Читать книгу Bella Donna - Robert Hichens - Страница 11

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Mrs. Chepstow had said to Nigel, "Bring Doctor Isaacson—if he'll come." He had never gone, though Nigel had told him of her words, had told him more than once. Without seeming deliberately to avoid the visit, he had deliberately avoided it. He never had an hour to spare in the day, and Nigel knew it. But he might have gone on a Sunday. It happened that, at present, on Sundays he was always out of town.

He had said to himself, "Cui bono?"

He had the sensitive nature's dislike of mingling intimately in the affairs of others, and moreover he felt instinctively that if he tried to play a true friend's part to Nigel, he might lose Nigel as a friend. His clear insight would be antagonistic to Nigel's blind enthusiasm, his calm worldly knowledge would seem only frigid cruelty to Nigel's generosity and eagerness in pity. And, besides, Isaacson had a strong personal repulsion from Mrs. Chepstow, a repulsion almost physical.

The part of him that was Jewish understood the part of her that was greedy far too well. And he disliked, while he secretly acknowledged, his own Jewishness. He seldom showed this dislike, even subtly, to the world and never showed it crudely, as do many of Jewish blood, by a strange and hideous anti-Semitism. But it was always alive within him, always in conflict with something belonging to his nature's artistic side, a world-feeling to which race-feeling seemed stupid and very small. The triumphs of art aroused this world-feeling within him, and in his love of art he believed that he touched his highest point. As Isaacson's mental unconventionality put him en rapport with Nigel, his Jewishness, very differently, put him en rapport with her. There is a communion of repulsion as well as a communion of affection. Isaacson knew that Mrs. Chepstow and he could be linked by their dislike. His instinct was to avoid her, not to let this link be formed. Subsequent circumstances made him ask himself whether men do not often call things towards them with the voices of their fears.

The season was waning fast, was nearly at an end, when one night, very late, Nigel called in Cleveland Square. Isaacson had just come back from dining with the Dean of Waynfleet when the bell rang. He feared a professional summons, and was relieved when a sleepy servant asked if he would see Mr. Armine. They met in a small, upstairs room where Isaacson sat at night, a room lined with books, cosy, but perhaps a little oppressive. As Nigel came in quickly with a light coat over his arm and a crush hat in his hand, a clock on the mantel piece struck one.

"I caught sight of you just now in St. James's Street in your motor, or I wouldn't have come so late," Nigel said. "Were you going straight to bed? Tell me the truth. If you were, I'll be off."

"I don't think I was. I've been dining out, and should have had to read something. That's why you kept your coat?"

"To demonstrate my good intention. Well!"

He put the coat and hat on a chair.

"Will you have anything?"

"No, thanks."

Nigel sat down in an arm-chair.

"I've seen so little of you, Isaacson. And I'm going away to-morrow."

"You've had enough of it?"

"More than enough."

Isaacson was sitting by a table on which lay a number of books. Now and then he touched one with his long and sallow fingers, lifted its cover, then let it drop mechanically.

"You are coming back in the autumn?"

"For some days, in passing through. I'm going to Egypt again."

"I envy you—I envy you."

As he looked at Nigel's Northern fairness, and thought of his own darkness, it seemed to him that he should be going to the sun, Nigel remaining in the lands where the light is pale. Perhaps a somewhat similar thought occurred to Nigel, for he said:

"You ought to go there some day. You'd be in your right place there. Have you ever been?"

"Never. I've often wanted to go."

"Why don't you go?"

Isaacson's mind asked that question, and his Jewishness replied. He made money in London. Every day he spent out of London was a loss of so much money.

"Some day," Nigel continued, "you must take a holiday and see Egypt."

"This winter?" said Isaacson.

He lifted the cover of a book. His dark, shining, almost too intelligent eyes looked at Nigel, and looked away.

"Not this winter," he added, quietly.

"But—why not this winter?"

Nigel spoke with a slight embarrassment.

"I couldn't get away. I have too much work. You'll be in the Fayyūm?"

Nigel was staring at the Oriental carpet. His strong hands lay palm downwards on the arms of his chair, pressing them hard.

"I shall go there," he replied.

"And live under the tent? I met a man last night who knows you, an Egyptian army man on leave, Verreker. He told me you were reclaiming quite a lot of desert."

"I should like to reclaim far more than I ever can. It's a good task."

"Hard work?"

"Deuced hard. That's why I like it."

"I know; man's love of taming the proud spirit."

"Is it that? I don't think I bother much about what prompts me to a thing. But—I say, Isaacson, sometimes it seems to me that you have a devilish long sight into things, an almost uncanny long sight."

He leaned forward.

"But in you I don't mind it."

"I don't say I acknowledge it. But why should you mind it in any one?"

