Chapter VI: Part 6

"I know all that," he said quietly, "but I can't help myself. It is not for the picture--that doesn't matter. It is for me. Because I love you."

Madge threw her arms wide, then brought them together in front of her as if keeping him off, and a sort of cry of triumph that had begun to burst from her lips ended in a long moan. Then the room for a moment was so suddenly illuminated by some hellish glare that the candle burned dim, and simultaneously a crack of thunder so appalling shattered the stillness that both leaped apart.

"Oh, something is struck!" she cried. "It was as if it was in the very room: Is it me? Is it you? Oh, I am frightened!"

But Evelyn hardly seemed to notice it.

"That is why--because I love you," he said again.

For the moment Madge could neither speak nor move. That sudden double shock, the utter surprise of it all, and, deep down in her heart, the tumult of joy, stunned her. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him.

"You must go away at once, or I," she said. "We can't sit in the same room."

"But you don't hate me, you don't hate me for what I have said?" cried he.

"Hate you?" she said. "No, no, I"--and a sob for the moment choked her--"no, you must not think I hate you."

Just then the sound of a footfall outside and a voice in the hall struck in upon them, and Madge's name was called. In another moment the door opened and Lady Ellington entered, followed by Merivale.

"Ah, there you are, Madge!" she said. "Has it not been appalling? A tree was struck close to---- Mr. Dundas?" she said, breaking off.

Evelyn came a step forward. By a difficult, but on the whole a merciful arrangement, whatever private crisis we pass through, it is essential that the ordinary forms of life be observed. The solid wood may be rent and shattered, but the veneer must remain intact. This is merciful because our thoughts are necessarily occupied in this way with trivial things, whereas if they were suffered to dwell entirely within, no brain could stand the strain.

"Yes, I got here just before the storm began," he said, "and Miss Ellington and I have been keeping each other company. We both hate thunder."

Madge, too, played at trivialities.

"Ah, mother, you are drenched, soaking!" she cried. "What will you do?"

"I really urge you not to wait," said Merivale. "Let me show you a room; get your things off and wrap up in blankets till your maid can come from Brockenhurst with some clothes. I will send a boy in with a note at once."

Madge went upstairs with her mother to assist her, and Merivale came down again to rejoin Evelyn.

"I've only just seen your telegram," he said, "but I'm delighted you have come. That's a brave woman, that Lady Ellington. A tree was struck only a few yards from us, and she merely remarked that it was a great waste of electricity. But I'm glad it was wasted on the tree and not me."

He scribbled a few lines and addressed them to Lady Ellington's maid, and went off to get somebody to take the note into Brockenhurst. Then he came back to Evelyn.

The latter had not gone back to the room where he and Madge had sat during the storm, but was out on the verandah. Just opposite, on the other side of the river, was the tree that had been struck, not a hundred yards distant. One branch, as if in a burst of infernal anger on the part of the lightning, had been torn off, as a spider tears off the wing of a fly, and down the center of the trunk from top to bottom was scored a white mark, where the wood showed through the torn bark. But the tree stood still, no uprooting had taken place; but even now, in this windless calm, its leaves were falling--green, vigorous leaves, that seemed to know that the trunk and the sap that sustained them were dead. They fell in showers, a continuous rain of leaves, until the ground beneath was thick with them. All the pride of the beech's summer glory was done; in an hour or two the tree would be as leafless as when the gales of December whistled through it. What mysterious telegraphy of this murderous disaster had passed through the huge trunk, that had sent the message to the uttermost foliage like this; some message which each leaf knew to be terribly true, so that it did not wait for the dismantlement of the autumn, but even now, in full vigour of green growth, just fell and died? Somehow that seemed to Evelyn very awful and very inevitable; the citadel had fallen, struck by a bolt from above, and in the uttermost outworks the denizens laid down their arms. Something, too, of the sort had happened to himself in the last hour; he had told Madge the secret of his life, that which made every artery fill and throb with swift electrical pulsation of rapturous blood, and it had all passed into nothingness. She had said she did not hate him; that was all. His recollection, indeed, of what had happened after he had told her was still rather dim and hazy; there had been a terrific clap of thunder, she had said she did not hate him; then her mother and Merivale came in.

