strictly _en famille_. By the way, Margaret has
     not only finished 'Chiron' and the 'Spanish Marauder,' but she
     has actually sold both! They look very well, indeed, in bronze.
     Yours ever, Kate Medhurst.

     "P. S.--Diana sends her love and hopes that if you have any more
     stamps you will bring them with you."


This postscript was in the writing of the young lady herself.

The reading of these letters did not give him any pleasure just then.
These other lives in whose round he was an important figure were going
on without any intuition of his inner tragedy, without any suspicion
that they would henceforwards have to go on without him; that he could
no more carry them forward into his vague, new life than those equally
vital elements of his old self--his poems! How strangely did their
moods contrast with his--his father's playful good-humour, Lady
Thiselton's sprightly _camaraderie_ and Mrs. Medhurst's cheerful
domesticity!

But the last letter made him wince. It was only a simple invitation,
but it hurt him as though a finger had been put on a raw wound. For
he, who had made a failure of his existence, whose one remaining link
with life was a mere grotesque possibility of an adventure with an
unknown serpent-woman, loved Margaret Medhurst with a poet's
despairing love.

The figure of the scented woman floated up again. She had let the
letter fall into her lap now and her wonderful face seemed to smile at
him.




CHAPTER III.


He awoke in the morning, acceptant of what he had done in the night. A
calmness had set in and with it had come a clarification of his
thought. His grasp of the position was more definite, and his feeling
was that, to meet it adequately, he must disattach himself completely
from the past.

But the future was mystic and seductive.

However, his tendency to dwell on it had to be put aside in favour of
commonplace things that must be done immediately. As Ingram had
pointed out to him, he might be as indifferent to money as he pleased,
yet he must give it his first attention. Though ready cash was
exhausted, he remembered almost with surprise he had several
possessions that might be converted into it.

His breakfast was served to him as usual, but he did not open the
promised letter which duly arrived from Lady Thiselton. His general
sense of things filled his mind sufficiently.

His first business was to wait upon the family jeweller in Oxford
Street, from whom he had made occasional purchases for birthday
presents. The experience was a strange one for him, and he felt
somewhat timid about it. However, when he had explained what he
wanted, he was agreeably astonished at the man's insisting, with a
great show of goodwill towards him, he must accommodate him with
fifty pounds, and before Morgan had recovered from his flurry, he had
given an I. O. U. for the amount and had bank notes in his pocket.

"Why, I shouldn't think of charging _you_ any interest," the jeweller
had declared, and Morgan was much puzzled to understand why. Nor did
he quite know what this piece of paper he had signed represented.

He had now accomplished all the action his brain had planned, and it
was time to go and meet his father. And then it struck him as curious
that life seemed to be ignoring his ideas and to be taking him forward
despite himself. With all his intense feeling that he must complete
his disattachment from the past, its impetus was stronger than he.
Somehow he _must_ go and meet his father; he _must_ dine with the
Medhursts that evening.

As was clear from Archibald Druce's note, the relation between father
and son was scarcely so theatrical as Ingram might have gathered from
Morgan's talk the evening before, a fact of which Morgan was well
aware. He had not really intended to give Ingram a theatrical
impression, but the somewhat subtle truth could never have been
conveyed in the few words they had had together, apart from the fact
that it must inevitably have got coloured by the mood of the moment.

There had been many vicissitudes between father and son. The latter
well remembered the moment when, unable to keep his big idea to
himself any longer, he had divulged it to his father as they were
strolling together in the grounds one sunny afternoon. The two had
always been on the best of terms. Now Archibald Druce's ideas about
his Morgan's career had been definitely shaped for years. He intended
that the boy should, after passing through the University, enter the
banking business with which his whole life had been associated, and
ultimately become a partner therein. But Morgan's own idea of his
mission in life seemed to the banker so extraordinary that it made him
laugh outright. Unfortunately, too, in addition to pooh-poohing his
son's unexpected ambition, he went on, by way of implanting in him
sensible and serious views of life, to point out that the right to
spend money had to be acquired by effort expended.

Morgan had made up his mind at a very boyish age that he was destined
to become an immortal bard; the conceptions he had then formed had
remained with him in all their boyish freshness. They were pure
conceptions, detached from the realities, of which he then knew
nothing. Poetry was a great and glorious thing, and when he first
decided that his whole life could be devoted to nothing nobler, he had
selected it away from the actual material circumstances from which
existence cannot be extricated.

But in this first talk with his father he had already been brought
into collision with these sordid complications. Archibald's
well-intentioned scorn had inflicted a wound that pained still after
the lapse of years. Moreover, by raising financial questions, he had
unwittingly poured poison into that wound. Morgan, however, refused to
have his eyes opened and clung desperately to his detached conception
of poetry and the poet's life.

The thought of his being destined for business terrified the lad. He
felt he could never live in the atmosphere of an office. He was born
to sing, to charm, to enchant. What had he to do with money? He must
argue with his father and convince him. And he effectually did succeed
in making him understand he was serious. The banker was upset, and
Morgan, carried along by the freshness and purity of his enthusiasm,
made an altogether wrong judgment of the position. For the first
opposition and the first clash of wills represented a bigger fact to
Morgan than it did to the father, who, not entirely understanding the
force of the ferment in his son's mind, as yet took it for granted
that time was only needed to eradicate this strange, startling
madness. He therefore pressed Morgan to proceed at once to the
University, in the belief he would take a more sensible view of things
when he was a few years older. But Morgan refused. He held to his
ambition with frenzied persistence, and he had felt the bitterness of
dependence. He determined, therefore, to try his wings at once,
remembering that money _was_ attached to success, and, in the optimism
of enthusiasm, forming impossible hopes of supporting himself before
long.

Archibald Druce did not mind his being apparently idle for awhile,
and, by a sort of common understanding, the subject was not touched
upon between them for some time. Morgan perforce had to live at home,
and, as time went by, this very fact caused him a great deal of
misery. Perhaps the very magnificence of his surroundings made matters
worse for him.

His mother, too, was against him, and, after awhile she seemed to
expend all the time she could spare from playing the rôle of _grande
dame_ in the county, in egging on his father against him. The sense of
her injustice embittered him, for he knew he could not fairly be
accused of spending his time unprofitably. He was studying perhaps
harder than he would have done at college, for he was a student almost
as much as he was poet. Of recreation, though, he had no stint. He
rode, fished, swam and boated; but always alone, for his instinct made
for solitude. With his brother he was not unfriendly, but there was no
intimate sympathy between the two.

During the years that followed there were many fallings-out and
reconciliations between father and son. If the banker had been
entirely able to rid his mind of the plans he had so long cherished
for his son, he would have been quite content that the latter should
go through life as a gentleman of wealth and leisure. But he was
wedded to the business to which he had given the best energies of his
life, and the idea that Morgan must eventually take his place in it
amounted almost to an obsession. A reconciliation always made Morgan
happy, for its own sake quite as much as for the belief that his
ambition was being recognised. Estrangement and friction were always
terrible things to him and caused him unspeakable suffering.

His letter to Ingram was the culmination. It was sincere and expressed
exactly what he felt. The immediate cause of the mood which prompted
it had been Archibald's putting before him again all the old
propositions and his letting it be clearly seen he had never really
abandoned them.

Then followed a few months of happiness in London. At last he felt
master of his own destiny--free of all that had vexed him, free to
succeed. But the routine of his days was much the same as before. He
studied and wrote and dreamed. Now and again he was allowed to come
and chat with Ingram. Friends of the family made him welcome at their
houses whenever he chose to emerge from the isolation that was natural
to him. At the Medhurst's, in particular, he was almost one of the
family.

But, some time after Morgan's leaving home, Archibald Druce retired
from active affairs and began to acquire the taste for reading. And
now came a great change in Archibald's attitude. Morgan one day
realised with astonishment that his father had become perfectly
reconciled to the idea of his following a literary career, nay, that
he was now proud of having a son who was a man of letters. Archibald,
in fact, seemed to be relishing the literary atmosphere tremendously.
He made constant additions to his library, consulting Morgan as to the
choice of books, and spent a great part of his time amid its oaken
magnificence. He read very many novels, buying the newest ones as they
appeared. When Morgan's first volume of poems was published, Archibald
went about in a state of intense excitement. He bought fifty copies to
give away, and never went abroad without carrying one in his pocket.
He bragged and boasted about Morgan, till one might have imagined the
latter had scornfully refused the laureateship.

Morgan, however, had no great respect for his father's literary
judgment. It was all very well when he came to him for advice about
his reading, but there were times when the banker did not hesitate to
lay down the law, for he was growing accustomed to a respectful
hearing on the part of his friends, which was somewhat spoiling him.
All his world knew he had trouble with his eyes. As a matter of fact,
his sight was scarcely worse than it had been for years, his visual
weakness being little more than imaginary, and but one of the
manifestations of his literary phase.

Altogether, Archibald Druce seemed quite satisfied with Morgan's slow
progress. Once he had finally got rid of the notion of making Morgan a
banker, he was a delightful man to have for a father, a fact which
Morgan fully appreciated. Often had he asked the latter if "he were
all right for money," and Morgan had replied he was; so that he knew
quite well his father would take a very lenient view of his
expenditure and had no desire at all to hold him to the arrangement
made. But Archibald always limited himself to the general question,
and never sought to know whether Morgan was living on his interest or
spending the capital.

The relation between the two now was a perfectly hearty one. The
banker was glad to have Morgan home for a few days now and again, and
equally enjoyed coming to town occasionally to see him. But in spite
of his father's liberality and cordiality, Morgan's pride, combined
with the sense of his failure, made him determine never to come upon
the paternal purse again. It was this very pride perhaps that had made
him somewhat distort his father's attitude--rather by implication than
by any definite statement--in his last evening's conversation with
Ingram.

He was but too conscious of that attitude as he waited on the platform
for the train to arrive--it had gradually become an intolerable irony
to him.




CHAPTER IV.


"I'm perfectly ravenous," said Archibald Druce. "We must lunch at
once."

Morgan restrained his usual impatient stride, falling in with the
slow, dignified step of his sire, who, though of broad build, would
have been as tall as his son, had it not been for a slight stoop, of
which he was proud, as it gave him an air of erudition.

They repaired to a restaurant close at hand and had a sumptuous lunch
served them. Archibald, who had a weakness for punning, was in one of
his gayest moods, and was not above being occasionally appreciated by
the waiter. Morgan did his best to appear cheerful; he did not wish
his father to suspect anything was amiss. He listened to a humourous
account of home affairs with smiling face, even interposing a few
humourous comments of his own. Eventually he enquired about his
father's eyesight and Archibald's face brightened still more. Soon the
banker grew eloquent on the subject, detailing all the minute symptoms
a morbid attention had detected.

"But I've great faith in John--he's the cleverest oculist in the
Kingdom. And so I thought I'd better come up to town and see him
before--ha, I was just going to let my secret slip out!"

And Archibald sipped his coffee and beamed at Morgan behind his gold
spectacles.

"That sounds like a direct encouragement to me to be inquisitive,"
said Morgan.

"Well, if you'd like to know the secret, it's simply this: I'm going
to write a book."

"What about?" Morgan's tone and gesture summed up his amused
astonishment.

"A good many things," answered Archibald, his face assuming a serious
expression. "You see, I've got into the habit of thinking a good deal
of late, and I've come to the conclusion I ought to be putting my
thoughts down on paper. New ideas occur to me almost every day, and
I'm really beginning to feel that a man like myself can derive more
mental culture from the free play of his own original thought than
from simply following other men's, however admirable it be. The latter
course rather encourages a certain mental laziness, whereas in
thinking for oneself so many points occur which cannot be passed over
till they have been wrestled with and vanquished. Now yesterday, for
instance, some very stiff problems occurred to me--as thus: Can a man
justly lay claim to merit for the talents he possesses, and is it
immodest of him to let others perceive by his conversation that he is
quite aware he possesses them? Or, on the contrary, is not the fact
that he is talented purely a piece of good fortune, and would it not
be the merest humbug on his part to pretend to be blind to it? Again,
if a man performs what is called a good deed, ought he to claim merit
for that? Does not the performance of such a deed give one pleasure,
and is not that pleasure the real end in view? It has struck me of
late that on such points there's a great confusion of thinking, and
between ourselves, Morgan, I've been lately arriving at conclusions
that most people would call revolutionary and dangerous. But I set
truth above all things, and I can't do better than devote my remaining
years to its service. Now, I think I have really sufficient material
for an original and interesting volume. I have been a man of affairs
all my days, and I think the views of such a man who has lived in
contact with the world should at least be as valuable as those of a
college professor who has been secluded from it. It is really about
this volume I propose to write that I want to consult you. I have made
a memorandum of a few points I should like to thresh out thoroughly
with you."

Morgan was rather startled at this sudden and serious awakening of
literary ambition in his father, though he had before now had many a
hint that he was wrestling with formidable ethical and moral
difficulties. He could see Archibald had set his heart on writing the
book, so he could not do otherwise than encourage him. It would simply
keep him enjoyably occupied, and, as the task would no doubt cause him
to dip into accredited works on ethical science, he would ultimately
discover that the problems he had chanced upon were not quite so
original as he supposed.

But even while Morgan discussed the idea with his father, he had a
curious dream-like consciousness of his own affairs, which somehow
seemed to be retarded by this appearance of the banker in London. And,
all the time he was endeavoring to concentrate himself on the
conversation, he was aware of that floating vision which had never
ceased to haunt him.

Minute details respecting the work were gone into, even to the colour
of the paper on which it was to be written. Morgan did not know
whether blue or buff was the more restful for the eyes, and the
question was left open for John Medhurst to decide. Archibald looked
tremendously pleased at his son's reception of his project, and it
certainly raised his opinion of Morgan's judgment.

"I'm glad to see you've not been spoiled by success, Morgan," he could
not help saying.

It was a strange irony, Morgan thought, that his father's acceptance
of him should be so complete just when he himself had finally
abandoned all hope. The reflection would have been a bitter one had he
not found Archibald's pride in him amusing, in view of the latter's
new theories about "merit."

Later on, at the hotel, Archibald produced the copy of the "Pleiad,"
which contained the verses inspired by Margaret Medhurst's younger
sister, and insisted on reading them aloud. His paternal pride was
more than satisfied by the small sum total of Morgan's published work,
and each little addition to it furnished an occasion of great
excitement for him.

Of course, Ingram was mentioned before long, and Morgan had to say
that that gentleman and he were no longer friends. Archibald said he
was sorry, and looked it. He considered Ingram a great author, and the
breach rather a misfortune.

"Is there no hope of smoothing things over?" he asked. "Why not take
me into your confidence? I flatter myself I have had some experience
in patching up even serious differences between people, and you know
I'm at your disposal."

Time had, indeed, brought about a strange reversal of rôle between the
banker and Ingram.

Morgan explained that Ingram had behaved in such a way as to make him
revise his estimate of him, but that it would scarcely serve any
purpose to go into details.

The banker again said he was sorry, and looked it still more than
before. Anyhow, as the subject was so obviously disagreeable to
Morgan, he would not allude to it again.

In the afternoon they took a little stroll together, and, after
partaking of a cup of tea, they parted, promising to see each other at
Wimpole Street.

"By the way," said his father, at the last moment, "I hear from Katie
that they haven't seen very much of you of late, and that you had
struck them as pre-occupied. She even seemed rather doubtful about
your coming this evening. I hope you don't stick too long at your
desk. I've long since found out that sort of thing is a mistake."




CHAPTER V.


Morgan arrived rather late at Wimpole Street, for father and son had
dallied almost till evening. However, he was the earlier of the two,
and he took the opportunity of presenting Diana with the stamps he had
got together for her and of chatting with her about her collection and
her newest acquisitions. He was relieved to find that Mrs. Medhurst
gave him his usual warm welcome, but at the same time he felt rather
guilty about his unsuspected intention to cease all relations with the
family. This house was more associated with happiness for him than any
other place in the world; he had passed in it perhaps the best moments
of his life. He had always been a favourite with the Medhursts, and
they had believed in him and taken his part even in the early days
when he had been looked at askance in his own family.

Were oblivion of all else possible, he would have felt to-night
supremely happy, for that needed but the sole condition of his being
where he was. But he thought of the borrowed money in his pocket, of
the charred remains of his manuscripts, of his hopeless love for
Margaret, now so near him, speaking to him, of the vague future to
which he was going to abandon himself. And the comfort he could not
help finding here mingled strangely with the emotions that troubled
his spirit and gave him a quivering sense of unrest.

The link between him and the Medhursts had been from the first one of
more than ordinary friendship. For, some thirty years before, when
Mrs. Medhurst was only seventeen, Archibald Druce had been a suitor
for her hand. But her romance with John Medhurst had already begun,
and she waited to marry her true love seven years later. Though
Archibald married within a few years of his rejection, he had all but
kept Kate to her promise to be a sister to him all his life. Certainly
he had remained one of her most devoted admirers.