Nigel quoted some words of Mrs. Chepstow, but Isaacson did not know he quoted.

"Hasn't the brain a tendency to overshadow, to brow-beat the heart?" he said. "Isn't it often arrogant in its strength?"

"One must let both have an innings," said Isaacson, smiling at the slang which suited him so little and suited Nigel so well.

"Yes, and I believe you do. That's why—but to go on with what we were saying. You've got a long sight into things. Now, living generally, as you do, here in London, don't you think that men and women living in crowds often get off the line of truth and kindness? Don't you think that being all together, backed up, as it were, by each other—as a soldier is by his regiment when going into battle—they often become hard, brutal, almost get the blood-lust into them at times?"

Isaacson did not reply for a moment.

"Perhaps sometimes they do," he answered at last.

"And don't you think they require sacrifices?"

"Do you mean human sacrifices?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps—sometimes."

"Why have you never been to call on Mrs. Chepstow?"

Again the sallow fingers began to play with the book-covers, passing from one to another, but always slowly and gently.

"I haven't much time for seeing any one, except my patients, and the people I meet in society."

"And of course you never meet Mrs. Chepstow in society."

"Well—no, one doesn't."

"She would have liked a visit from you, and she's very much alone."

"Is she?"

"Are you stopping on much longer in London?"

"Till the twelfth or fifteenth of August."

"She is stopping on, too."

"Mrs. Chepstow! In the dog-days!"

"She doesn't seem to have anywhere special to go to."

"Oh!"

Isaacson opened a book, and laid his hand upon a page. It happened to be a book on poisons and their treatment. He smoothed the page down mechanically and kept his hand there.

"I say, Isaacson, you couldn't have the blood-lust?"

"I hope not. I think not."

"I believe you hate it as I do, hate and loathe it with all your soul. But I've always felt that you think for yourself, and don't care a rap what the world is thinking. I've looked in to-night to say good-bye, and to ask you, if you can get the time, just to give an eye to—to Mrs. Chepstow now and again. I know she would value a visit from you, and she really is infernally lonely. If you go, she won't bore you. She's a clever woman, and cares for things you care for. Will you look in on her now and then?"

Isaacson lifted his hand from the book.

"I will call upon her," he said.

"Good!"

"But are you sure she wishes it?"

"Quite sure—for she told me so."

The simplicity of this answer made Isaacson's mind smile and something else in him sigh.

"I have to go into the country," Nigel said. "I've got to see Harwich and Zoe, my sister-in-law you know, and my married sister—"

A sudden look of distress came into his eyes. He got up. The look of distress persisted.

"Good-night, Isaacson, old fellow!"

He grasped the Doctor's hand firmly, and his hand was warm and strong.

"Good-night. I like to feel I know one man who thinks so entirely for himself as you do. For—I know you do. Good-bye."

The look of distress had vanished, and his sincere eyes seemed to shine again with courage and with strength.

"Good-bye."

When he was gone, Isaacson stood by the mantel-piece for nearly five minutes, thinking and motionless. The sound of the little clock striking roused him. He lifted his head, looked around him, and was just going to switch off the light, when he noticed the open book on his table. He went to shut it up.

"It must be ever remembered that digitalin is a cumulative poison, and that the same dose, harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated becomes deadly; this peculiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart."

He stood looking at the page.

"This peculiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart."

He moved his head as if in assent. Then he closed the book slowly and switched off the light.

On the August Bank Holiday, one of the most dreadful days of London's year, he set out to call on Mrs. Chepstow.

A stagnant heat pervaded London. There were but few people walking. Few vehicles drove by. Here and there small groups of persons, oddly dressed, and looking vacant in their rapture, stared, round-eyed, on the town. Londoners were in the country, staring, round-eyed, on fields and woods. The policemen looked dull and heavy, as if never again would any one be criminal, and as if they had come to know it. Bits of paper blew aimlessly about, wafted by a little, feverish breeze, which rose in spasms and died away. An old man, with a head that was strangely bald, stared out from a club window, rubbed his enquiring nose, looked back into the room behind him and then stared out again. An organ played "The Manola," resuscitated from a silence of many years.

London was at its summer saddest.

Could Mrs. Chepstow be in it? Soon Isaacson knew. In the entrance hall of the Savoy, where large and lonely porters were dozing, he learnt that she was at home. So be it. He stepped into the lift, and presently followed a servant to her door. The servant tapped. There was no answer. He tapped again more loudly, while Isaacson waited behind him.

"Come in!" called out a voice.

The servant opened the door, announcing:

"Doctor Meyer Isaacson."

Mrs. Chepstow had perhaps been sitting on her balcony, for when Isaacson went in she was in the opening of a window space, standing close to a writing-table, which had its drawers facing the window. Behind her, on the balcony, there was a small arm-chair.