Then, as the falling leaves from the tree might be gathered and put in a heap, at any rate, the shattered fragments of the afternoon began to piece themselves together again. She had confessed that she had said he bored her, she had confessed also that that was not true. What did that mean? She had said she did not hate him. What did that mean? And was her utter disorderment of mind, that hopeless, appealing agitation which had been so present in her manner throughout, merely the result of the thunderous air? Or was there something else that agitated her, his presence, the knowledge that she had behaved inexplicably? And--was it possible that the tree should live again after that rending furrow had been scored on it?

Merivale soon returned, still smilingly unruffled, and still in soaking clothes. But he seemed to be unconscious of them, and sat down in the verandah by Evelyn. Since that terrific clap there had been no return of the thunder, but the rain was beginning to fall again, slow, steady, and sullen from the low and dripping sky. He saw at once that something had happened to Evelyn; he was trembling like some startled animal. But since he held that to force or even suggest a confidence was a form of highway robbery, he forbore from any questioning.

"So you were with Miss Ellington during the storm," he said. "How I love that superb violence of elements! It is such a relief to know that there are still forces in the world which are quite untamable, and that by no possibility can Lady Ellington divert the lightning into accumulators, which will light our houses."

Evelyn turned on him a perfectly vacant face; he seemed not to have heard even.

"What did Lady Ellington do?" he asked.

"She attended when I talked to her," said the Hermit, with pardonable severity.

Evelyn pulled himself together.

"Look here, something's happened," he said briefly. "It's--I've told her that I love her. And that's all; it's a rope dangling in the air, nothing more happened. She just said I had better go to another room. She made no direct answer at all; she wasn't even shocked."

Then the tiny details began to be gathered in his mind, as if a man swept the fallen leaves from the stricken tree into a heap.

"She gave a sort of cry," he said, "but at the end it was a moan. She threw her arms wide, and then held them to keep me off. What does it mean? What does it all mean?"

He got up quickly and began walking up and down the verandah.

"Where is she?" he said. "I must see her again. I must say what I said again, and tell her she must answer me."

The Hermit, for all his inhuman life, had some glimmerings of sense.

"You must do nothing of the sort," he said. "You don't seem to realise what you have done already. Why, she is engaged to Philip, to your friend, and you have told her you love her. Good gracious, is not that enough to make her moan?"

"I told you I should a week ago," said Evelyn.

"Yes, but you told me that conditionally. You said you would do so when you saw she loved you. Instead---- Good heavens! Evelyn, you must be unaware of what you have done. You were left with the girl during a thunderstorm, a thing that excites you and terrifies her, and you took advantage of your excitement and her terror to say this. It's ugly; it's beastly. But I can say it isn't like you."

Evelyn showed no sign of resenting this. As far as the mere criticism of what he had done was concerned, he appeared merely to feel a speculator's interest in how it all struck another spectator. Even Lady Ellington's hard, polished mind could not have presented a surface more impervious to scratches.

"You speak as if I did it all intentionally," he remarked. "But I never intended anything less. It had nothing to do with what I could control. I had no more power over it than I had over the thunderstorm. After all, you don't blame your thrush for eating worms. If one acts instinctively, nobody has any right to blame me. Besides, I don't want your moral judgment. I just want to know what it means. You have called me a Pagan before now, and I did not deny it. But there I am. I don't happen to like the colour of your hair, but I accept it. It seems to me buttery, if you want to know. And I seem to you Pagan, without conscience, you think I have acted uglily. Very well."

Merivale hesitated a moment; he had no desire to say hard things because they were hard. On the other hand, he felt that the game must be played, rules had to be observed, or human life broke up in confusion, as if the fielders in a game of cricket would not run after the ball or the bowler bowl. He himself did not go in for cricket, he deliberately stood aside, but the rules were binding on those who played. Yet it was no use trying to convince a person who fundamentally disagreed.

"Well, you asked me," he said, "and I have given you my opinion. That's all. Nobody's opinion is binding on anyone else. But I do ask you to think it over."