Mrs. Medhurst was still beautiful, and even Morgan admitted that she
was just the mother a girl like Margaret ought to have. Her face was
winning and sweet, and the simplicity of her attire held no suggestion
of severity. Morgan's eye was pleased by the quiet harmony of the gray
silk dress with its silver girdle and its touches of silver at the
throat and wrists.

Margaret herself was only just nineteen. Taller than her mother by
half a head, she was built with a slender grace and a rare purity of
outline. A somewhat high forehead lent her distinction, perhaps
accentuating the shade of thoughtfulness that was characteristic of
her expression, and that never clashed with its sweetness; rather were
the two qualities blended into a charming spirituality. Her dark blue,
velvety eyes suggested the clear depth of a stream, her cheeks were
modelled in a full, soft curve, her nostrils were delicately
chiselled, and her mouth was small, red and sweet. The neck showed
cool and white above the silver-blue of her girl's soft, silk evening
gown that came almost to her throat. Margaret rather affected
silver-blue--she knew quite well it made her adorable; for, being a
sweet human being, she had just a charming touch of vanity, and would
have been less charming without it. The only other note of colour was
given by the quaint silver buckle at her waist, for the sash was of
the same material as the gown itself.

At sixty-three, Archibald Druce--for the old fellow's heart was still
susceptible--worshipped her almost as much as he had once worshipped
her mother. And Morgan had only realised how she had grown into his
spirit just when despair had begun to show itself again. The discovery
had perhaps given him a fresh spurt of hope, but the charred mass had
marked the end of that.

John Medhurst was somewhat past fifty, and his beard was getting just
a little grey. He was of medium height, and wore spectacles himself--a
fact which, in view of his profession, had given Archibald endless
material for humour. His manner and voice alike were singularly soft
and gentle. He possessed both a sense of humour and a quiet humour of
his own; and his laugh was always ready to ring out. Sometimes it
struck Morgan that Margaret's features were hinted at in his face even
more than in Mrs. Medhurst's, but so subtly, that the resemblance
would seem to vanish for long stretches of time, and he would only be
able to detect it at odd moments.

Archibald arrived quite half an hour late, so that his ferocious knock
and ring caused general rejoicing. His spirits invariably mounted as
soon as he set foot on the Medhursts' doorstep, and, once within the
house, he overflowed with jest and laughter, extracting fun and
merriment from anything and everything, making rather a terrible noise
and enjoying every instant.

"My scamp of a boy and I got talking together," he explained, in
high-pitched apology. "Now, Morgan has some ideas in that head-piece
of his"--here he tapped his son playfully on the skull--"so that when
we two _do_ get talking together, we both find it so fascinating that
we lose all count of time. I've had quite a rush to get here, though I
see Morgan has raced me. I suppose that, at my age, I mustn't
expect----"

"To keep pace with the youngsters."

Margaret finished the sentence for him in playful anticipation of his
platitudinarianism. Archibald took her in his arms and kissed her on
the forehead, with a "No harm at my age, my dear," after which he
laughed gleefully, and proceeded to kiss Diana on the lips, adding:
"No harm at _your_ age, my dear."

"I'm thirteen, and I shall really not allow that sort of thing any
more," said Diana, severely.

"Not from me--your sweetheart!" exclaimed Archibald. "Ah! I
understand," he went on. "It's the grown-up frock."

She was in a shaped dress to-day, but he had recalled her as she was
in her poke-bonnet days, when she had been wont to accept the same
kind of salutation without demur. It did not seem so very long ago
since he had seen her bare-kneed, in short, crimson skirts and all
sorts of fantastic caps and brilliant turbans; and he now reminded her
of the fact, undeterred by the haughtiness of her mien and the
arrogantly rippling masses of golden-brown hair, just a shade darker
than Margaret's.

She gave him a withering glance that asked how he dared!

"Perhaps it's not the frock. It's the poem in the 'Pleiad.' Morgan has
turned her head," recommenced Archibald.

"Morgan, take me down, please," said Diana, majestically ignoring her
tormentor, who thereupon offered his arm to Mrs. Medhurst, and
Margaret and her father brought up the rear.

But when they came to take their seats, they somehow got mixed up
again, so that Morgan found himself next to Margaret, whilst Diana and
Archibald sat opposite. Morgan had more than a suspicion that this was
the result of adroit manoeuvring on Diana's part. Very soon, however,
there arose such a clattering dispute between that young lady and her
neighbour, that Morgan could not talk to his, which made him rather
angry. Anyhow, it was impossible not to be amused after a while by the
altercation, for Diana's tongue was ready and brisk and attacking.
Margaret was a far less militant character, and would never strike,
were there the slightest chance of wounding. Diana's aim was always to
wound, and to wound deeply, provided it was some dear friend she was
pitted against.

In view of the fact that this was the last visit he purposed to the
Medhursts, Morgan had been feeling that a close conversation with
Margaret would prove too much of an ordeal for him, and he had
determined to talk to her as little as possible. But somehow he did
not find himself welcoming the practical inhibition from the other
side of the table; it gave him a sense of frustrated desire. If his
will made him say "I must not talk to her intimately, for I shall lose
all the ground I have gained by purposely avoiding this house so long;
I shall be drawn back close to her and, as the parting must come
nevertheless, the greater will be its anguish," his temperament made
reply: "What! you calculating effects, whose business has always been
poetry? Let your business still be poetry, but weave it out of life
instead of words. Abandon yourself without underthought. Live in that
wonderful region which is here, even as it is everywhere, but in which
only the souls of poets may wander and rejoice." And his temperament
prevailed over his will. He allowed the full flow of love to flood his
spirit. Great poems were summed up in one quick flash; in a second he
lived through a century of fine words.

And, as if divining his thought, she turned to him and spoke. Her
words seemed softly to ring through the din, and he gave himself up to
the full delight of the moment.

"Do you know, Morgan"--for he was always "Morgan" to everybody
there--"a great change has occurred in my dignity the last few days?"

"You are to marry a peer," he hazarded.

"I have risen much higher than that."

"You were at the utmost height."

"I only moved in yesterday, with my benches and mess and clay and wax
and tools. Pa had a hole made in the roof and a top light put in. I
feel so pleased with my studio, and, of course, I mean to entertain
there. We shall have such gay times, and I've a fine excuse for
keeping the company young and select."

"Too high up for old legs?"

"How shrewd!" she exclaimed. "I see that for real worldly insight one
must go to a poet."

"Thank you. This is the first time I've been accused of common sense."

"That is hardly to be wondered at. Your poems have every other
quality. You'll come up and see my studio anyhow?"

"By moonlight?"

"No, by candle light. And you the bearer, like the Latin motto on one
of my old school books."

Meanwhile the combat opposite still raged, and in the end Archibald
and Diana had to be parted almost by force. Diana sent a final shot
from the door, and then scampered away.

"The little rogue!" murmured Archibald, and then broke into one of
those unrestrained laughs which he usually reserved for his own
witticisms.

The three men drew near the fire. Medhurst said something about taking
Diana in hand. She had been somewhat spoiled at school, being looked
upon as a sort of demi-goddess by her classmates. Archibald declared
he wouldn't have her any different for the world. What was the good of
a girl if she was just the same as any other girl? Thence, proceeding
to attack convention, Archibald eventually steered the conversation
round to the contribution he himself purposed making to ethical
philosophy, for he had been waiting for an opportunity to let Medhurst
into the secret.

"It's curious that the more one thinks, John, the more one gets one's
notions upset. I know quite well that most people would think it a
highly dangerous doctrine to put forward, but I really cannot see that
the man who is a saint deserves any more to be praised than the man
who is a murderer. The murderer is simply unfortunate and ought to be
pitied. Nature gave him the impulse to murder--in fact, on a closer
analysis, all personal responsibility seems to disappear."

"And what does your wife say to all this? Isn't she rather alarmed?"
asked Medhurst.

"My wife!" exclaimed the banker, contemptuously. "She's hopelessly
behind the times. Why, she's a perfect child. She takes no interest in
anything beyond the tittle-tattle of the county. We had quite a scene
the other day because I gave expression to my opinion that young
people should be properly instructed in life by means of explanatory
handbooks, instead of being left to gather their knowledge haphazard.
I have never known her to make a single original remark--her
observations are invariably the most obvious. Morgan should be
thankful for the happy hazard of nature which fashioned his brain
rather in the mould of mine than in that of his mother."

"And so you really intend publishing?" said Medhurst.

"I am not afraid. People must be taught to look the problems of life
straight in the face. Truth must be driven home, my dear John, and it
is my intention to say some pretty straight things to the world."

"Have you yet fixed on a title?" asked Medhurst, secretly amused at
this sudden, strange development on the part of his old friend.

"Ah! there's just the difficulty. It was one of the first questions I
put to myself--what about the title? The thing is to get a good
striking one, and that's by no means an easy task. The title of a book
is almost as important as its contents, and, confound it all, my dear
John, I'm blessed if it doesn't take nearly as long to manufacture.
I've been cudgelling my brains for the last three months, and I must
confess my mind is an absolute blank so far."

"Why not call it 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker?'" suggested
Morgan. "And perhaps you might add a sub-title--'An attempt to
investigate some questions of primary importance that are usually
shelved.' How does that strike you?"

"Splendid!" exclaimed Archibald, enthusiastically. "'Plain Thoughts of
a Practical Thinker'--the very thing. 'An attempt to investigate some
questions of primary importance that are usually shelved.' Admirable!
'Practical Thinker!' That is just the idea I want to convey to the
world. I am not one of your mere dreamers, your theorists, your college
professors. I speak as one who has had a large experience of men and
affairs, as one who has for years administered the fortunes of a great
house. And yet I have sufficient of the thinker and the idealist in me
to have begotten a son whose name will live in English letters. It will,
Morgan, I tell you. You are a little bit misunderstood now, but what
great man has ever escaped misunderstanding? I expect to be misunderstood,
but if they think I am to be howled down--'Plain Thoughts of a Practical
Thinker!' A perfect inspiration! Suppose we join the ladies. I want to
tell Kate about it."




CHAPTER VI.


While Archibald unfolded his literary scheme to Mrs. Medhurst, Diana
mimicking his enthusiastic gestures at a safe distance, Morgan and
Margaret sat apart in that region of the drawing-room which lay
nearest the door. She had been telling him about some parties she had
gone to, and he, terribly jealous of the men who had danced with her,
made pretence to rally her about them. She, however, remained quite
calm, admitting cheerfully she _had_ a good many admirers, who filled
her programme, and whom it was always pleasant to meet. Then they were
both silent and looked at each other.

"Once upon a time," said Margaret, deciding at length to speak her
mind; "_you_ used to be one of those who wrote on my programme. Now
you never appear anywhere. I suppose you are afraid you might have to
talk to me a little."

"You are unjust," he said somewhat bitterly. "It is not kind of you to
say such things."

"If a friend suddenly develops a distaste for one's company and
manifests it as markedly as you have, how can one be blind to it? You
are a changed man, Morgan. In two months you have come here once to
tea, and you had not even the decency to put on a cheerful face. Such
a lackadaisical expression you had! And not even an enquiry about my
great works. You seemed to be saying the whole time, 'How you
commonplace people depress me--me, the genius, the genius; you are
killing my inspiration.'"

Something in his look checked her.

"Genius suffers from fits of melancholy as well as from fits of
inspiration," he reminded her.

"Poor Morgan!" said Margaret, softening. "And so you've had a fit of
melancholy! What a long one, too! All the same, I ought to reproach
you for not believing in our sympathy. Well, I suppose now I may tell
mamma not to be afraid to send you a card for our dance next month."

"I had no idea your mamma was so timid a person," he said, with
successful evasion. "And how goes Chiron, how the Spanish marauder?
And how much did you get for them?" he went on gaily, in one breath.
"You see I am well posted in your affairs."

"Well, since you _are_ a little bit interested, come."

Instinctively they looked towards the other group. Archibald still
harangued Mrs. Medhurst, endeavouring to prove to her that John's
abilities were no merit of his, any more than her beauty was a merit
of hers. A happy accident was the cause of either, and he had been
intellectually wrong in lavishing so many compliments on her during
all these years.

Morgan and Margaret left the room quietly, and stole up the stairs on
tip-toe, like two children at play. Right on the top landing Margaret
threw open a door, and Morgan peered into a shadowy abyss, for the one
gaslight was round a corner by which its rays were cut off from this
part of the landing.

"The candle is on a ledge in the hall," explained Margaret,
disappearing within the darkness; and in a second he heard her strike
a light.

"This is the hall," she went on. "I insisted on pa having it
partitioned off from the rest of the room--though, as you see, only by
a sort of green baize screen that doesn't reach to the ceiling. But it
makes the place ever so much more romantic."

Morgan stepped into the tiny vestibule, which was fitted with a little
oak table, and passed through a door in the green baize into the attic
itself.

"Was I not to be the candle-bearer?" he asked, taking the light from
her. "What a tremendous place!"

"It's perfectly ripping," said Margaret, "though I reckon it won't
hold more than four of us when we're in a gay mood. That's an old
piano. It takes up a lot of room, but there's still a good deal of
thumping to be got out of it. As yet the place is quite bare, but all
next week I'm going to hunt up odd things in back streets, and when
you come again you'll be astonished at the transformation. All that
mess there covered up in the corner--well, you can guess what it
consists of."

"And where are Chiron and the Spanish gentleman?"

"The first casts are on the mantel yonder--lost in the gloom. Pa wants
them for the drawing-room, but I am so childishly pleased, I can't
part with them yet. The moulds were to be destroyed after sixty
examples of each had been taken. I have received twenty-five pounds
each. You see, Morgan, I, too, am a genius."

On closer examination Morgan found he could conscientiously extol
Margaret's handiwork. From a technical point of view both figures were
excellent, and there was a virility and vigour in the handling which
one would scarcely have associated with the work of a young lady
modeller, and which certainly showed she had towered above her
material. The Spanish Marauder swaggered along in helmet,
breast-plate, doublet and hose, a hare and pheasant slung jauntily
over his shoulder, and his jolly, devil-may-care face, that had
evidently smelt powder, full of an arrogant self-satisfaction. The
Chiron was a strong piece of anatomical modelling. The ancient
centaur, indeed, looked very wise and very noble, and the horse into
which he merged was arranged with quiet skill in its lying posture, so
that not a line, limb, hoof or muscle struck a note of awkwardness.

"Then you think I really am worth talking to--a little?" asked
Margaret.

He set down the light on the mantelshelf and somehow found himself
holding her hand. Neither appeared to be aware of the fact.

"My dear Margaret, I was hoping you had accepted my fit of
melancholy----"

"You stupid Morgan! I only wanted you to tell me how clever I am. I am
so greedy for praise--because I haven't any of those melancholy fits,
and my vanity must be gratified _somehow_. At least, when I do have
the mopes I always know the reason, and it has never been anything
connected with my genius."

"What! you don't mean to say that you ever----"

"Sometimes," she interrupted. "A good deal of late, only, unlike you,
I never let anybody guess."

"I thought you were a perfectly happy girl in the first flood of
enthusiasm for your work and with all those nice men to admire you."

Her fingers tightened perceptibly on his.

"If you continue to plague me about those nice men, Morgan, you shall
not have a single dance next time, but you'll just see those nice men
get them all."

"I am sure you don't look a bit as if you could devise such cruel
torture."

"Would it be a very terrible punishment?"

"I would do any penance to avoid it."

"You'd look too comic in sackcloth and ashes. Come to my
studio-warming instead."

"A charming penance, Margaret."

"Perhaps we ought to go down now," she suggested, irrelevantly.

He took up the light again.

"Have you fixed the date for the warming?"

"Impossible yet. But I'll send you----"

"Not cards--now you've moved up into Bohemia!"

"Oh, no. A little pink note. I hope that is the correct thing in
Bohemia, or, at least, that it isn't incorrect."

"In Bohemia there are no correct things."

"What an awful place it must be. Whatever one does is wrong."

"On the contrary, whatever one does is right."

"Then all things are correct in Bohemia!"

"How can that be, Margaret? There are things--no, there aren't,
and--and--I'm afraid I've got myself into an awful tangle. You've
quite turned my head with your logic."

He began to move across the room towards the door.

"If it's only my logic that turns your head, then I take everything
back. I won't speak to you ever again."

"My goodness!" began Morgan, losing his wits, forgetting he held the
candle and letting it fall. The light vanished like a spectre. "I beg
your pardon," he ejaculated, in some astonishment, whilst Margaret's
laugh rang out.

Just as he stooped down to recover the candle, they became aware of
footsteps, and in a moment the handle of the outer door was being
turned.

"All dark," said Diana's voice. "Then I suppose they're not here--or,
at least, I shouldn't like to think they were. I fancy Marjy put a
candle and matches on the table."