"Doctor Meyer Isaacson!" she said, with an intonation of surprise.

The servant went out and shut the door.

"How quite amazing!"

"But—why, Mrs. Chepstow?"

He had taken and dropped her hand. As he touched her, he remembered holding her wrist in his consulting room. The sensation she had communicated to him then she communicated again, this time perhaps more strongly.

"Why? It is Bank Holiday! And you never come to see me. By the way, how clever of you to divine that I should be in on such a day of universal going out."

"Even men have their intuitions."

"Don't I know it, to my cost? But to-day I can only bless man's intuition. Where will you sit?"

"Anywhere."

"Here, then."

He sat down on the sofa, and she in a chair, facing the light. She was without a hat. Isaacson wondered what she had been doing all the day, and why she was in London. That she had her definite reason he knew, as a woman knows when another woman is wearing a last year's gown. As their eyes met, he felt strongly the repulsion he concealed. Yet he realized that Mrs. Chepstow was looking less faded, younger, more beautiful than when last he had been with her. She was very simply dressed. It seemed to him that the colour of her hair was changed, was a little brighter. But of this he was not sure. He was sure, however, that a warmth, as of hope, subtly pervaded her whole person. And she had seemed hard, cold, and almost hopeless on the day of her visit to him.

A woman lives in the thoughts of men about her. At this moment Mrs. Chepstow lived in Isaacson's thought that she looked younger, less faded, and more beautiful. Her vanity was awake. His thought of her had suddenly increased her value in her own eyes, made her think she could attract him. She had scarcely tried to attract him the first time that she had met him. But now he saw her go to her armoury to select the suitable weapon with which to strike him. And he began to understand why she had calmly faced the light. Never could such a man as Nigel get so near to Mrs. Chepstow as Doctor Meyer Isaacson, even though Nigel should love her and Isaacson learn to hate her. At that moment Isaacson did not hate her, but he almost hated his divination of her, the "Kabala," he carried within him and successfully applied to her.

"What has kept you in this dreary city, Doctor Isaacson," she said. "I thought I was absolutely alone in it."

"People are still thinking they are ill."

"And you are still telling them they are not?"

"That depends!"

"I believe you have adopted that idea, that no one is ill, as a curative method. And really there may be something in it. I fancied I was ill. You told me I was well. Since that day something—your influence, I suppose—seems to have made me well. I think I believe in you—as a doctor."

"Why spoil everything by concluding with a reservation?"

"Oh, but your career is you!"

"You think I have sunk my humanity in ambition?"

"Well, you are in town on Bank Holiday!"

"In town to call on you!"

"You were so sure of finding me on such a day?"

She sent him a look which mocked him.

"But, seriously," she continued, "does not the passion for science in you dominate every other passion? For science—and what science brings you?"

With a sure hand she had touched his weak point. He had the passion to acquire, and through his science of medicine he acquired.

"You cannot expect me to allow that I am dominated by anything," he answered. "A man will seldom make a confession of slavery even to himself, if he really is a man."

"Oh, you really are a man, but you have in you something of the woman."

"How do you know that?"

"I don't know it; I feel it."

"Feeling is woman's knowledge."

"And what is man's?"

"Do women think he has any?"

"Some men have knowledge—dangerous men, like you."

"In what way am I dangerous?"

"If I tell you, you will be more so. I should be foolish to lead you to your weapons."

"You want no leading to yours."

It was, perhaps, almost an impertinence; but he felt she would not think it so, and in this he accurately appraised her taste, or lack of taste. Delicacy, reverence, were not really what she wanted of any man. Nigel might pray to a pale Madonna; Isaacson dealt with a definitely blunted woman of the world. And in his intercourse with people, unless indeed he loved them, he generally spoke to their characters, did not hold converse with his own, like a man who talks to himself in an unlighted room.

She smiled.

"Few women do, if they have any."

"Is any woman without them?"

"Yes, one."

"Name her."

"The absolutely good woman."

For a moment he was silent, struck to silence by the fierceness of her cynicism, a fierceness which had leapt suddenly out of her as a drawn sword leaps from its sheath.

"I don't acknowledge that, Mrs. Chepstow," he said—and at this moment perhaps he was the man talking to himself in the dark, as Nigel often was.

"Of course not. No man would."

"Why not?"

"Men seldom name, even to themselves, the weapons by which they are conquered. But women know what those weapons are."

"The Madame Marneffes, but not the Baroness Hulots."

"A Baroness Hulot never counts."

"Is it really clever of you to generalize about men? Don't you differentiate among us at all?"

He spoke entirely without pique, of which he was quite unconscious.