Evelyn gave a little click of impatience.

"Think it over!" he said. "What else do you suppose I should be thinking about, or what else have I thought about for days?"

Merivale shook his head.

"Try to get outside yourself, I mean, and look at what you have done from any other standpoint than your own. You say you couldn't help telling her. Well, there are certain things one has got to help, else----"

He stopped; it was no use talking. But Evelyn wanted to hear.

"Else?" he suggested.

"Else you had better not mix with other people at all," said Merivale. "You have better reason for turning hermit than I. You have told a girl who is engaged to your friend that you love her. Think over that!"

NINTH

In spite of her wetting Lady Ellington felt she had had a most interesting day, when, an hour later, she drove back with Madge and her maid to Brockenhurst. She was not in the least afraid of having caught cold, because her physical constitution was, it may almost be said, as impervious to external conditions as her mind. That frightful flash of lightning, too, which had shattered the now leafless tree, had also, as we have seen, been powerless to upset the even balance of her nerves, and had only evoked a passing regret that so much electric force should be wasted. She could, therefore, observe with her customary clearness that something had occurred to agitate Madge, and though the thunderstorm alone might easily account for this--where Madge had got her nerves from she could not conjecture, there was nothing hereditary about them, at any rate, as far as her mother was concerned--yet it required no great exercise of constructive imagination to connect Evelyn's sudden appearance with this agitation. She remembered also Madge's refusal to see him the other day, and her rather unaccountable postponement of the sitting. A few well-chosen questions, however, would soon settle this, and these she delivered that evening after dinner, firing them off like well-directed shots at a broad target. She did not, to continue the metaphor, want to make bull's eyes at once, a few outers would show her the range sufficiently well.

She had first, however, committed to writing on half-a-dozen sheets of the hotel paper her impressions of the day and the conversation of Mr. Merivale, in so far as it bore upon the simplification of life, and was pleased to find how considerable a harvest she had gathered in. Lady Ellington's literary style had in perfection those qualities of clearness and sharp outline that distinguished her mind, and her document might have been a report for an academy of science, so well arranged and precise was it. There were no reflections of her own upon the matter; it was merely a chronicle of facts and conversation. This having been written, revised, and read aloud to Madge, she then marched with her gun to her position in front of the target.

"It was odd that Mr. Dundas should have appeared so unexpectedly, Madge," she said. "You must have had some considerable time with him if he arrived before the storm began."

Madge had been rather expecting this, and she winced under her mother's firm, hard touch.

"Yes, he had been there about an hour before you came in," she said. "I think your account is quite excellent, mother."

This, if we consider it as an attempt to draw Lady Ellington off the subject of Evelyn, was quite futile. She did not even seem to notice that such an attempt had been made.

"And did you arrange about your further sittings?" she asked.

"I don't think any more will be necessary," replied Madge. "Philip agrees with me too."

"And Mr. Dundas?"

"I don't think he will ask me for any more either."

Lady Ellington considered this a moment.

"But surely you had settled to have one more," she said, "the one which you postponed."

"Yes, but I think we all agree now that as far as I am concerned the picture is finished."

Lady Ellington was not exactly puzzled; it would be fairer to say that though she did not quite know where this led, she was quite certain it led somewhere. It was not a puzzle; it was rather a clue. So she got behind a bush, as it were, and continued firing from there.

"He is a great friend of Philip's, is he not?" she said. "I suppose you will see a good deal of him after your marriage?"

This sharp-shooting was frightfully trying to Madge's nerves; she never knew where the next shot might be coming from. But in that it was now quite clear to her that shooting was going on, it was the part of wisdom to defend herself.

"Oh! I hope so," she said, "he is charming. I expect he will be constantly with us."