They heard the sound of her fumbling, and, as if by common
understanding, they remained still as mice. Then Diana declared the
things weren't there, and Archibald suggested they might inspect the
place in the dark.

"I certainly shall do nothing so improper," returned Diana severely.
"There must be match-light at least. I draw the line at that. Produce
your pretty, golden box."

Diana opened the green baize door, and Archibald struck a light.

"Ho, ho!" he said, playfully.

"We are evidently _de trop_" said Diana. "Let us retire."

"Be careful," called Margaret. "You'll burn your fingers."

But the mischief was already done. Archibald uttered a "d--n," threw
down the end of the match and stamped on it wrathfully.

Morgan picked up the fallen candle, lighted it and replaced it on the
mantelshelf. The wax was broken in the middle, and the top part
leaned disconsolately to one side.

"We are sorry to have unwittingly interfered with your little
arrangement," said Margaret, curtseying in mock apology. "But you are
quite welcome to make free of my humble abode, so we shall leave you
in possession. Come, Morgan." And the two swept out of the room.

"Come and lunch with me to-morrow at the hotel," said Archibald to
Morgan, as he got into a hansom an hour later. "We'll spend the
afternoon together. There are some points about my book I want to
settle. 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker!' Splendid title!
Morgan, you're indeed a genius. 'An attempt to investigate some
questions of primary importance that are usually shelved.' That just
hits it off--the very book I intended to write!"




CHAPTER VII.


When his father had driven off, Morgan, seized with a restlessness,
began to stroll slowly homeward. He had at least wrung some happiness
from the evening. His love for Margaret had been strong enough to
absorb him, save when at moments his sense of his general position had
obtruded. But now he surrendered himself once more to the mood which
the events of the day had interrupted.

He was again conscious of the tragedy of his past life with its
culminating episode of the evening before, and of the infinite
possibility that life held of mystery and fantasy--a mystery and
fantasy into which he was going to plunge. The hours he had just
enjoyed, he told himself, must not be allowed to influence him. They
must be sternly isolated from the future; the disattachment of the new
life before him from the wreckage of the old must be complete.

Wreckage! He used the word deliberately, though he was aware there
were elements in the position that would have made his estimate of it
seem grotesque to many ears.

He was the son of a father of unlimited wealth, who idolised him now.
In addition to very many acquaintanceships, both in London and the
country, that were pleasant even if they did not occupy the centre of
his consciousness, he had the friendship of Lady Thiselton and the
more intimate though less fantastic relation with the Medhursts. And,
moreover, he was in love with a beautiful and talented girl, who, he
modestly felt, had a great esteem for him--though any other eyes than
those of the diffident lover would have seen at a glance that she
loved him in return.

How could all these things fail to make a man happy, especially when
the man was only twenty-eight years old?

But Morgan's happiness was dependent on his attitude towards things,
not on the things themselves. And just now he but perceived all these
elements that might have made another life enviable as so many
ironies. His ambition--his self-realisation and its recognition by his
fellows--had been all in all to him; its abandonment had been the
culmination of anguish infinite. The best years of his youth had been
lost in vain effort, and some of the bitterness of early opposition
that success might have purged still lingered in his spirit. His
nature was proud and sensitive and his very failure made it impossible
for him to ask for more money, even though he knew it would be
forthcoming without stint. What wonder now if he perceived his life as
a tragedy!

Common Sense would have advised him to put on one side all emotions
and moods that arose out of and summed up the past, all the subtle
feelings that possessed and mastered him; would have urged him to
begin a new epoch, seek the paternal aid, retain his friendships, and
persevere in his love; would have given him assurance of a perfectly
satisfactory outlook if he would but readjust his mental focus.

But Common Sense is obtuse and safe. Morgan was a mass of fine
sensibility; his temperament was full of subtle light and
shade--therefore dangerous. Plain-souled, clumsy-handed Common Sense,
with perception limited to the thick outlines of character, could not
have comprehended him, and would unwittingly have confessed it by
classifying him contemptuously.

Morgan had lived his own life--felt it. His present estimation of it
was, therefore, spontaneous; not a cold estimation by mere intellect,
but a living one by his whole complex being. And, as the result, he
was meditating, at this period of pause and summing-up, to carry
forward all that Common Sense would have suppressed, and to suppress
all that Common Sense would have carried forward, to sacrifice all the
inter-relations with others that constituted his outer life--even as
he had already sacrificed the expression of his corresponding inner
life; retaining only his emotional unrest.

And the seductive picture of the scented serpent-woman, ever smiling
at him now with gleaming teeth, symbolised the future for him, and
alone preserved the continuity of interest that stimulated him to go
forward at all. His attitude, in some respects, was analogous to that
of a romantic boy playing with the idea of running away from home,
drawn by visions of marvellous adventures in strange lands. The sequel
might be vague and in the clouds, but that very fact only made it the
more fascinating.

His temperament had said to him that evening: "Let your business still
be poetry, but weave it out of life instead of out of words." The
thought resurged in his brain and then it struck him as crystallising
his whole feeling about the future course of his existence, as
furnishing the key to his position.

To make of life a fantasy, a poem, a dream! The idea was an
illumination.

But beyond a half-considered intention of changing to humbler rooms
and hiding therein from his world, he did not meditate any definite
activity. The feeling at the bottom of his mind was rather that events
would shape themselves. To this attitude of passivity his whole life
had tended. His will-strength had gone into his passionate desire of
poetic achievement, and were it not that he had, so to speak, grown
into relation with others, his life would have been utterly static.
The movement of their lives alone had taken his along. He had not the
least idea now how he was going to become acquainted with the strange
woman who filled his thoughts, but, without actually translating his
feelings on the point into definite terms, he counted it as a
certainty that a path would somehow be opened. It pleased him, too, to
think that he owed his cognisance of her existence to that first
impulse which had caused him to write to Ingram. That fantastic
initiation had set in motion fantastic life-waves that were now
flowing back to him.

For others the regularities of existence, the steady round of work,
the care and hoarding of money; for him the mystery and the colour of
life!

And in a flash of insight he seemed to understand that the poet in him
had already asserted itself in his life as well as in his work. Was it
not the very curiousness of his relationship with Ingram had made it
so palatable? Was it not the strangeness of his friendship with Lady
Thiselton and the originality of her personality that appealed to him
so much, and was it not his imaginative side that had always been so
pleased with both? Was it not his peculiar temperament that had always
made him keep his relation with each person a thing apart, so that
each was unaware of the others; that had made him like to feel that
his life, in a manner, was cut up into strips, along each of which he
could look back with a certain sense of completeness, though it was
only by the nice fusion of all these isolated completenesses that his
existence could be seen as a whole?

But underneath the imaginative spirit of the poet lay the human spirit
of the man. And if the former predominated the latter was not entirely
dormant. If the poet in him coloured his life and thought, it was the
man in him that felt the results, so that the instincts of the poet
often clashed with the sympathies and affections of the man. Of this
discord within himself he could not help being aware, but he knew it
purely by its effect, for he had never searched deeply into the
complexity of his nature.

Thus it was that the man in him was grieved at his having had to make
promises of further visits to the Medhursts; was paying for every
grain of happiness wrung from the evening by a reaction of pain
unspeakable. But the poet in him governed, was trying to suppress the
man.

He was roused from his meditations by a familiar voice when he was but
a few feet from his own door.

"I have been hovering about for a quarter of an hour."

He was startled, then laughed. The veiled woman stood on tip-toe and
kissed him on the forehead, he stooping mechanically to meet her
movement.

"You don't mind the veil?" she said.

"How did you know I was not indoors and abed by this time?" he asked.

"I didn't know. I only came to meditate in the moonlight. I have been
enjoying such exquisite emotions. Are you too tired for a promenade
round the circle?"

He fell in with her humour.

"Morgan, reproaches have been accumulating. To save time--you know I
never waste any--you shall have them all in one ferocious phrase. You
have been brutal to me of late. I don't mean to say that you've ever
ceased to be charming, but--why, at least, didn't you answer my note?"

"It only came this morning," he stammered, "and I haven't had time to
read it yet."

"In other words, you wrinkled your brow as soon as you saw it, made up
your mind I was beginning to be somewhat of a nuisance, and threw it
aside unopened. Of course, you forgot all about it afterwards. You
have a perfect genius for putting crude facts in a delicate way."

"Another new discovery about me."

"That is but the natural result of the profound thought I bestow upon
you."

"Your profound thought contradicts itself. It declares me brutal and
charming with the same breath."

"Profound thought always contradicts itself. I know it for a fact,
because I've been looking up Hegel. The nice things and nasty things I
say about you arise equally from my love for you, which is thus the
unifying principle. The apparent contradictoriness, therefore,
disappears in a higher synthesis."

"Quarter! A man can't stand having philosophers hurled at his head."

"But I kiss your head sometimes. I'm sure I'd much prefer that always,
only you goad me into the other thing."

"I goad?"

"Yes. By your masterly inactivity when I am concerned. I have to force
myself into your life, and after we've been chums for three years,
you, left to yourself, ignore my existence. You have such a terrible
power of negative resistance against poor, strong-willed me. But,
after all, you admire me tremendously, don't you, dear Morgan?"

"I have told you scores of times you are the cleverest woman in the
kingdom."

"I am the only woman who understands your poetry. I don't mean that as
a bit of sarcasm at the expense of your compliment--I merely want to
show you I deserve it."

He made no reply. For a few moments there was a silence.

"How reticent you are to-night!" she said at length. "You usually have
quite a deal to tell me. Are the sentimental chapters preying on your
mind? I do so much want to know about those sentimental chapters, but
you always evade the subject. Tell me, _are_ there any in your life?"

"Ours was to be an intellectual companionship only."

"Comprising intellectual sympathy and kissing on the forehead--both
of them chaste, stony, saint-like, tantalising things. But I'd be
content for the time being if I were only sure your heart were
perfectly free. I couldn't bear the thought of your making love to
another woman."

"You are amusing."

"I am jealous."

"Then you have been imagining sentimental chapters for me."

"Well, being a woman of the world, thirty-three years of age--no
deception, Morgan--and, knowing you have lived twenty-eight, I
naturally suspect the existence of those chapters, you darling sphinx.
And when I suddenly come across a poem from your pen about a sweet
little girl, my suspicion becomes almost a certainty."

He could not help laughing.

"That sweet little girl is too concrete, too much away from your
metaphysical manner, to be a mere creation of your brain. What vexed
me particularly was that the most stupid woman I know--I mean my dear
friend Laura--admired the thing and called it a gem. Now I don't like
my monopoly threatened in that way. I have always prayed against your
own prayer. I don't want the world at large to admire you--yet. I want
you, disgusted with the world's non-acceptance of you, to find
consolation in my love. There is a fair proposal for you, Morgan. Love
me, marry me--and after that you may become as great as you like. Your
poetry as yet is my friend, but I begin to feel afraid of it when you
start pictures of sweet little girls."

He did not take her the least bit seriously--he never did. Her
occasional courtship of him had been always so light and airy, so
dispassionately epigrammatic, that he looked on it as mere whimsical
banter and rather good amusement. She had plagued him into consenting
to that kiss on the forehead which she gave him each time they met,
referring to it constantly as an advantage won by hard effort. The
circumstance of their first meeting had been commonplace enough--a
chance introduction at an afternoon tea. They were friends whilst yet
utter strangers to each other, for a mutual personal magnetism had
acted immediately. He understood that her playfulness did but conceal
fine qualities of character that would have pleased even the
aphoristic moralist, whose conception of the ideal woman she
mercilessly outraged. That she had really understood and appreciated
his work naturally counted a good deal in her favour. He knew her
worth, but of course he did not want to marry her. If to-day there was
a more earnest ring than usual in her love-making, he had got too
indurated to it to believe in it.

"Who _is_ the sweet little girl?" she insisted. "I repeat, I am
jealous. This is my first experience of that queer emotion, for you
are the first man I have ever loved."

He found this most amusing of all.

"Really, Morgan, it is perfectly harassing to have one's tragedy taken
for light comedy. You know my wedded life was unhappy. The late
baronet was absolutely ignorant of Schopenhauer, and even cursed him
to my face for a madman, just because he happened to be my favourite
philosopher. Since I've dipped into Hegel, I've come largely to agree
with my husband's denunciation, though not on the same grounds. Not
that I profess to know anything either about Hegel or Schopenhauer.
Edward always thought me a blue-stocking--me, who have only a woman's
tea-table smattering of philosophy! Why, it takes all the fun out of
life to be a blue-stocking! Edward hadn't any brains. I married him
without love, and in face of his attitude towards Schopenhauer, you
may guess what chance it had of springing up. During the brilliant
years of my widow-hood--eight in number--my heart has remained
positively untouched by anybody but you. It's your childlike
helplessness that fascinates me."

"You flatter me."

"There are other things, of course. You've splendid large eyes and
nice, soft, silky hair, and such a pretty curl to your lip. And you've
such a charming, innocent look. If only you'd promise not to write any
more poems about sweet little girls, you'd be perfect."

Whether it was that her proximity at this moment of inner perturbation
and suffering roused in him an overmastering desire for her sympathy,
or whether her last remark exercised an insidious drawing power, he
did not quite know, but he found himself saying immediately:

"I can make that promise very easily. I made a bonfire last night."

She understood at once.

"Which explains much for which I've been reproaching you!" she
exclaimed sympathetically. "You have been suffering, dear Morgan."

Her voice had grown soft and coaxing. His determination to shun
everybody could not stand against this real concern for him. In a few
words he told her of his despair and of the dubiousness of his
position. But he could not bring himself to speak of his hopeless
love, or to raise the veil that concealed his other friendships from
her. His comradeship with her had always stood for him as a thing
apart; and this attitude of his towards it had made it the more
charming. It had been quite natural for him to take it entirely by
itself and as unrelated to the rest of his external life.

"But, my dear Morgan," she protested, "this can't go on. How do you
intend to live?"

He was glad she did not have recourse to that crude, obvious
suggestion of his begging a replenishment from the paternal coffers.
But he did not know how to reply to her question, which rather made
him regret the turn the conversation had taken. The one future for him
was that in which floated mystically the figure of the scented
serpent-woman, and he felt that that drift of things he was relying on
had begun by a wrong move.

"Perhaps I shall write stories," he hazarded.

"You alarm me," she cried. "Your idea is hopelessly impracticable. How
could you possibly hope to rival the Robert Ingrams?"

"The Ingrams!" he echoed, glancing at her sharply.

"I only mention him because he happens to be as popular as all the
rest put together, and because I happened to make his acquaintance
some time back."

Morgan made no remark. He was relieved at her explanation, about which
there was nothing surprising, for he well knew that Ingram moved in
high social latitudes.

"Besides," she went on, "you would naturally be tempted to draw women
like me, which would simply be courting extinction. Of course, in
Ingram's novels no fashionable lady ever does the things I do, and
the critics would insist I was an utter impossibility. Now, as to the
fifty pounds you've got--before long the sin of that borrowing will
rise up against you and you'll be signing again, signing away whole
pounds of your flesh. And I daresay you overlook you've various little
debts. No doubt you owe your tailor, say a year's account, and then
your rooms are pretty expensive, and quarter-day has a spiteful habit
of swooping down on one four times a year, and--and you mustn't have
to bother your pretty head about all these sordid things."

This was somewhat of an appalling speech for Morgan, who certainly did
not want to cheat his creditors. And, indeed, it now occurred to him
that he must be indebted to his tailor for quite a large amount.
Although his horror of debts was far above the average, he never
realised the conception "money" as ordinary people realise it. So far
as it figured in his thoughts at all, money was a gorgeous, poetic
unit--the treasure of romance, the gold and silver of fairyland. In
practice, the very abundance of it at his command had till lately kept
his attention from dwelling on it; just as it did not dwell on, say,
the second toe of his left foot--an equally constant factor in his
existence--till some pain might make him aware it was there. His
present forced awareness of the prosaic side of the notion "money"
gave him somewhat of a sense of being caught amid a swirl of
storm-blown icicles.

"The remedy is simple," he said, at last.

"It is. I have forty thousand a year. Marry me for my money."

"Declined, with thanks."

"So blunt, yet so pointed. A pity it's not original. But I know what
you meant by your remedy. You don't see it would be a double crime,
and you are too good a man even to commit a single one."

"You mean----"

"I mean I should follow you. It would be just lovely to be rowed
across the Styx together. Of course, I should have to pay your
obolus."

"It is getting late. I really think we ought to turn back."

Lady Thiselton sighed.

"I must confess I am dejected," she said. "I should like to have a
quiet cry. What are you going to do, Morgan?"

"Nothing."

But he knew that would mean bankruptcy, and he had also an unpleasant
conviction that she meant what she said about following him.