"I do differentiate," she replied. "But only sometimes, not always. There are broad facts which apply to men, however different they may be from one another. There are certain things which all men feel, and feel in much the same way."

"Nigel Armine and I, for instance?"

A sudden light—was it a light of malice?—flashed in her brilliant eyes.

"Yes, even Mr. Armine and you."

"I shall not ask you what they are."

"Perhaps the part of you which is woman has informed you."

Before she said "woman" she had paused. He felt that the word she had thought of, and had wished to use, was "Jewish." Her knowledge of him, while he disliked it because he disliked her, stirred up the part of him which was mental into an activity which he enjoyed. And the enjoyment, which she felt, increased her sense of her own value. Conversation ran easily between them. He discovered, what he had already half suspected, that, though not strictly intellectual—often another name for boring—she was far more than merely shrewd. But her mentality seemed to him hard as bronze. And as bronze reflects the light, her mentality seemed to reflect all the cold lights in her nature. But he forgot the stagnant town, the bald-headed man at the club window, the organ and "The Manola." Despite her generalizing on men, with its unexpressed avowal of her deep-seated belief in physical weapons, she had chosen aright in her armoury. His brain had to acknowledge it. There again was the link between them. When at last he got up to go, she said:

"I suppose you will soon be leaving London?"

"I expect to get away on the fifteenth. Are you staying on?"

"I dare say I shall. You wonder what I do here?"

"Yes."

"I am out a great deal on my balcony. When you came I was there."

She made a movement towards it.

"Would you like to see my view?"

"Thank you."

As he followed her through the window space, he was suddenly very conscious of the physical charm that clung about her. All her movements were expressive, seemed very specially hers. They were like an integral part of a character—her character. They had almost the individuality of an expression in the eyes. And in her character, in her individuality, mingled with much he hated was there not something that charmed? He asked himself the question as he stood near her on the balcony. And now, escaped from her room, even at this height there came upon him again the hot sluggishness of London. The sun was shining brightly, the air was warm and still, the view was large and unimpeded; but he felt a strange, almost tropical dreariness that seemed to him more dreadful than any dreariness of winter.

"Do you spend much of your time here?" he said.

"A great deal. I sit here and read a book. You don't like it?"

She turned her bright eyes, with their dilated pupils, slowly away from his, and looked down over the river.

"I do. But there's a frightful dreariness in London on such a day as this. Surely you feel it?"

"No. I don't feel such things this summer."

In saying the words her voice had altered. There was a note of triumph in it. Or so Isaacson thought. And that warmth, as of hope, in her had surely strengthened, altering her whole appearance.

"One has one's inner resources," she added, quietly, but with a thrill in her voice.

She turned to him again. Her tall figure—she was taller than he by at least three inches—was beautiful in its commanding, yet not vulgar, self-possession. Her thin and narrow hands held the balcony railing rather tightly. Her long neck took a delicate curve when she turned her head towards him. And nothing that time had left of beauty to her escaped his eyes. He had eyes that were very just.

"Did you think I had none?"

Suddenly he resolved to speak to her more plainly. Till this moment she had kept their conversation at a certain level of pretence. But now her eyes defied him, and he replied to their defiance.

"Do you forget how much I know of you?" he said.

"Do you mean—of the rumours about me?"

"I mean what you told me of yourself."

"When was that? Oh, do you mean in your consulting room? And you believe all a woman tells you?"

She smiled at him satirically.

"I believe what you told me that day in my consulting-room, as thoroughly as I disbelieve what you told me, and Mr. Armine, the night we met you at supper."

"And what are your grounds for your belief and disbelief?"

"Suppose I said my instinct?"

"I should answer, by all means trust it, if you like. Only do not expect every one to trust it, too."

Her last words sounded almost like a half-laughing menace.

"Why should I want others to trust it?" he asked, quietly.

"I leave your instinct to tell you that, my dear Doctor," she answered gently, with a smile.

"Well," he said, "I must say good-bye. I must leave you to your inner resources. You haven't told me what they are."

"Can't you imagine?"

"Spiritual, I suppose!"

"You've guessed it—clever man!"

"And your gospel of Materialism, which you preached to me so powerfully, gambling, yachting, racing, motoring, theatre-going, eating and drinking, in the 'for to-morrow we die' mood: those pleasures of the typical worldly life of to-day which you said you delighted in? You have replaced them all satisfactorily with 'inner resources'?"

"With inner resources."

Her smiling eyes did not shrink from his. He thought they looked hard as two blue and shining jewels under their painted brows.

"Good-bye—and come again."

While Isaacson walked slowly down the corridor, Mrs. Chepstow opened her writing-table drawer, and took from it a packet of letters which she had put there when the servant first knocked to announce the visitor.

The letters were all from Nigel.