This was a little disconcerting; Madge had distinctly had the best of that exchange. But she was in the beleaguered position; she felt that at any moment she might have to give in. She had a wild desire simply to leave the room, for she wanted to be alone, and to think over all that she now knew, but the clock inexorably pointed to half-past nine only, and to say she was going to bed would simply strengthen whatever idea it was in Lady Ellington's mind that prompted her questions. Maternal anxiety and solicitude, though the point of view of the mother was perhaps a little predominant, were the moving causes of them, if they were referred back to primary motives; to put it more bluntly yet, Lady Ellington merely wished for a guarantee that nothing of any sort had occurred which might, however remotely, influence the matrimonial design for her daughter which she had formed and Madge had agreed to carry out. That she had fears that things were running otherwise than smoothly--by smoothly being meant that the marriage would take place on the twenty-eighth of the month--would be an overstatement of the idea that prompted these questions, but she certainly wished for some convincing word that she need have none.

Now, in the art of conversation as generally expounded, provision is not made for one very important and common contingency. Of the two conversationalists one may be willing to talk of anything in the world except one subject, the other may for the time wish to talk about no other than that, and thus conversation becomes difficult. But it would often be a tactical error--a thing of which Lady Ellington was seldom guilty--for the person who wishes to speak of one subject only to batter the other with too many questions on it. It is often better to sit quietly down and wait, refusing with what politeness there may be handy to talk of anything else, and simply let silence do its stealthy work--for awkward silences are wearing, and the wearing effect is inevitably felt by the side which is willing to talk of any but the one subject. Lady Ellington perhaps had never formulated this in all its naked simplicity, but she had often before now put the theory into practice with masterly effect, and she did so now. There was, so to speak, but one gate through which the beleaguered garrison could make a sortie: round that she concentrated her forces. The beleaguered garrison knowing that, tried to make a sortie through every other gate first.

A long silence.

"That was a terrible storm this afternoon," said Madge. "The rain fell in bucketsfull. I saw there were quite deep channels across the road along which we drove back here, which it had made."

"I did not notice them," said Lady Ellington.

Silence.

"Fancy Mr. Merivale cooking for himself and doing all the housework," said Madge.

"Fancy!" said Lady Ellington.

Silence.

"Shall we go up after breakfast to-morrow?" asked Madge.

"Unless you would like to go before," said her mother.

There is a terrible little proverb about being cruel only to be kind, and this benignant sort of torture exactly describes the procedure of Lady Ellington. Should there be--and she was quite sure there was--something going on in Madge's mind with regard to Evelyn she was quite convinced that it would be better in every way that she should know about it. That was the ulterior kindness; the immediate cruelty was apparent--for Madge was on the edge of a crisis of nerves; a very little push might send her sprawling. If that then was the case, Lady Ellington distinctly wished that she should sprawl; if, on the other hand, there was nothing critical or agitating in her outlook, the little push would do no harm whatever, for a mind at peace does not have its tranquility upset by vague suggestions and indefinite suspicions.

But since poor Madge was far from owning just now that inestimable possession of a tranquil mind, in the silence that followed her third fiasco in making general conversation, she began to get restless and fidgetty. She opened a book and looked blankly at a page, and shut it again; she fingered the ornaments on the mantlepiece; she went to the open window and looked out for a considerable time into the hot, wet blackness, for the slow, steady rain was again falling, and the heavens wept from a sullen sky. The ridge of the forest below which stood Merivale's house was directly opposite the window--she had seen that before night fell--and, like the thrush that came to his voiceless call, so now her spirit sped there to one who called for her. That sudden flash of lightning had not been more unexpected than Evelyn's declaration to her that afternoon, nor had the thunder that followed it come quicker in response than she had come. And now she wondered, half with dread, half with a wild, secret hope, whether he had noticed that momentary self-betrayal that she had made. She knew that before she could think or control herself, a cry had been on her lips, her arms had flung themselves wide. True, as soon as her conscious brain could work, she had revoked and contradicted what she had done. But had he seen? How terrible if he had seen! How terrible if he had not!