"And even if we did go to throw sugar to Cerberus, your father would
step in and inherit your debts, and you will have sacrificed us both
in vain. The result is the same, whether we go to Whitechapel or to
the other place. You can't make it otherwise. Now, if you won't let me
be your wife, at least let me be a sort of mother to you."

Her thought met his just at the right junction. He did not answer
because her argument was unanswerable. How else avoid coming on the
paternal purse again?

"I am only asking you, Morgan, to let me help you live just as you
want to live."

She spoke with pleading and humility.

"We shall be towards each other just as we are now," she continued,
"and although I intended to torment you till you agreed I was worth an
occasional kiss on the forehead in return for mine--which would not at
all take us out of the platonic, or rather plutonic, regions in which
you so sternly insist we must abide--I shall give you my word to cease
from active hostilities for six whole months. Just think--I undertake
to be content for the next six months with kissing you on the forehead
once each time. Is that not sufficiently an earnest of my good faith?"

Again he gave her no answer, and, in the silence that followed, their
footsteps seemed to be echoed back to them. Since to die were futile,
let it be she rather than another that helped him to live. She was a
good friend and a loyal one. Of course, it was repugnant to take money
from a woman, but to take it from anybody else would be still more
repugnant.

"As is usually the case in life," she again chimed in his thought,
"the choice is not between the good and the less good, but between the
bad and the worse. Believe me, I understand and sympathise with your
hesitations. But between such friends as we are and such original
people to boot, scruples of a conventional kind ought not to enter.
With us money should count for nothing. So please don't choose 'the
worse,' and perhaps 'the bad' won't turn out so very bad after all."

Still he could not prevail upon himself to accept her generosity,
though conscious he was undeserving of her long-sufferance.

"If I could but see the least prospect of repaying you, I should not
hesitate so much," he said at last.

"My dear Morgan, in life one mustn't look too far ahead, else
existence becomes impossible. Let us not bother too much about the
future, but let us seize the flying moments; which means we ought to
go to Whitechapel on Thursday and spend a happy day."

He was still lost in thought.

"And your silence--may I put the usual interpretation on it?"

"I suppose so," he said, shame-facedly. "Please don't think me
ungracious," he added.

"You very dear person!" she cried; and after that they walked for
fully five minutes without exchanging a word.

The matter had been decided and, according to their wont, there was no
further manifestation, no further reference to it on either side. Each
understood the other's emotions, and that sufficed.




CHAPTER VIII.


"Shall I put you into a hansom?" said Morgan, looking at his watch as
they passed out of the park. "It is getting on towards two."

"Mayn't I come in and smoke a cigarette?" pleaded Lady Thiselton. "My
nerves have been tried a little, and a few minutes' rest will soothe
me."

"I fear the lady of the house would not approve."

"Oh! we shall creep in quietly without disturbing her pious dreams. Do
be nice, Morgan. You know I never smoke any other cigarettes than
yours--I am never wicked except in your company."

They entered almost noiselessly.

"How silent the night is," she remarked, "and what a feeling of
sleeping multitudes there is in the air! Suppose the morrow should
dawn and they should never awaken. I am shivering. Your room is cold,
though the moonlight is quite pretty."

He lighted his reading lamp under its big, green shade. She would not
have the gas--she liked the room full of dusk and shadow. The fire was
ready laid, and Morgan put a match to it, after which he proceeded to
look for the cigarettes. When eventually he turned towards her, he
uttered a suppressed exclamation.

She had taken off her heavy cloak and her hat and thrown them
carelessly on a chair. She now stood a little to the left of the fire,
her face half turned towards it, and was busy removing her long
gloves. Her features, amid which nestled mystic trembling shadows,
showed bloodless, as though carved of ivory, and her great, dark brown
eyes were wonderfully soft and caressing. Her hair ran in a flowing
curve off the warm white pallor of her brow till it was lost beyond
the ear. Almost on top of her head it lay in a coil, bound with a
wide, green velvet band that was fastened in front with a great
emerald. Her throat, neck and shoulders rose with the same dull,
smooth whiteness, and with an exquisite firmness, from the strange,
green velvet costume it had pleased her to wear, and were set in its
gold border that glowed and sparkled with smaller emeralds. The robe
curved in at the waist, defining the adorable grace of her figure and
falling to the ground in gleaming folds and strange contrasts of light
and shade. And on each side hung a long, open sleeve with bright
yellow lining spread out to the view--a wide, descending sweep of gold
in glistening contrast with the deep green of the costume.

She had now placed her gloves on the same chair, and her long, bare
arms showed in all the firm beauty of warm ivory tones, without a
touch of rose in their whole length, even to the very finger tips. A
thick, gold bracelet encircled the wrist of her right hand. On the
other hand the gleam of ornament was given by the wedding ring and a
similar ring on the same finger set with a limpid diamond.

"Well," she said, smiling.

"You have taken me unawares. One moment you are a soberly clad person,
and the next a queenly blaze."

"The moonlight is really wonderful. Turn out the lamp and let me play
the 'Moonlight Sonata.'"

"No, smoke your cigarette instead," he suggested.

"You are afraid I might cause the good lady pleasant dreams instead of
pious ones. Thank you, dear."

He held her a light, and, after she had taken a puff or two, she
passed her cigarette to him.

"Your tribute, Morgan," she demanded.

He took a puff and passed it back to her. Then, when she had smoked a
little:

"It is delicious," she said. "Your lips have given it their sweetness
of honey, their fragrance of myrrh."

She leaned leisurely against the mantel, whilst he drew a chair for
himself to the opposite corner of the fire. The great emerald gleamed
through a dainty cloud of smoke.

"It is lovely here," she said at last. "Such moments as these are the
happiest of my life. One's nature must rebel sometimes against being
driven along the prescribed lines. There are sides to one's soul,
absolutely unallowed for in the ordinary scheme of civilized
existence. But instead of letting me moralise, you might be saying
some nice things."

"About what?"

"About me, of course."

"Oh! I am enjoying the spectacle you present."

"I built a palace in the air, and, lo and behold! it has proved to be
a real palace. I went up to my room to-night and was feeling fanciful
and sentimental, which means, of course, I was thinking about you. And
then I imagined this whole scene--only a little different; I in this
dress, and you at my feet, worshipping me and calling me all
sorts of sweet names. And I was coy and held back!"

She paused a moment and laughed merrily.

"Of course," she went on, "I could not resist putting on the costume
in order to get nearer the real feeling of such a scene, and it was so
delicious that I at once wrapped myself up and come here in a cab. The
maid told me you were not expected till late. It's very amusing, by
the way--that girl really believes I'm your sister! So I made a
descent on dear, stupid Laura--the admirer of your sweet-little-girl
poem--and whiled away an hour or so. All muffled up, of course. Her
heart's weak, you know. Then I strolled back here. And now my
imaginary scene is being enacted. Not exactly as I imagined it, but I
know the realities of existence and the usual tragic fate of
expectations, and so I have reason to feel ecstatic over the result.
Besides, I think I really do look very nice. The contractor for the
clay must accidentally have supplied a little of the first quality at
the time I was made. He must have torn his hair on finding out the
mistake. Come, Morgan, kiss me on the forehead."

She put the cigarette on the mantel, prettily blew away the smoke, and
held her two splendid arms towards him. But he did not move.

"I'll even put on the veil and keep my hands behind me, like a good
child."

"Helen! Please," he protested.

"Forgive me," she said, and there was a strain of pathos in her voice.
"For the moment I forgot my promise--I was fancying this was a mere
continuation of my vision. But I shall not do it again--I shall bite
out my tongue first."

He was moved, and awoke to the understanding that he had not yet
estimated, according to the ordinary reckoning of the world, the
pecuniary favour he had accepted from her. The fact that he felt shame
at the resource of which circumstances forced him to avail himself
could not affect his sense of her nobility, and it was a true instinct
of gratitude that made him rise in order to bestow what she had ceased
to demand. But, somewhat to his astonishment, she waved him back.

"No, Morgan; I really meant what I said, and you must not think I am
only tricky."

After which he felt forced to pin her to her request, protesting her
honesty was not in dispute.

"You know I am to be trusted," she whispered demurely. "I am so glad
you did not insist on the veil. I must really smoke another cigarette
to get calm; I am as agitated as a girl getting her first kiss."

"And I'll smoke another to keep you company," he said.

"Let us meet clandestinely somewhere on Thursday about ten o'clock,"
she said a little later. "It makes it ever so much more piquant to
proceed mysteriously. We shall lunch in those parts. I must be home
again by five, as I have a small dinner-party. I have an idea, Morgan.
One of my men writes he won't be able to turn up. You've never dined
at my house in state. Come and fill the vacant place."

He shook his head. His instinct was to refuse without considering. She
insisted a little, but, seeing his heart was against it, left the
subject, turning gaily to something else.

Soon he went out with her and saw her into a hansom. It was past two
when he bade her good-night, having agreed to a rendezvous for
Thursday in the heart of the city.




CHAPTER IX.


It was a little past mid-day, and Archibald Druce, who had returned an
hour before from an early morning professional appointment with
Medhurst, was feeling restless and lonely. Morgan was not due till
half-past one, and so the old man wandered disconsolately about the
hotel, seeking some congenial spirit with whom to hold converse. At
length, peering into the smoking-room, he discovered a white-haired,
stately gentleman, with a somewhat military air, whose grave
appearance was encouraging. With him Archibald began an exchange of
civilities, and very soon launched out into an account of his
interview of that morning.

"I assure you, my dear sir," said the banker, though the other had not
questioned the fact in any way, "I can see absolutely nothing. The
room is a perfect blur, and I fear I dare not venture out into these
crowded London thoroughfares for the rest of the day. The worst of it
is that the introduction of the cocaine into my eyes has been of no
avail. Of course my eminent friend could not know I was possessed of
such remarkable eyes, and as it was necessary for him to see into
them, no blame attaches to him for having adopted the usual means of
causing my extremely small pupils to expand. Now the curious point is
that my pupils were totally unaffected by the cocaine, and I fear my
eminent friend had to work on me under difficulties. The couple of
hours I spent with him in his wonderful workroom have, however, proved
exceedingly profitable to me. I assure you, my dear sir, they have
been most instructive."

"No doubt," said the military person, his fingers fidgetting uneasily
with his newspaper.

"Between ourselves," continued Archibald confidentially, "I rather
imagine that my friend enjoyed the time I spent with him. It is not
often he gets a really intelligent patient to work on--in fact, he
found me so appreciative that he exhibited especially some profoundly
interesting experiments. Amongst other things, he threw a gigantic
representation of my retinal system of blood vessels on to a white
screen merely by turning a strong light sideways into my eye. And the
explanation of it was quite simple. The retinal vessels stand out
slightly in relief, and thus a perfect shadow of the system is cast on
the retina. It was this shadow I saw, and the white screen was merely
a convenient background for it. I don't know if I make myself clear."

"Perfectly clear, perfectly," said the military person.

"Indeed, John Medhurst seemed quite loth to part with me. I quite
believe he enjoyed the experiments as much as I did. He brought out
his books and very kindly allowed me to inspect the plates--and
extraordinarily fine plates they are!--and thus acquire some idea of
the inner mechanism of the human eye. What a truly wonderful place the
universe is--wonderful!"

"That no intelligent man can deny," said the military person.

"My friend holds a most distinguished position in his profession, and
I esteem it a great honour and privilege to be on such intimate terms
with him," said Archibald, offering a cigar to the other and lighting
one himself. "Now you know," he went on, in a somewhat softened and
more intimate tone; "there's quite a little bit of a romance in the
story of our friendship."

"Indeed," said the military person more genially, his palate savouring
the exquisite aroma of the cigar.

Archibald smiled tenderly.

"His wife's an old flame of mine," he explained, veiling his emotion
with jocular phraseology. "An old flame, did I say? I'm still over
head and heels in love with her. But I was too late--she and John had
already made their little arrangements. And very soon after John and I
became friends, and friends we've remained to this day. Kate has two
of the loveliest girls, and I'm hanged if I'm not head over heels in
love with them as well. The younger one is a regular little
she-devil!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" guffawed the military person.

"Upon my honour she is," insisted Archibald. "Why, she flirts
outrageously with me. I'm sure I don't know how many heads the little
witch is going to turn when she grows up. And her sister, Margaret--I
couldn't tell you which of the two I like the better--has quite an
extraordinary talent for plastic art. I mean to give her a commission
before I return to my place. I'd like for one thing to have a bust of
her mother in my study--that would be so inspiring. And long ago I
took a fancy to have a nice sphinx. A thing of that kind, you know, is
good to remind one of man's intellectual limitations."

"I suppose so," said the military person, vaguely.

"Her figures are extremely lifelike. Just imagine, a thing cast in
dead bronze to have all the reality of life so that you would almost
expect it to move."

"She must be a highly-gifted young lady."

"You will scarcely credit it, my dear sir, but she is only
nineteen--on my word of honour," said Archibald with growing
enthusiasm. "Only the other day she sold two of her things for
twenty-five pounds apiece. Twenty-five pounds apiece!" he repeated
slowly, as if that represented to him a gigantic amount. "The examples
are to be strictly limited to sixty of each, after which the moulds
are to be destroyed. They are both magnificent pieces of work. Why,
you fancy you almost hear Chiron's voice and the twanging of his
harp."

"Indeed," said the military person.

"She is perfectly sweet and beautiful as well as clever," went on
Archibald. "Now my dog of a boy, between ourselves--ha! ha! ha!----"

"He's a bit smitten?" suggested the military person.

Archibald laughed gleefully. "And I fancy that a certain clever young
lady of nineteen who knows how to model is also a bit smitten. Only my
boy doesn't seem to come to the point. But then he's a poet."

"A what?" inquired the military person, startled.

"A poet," stoutly repeated Archibald. "And a very great poet, I
venture to assert, he will be one of these fine days. Naturally he is
not a man of action--he is a dreamer. But when I wanted Kate I wasn't
satisfied just to go on dreaming about her--ha! ha! Now if my boy
would only stop dreaming and just get married instead, I'd settle as
much on them as ever they'd want. You see, a genius like my son," he
went on, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, "must be exempt from
the sordid cares of money-earning, and my eminent friend, though his
position in life is an extremely honourable one, is not a man of
means. He may have put by a bit out of his hard-earned income, but, as
I always say to him, he wants that against a rainy day. But it's no
use my talking to him--he will keep on worrying about his girls having
no fortunes. 'And suppose they don't marry,' says he; and I have
positively to laugh him into a more cheerful mood. 'Don't be a fool,
John,' I say to him, 'those two girls are worth all the fortunes in
the world, and the man who didn't think as much wouldn't be worth
marrying.'"

"Your views are extremely generous," said the military person. "They
do you credit."

"Not at all, my dear sir," said Archibald, looking pleased; "my views
are simply rational. I consider the blind worship of mere money an
utter mistake. There are higher things in life. I may say I am in
entire sympathy with my son's aspirations. By the way, it occurs to me
that the extraordinary refusal of my pupils to expand under cocaine
may be but another manifestation of the remarkable nervous system that
characterises my family. It may be connected in some mysterious way
with my son's genius. But possibly, sir, you may know my son?"

"I fear I have not that honour. I know only one literary gentleman--he
is the editor of the 'Christian Bugle.' Might I suggest that we
exchange cards?"

"Willingly," said Archibald. "Very happy to make your acquaintance,
Major Hemming," he resumed, after the mutual self-introduction had
been effected. "My son is to be here shortly, when you will have the
opportunity of meeting him. Perhaps you will do us the honour of
lunching with us?"

"I should be delighted, but unfortunately I am lunching with a
friend."

"I am sorry we are not to have the pleasure," said Archibald. "But
perhaps you would like a copy of my son's book. It is but a small
volume, as you see." And Archibald pulled the parchment-bound,
deckle-edged booklet from his outer breast pocket. "Don't hesitate, my
dear sir, it will give me pleasure if you will accept it."

"You are most kind," said the Major. "I shall look forward to reading
it with the utmost pleasure."

"I am sure you will agree that only a genius could have written those
poems," said Archibald.

"I have no doubt but what I shall form a high opinion of your son's
gifts," said the Major.

"Being of a literary temperament myself," went on Archibald, "I
happily have been able to appreciate his. I do not want him to work
for money, and I have, therefore, put him on a sound financial basis.
So far, he appeals only to a very select section of the public. But he
has not written a line which he has not been inspired to write. As
regards the general public--I myself, in my humble way, have become
aware of the indifference and stupidity of the general public. When,
after thorough re-examination of every point of my mental position, I
try and speak plainly to such of my fellow-men as I have the
opportunity of addressing, I am met with an absolute want of
intelligent comprehension. However, I intend to say what I have to
say, and I am now at work on a volume, the nature of which you will
sufficiently gather from its title: 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical
Thinker--an attempt to investigate some questions of primary
importance that are usually shelved.'"