What had become, she asked herself, of all her sober and sane conclusions of a week ago? She knew then that she loved him, that that which had been a stranger to her all her life, no pleasant domestic affection, but something wild, unbarred, almost brutal, yet how essential now to life itself, had dropped into her heart, as a stone drops into the sea, going down and down to depths unplumbable, yet still going down until the bottom--the limits of her soul--was reached. And he? Was she to him another such stone? Was she really sinking down and down in his heart, so steadily and inevitably that all the tides of all the seas might strive, yet could never cast that stone up again? It was such a little thing, yet no power on earth, unless the laws that govern the earth were revised and made ineffectual, could ever stay its course, if it moved under the same command as she. Each had to settle in the depths of the other. Once the surface was broken by the little splash, down that would go which made the splash, and whether in a wayside puddle or in the depths of mid-Atlantic, it would rest only where it touched bottom. Such was the sum of her wide-eyed staring into the blackness of the rain-ruled night. Then, still restless, she turned back again into the room, and faced not the world of dreams and solitary imaginings, of what must theoretically be the case, but the material side of it all, which indubitably had its word to say. On the table was the letter she had received an hour before dinner, forwarded from London, and expressing the pleasure of the donor in sending a wedding present; there too was her own answer of neatly-worded thanks, and, above all, there was her mother, patiently adamant. And the beleaguered garrison, though it knew that the enemy--that friendly enemy--awaited it, went out on a sortie too forlorn to call a hope through the only available gate.

Madge sat down in the chair she had occupied before.

"You have been asking me a lot of questions, mother," she said, "which bear on Mr. Dundas. I suppose you think or have guessed that something has happened. You are quite right; I think you are always right. He told me this afternoon that he was in love with me."

Lady Ellington hardly knew whether she had expected this or not; at any rate she showed no sign of surprise.

"What very bad taste," she said, "his telling you, I mean."

Madge had given a sudden hopeless giggle of laughter at the first four words of this, before the explanation came. Lady Ellington waited till she had finished.

"What did you say to him?" she asked.

"I hardly know. I think I said that one or other of us must leave the room."

"Very proper; and he?"

"He--he asked me whether I hated him for it. And I told him I did not."

Then she broke; whether or no it was wiser to be silent she did not pause to consider, for she could not be silent. There must be a crash; a situation of this kind could not adjust itself in passivity, it was mere temporising not to speak at once.

"Because I don't hate him," she said, now speaking quickly as if in fear of interruption. "I love him. Oh! I have done my best; if he had never spoken, never let me know that he loved me, I could have gone on, I think, and done what it has been arranged for me to do. Philip knew, you see, that I did not love him like that. I had told him. But I did not know what it was. I almost wish I had never known. But I know; I can't help that now."

Whatever Lady Ellington's gospel as regards the best plan on which to conduct life was worth, if weighed as a moral principle, it is quite certain that she acted up to it. She put a paper-knife into the book she had taken up during Madge's aimless wanderings about the room to mark the page of her perusal, and spoke with perfect calmness.

"And what do you propose to do?" she asked.

Madge had not up till that moment proposed to do anything; she had not, in other words, considered the practical interpretation of this bewildering discovery. The fact that her silent, secret love--a love which she was determined to lock up forever in her own breast--was returned, was so emotionally overwhelming that as from some blinding light she could only turn a dazzled eye elsewhere. Her first instinct, at the moment at which that was declared to her, was of rapturous acceptance of it, but almost as instinctive (not quite so instinctive, since it had come second) was a shrinking from all that it implied--her rupture with Philip, his inevitable suffering, the pressure that she knew would be brought to bear on her. Yet the thing had to be faced; it was no use shrinking from it, and Lady Ellington's question reminded her of the obvious necessity for choice. Her choice indeed was made; it was time to think of what action that choice implied. But she answered quietly enough.

"No, I have not yet thought of what I mean to do," she said. "I suppose we had better talk about it."

Then Lady Ellington unmasked all her batteries. It was quite clear that Madge already seriously contemplated breaking off her engagement with Philip and marrying this artist.

"Indeed, we had better talk about it," she said. "But I want to ask you one question first. Has Mr. Dundas the slightest notion that his feeling for you is reciprocated?"

Madge thought over this a moment.

"He has no right to think so," she said. "I--I have told you what occurred. The whole thing was but a few seconds."

"There are various ways of spending a few seconds," said her mother. "But you think you spent them discreetly."

Madge looked up with a sort of weary patience.