"An excellent idea, sir."

"To give you an example of the narrowness even of people who occupy a
high position in the social sphere, whenever I have ventured to assert
my sincere belief that children should be instructed in life by means
of competent handbooks instead of being allowed to pick up their
knowledge in a haphazard, more or less dangerous fashion, I have been
met with a frigid politeness, behind which the shocked disapproval was
but too manifest."

"Humph!" said the Major. "I must confess your proposition is certainly
a startling one."

"It is a common-sense one," said Archibald, curtly.

"Pardon me," said the Major, somewhat stiffly, "but I do think that in
the interests of morality and religion it would be exceedingly
unfortunate if your ideas were generally adopted."

"I am perfectly prepared to argue the point," said Archibald, drawing
himself up, whilst his eye flashed with the light of battle.

"I fear I have no time just now," said the Major, glancing at his
watch. "I must be off. I wish you a very good morning, sir."

"Morgan, my boy," cried the banker, when that gentleman at last
appeared, "I've spent the last hour tackling one of the most terrible
Philistines I have ever met."


END OF BOOK I.




BOOK II.


CHAPTER I


"Which way do we go?" asked Lady Thisleton, as they stood hesitating
at a crossing-stage in Broad Street, City. "Wouldn't it be nice to
stay here and philosophise?"

She was dressed as plainly as possible in a dark brown coat and skirt,
and wore a small hat and veil, so that she was not in the least
conspicuous. Both she and Morgan, having entered on the day's
adventure, were determined to enjoy it, though his mood was far from
being whole-hearted. And, as they surveyed the slow medley of
omnibuses that moved between them and the pavement they were struck by
the scene in the same impersonal way. They did not feel that they
formed any part of it; they saw it as with the eyes of a floating,
invisible spirit. To them it was collective movement and
colour--movement in the hurrying streams pouring from every exit of
the giant stations, in the massed chaos of vehicles, in the sense of
bustle and business and purpose; colour in the crudities of blue,
green, yellow, red, that flared from omnibuses and shop windows, and
that yet were fused into the dun monochrome of town, to the
overwhelming sense of which asphalt and paving and street lamp and
stone buildings and sober costumes all contributed, and with which the
very hubbub seemed to blend.

A vague feeling of tragedy seemed to invade them as their eyes rested
on all this life; but it was the result of an intellectual
perception, not of a sympathetic realisation and comprehension of this
throbbing reality. As for Morgan, the scene made him remember he had
once tried to wrestle with political economy and had disliked it
tremendously, and the thought made him smile.

"Why do you smile?" said Lady Thiselton. "Certainly it is not gay
here. I feel quite overwhelmed. All these faces--pre-occupied,
cheerful, sad, worn, despairing, hopeful, starved, well-fed--suggest
such a whirl. I invent a whole biography for each one that catches my
eye. I wonder how far I am right--I who am only a woman of the world;
which means I know nothing of life outside of my own four walls and a
few other four walls that more or less resemble them. But it's all
really lovely, isn't it, Morgan? What suffering must be here! You
can't imagine how I'm enjoying everything. Of course I sympathise as
well. But mine is a sort of artistic sympathy. I'm not noble enough to
feel the real thing. Isn't it all interesting?"

"There's a policeman staring at us suspiciously."

"Then we'd better move on. The good policeman's dream of paradise must
be a place in which he is the one static soul and in which the blest
keep passing on to all eternity."

They crossed the road and moved along with the crowd. The bells of St.
Botolph's struck ten as they turned into Bishopsgate.

"I feel the mediæval spirit coming on and begin to see visions of
highly-coloured Lord Mayors and aldermen and burghers and beef-eaters.
And somehow Dick Whittington and his cat are mixed up with it all, and
exhibitions with glass roofs and careful craftsmen and apprentices,
and Christopher Wren. Alas and alack! Where is old London?"

"I don't know," said Morgan. "But I do know where Whitechapel is. We
have to pass through Houndsditch. I looked it up on the map to refresh
my memory. I have always found Houndsditch a disappointment."

"So have I," said Lady Thiselton. "It is every bit as uninspiring as a
West End street. Some of the side alleys look interesting though, but
then such strange people seem to be in absolute possession, and you
feel you have no right to set foot within their territory. I am really
a fearful coward."

They walked on silently.

"Why don't you contradict me, Morgan, and tell me I'm brave? You never
voluntarily pay me a compliment. If I want compliments I have to put
them before you as so many propositions, to which, being a truthful
person, you are forced to give your assent."

"You are brave," said Morgan.

"Thank you. Every stone in this part of the city has its associations,
its traditions, its history. And then there are venerable churches
isolated amid the serried buildings of commerce, with charming bits of
hidden green and trees. I'm chattering away like a country cousin come
up to see the sights of London town and to carry back its fifteenth
century flavour. Let us forget history and tradition, and let us get
an unadulterated vision of the modern. Here is a nice place to stand."

They had turned into Aldgate and had gone some distance in the
direction of Whitechapel, and the new scene had a character of its
own. Both felt the spirit of toil here, where the grime of industry
struck a coarser and somberer note.

"I feel a million miles from home, which is just what I want to feel,"
declared Lady Thiselton. "And there is quite a market place opposite,
and bookstalls. This is just what Browning could have described. Why
did he not come here for inspiration? Here, too, he might have found a
square, old yellow book and paid eightpence for it, and tossed it in
the air and caught it again and twirled it about by the crumpled
vellum covers, and could have wandered on reading it through a
perilous path of fire-irons, tribes of tongs, shovels in sheaves,
skeleton bedsteads, wardrobe drawers agape, and cast clothes
a-sweetening in the sun. But the crowd is really too thick to walk
amongst. As we are on pleasure bent, let us be recklessly extravagant
and take a twopenny ride on top of a tram-car."

Morgan admitted he was beginning to find it unpleasant to be at such
close quarters with the crowd. Some of the people he was brushing up
against, he complained, were not too scrupulously clean.

"No doubt," he added, "I shall find them with their mysterious bundles
more picturesque from a distance."

"Why some of them are quite spick and span with their polished silk
hats, and there are any number of pretty girls. The shops, too, seem
quite attractive. I can even imagine myself living here for a time,
cannot you?"

"Let us get on our tram car. That may give my imagination the
necessary stimulus."

At first they had the top all to themselves, and were borne smoothly
onwards, cutting through the very centre of the turmoil. The red brick
church was the furthest point she had ever reached in the East of
London, Lady Thiselton informed Morgan. She had been in the
neighbourhood two or three times in company with her husband, who had
been interested in a sort of mission and dispensary combined, his idea
being not only to make wicked people religious, but to irritate the
devil by keeping their souls out of his clutch as long as possible.

"Now it is only like the High Street of a big provincial town," she
commented, after they had passed the London Hospital. "I think it's
getting monotonous."

Three begrimed, strapping youths came clambering up noisily and,
sitting immediately in front of them, continued a conversation about a
certain "she." Their vocabulary became so offensive that Lady
Thiselton whispered she thought it perfectly improper for a lady to
keep on looking at the backs of men's necks on the top of a car, in
full view of the whole world.

They descended and strolled on further. There was no crowd now to
hinder them, and they were curious to see what this far-stretching
thoroughfare led to.

"So far it seems a broad stretch of mean quaintness. I had no idea
London was so big. And what grimy side streets! I shudder to think of
the grimy network that lies on either hand. Morgan, I feel a very
immoral person."

"Your emotions are strangely unpredictable."

"What right have I to forty thousand a year when there are people
starving in these back streets?" asked Lady Thiselton indignantly. "I
am going to turn Socialist."

"You are not."

"I am."

"You'll never abandon individualism."

"Of course not. I'd never think of parting with that. But I really
don't see why I shouldn't be a Socialist as well. I pity those poor,
benighted beings that have room in their narrow souls for only one set
of opinions. I like to be everything, to hold every 'ism,' and to be
labelled all over with every 'ist,' like the window of that
'eating-house' yonder. Which reminds me of my dinner party to-night.
Isn't it terrible to eat in Belgrave Square when some people have to
eat in a place like that. It's positively wicked. I have an idea. I
think I can't do better than inaugurate my new 'ism' by lunching there
to-day. Suppose we do so on our way back."

"But _I_ never confessed to be converted to socialism," he protested.

"Why it's a dear little eating-house, a perfect love of a place."

"I take it for granted you wish to meet your guests to-night with a
smiling face," he warned her.

"The consciousness of having had the courage of my 'ism' will fill me
with such a glow of goodness that I cannot fail to appear a veritable
Madonna. Of course, you know I am counting on you."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"But I haven't filled up the place. I've been relying on nagging you
into coming."

"You know I don't want to," he grumbled yieldingly.

"But I want you to. Don't be angry, dear," she went on, coaxingly.
"Haven't I amused you the whole time?"

He ended by promising to come, if not incapacitated by the lunch, and
felt fairly secure of passing the evening at home.

After they had wandered about for some time longer and had paid
pennies to see a curious compound animal, a sort of ox, sheep, horse,
donkey and goat rolled into one, and an abnormally fat woman, more
decently clad than the life-size coloured picture of her in the window
had led them to imagine, they invaded the love of an eating-house.
They stepped within the threshold firmly enough, but then stood
hesitant. The place gave them a general sense of brownness. It was the
old-fashioned style of coffee-house, with a sanded pathway down the
middle and a row of stalls on either side, each separated from its
neighbours by tall partitions. Everything was of a dirty brown,
panelling, partitions, benches and the bare tables. A brown light came
through the dingy windows, and the very odours that hung in the dingy
atmosphere suggested the same tint.

A coatless, aproned waiter emerged from the back to greet the first
mid-day customers, and, in reply to their enquiry for lunch, invited
them to be seated within one of the stalls. After he had wiped their
table he disappeared, and he returned in a moment with a table cloth,
followed by a shorter and stouter man, also in shirt sleeves. They
began to see they had made an impression, and were to be served in
accordance with the host's sense of the fitness of things.

The proprietor--for such the stout man was--by way of special
civility, remarked that it was fine weather, and asked what he might
get them.

"The correct thing," said Lady Thiselton; and, on the man staring,
"what everybody usually has here," she added, in explanation.

"Boiled beef and suet to-day, or roast beef and Yorkshire, or chops
and steaks," enumerated the man.

So "boiled beef and suet" was ordered on the assumption it was the
correct thing, and, while the waiter was busy getting it, the
proprietor felt it his duty to entertain them till it came.

"His intentions were no doubt strictly honourable, but, Morgan, do you
think we shall have to talk to people like that when socialism is
established? My goodness!" she exclaimed, examining the slices of meat
closely. "What are those green streaks?"

"Perhaps that's perfectly right. The green streaks--like the boiled
carrot--may be just a little surprise by way of extra. Neither is
included in the description of the dish."

"Morgan, I really don't think I can eat this," she said faintly.

"Backsliding already?"

"Not at all. You forget I'm a bundle of 'isms,' and in practice one
can only be true to one at a time. When that one begins to make me
feel uncomfortable, I become true to another. Thus I am always true to
myself. All the mutually contradictory 'isms' unite in a higher
synthesis. Am I not the most lovely higher synthesis you ever saw?"

"All of which Hegelian dialectics mean that I'd better tell them to
take this stuff away."

"If you think they won't maltreat us. They look terribly fierce; and
they may have any number of myrmidons within call. That sort of
people, you know, doesn't like to have its cooking criticised."

"So long as we pay, we'll not find them too sensitive."

The matter was soon arranged, they adopting the man's suggestion of a
"nice, juicy steak." And when it arrived they felt compelled to
pronounce it excellent.

"I shouldn't be surprised if those green streaks were the proper thing
after all," said Lady Thiselton.

"Doubtless we have missed some extraordinary delicacy," said Morgan.
"But please tell me which particular 'ism' is in possession at the
moment. I am not quite clear on the point."

"That is just my state of mind. But I fancy that, at the present
moment, I am given over to emotion rather than to thought. This
interior is affecting me artistically. I was just thinking what a
lovely Dutch picture it would make. But I really am sincere about my
'isms.' The arguments in favour of any one 'ism' are unanswerable, and
I have to admit the truth of each, whenever I consider it. All human
thought ends in the blind alley of Paradox. Hegel was a word-juggler.
Nice phrases are pleasing, but let us not take them seriously."

And Lady Thiselton proceeded to utter a good many "nice phrases,"
which Morgan found pleasing, and did not take seriously. Customers
dropped in by ones and twos till at length all the other stalls were
filled, everybody instinctively avoiding the stall where a tablecloth
gleamed its white warning. When some men, having eaten, began smoking
their clays, Lady Thiselton's sharp ear detected some speculative
remarks about herself and Morgan, tinged with facetiousness and gore.
She thereupon suggested she was pining for something mystic and
spiritualistic, being quite tired of this realistic interior.

"I am trying to banish it by contemplating the Blessed Damozel," she
said, and quoted whisperingly:

     "'The Blessed Damozel leaned out
      From the gold bar of Heaven;
      Her eyes were deeper than the depth
      Of waters stilled at even;
      She had three lilies in her hand,
      And the stars in her hair were seven.'"


A moment later they stepped out into the afternoon light that nearly
blinded them with its mournful glare. But a heavy sadness had
descended on Morgan. The lines Lady Thiselton had whispered to him had
set him thinking of Margaret.




CHAPTER II.


The same evening, Morgan, not feeling any alarming symptoms, had to
carry out his promise to join Lady Thiselton's little dinner party.
She received him with a formality that made him laugh inwardly--and
almost outwardly. But the impulse died away as with a start he
perceived that Robert Ingram was in the drawing-room. He reflected,
however, that, though the encounter was an unexpected one, there was
nothing very astonishing about it. Helen had herself told him she had
made the novelist's acquaintance, and to find him dining at her house
was no matter for surprise. The position, nevertheless, was a most
curious one, especially when their hostess unsuspectingly introduced
the two men. Ingram's manner was a little bit bewildered, as if--from
his knowledge of Morgan--he feared the latter might make a scene by
dramatically cutting him.

However, nothing of the kind happened, Morgan behaving with perfect
gravity. He had to give his arm to Mrs. Blackstone--Helen's dear
friend, Laura, of whom she had spoken to him as the most stupid woman
she knew. He would have welcomed the opportunity of talking to
her--for he was sure her conception of Helen would be astonishingly
amusing, but he had a feeling that something important was going to
arise from his coming here to-night, and that there were possibilities
of explosion in the position. This gave him a general sense of
expectant excitement, so that at first he was a little bit impatient
of Mrs. Blackstone's remarks. He learnt that she admired intensely
that sweet little poem of his, and that she had been longing to meet
the writer; also that reading was a great blessing when one felt
miserable. Did he not admire Mr. Ingram? She herself adored his work.
He was constrained to reply that Ingram was one of his literary
heresies, whereupon she, with ready resource, supposed that tastes
differed, and then, as the result of a luminous thought, she added
that a poet would naturally not be so much interested in mere prose.
Of course poetry ranked the higher, but she was ashamed to
confess--she made the confession without any sign of shame--she
scarcely ever read any at all. She had several favourite novelists who
each published so many books a year that it took all the time she
could spare to keep pace with them.

"And indeed I'm glad they manage to write so much. They help to fight
against the flood of nasty realistic works we get nowadays. I should
like to see those all burnt."

Mrs. Blackstone went on to observe that she couldn't make out why
people went on writing such filth. She preferred books of a sound,
moral tone.

Morgan, feeling himself called upon to make common cause against the
Philistine, put in a tentative word of defence.

"That's true," admitted Mrs. Blackstone.

He soon drew further admissions from her, she never suspecting the
extent of the ground she was yielding till, just at the moment of
rising, she apparently gave up her whole position with the naïve
statement:

"I always thought they had a reason for introducing that sort of
thing. Thank you so much, Mr. Druce, for explaining it to me."

He was not quite sure whether he had been bored or amused. All the
same he now felt glad he had come; he seemed to be so much more
actively interested in what was to follow. Instinctively he looked at
Ingram, and the novelist came to talk to him whilst the other men
discussed the hygienic aspects of smoking.

"Well, have you got over your temper yet?"

The phrasing was unfortunate, though its conciliatory intention was
obvious. Morgan felt he was being addressed as if he were a sulky
child, and his resentment leapt up afresh.

"I beg you will not interest yourself further in me," he said.

"Suppose we omit some of the conversation," suggested Ingram, "and
assume all that sort of thing to have been said. You are hurt because
I showed your letter to a friend. Aren't you taking a distorted view
of the matter? Recollect that at the time you were an utter stranger,
and your letter was a bolt from the blue. I cannot see that I
committed so very great a crime."

"It is as great or as little as you feel it to be."

"And how may it be purged?" asked Ingram ironically.

"Ponder over it till you perceive its enormity, then apologize to me
in the presence of the woman."

Morgan scarcely realised what he was saying till the words were out.
Apparently he had spoken without hesitating and without thinking, but
he knew that his utterance was the result of all that had occupied his
mind for many days past. He felt now he was on the road towards the
realisation of that fantastic future, that poem in life that was to
take the place of the poetry in words he had abandoned.

Ingram gave him a strange, piercing look. Morgan had never before seen
in his face such an expression as he saw in it now. There was a
pregnant pause before the reply came.

"Very well, then. We will go to her to-night. No doubt the others will
now be glad to hear our views on tobacco smoke."

Morgan was conscious of a strange glow of pleasure, of a strange
satisfaction. All his sense of romance and mystery was astir. How
charming was the promise of the phantasy to come! The smiling, scented
serpent-woman was holding her arms to him! And again those lines of
Browning echoed through him, and his whole being seemed invaded as by
a "faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine, worm-eaten shroud."

He defended moderate smoking with vivacity.

Afterwards, the guests being disposed for conversation in the
drawing-room, Helen managed to sit with Morgan a little apart.

"What do you think of Mr. Ingram?" she asked. "Did you talk to him at
all?"

"He seems fairly intelligent," replied Morgan; "more intelligent, in
fact, than his work would lead one to suppose. You told me the other
day, did you not, that you have known him some little time?"

"It is only during the last few months that I have cultivated him or
rather he me."

"I see Mrs. Blackstone has possession of him now. She must be very
happy."

"She is his greatest confidante. That I am _her_ greatest confidante,
you know already, _ergo_--well, I'll leave you to make the deduction.
She is really a good soul, and a marked success as an ear trumpet."

"But is Mr. Ingram aware of that?"

"Quite. That is why he speaks into her such a deal. He finds me
perfectly deaf otherwise."

All this was a revelation to Morgan.

"You seem to be hinting at something," he could not help exclaiming.

"Of course. Mr. Ingram is anxious to marry a title, and, since he does
not object to having a good-looking person attached to it, he has done
me the honour to pretend to be in love with me. He has been proposing
for the last six weeks, and has offered to purify his books still
further to suit my virginal soul."

"And you professed to be telling me everything interesting," he
reproached her.

"Why, I left off telling you about my wooers and proposals at your own
request. You insisted they would never make you jealous, and they
rather bored you. So I did not say a word about this one. Of course
Laura is anxious to further his cause. She thinks me a good woman and
somewhat of a prude. Poor soul! She doesn't suspect the wedding ring
with the diamond in it you've seen me sometimes wear! You know it's
the sort of thing wicked women affect when they want to be cynical
about the marriage tie. Well, Laura is doing her best to persuade me
to be the instrument of Mr. Ingram's reform. She thinks it such a pity
his life has not been so wholesome in tone as his novels. Her
admiration of him is so great that she wants him to live up to her
conception of the author of his novels, and I am to be sacrificed for
the purpose. She is ten years my senior, and you will observe her
interest in me is quite maternal. But I must tell you more about it
another time. The doctor's looking bored. I must go and amuse him."




CHAPTER III.


Shortly after midnight Morgan and Ingram were driving towards
Hampstead, in which vicinity, the latter explained, resided the lady
upon whom they were going to call. For a long time the two sat
silent--they seemed to have nothing to say to each other.

And even while Morgan was thrilled through and through with expectancy
of romance, he could not help his brain playing a little with the
general position, which, in face of what he had learnt to-night, was
far more complicated than he had imagined. He smiled as it occurred to
him how easily he could annoy Ingram by marrying Helen. Curious, he
thought, that Ingram had not the least suspicion of it!

"May I not ask who is the lady?" he said at last.

"She is nobody in particular," said Ingram. "I call her 'Cleo,' which
is sufficient for all practical purposes. There is really no reason
why I should not tell you now that Cleo, in fact, has been the
companion of my leisure for the past six years. I will leave you to
form your own impression of her."

Ingram spoke with an exaggerated air of bluntness, as if to indicate
his indifference to whatever effect his statement might produce on
Morgan. The latter, however, was not very much surprised. His active
feeling was rather one of bewilderment as to the part Ingram was
playing in this tangle of relations. The fact that Ingram had turned
up as a suitor for Helen's hand, when he himself had been all these
years in active relation with either unknown to the other, had
exhausted all the possibilities of astonishment in him. But he found
it strange that Ingram, in spite of his matrimonial intention, should
still continue on such terms with this 'Cleo' as to be able to bring a
friend to see her in the way he was doing now. Ingram's very readiness
to fall in with the suggestion struck him as bearing some significance
he could not yet fathom.

Yet, though his mind was thus occupied, Morgan cared little about
Ingram's private designs. It satisfied him to feel that Ingram was his
unconscious tool, and that he was at length drifting in the right
direction. On rattled the vehicle through empty, dark streets, where
the very street lamps looked lonely and subtly fostered his mood.

They drew up at length in a narrow street of stucco houses, and Morgan
followed Ingram through a wooden gate up a glass-covered stairway that
led to an ordinary front door. Ingram opened it with a latch-key, and
they stood in a square, little hall, prettily furnished and dimly
lighted by an antique hanging lamp.

"Cleo expects me," said Ingram, "but I must ascertain if she will
receive both of us."

He disappeared through a door at the back of the hall, and, returning
soon, led Morgan through a sort of anteroom into a large inner
apartment, on the threshold of which they were met by a waft of
strange perfume which Morgan recognised immediately, though for a
moment it somewhat overpowered him. The scene, too, was so bizarre
that his perception of it lacked sharpness, and his first impression
was a dreamy one of fusing colour.

The room itself was large and square, and more than half of the marble
inlaid floor was raised several inches above the other part--that on
which Morgan stood as he entered. In the centre of this lower part was
a small marble fountain, with two tiers of basins, beautifully carved.
The water played prettily, overflowing from the lower and larger basin
into a daintily-bordered square tank set in the floor. Against the
wall beyond the fountain was built a marble slab, supported by a
double arch, under which stood ewers and vases. And higher up in this
same wall were set two pairs of tiny windows, divided into little
coloured panes, with designs of flowers and peacocks.

The ceiling seemed a quaint, flat, immense tangle of gold, green, red
and blue thread work, each line of which could be followed till the
eye lost it in the maze; and three lamps, suspended by brass chains,
filled the room with a ruby light that came through the interstices of
fine brass and silver work. The walls were marked out in panelling and
covered with a strange, decorative pattern. The raised part of the
floor was spread with richly woven rugs of warm tints, and a few
stools of curious workmanship stood about. Books lay scattered here
and there, as if thrown carelessly on the ground after perusal. In the
centre was a gilded couch, upholstered in silk, and, as Ingram
mentioned his name, Morgan found himself bowing to the wonderful woman
who reclined on it.

She rose at his greeting, tall and of a gipsy-like brown, and clad in
a straight terra-cotta robe tied in front with a broad, gold girdle,
whose long ends fell floating to the ground. Her feet were sandalled.
Her hair was of a rich, golden red, and somehow showed up in contrast
to the blue grey of her eyes. Her lips were full and of a startling
scarlet, as though they bled. She smiled to Morgan, displaying two
rows of tiny white teeth, and held out to him a long, brown hand.

He took it in his, and the contact set vibrating every chord of his
nature that had been strung up during the past days. At last he was
face to face with the dream-woman who had haunted him, and she was
even as he had seen her! And with all his emotion at this sacred
moment there mingled a sense of pride that his poet's instinct had
divined true.

"I am happy to know you, Mr. Druce. Mr. Ingram has just explained to
me why he has brought you. I am so sorry to be the cause of your
anger."

Her voice was curiously soft, without the least ring or even
suggestion of firmness; warm and yielding as a summer wavelet.

Morgan was somewhat startled at her words; he had almost expected some
strange, rich, musical language to fall from her lips.

Ingram drew over a stool, and Cleo bade him be seated. There was
somewhat of an embarrassed silence. Morgan scarcely knew how to meet
the occasion. It struck him that perhaps he ought to be grateful to
Ingram, for he had now a conviction that the letter of his which Cleo
had had in her possession had really interested her in him--had
touched some sympathetic chord in her--and that the task of
cultivating her would not, for that very reason, prove a difficult
one. He was certain that her nature had much in common with his
own, and that the future which was now to be unrolled was to be a
series of tableaux as charming as this first one.

He felt it incumbent upon him to dispose of the matter for which
nominally he had come, and murmured that Ingram had now sufficiently
shown his good faith, and that he personally was quite satisfied. As
he spoke he looked at Cleo again, and her eyes and lips gleamed at him
strangely. He was aware she wished to say a good deal to him, but that
the presence of Ingram hindered. And as the same constrained silence
once more fell upon them, the elusive odour of her perfume seemed to
obtrude again, as though taking the opportunity to assert itself.

Ingram at length remarked that the hour was late, and that if Cleo
would excuse them he would escort Mr. Druce back. He was glad that
harmony had been re-established, and he expressed his thanks to Cleo
for so willingly receiving his friend and helping to heal the breach.

Morgan did not mind having this first interview with Cleo thus cut
short, especially as he could not talk with Ingram there to listen. He
was, moreover, uncomfortably aware that Ingram was watching him
closely the whole time, and he did not fail to detect the tinge of
irony in the novelist's last little speech. But he felt he had closed
his account with the man, and he would not trouble his brains any more
about his motives or meaning. He therefore rose to say good-night to
Cleo. She offered them wine, but both men refused, so she smilingly
gave her hand again without striving to detain them.

Outside, each seemed given up to his own thoughts. Morgan would make
no comment on what had been revealed to him, nor apparently did Ingram
want to hear any.

They separated at a cab rank, each taking a separate vehicle. And only
as they were about to part did Ingram break the silence:

"I need hardly tell you you have seen a hidden side of my life. I look
to you to forget."




CHAPTER IV.


The very rapidity of the glimpse that Morgan had had into that
Hampstead interior made it the more fascinating to dwell upon in
imagination, and, though the definite figure of Cleo now took the
place of the vague, smiling woman who had always been with him, it
seemed to him that he had discerned Cleo's every feature from the
beginning.

The general flow of his thoughts and moods were coloured by this
fantastic adventure on which, he now felt, he was fairly embarked.
Nevertheless his life was not proceeding precisely on the lines he had
conceived when he had resolved to transport his imaginative
combinations from the field of paper to the field of life, to weave
dreams from reality instead of from thought. That disattachment he had
decided on in order that he might abandon himself wholly to the urging
of his temperament was proving a much more gradual process than he had
supposed.

For as yet the old relations were being continued; the man in
him--which the poet was unable to suppress entirely--could not break
these off abruptly. Thus, when Margaret's pink note announcing the
studio-warming arrived, he could not possibly accept the notion of
ignoring it, for was he not her true and healthy lover? His
friendship, too, with Lady Thiselton, had even become strengthened in
spite of himself. He could not help telling himself again and again
that she was as firm and true as a rock. And the very man in him that
appreciated her sterling qualities had still a sense of shame at his
having taken money from her, forced though his hand had been. The
vagueness and nebulousness of the future that suited the poet made the
man with his healthy repugnance to debt extremely uncomfortable.

The flow of his existence had thus split up into two currents, but the
stronger by far was the poetic force in him that made for a desperate
playing with life.

Yet several days passed without his being impelled to go to Cleo
again. Even as he had been wont to wait for inspiration, so he waited
now for the spirit to move him to the next step in this life-fantasy.
His time got frittered away, he scarcely knew how. He replied to
several letters from his father, who wrote to him at great length on
particular points of ethics, for the banker had by now seriously set
to work on his _magnum opus_. Two or three times Helen ran in to see
him at tea-time, and did her best to amuse him. The mere reflection
that Ingram must suppose he was but the most casual acquaintance of
Helen's was sufficient for that; so that she had not a very difficult
task, and expressed herself highly pleased at the agreeable mood in
which she was now finding him. She chatted quite freely about Ingram
and the latest developments of his courtship of her. She had refused
him for the fifth time, but he didn't seem the least bit discouraged
yet.

"By the way," she went on, "I've just been reading his biography in a
magazine. Evidently he has not been as frank with his interviewer as
he has been with me. The way I made him confess was just lovely,
though now he makes that a grievance, much to my indignation. All I
said was I couldn't possibly begin to consider his case till I knew
all about him. I made no promise at all. At first, indeed, he was
foolish enough to insist his record was spotless. A man who writes
novels of such sound moral tone! If only he had written naturalistic
novels, I might have believed him."

Morgan wondered if Ingram had included Cleo in his "confession." He
was rather inclined to doubt it, because he felt sure that the very
strangeness of that _liaison_ would have made Helen want to tell him
about it.

"And what do you intend to do with him ultimately?" he asked.

"Well, if I thought it would make you the least bit jealous, I should
announce that I intended to accept him. But as there is no possible
advantage to be gained by such a falsehood, it would be very
extravagant of me to waste it. I've scattered so many of them in my
time that I must be economical for the rest of my life."

Though he had never for a moment believed there was any possibility of
her marrying Ingram, he was yet relieved to hear her state her
intentions so definitely. Such was his sense of Ingram's unworthiness
of her!

A couple of days later he went to Margaret's studio-warming. Both the
experience and the anticipation of it were emotionally exciting. But
as a good many of Margaret's particular friends were there, her
attention had to be spread out a great deal, and he did not have to
talk to her much at first. Certainly there was nothing between them
that could be called conversation.

He found it soothing to talk a little with Mrs. Medhurst, who was
always equable, nice, and apparently in a pleased mood. She also had
been receiving long confidential letters from his father, and she
expressed the fear that at the rate the latter was now going in the
direction of iconoclasm he was courting public suppression.

"He is very much in earnest," she added. "I have written him at length
about the bringing up of daughters--he insisted on having my views. He
is very modest, though--just ventures to hope for success. 'If I only
had Morgan's pen,' he once wrote, yearningly."

To be reminded now how completely his father had been won over to
belief in him was but to have all the bitterness of his failure again
concentrated in one moment.

During the rest of the time he found himself carrying on a
half-hearted conversation here and there, yet with all his attention
on Margaret. He followed her with his eyes, watching her every
movement and gesture, noting her every smile, catching her laughter
and the sound of her voice. Something that was light, that was
sunshine, seemed to detach itself from her and to fill the whole room;
something that brought a sense of happiness to mingle with his strange
mood.

He felt that happiness as a sick man feels a cool, soft caress on his
brow.




CHAPTER V.


One afternoon Morgan took a hansom and drove to Hampstead. He entered
the glass-covered way that led up to Cleo's door and knocked
unhesitatingly. The servant who responded to his summons stared at him
in undisguised astonishment.

"Is your mistress at home?" he asked, for he did not know by what name
to enquire for Cleo. He sent in his own, however, and was immediately
ushered into her presence. This gave him no elation, because he had
taken it for granted she would receive him.

"I had a sort of presentiment you would come to-day," said Cleo,
throwing on one side the novel she had been reading, and the cover of
which, illumined with seven mystic stars and a veiled floating figure,
just caught his eye.

"And I just felt that I _must_ come," he said as, at her invitation,
he took a seat on one of the quaint stools with somewhat of an air of
long habituation to this strange Egyptian chamber.

Cleo was lounging on her gilded settee, obviously arrayed to receive
him in the hope of his calling. A vague, mystic light that compelled
an almost religious emotion came through the tiny window panes. The
fountain played with a soft splash.

"Do you know I am what the vulgar call 'superstitious?'" she
continued. "I always knew you would come into my life."

As she spoke her eyes seemed to shine with a greater fire. The scarlet
of her lips to-day was somewhat concealed by the half shadows; her
hair, too, seemed silkier and more restrained in tone than his first
impression of it. Her gown was of a vague colour--a sort of blue-grey,
in which the element of blue was suggested as a light continuous
tinge. A crimson silk scarf, fastened with an opal buckle, formed a
pleasing sash, and fell to the knee. As before, her feet were
sandalled.

"That letter of yours Robert showed me--years ago now--made me love
you at once," she explained. "Only a man of genius could have written
it. How my heart bled for you when you said, 'I see no other end to
the comedy than fall. God knows what shape that fall will take, into
what mud my soul plunge in the fight for life. I could bear anything
if I were not so utterly alone and helpless.... If you could see me,
speak to me--help me in any way!' Yes, I wanted to see you--speak to
you--help you. It was I who made Robert respond to your appeal. I
remember how disgusted I was with him when he insisted on taking the
whole thing as a splendid joke, just because he found you had a rich
father."

Her strange, soft voice seemed almost informed with dramatic passion
as she quoted his letter. It was clear she knew the whole of it by
heart. So Ingram's violation of his confidence, he reflected, had been
responsible for this interweaving of his life with Cleo's, and his
presence here to-day was but the natural continuation of the beginning
then made. He confessed to having been angered with Ingram.