"You mustn't badger me," she said. "It is no use. I did my best to conceal it."

Then the bombardment began.

"Very good; we take it that he does not know. Now let us consider what you are going to do. Do you mean to write a note to him saying, 'Dear Mr. Dundas, I love you?' If that is your intention, you had better do it at once. There is no kind of reason for delay. But if it is not your intention, taking that in its broadest sense to mean that you will not make known to him that you love him, dismiss that possibility altogether. Pray give me your whole attention, Madge; nothing that can occur to you in the whole of your life is likely to matter more than this."

"But I love him," pleaded Madge, "and he loves me. Is not that enough? Must not something happen?"

"I ask you whether you intend to do anything; that implies now that you, without further action on his part, will show him that you love him. The question just requires 'Yes' or 'No.'"

"And supposing I decline to answer you?" asked Madge, suddenly flashing out.

"I don't think you can do that. You see I am your mother; as such, I think I have a right to know what you propose to do."

Madge covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. The question had to be answered; she knew that, and she knew also that unless Evelyn made a further sign she could do nothing. If his love for her, as she doubted not at all, was real, he must approach her again. Here then were all the data for her answer.

"No," she said. "I shall do nothing, because there is no need. He must----" And she broke off. Then she got up with a sudden swift movement.

"You put it coarsely, you make cast-iron of it all, mother," she said, "when you ask me if I intend to write to him and tell him. Of course I do not."

"Nor see him?" pursued Lady Ellington.

"If he asks to see me I shall see him," said she. "And if his object is to say again what he said to-day, I shall tell him."

Now to get news, even if it is not very satisfactory, is better than not getting news. In uncertainty there is no means of telling how to act, and whatever the contingency--a contingency known is like a danger known--it can perhaps be guarded against, and it can certainly be faced. How to guard against this Lady Ellington did not at the moment see, but she knew that danger lay here.

"And from that moment you will break off your engagement with Philip?" she asked.

There was no need here of any reply, and Lady Ellington continued:

"Now consider exactly how Mr. Dundas stands," she said. "He knows you are engaged to a friend of his, that you will be married in a few weeks, and he allows himself, left alone with you by accident, to make this declaration to you. Does that seem to you to be an honourable action?"

Then once again Madge flashed out.

"Ah, who cares?" she cried. "What does that matter?"

Lady Ellington rose.

"You have also promised to marry Philip," she said. "I suppose that does not matter either? Or do I wrong you?"

"He would not wish me to marry him if he knew," said Madge.

Lady Ellington poured out her glass of hot water, and sipped it in silence. She knew well that many words may easily spoil the effect of few, and her few, she thought, on the whole had been well chosen. So just as before she had refused to talk on any subject but one, so now, since she had said really just what she meant to say, she refused any longer to talk on it, but was agreeably willing, as Madge had been some ten minutes before, to talk about anything else.

"I think there will be more rain before morning," she said.

Then Madge came close to her and knealt by her chair.

"Are you not even sorry for me, mother?" she said.

"I shall be if you act unwisely," replied the other, and Madge, there was nothing else to be done, got up again.

There was a slightly chalybeate taste in Lady Ellington's hot water to-night, and she remarked on it; this was more noticeable if the water was hot than if it was cold, but the taste was not unpleasant. Then the question of their train up to town the next day was debated, and it was settled to leave that till to-morrow. Indeed, it was rather a pity to come down into the country for so few hours, and their afternoon to-day had really been spoiled by the rain. Another walk in the forest--it would look beautifully fresh and green after the storm--would be very pleasant to-morrow morning, if it was fine.

All this, delivered in her cool, well-bred voice, had a sort of paralytic effect on Madge; she felt as if coils were being wound round her that hampered her power of movement. She could scarcely picture herself as in active opposition to her mother's will, and the picture of herself triumphant over it was even more unthinkable. But, as usual, she kissed her mother when she said "Good night" to her, and her mother offered her bromide if she thought that the excitement and agitation caused by the thunderstorm would be likely to prevent her sleeping.