"My blundering vision could not see how the strands were being woven,"
he added.

"I was certain all along they _were_ being woven," she returned. "The
incident at the time made a great impression on me, and I knew that
one day we should come together."

It gave him a thrill of joy to learn that he had been occupying her
thoughts for years past; that, having once come within her
consciousness, he had remained in her vision as a never-fading image.

"I am encouraged to ask you about yourself," he said. "You know I love
you, too."

This last statement was not an insincere one, for he did not conceive
it as a real statement made to a real human being. Cleo was his
wonderful dream-woman, and he had no notion at all of getting any
insight into her as a real woman playing an actual rôle in actual
life. He did not think of her as an element of real life at all; she
was simply the heroine of the fantasy he was busy weaving. His
declaration represented exactly his sentiment towards her in that
rôle; it expressed his sense of the fitness of things at the moment,
was the requisite correct touch the position demanded--this position
which he had mentally isolated from the rest of reality, and in which
for the time being he had lost himself.

"I know, dear," she answered. "I will tell you gladly, for I want you
to understand and appreciate me. Like you I have always been conscious
of genius, but I have had to wait long, bitter years. 'Tis always so
with genius. I have ever felt myself a chosen spirit, and I am sure I
am destined to become the greatest actress that has yet charmed and
captivated the world. Am I not tall, surpassingly beautiful,
lithe and supple as a reed--graceful as a lily? But that is not all.
In me is reincarnated the spirit of the ancient East, and it is my
mission to interpret that spirit to the modern world. I will help you,
dear, to realize that same spirit, and then one day, in a grand burst
of inspiration you shall write the play of my life. Then shall I break
upon the civilized world as a revelation.

"I can remember no time at which I have not been conscious of my
mission. But six years ago, when I set out on my journey into the
world, I was scarcely more than a child. I had no influence--I knew
nobody; and so I had no chance of making a real appearance at once. I
had to begin by joining a touring company, and that only to play the
rôle of a servant girl. At the time I was glad of any beginning, for I
was confident I should make my way. But I soon found myself stranded.
Then what do you think I did?"

"You wrote a letter to Ingram--just as I did?" he exclaimed excitedly.

She laughed.

"That is very clever of you. It is exactly what I did. He had a
successful play running at one theatre and I read that he was at work
on a new play for another manager. I thought that, if I could only
induce him to see me, I might get a real chance. My letter produced
the desired effect, for in it I had told him exactly what my future
was to be. We had an interview and he perfectly agreed with everything
I had said about myself. But he swore he could do nothing for me. His
plays, he asserted, contained no fit part for me--it would be a
thousand pities if I let my strength and energies be dissipated
in playing minor parts that any intelligent school girl with a pair of
bright eyes could do ample justice to. Then he confided to me that he,
too, had plans and ambitions, but that he was not making nearly so
much money as he was said to be doing in the personal paragraphs of
the newspapers. He was putting aside, however, all he could spare, so
that he might have a vast theatre of his own; and if that came to pass
I was the one being on earth to be associated with him in such a
mighty undertaking. Would I stay with him and wait?

"So I stayed with him, and I have waited--six years! We have built our
vast theatre again and again--it was to be the vastest in the world,
so that my audience should be worthy of my great gifts. Time after
time have we gone together into every detail of the scheme, I always
believing that at last we were getting ready in earnest. You will
wonder, perhaps, how it is I have allowed myself to be deceived for so
long. It was because I believed in him during the first three years,
and during the second three I had already lost so much time that I
_dared_ not disbelieve in him. It was always: 'Just six months more,
Cleo, dear, and then we shall astonish the world.' And then the vision
of that vast theatre was too fascinating for me to abandon. His
excuses were always plausible. Now he had made some terribly bad
investment, now a publisher had gone bankrupt, now the sales of his
books had fallen tremendously. Besides, he kept complaining bitterly
that he was being forced to suppress his genius and individuality and
to work for money. Just as he was waiting patiently, so must I wait
patiently. He was to write me my great piece, and I was to interpret
it. He bought this house for me and had this room rebuilt to suit my
ideas, so that the spirit in me should be nourished by a congenial
environment. By sitting here each day and meditating, I have
ministered to my sacred moods and I have kept pure the essence of the
ages which I am to revive for the modern world. Thus the years have
not been wasted. I have matured. I am confident my powers have
increased, and I have never felt more eager to exercise them than now.
Let me but appear in a suitable rôle and both fame and fortune are
assured to me, for I shall easily eclipse every living actress.

"Of course, I have recognised now that Robert has been playing me
false, at least of late. I should not like to think that he did not
really have those ideas in the first years, but I realise now he has
abandoned them and hasn't the courage to confess the truth. Of course,
he says that his year's finances have all gone wrong again, and that
he had seriously underestimated the capital necessary for the
undertaking.

"I am not a prisoner, of course. I have always had perfect liberty,
and I engaged the maids myself. They are too well paid not to be
attached to me. Robert is supposed to be my husband. Of course, they
know he isn't. Altogether, I have not been so very unhappy here. This
room has been a great comfort to me, and Robert and I have always got
on well together. But now we must part. He will miss me after all this
time, but there is no reason why we should not part in peace."

She related all this with the greatest naïveté, so that her absolute
faith in herself, her genius, and her mission, did not astonish him.
The words seemed to flow naturally from the personality.

He was aware she had scarcely given him a biography, but he liked to
take her as a mystical figure floating out of a sort of nebula. Such
personal details as might have been relatable of any other woman he
did not want to know; they would have interfered with this purely
artistic vision of her.

"I wish that I had a fortune to place at your disposal," he murmured.
"You should have your theatre at once."

"My vast theatre!" she sighed. "I fear I must dismiss that as a
hopeless dream. But I could take a theatre and make a less ambitious
beginning with very little money, indeed," she added, yearningly.

Then Morgan told her the condition of his finances; how he had
exhausted his own resources, and how "a friend"--he referred to Helen
in this highly general manner--had lent him five hundred pounds, of
which he had scarcely spent anything yet, but which he had not the
slightest idea how he was going to repay. Of course, he could not and
would not apply to his father again; on which point Cleo readily
expressed her sympathy with him.

Asked by him how much she thought would be sufficient to launch her on
her career, she could not say at once, but promised to think about it
and discuss the matter with him when he came again. She explained that
whatever the amount was, it would only be necessary to have it to draw
upon in case of need. Success being certain from the first, money
would come flowing in immediately, and, if they did decide to embark
on the adventure, he would certainly be able to repay his friend very
soon.

Her words to him were so many oracular statements, and he no more
thought of questioning them than a child thinks of questioning its
teacher about the names of the strange marks that constitute the
alphabet.

"You will be coming again, then, on Thursday," said Cleo, as he
stooped to kiss her hand in token of farewell.




CHAPTER VI.


"My dear," said Cleo, when Morgan came again, "I want to bind you to
me for always. Let us marry at once, or, at least, as soon as
possible. Then, since we shall have thrown in our lots for good and
always, we shall achieve together what we have been unable to do
separately. My spirit shall act on yours, and one day your genius
shall fashion the great masterpiece of my life. As soon as we are
married we shall take a theatre and I shall put on the most suitable
play I can find. As I have already told you, I have given up those
idle dreams of a vast theatre of my own, in which to make my début.
But never before have I felt my powers to be so ripe. Let me but
appear for one evening in a part that will enable me to do justice to
my gifts and I shall bring the world to my feet. I look to you to help
me now, and, by making myself yours for always I shall at least be
showing my gratitude and my confidence in you. It is but right that
two geniuses should be mated. The fact that we both thought of the
same resource under similar conditions--for were you not as forlorn
and alone as I?--was prophetic, and clearly indicated it was fated
your life and mine were to be cast together."

Her masterful definiteness hypnotised him. Her will was strong enough
to do what his own had failed to complete, to draw him away from the
rest of the world and absorb his life in hers.

Cleo had entered into his spirit and had at length not only silenced
but won over the man in him. She had seized on his whole being,
appropriated his every thought, and had attuned to hers every chord of
his complex nature. Her perfume and colour, her exotic beauty, had
entwined themselves in his every fibre, had enslaved his senses, and
intoxicated the thinking part of him. Her genius, too, cast an added
glamour of enchantment over the new life that lay before him--a
dream-life into which this marriage would take him entirely, and by
contrast with which, apart from its anguish, the real life behind him
lay dull and leaden.

To link his life with hers! To launch Cleo as a great actress! To win
renown side by side! He yielded himself to the prospect with eager
enthusiasm!

The notion of taking a theatre that Cleo had put before him at their
last meeting had already led him to make a rough calculation of his
present resources, and he had estimated that a financial clearing-up
would leave him with but little more than three hundred pounds. He
mentioned this now somewhat hesitatingly, for he feared that sum might
be quite inadequate. He was relieved to hear Cleo say that she could
make it suffice; and with her clever management he would very soon be
able to discharge his debt to his friend. She knew exactly how to go
to work and would make all arrangements, but of course she would let
him help her as much as he could.

"We shall set to work the very day we marry, for we must not lose any
time. All I shall take away from here are my costumes. I have some
money that Robert has given me from time to time, but that I am going
to return to him. It would be a desecration for us to use a penny of
his in our new life. Of course we must make our home temporarily in
furnished rooms."

The next day Morgan paid all his odd, floating debts, and got his
particular possessions together; all of which did not occupy him very
long. When he saw Cleo again it was arranged that she should take the
requisite formal steps for their marriage before the registrar, and
that she should also begin negotiations for the renting of a Strand
theatre. She had had her final reckoning with Ingram, who had assumed
an air of indifference, and had not wanted to know anything about her
plans or future movements.

"'Since you have made up your mind,' he said, 'I have no option but to
bow to your wishes.' But I could see that his lips were drawn as if
his heart ached at having to lose me. I must have meant so much to him
all this time. Poor Robert!"

"Of course, I gave him back his money," she went on, when her emotion
had subsided. "He took that with the same indifference. He said he
could quite appreciate my feeling about it and he would not oppose my
wishes on the point."

As regards his family and friends, Morgan made up his mind to write to
his father, to Lady Thiselton, and to Mrs. Medhurst, simply announcing
the mere fact that he had married. He would not give any particulars
nor say a word as to the personality of Cleo. The rest of his
acquaintances he would simply ignore.




CHAPTER VII.


However, on the day before his marriage, Morgan happened to come
across Mrs. Medhurst's dance card amid a heap of papers he was about
to destroy, and somewhat to his surprise found it was for that very
evening. He had accepted the invitation verbally, when talking to Mrs.
Medhurst at the studio-warming. And now a strange notion seemed to
come whizzing at him and he arrested it with a clutch.

Why should he not go and dance with Margaret for the last time?

In a moment his mind was made up. And shortly after ten o'clock he
found himself being received by Mrs. Medhurst. A half-dizziness came
over him as he shook hands with her--the festal atmosphere that
pervaded the rooms seemed to blur his senses. He would have stumbled
had it not been that Margaret's voice fell upon his ear just then, and
he became aware that her hand was in his. He saw her, as she stood at
her mother's side, a clear and gracious figure against the mist of
things.

She was in white to-night with just a lily in her hair, and it showed
graciously in a dainty setting of green. An adorable tiny edge of arm
peeped between sleeve and glove. Morgan thought of the lines Helen had
whispered to him at the Whitechapel Coffee House:

     "The Blessed Damozel leaned out
      From the gold bar of Heaven;
      Her eyes were deeper than the depth
      Of waters stilled at even."


He wrote his name on her programme. He was feeling timid and
self-distrustful, and having taken a dance near the beginning he
hesitated perceptibly before taking another lower down. She thanked
him gravely as he returned her the card and he thought he detected a
half-sorrowful expression in her face. No doubt she had been quick to
observe the constraint of his manner, and he felt she must be
suspecting something.

He was glad that the arriving guests were claiming her attention, and
he moved away and mingled with the crowd. But he was indifferent to
the scene, to the music and dancing, to all but Margaret. He could not
turn his eyes away from her. He took note of every man that asked a
dance of her. One of them kept writing on her programme for what
seemed to Morgan an unbearable time, Margaret looking on with a
tolerant half-smile. He knew the fellow well and hated him. Fledgling
at one or other of the learned professions, always aggressively smooth
and well-bred, a veritable paragon of polish without a single
redeeming mannerism, to Morgan he represented one large swagger. There
was something in the pose of the eye-glasses and in the clean-shaven
upper lip that told of boundless conceit and infinite self-assurance.
What right had he, was Morgan's indignant thought--and he made the
criticism as of a mere external fact from which he stood aloof--to be
so friendly with Margaret? How was it that she should show such
little insight as to be imposed upon by so specious a personality? No
doubt she thought him perfectly charming!

He was very angry and bitter, and already half-repented the impulse
that had driven him here. If the experience, in all its emotional
bearings, was a unique one, it was likewise a disagreeable one. When
the time came round for him to dance with Margaret he tried hard to
appear perfectly at his ease, and to make a show of good spirits.
Exercising the privilege of an old friend, he began to tease her about
the rapidity with which her programme had got filled.

"A girl must flirt a little," she asserted calmly, after a short
passage-at-arms. "You're not jealous, Morgan, are you?"

"I am only observant," he answered evasively.

"Your gift of observation must be truly wonderful--you manage to
exercise it at so great a distance, or perhaps you send out your
astral body to do the observing, which must be the reason why it's
invisible to me."

"I dare not speak at all. You turn my every word into a scourge
against me."

"Don't you feel you deserve the scourging?"

"I have had another melancholy fit," he urged, forced to defend
himself.

"Poor Morgan!" she said, pityingly. "I do believe you have some
trouble that you are keeping to yourself. Do you know, I've been
thinking so for some time now. You don't trust your friends
sufficiently. Come now, isn't my surmise near the truth?"

The tears almost welled up to his eyes. He did not answer her, for he
could not speak at all; but his silence was tantamount to an
admission.

"Poor Morgan!" she repeated softly, as if to herself, and the sympathy
in her voice troubled him still more. "And the trouble? Of course, you
are going to tell me first."

"Well, not to-night," he answered, closing his heart against her with
a superhuman effort. "I must not spoil your evening."

"Do you think I shall enjoy it, now that I know?"

"Why should you not?" he asked, and there was a shade of rebuff in his
tone. A half-savage impulse was urging him to pick a sort of quarrel
with her.

"You are unkind," she exclaimed in distress. "Is my friendship nothing
to you? Perhaps I am wrong to show you that I care about yours. I
ought not to have let you see I was so concerned about your trouble,
but I could not know that was going to vex you."

He did not answer, because her words disarmed him.

"Forgive me, Morgan," she went on gently. "Of course, you are
irritable and all unstrung, and I ought to be very much more patient
instead of flying at you. It would be wicked for us two to quarrel,
but I really do want you to be nice to me."

She was led away just then, and he felt glad to be relieved of the
responsibility of carrying on the conversation.

Dance after dance went by. It hurt him to see that eye-glassed
plausible young man dancing with Margaret. His mood grew hateful. The
hours at length became unendurable. He slipped away quietly and went
home.

But all through the evening he had been conscious in the back part of
his mind of the new life he had embarked upon. And even whilst he held
the sweet lily in his arms, his very love for her bringing him anguish
and bitterness, he was yet aware of scenes that sought to
obtrude--scenes in which figured the wonderful woman with whom he had
thrown in his lot, in which she stood in the glare of the footlights
with a dense packed theatre applauding to madness; scenes not outlined
clear and projected in space, but which were to him shapeless
silhouettes and dazzling formless patches of light flitting across the
extreme background of his consciousness.

       *       *       *       *        *

About mid-day Morgan Druce and Selina Mary Kettering were united in
holy matrimony. She had given her true name for the occasion, but
Morgan, intent on signing his own, scarcely noticed hers. She was Cleo
to him, and Cleo she would remain. It was not till about an hour
later, when they were lunching at a West End restaurant, that his mind
began to play about the fact that he really was married now. Yet it
seemed incredible. For him marriage had always connoted something
large and elaborate, a substantial experience with which were involved
complicated preliminaries, a process so transforming that one almost
expected one's very chemical composition to be changed by it.

But all had been so astonishingly simple. The whole morning had been
singularly like other mornings. The visit to the registrar's office
had been short and unimpressive. His bone and tissue were perfectly
unaffected by it. Cleo and he had lunched here before. How then was
his relation to her so different from what it had been?

He argued with himself. He told himself he _was_ married, but he
refused to believe it. With all his knowledge and certainty of the
fact, he failed to convince himself. And yet that certainty set him
speculating as to what his father and mother would say when they read
the curt announcement he intended dispatching that afternoon. He
wondered what Helen would think, what Margaret. The fragrance and
beauty of the lily seemed suddenly to invade his spirit. He had a
sense of sweetness and light, followed by a reaction of pain. Perhaps
Margaret would be crushed by the news; perhaps--and he could not help
the thought, grotesque though it was--she would marry that smooth,
eye-glassed young man.

There was a strange ringing in his ears; he was conscious of his whole
being soaring far away, a floating, palpitating spirit amid great
spaces of mystery and dream. A universal music was swelling around
him, a mighty concerto bursting full upon him from the stillness of
infinite distances--the sobbing of violins, the blare of brazen
instruments, an orchestral clash and clang.

"You may smoke," said Cleo.

With a start he found himself amid the garish mirrors of the gilded
restaurant.


END OF BOOK II.




BOOK III.


CHAPTER I.


Had the transition from bachelorhood to the married state been less
easy and less quickly achieved, Morgan might perhaps have realised
that the pattern of life he was weaving had not the same
undetachedness from the real as a pattern woven in dream, but that it
was a part and parcel of the real. As it was, he was not the man to
stop and think, once he had made his plunge into the strange, vague
future that had appealed to him. And now this theatrical enterprise,
with Cleo as the star, loomed ahead of him not only as the redemption
of his empty life, but wrapped in that seductive romance which his
mood and temperament demanded.

For the present, they had taken furnished rooms in Bloomsbury, where
they lived under an assumed name. Morgan did not leave his new address
at his old quarters, for he did not want any letters to follow him, no
matter from whom they came. He felt he had done all he could in
writing the three letters he had decided to write. And with the
sending of those letters, he seemed to be detaching himself from his
old life with one clean cut; his imagination left free to construct
the tableaux of what he believed--such was the impression Cleo's
personality had made on him--was going to be a gorgeous panoramic
future, a triumphant historic march through the civilised world. The
fact that Cleo now went about clothed like any other mortal did not
detract from his estimate of her genius, for the mere dispensation
with such extraneous splendour left untouched the splendour of the
woman herself.

And, from this mere moving from one London street to another, he had
all the feeling of having placed a thousand miles between himself and
everybody who knew him. In the theatrical enterprise he was to figure
under his present assumed name, though that was only likely to come
within the public cognizance as the name borne by Cleo's husband, a
personage none of his friends would think of associating with himself.
He thought he might thus fairly count on remaining undiscovered,
though, of course, he could not provide against chance encounters. But
he felt he would be very angry if any attempt were made to follow him
up and interfere in any way with the destiny he had chosen.

Meanwhile, with an exaggerated sense of his own helplessness, he
looked up to Cleo with an unshakable confidence, placing an oracular
value on her every word. She symbolised for him an all-conquering
power before which destiny itself could make no front. Had he been an
artist he would have painted her as the triumphant figure of allegory,
standing amid the stars with one foot planted on the terrestrial
globe. His attitude towards her was one of wondering admiration and
blind assent; with so much deliberateness did she turn her vision on
that seething world which she was preparing to conquer, and which had
always been to him such a whirling, giddy, incomprehensible chaos that
he had never been able to look steadily at it. Now, timidly peeping
from behind her skirts, he ventured to open his eyes on it. Alone, he
would never have known where to touch the heterogeneous, noisy mass,
but she, displaying a definite and intimate knowledge of its
constituents, at once began to establish relations with it here and
there. These efforts of hers seemed to him at first random and
isolated, and he watched with interested expectancy for the
light-giving result as a child might watch the preparations for an
elaborate conjuring trick. Eventually he began to see, with a pleased
sort of surprise, that the floating set of relations entered into by
Cleo was assuming recognisable shape as a theatrical enterprise.

The marvel she inspired in him deepened daily, so wonderful seemed her
purposefulness, her energy, her faith in herself. And though, beside
these qualities of hers, his diffidence compelled him to
self-effacement, he yet seemed to draw something from her very
superabundance.

From the beginning he had given up all the money to her, only too
pleased to be rid of the control of it. But when the arrangements were
fairly advanced, she insisted on his mastering the details of the
expenditure she was making and on going into the figures with him each
time she drew up what she considered a likely profit and loss account,
which she did at least once each evening. The result was always on the
right side and always large, and he was not quite clear that it did
not necessarily represent a sure fact, if a future one. Figures had
always irritated him, but, as she performed all the arithmetical
processes and he simply had to exert his intelligence to the extent of
grasping what each item stood for, he was pleased to find himself
equal to the effort.

Their three hundred pounds in the meantime had dwindled considerably,
but, as Cleo showed no signs of anxiety, it never occurred to Morgan
to feel uneasy. Cleo, who, for the sake of simplicity and also to
enhance her authority over the people she should employ, was making
every arrangement in her name only, had had to pay a large sum down
before she had been allowed to take possession of the theatre, for she
had been preceded by some other enterprising actress, with whom the
lessees had been less stringent, and who had come to grief, much to
their disgust. The costumers and the printers, too, were shy of
unknown dames with stage ambitions, and their co-operation was not to
be obtained without a show of bank notes.

Nor was Cleo unprepared in the all-important question of the play
itself. She had employed some of her past leisure at Hampstead in
translating many pieces from the French, and she now gave Morgan half
a dozen to read, saying she had already formed her own opinion as to
which one contained the best part for her and she wanted to see if his
judgment would tally with hers. Morgan was glad to have this quiet
task to keep him occupied for a few days. He took it, however, very
solemnly, for he wished to arrive at an honest decision, but he did
not wish it to be different from hers. However, he could not say he
liked any of the plays. Half of them were modern, half Oriental; all
artificial and stilted, and full of long-winded inanity. Eventually he
selected one of the Oriental, which he thought would at any rate give
Cleo an opportunity of displaying her dresses--to such Machiavellian
extent had she already influenced him. To his delight, she declared
that his choice was hers. He timidly ventured on a little criticism,
but she laughed and assured him that the play itself signified
nothing--plays were mere excuses for acting. This one provided a
part which, if not the ideal one for her, would at least enable her to
display herself and her genius to some advantage. Of course, she was
well aware she was not making the début that befitted her genius, as
that would have involved a play written specially for her in which
every other part was artistically subordinated to her own, a vast
theatre such as the one she had dreamed of, and a lavish expenditure;
her brain, moreover, being entirely relieved of all material
considerations and her spirit left unfettered. Under the present
make-shift circumstances she must be content with such humble
beginning as the poor funds at her disposal would allow her. And
Morgan felt quite guilty at his inability to provide the ideal début
she described, feeling she had quite a right to despise this mean and
unworthy beginning, and that it was really generous of her to face the
difficulties occasioned by their narrow means without complaint.

That there were difficulties he could not help knowing, for Cleo was
at no pains to conceal the fact. Rather was she intent on showing that
she was perfectly capable of vanquishing them. When the open-handed
policy she had been compelled to adopt had reduced their resources to
about fifty pounds, Cleo withdrew the money from the bank, saying it
would be safer in her pocket. But by this time her unhesitating
payments had begun to produce their effect, and it had got about that
she was no mere penniless adventuress, but a wealthy stage-struck
dame. As a mysterious personage, suddenly springing from nowhere into
the theatrical world, she began to arouse a good deal of interest, and
the flâneurs in those circles obtained kudos by pretending to precise
information about her. The rumour of riches spread. Tradespeople
became sweet and pliant--the plucking of a goose with golden feathers
was not an every-day event.

Cleo, who could afford to pay anything out of the profits of the huge
success to come, cleverly betrayed the rich amateur's ignorance of
charges, varying it by the occasional query: "Isn't that rather dear?"
Her delight at securing an abatement of a few shillings was so
undisguised that it caused much amusement to complaisant tradesmen.

The transaction of all this preliminary business afforded Cleo an
immense enjoyment. Her front to the world throughout had been the
perfection of boldness.




CHAPTER II.


And now Morgan found himself doing quite a deal of work, arranging
parts for typewriting, reading proofs and trying to understand
something of the--to him--intricate system of theatrical accounts. He
was proud when he succeeded in following business details, astonished
to find they were not beyond his intelligence. He passed to and from
the theatre several times a day, curiously glad to feel himself a
working part of all this complex machinery. But he was never quite
comfortable in the building, wandering uneasily about its corridors
and almost feeling as though he ought to explain his presence to one
or other of its scattered population he encountered in odd corners.
Everybody about the building seemed vaguely respectful to him, as
though possessed of some faint notion that he was attached to Cleo in
some incomprehensible way or other.

So far Cleo had behaved with perfect sang-froid. If at home she had
occasionally allowed her natural excitement to appear, it had been of
a pleasurable kind and fully sympathised with by Morgan. In the mere
commercial transactions that had relation to the enterprise, she had
shown herself as calm and unshakable as a rock, but as soon as the
actual fact of her chosen art began to be concerned, she commenced to
reveal other sides of her nature that disturbed Morgan's blind worship
in no little degree.

The first thing that began to stir his doubts was her method of
engaging the players, for she put on the airs of a grand patron, and
such pleasure did this part of the business give her that she
prolonged it unduly. She made actors and actresses wait upon her time
after time when she had not the slightest intention of engaging them.
She liked to have a crowd waiting in her anteroom at the theatre and
admitted to her august presence one at a time. It behoved her, she
explained to Morgan, to impress people from the beginning, and, though
this was the first time she had had a theatre of her own, she wanted
to appear as if to the manner born. Moreover, when he took the
opportunity, by way of expostulation, to express his sympathy with the
rejected applicants, who had been kept "hanging about" in vain, she
was able to make a show of justification, urging it had been necessary
for her to have the widest latitude of choice.

When the company was complete she laughingly admitted it was none of
the finest, but it would make an excellent foil for herself.

But it was only when the rehearsals began that Morgan discovered Cleo
possessed attributes, frequently associated with genius, it is true,
but by no means certain symptoms of it. Her patience was astonishingly
short and she possessed a temper that was perfectly ungovernable, once
it was roused. He likewise observed that there was a certain
domineering spirit in the whole control of the theatre.

His eyes were first opened to this state of affairs one day when he
had wandered on to the stage and stood surveying the desolate
emptiness of the house, in the vague spaces of which cleaners flitted
about or busied themselves amid the dim tiers of swathed seats.
Orchestra practice was proceeding in the band room, and Morgan stayed
to listen for awhile. A sudden high-pitched brutal comment gave him
the first inkling of the conductor's bullying methods.

The discovery soon followed that the stage manager was worse than the
conductor, and that, when Cleo once lost her head, which she did very
easily at rehearsals, she became almost hysteric. She was, however,
always ready to explain away her exhibitions of temper, saying that
the stupidity of the players and the worry of making things go right
were trying beyond human endurance. Which explanation he had perforce
to accept.

It was in apprehension of witnessing her outbreaks that he dared not
stay at the theatre during rehearsal hours for more than a few minutes
at a time. He could not help knowing, however, lounging about the
house as he did, that Cleo was disliked by all the company, she and
the stage manager being bracketed together as a pair of bullies. He
was aware he himself was better liked, for he got on very well indeed
with a couple of the men and thought them "very decent fellows."
Though their poverty forced them to borrow occasional half-crowns of
him, that only made him sympathise with them the more.

Morgan himself would have been puzzled to tell what difference the new
light in which Cleo was showing herself was making in his attitude
towards her. Her personality, taken as a whole, remained fully as
wonderful and impressive for him as before, and in the hours of her
calm he could scarcely believe he had ever seen her worked up into
such tense, nervous states. At such times there seemed possibilities
of indulgent explanation, for in all else she was living up to his
conception and to his expectations of her. His faith in her genius was
unshaken. Nothing had occurred to make him doubt the glorious
successes to come. Yet were the shortcomings she had so far displayed
distinct and tormenting drawbacks to the enthusiasm with which he had
begun.




CHAPTER III.


The frenzy of activity grew greater as the time of opening approached.
The three weeks allotted for the rehearsal swept by for Morgan in
tempestuous flight--an impression which he got from watching the
feverish evolutions of his Cleo. He found himself, too, drawn into
London night life, assisting at restaurant supper parties and sitting
down with men in evening dress who affected cloaks and crush hats, and
who were scarcely names to him. Cleo presided, sometimes as hostess,
sometimes as guest; Morgan, who figured as "my husband," having the
feeling that the others were just civilly tolerant to him. As for
himself, he was inclined to be taciturn, being little versed in the
matters on which the rest discoursed so racily. Cleo gave him to
understand that these men, and others he had stumbled against in the
corridors of the theatre and who seemed to have an easy entrée to her,
were those whose good will it was necessary to secure--critics,
journalists and the like. She further confided to him that she
considered she had achieved a triumph in drawing them round her. Asked
if they were of the first importance, she had to confess most of them
were attached to various weekly papers, whose influence, however, she
thought must be considerable. The names of the sheets were but dimly
familiar to Morgan and had that equivocal ring about them that
suggested vagueness of circulation. He did not quite approve of this
fawning on critics and hinted as much, whereupon Cleo insisted the
critics were only too glad to fawn on her.

"Do you suppose they have no insight?" she asked, "that they are
incapable of recognising beauty and genius? They can read the future
in my face, and for the sake of their own reputation they dare not
overlook or ignore me at the outset."

The world seemed to hold its breath on the last day, and Morgan was
conscious of a strange hush that seemed to hang over the crowded,
grinding thoroughfares. The last of the money had been spent in
advertising, and every portable effect, including his own watch, had
gone to raise more. All day long he lounged about the theatre in
feverish suspense. From the box office man--an incommunicative
individual with an absurd mustache, who spoke with an air of
resentment at being accosted--he learned that the advance booking had
been very slight, that, so far, the announcements and the various odd
paragraphs from the pen of Bohemian acquaintances, who had spoken very
favourably of Cleo's beauty, had failed to attract more than seven or
eight pounds.

But never for a moment did Cleo lose faith in the venture--that would
have been to lose faith in herself. Of course she knew her name was
absolutely unfamiliar to the public, she explained, in anticipation of
unsatisfactory takings, and, therefore, she could not expect to draw a
full house the first night. She had, however, taken steps to secure
appearances by an extensive distribution of paper. But she expected
the effect of her performance to be magnetic. She alone would stand
forth and the play and the rest of the players would scarcely obtrude
on the consciousness of the spectators. After the first evening or two
they would certainly have to turn away business.

The near approach of the moment when the realisation of his panoramic
visions was at last to begin, freshened again in Morgan all his sense
of the romance of the situation. There had been times in the last few
days when he had suffered from despondency. There were sides to
theatrical life that were little to his taste. He had long since
known, for instance, that the stage manager was addicted to obscene
talk; and when, one day, just as in the middle of a rehearsal he was
about to step from the wings on to the stage, he was arrested by a
torrent of vileness that came from that same individual, he was not
very much surprised at the mere fact. But he was vexed and disgusted
that the fellow should not have restrained himself in the presence of
Cleo. What was worse, Cleo herself seemed to be perfectly unaware of
anything exceptionable, for she made not the least protest; from which
Morgan gathered that the sort of thing must be quite usual and that,
had he not shunned the rehearsals so persistently, he would have known
it before. Thus, there were moments when he felt utterly alone in this
strange life, when he longed for real, human sympathy. He yearned for
some other being who was not Cleo, to whom to turn, to whom to pour
out the human emotion that was in him; some being who belonged to the
life from which he had cut himself off, and to which he looked back
almost as from another world. Yet these were only momentary longings
that mastered him. His whole interest, his whole imagination, were
bound up with his present life; and the fascination exerted over him
by Cleo and the wonderful future he believed was to be hers sufficed
to attach him enthusiastically to her career.

Thus, as the rising of the curtain approached, so did the excitement
in him overcome every other emotion; so did he become absolutely a
creature of this region into which he had plunged, breathing its air
with avidity and entranced by the prospect.

"I've a surprise in store for you, dear," Cleo confided to him that
day at lunch. "I've arranged a special scene at the beginning of the
second act, in which I alone appear. No one has any suspicion of it,
but I tell you, dear, the effect will be wonderful. Coming after I
shall have charmed everybody with my acting in the first act, it will
carry the audience off its feet with enthusiasm."




CHAPTER IV.


Morgan, installed in a box, all by himself, was eagerly interested in
the audience as it came straggling into the house, which, thanks to
the paper distributed, ultimately presented a pretty compact
appearance. He himself was ignorant how much real business had been
done, but, so far as he could judge, the gallery and pit were being
fairly well patronised. No doubt a good many had been drawn by the
gorgeous poster representing Cleo, twice her natural size, and dressed
in a costume somewhat like the one she had worn when he had first made
her acquaintance. Appropriately huge ornamental letter-press declared
her to be "The Basha's Favourite;" and it was on the first act of "The
Basha's Favourite" that the audience was now waiting for the curtain
to rise.

And at this moment of culminating excitement the scene impressed
Morgan curiously. His mood was essentially one of romance. That the
play itself was full of inanities was forgotten; but its title and
Egyptian colour together with Cleo's personality had somehow got
inter-blent and interwoven with the enterprise itself, making eve

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/29207