Lady Ellington did not propose taking any bromide herself to make her sleep; she did not, on the other hand, propose to attempt to go to sleep just yet, for she had matters to weigh and consider, and perhaps take steps consequent on her consideration, before she went to sleep. Like all practical and successful people, she believed intensely in prompt action; it was better in most cases to decide wrongly than not to decide at all, and she intended before she slept to-night both to decide, and, as far as the lateness of the hour permitted, to act on her decision. The proposition, the thesis of her decision, was very soon rehearsed; indeed, that was the thing that she took for granted, but had now to prove and demonstrate. There was a house, so to speak, which she was under contract to build and have ready in a few weeks, it was her bricks and mortar she had to procure, and have the house solidly built and ready by the required date. And the house to be built, it is almost superfluous to remark, was the house which Madge and Philip would occupy together.

Now, according to her lights, little lights, they may have been, "much like a shade," she was convinced that Madge would be extremely happy in the house she had to build, for she was a woman of sense, and fully believed that everything that was sensible, even a sensible marriage, was _ipso facto_ better than its corresponding equivalent with the sense left out. Philip was in every way a suitable match; he was a gentleman, he had all those solid qualities, the qualities that wear well, which are so supremely important if they have to wear for the remainder of mortal existence, and he was much devoted to Madge. Madge on her side was much attached to him, and was quite certainly unemotional. It was therefore only reasonable to suppose that her sudden ascent into these aerial regions which had culminated in this evening's crisis were but a Daedalus-flight; her wings, or the fastenings of them, would melt, and she would, if she pursued the unwise course, come to earth with a most uncomfortable and shattering bump. Evelyn, no doubt, possessed for her something which she missed in Philip, or would have missed if she had looked for it. But she had not looked for it, she had told him that she brought him affection, esteem, respect, and he had been content. He was content still, and Madge must be content too.

Browning says that it is "a ticklish matter to play with souls," but Lady Ellington did not stand convicted over this. She did not play with them at all; with a firm, cool hand, she shoved them into their places. For weeks Madge had accepted, if not with rapture, at any rate with a very sincere welcome, the future that had been planned for her, and it was an insanity now to revoke that for the sake of what might easily be a moment's freak. That there was something very attractive about this irresponsible boy with his brilliant talent and his graceful presence, Lady Ellington did not for a moment deny, even when she was quite by herself. But to plan a lifetime that merely rested on these foundations was to build a house upon sand. Madge had fallen in love with externals; it was impossible that she should be allowed to make her blunder--for so her mother regarded it--irreparable, and it was the means whereby this should be rendered impossible that Lady Ellington had now to determine. And since she was quite firmly convinced of the desirability of this end, she did not, it must be confessed, feel particularly scrupulous with regard to means.

All this time Lady Ellington's mind had not been only formulating but also constructing, and her construction was now complete. Late though it was, she drew her chair to the small writing-table, so conveniently placed under the electric light, and wrote:

DEAR MR. DUNDAS.--My daughter has told me, as indeed she was bound
to do, what took place this afternoon when you arrived unexpectedly
at Mr. Merivale's house and found yourself alone with her. I feel
of course convinced that you must be already sorry for having
allowed yourself to take advantage of my girl's accidental
loneliness in this way, but since I gather from her that Mr.
Merivale and I returned almost at that moment, I am willing to
believe that you would not have----

Lady Ellington paused a moment; she wished to put things strongly.

--have continued to obtrude your presence and your speech on one to
whom it was so unwelcome.

I have no desire to add to the reproaches I am sure you must be
heaping on yourself, and I will say no more on this subject. It is
of course impossible that my daughter should sit to you again, it
is equally impossible that you should write to her or attempt to
see her, since you cannot possibly have anything to say except to
reiterate your regrets for what you have done. These it is better
to take for granted, as I am perfectly willing to do. We both of us
forgive you--I can answer for her as completely as I can answer for
myself--with all our hearts, and will maintain, you may rest
assured, the strictest silence on the subject.

I should like to have one line from you in acknowledgment of the
receipt of this.--Yours very truly,

MARGARET ELLINGTON.

This note was written with but few erasures, for it was Lady Ellington's invariable custom to think her thoughts with some precision before she committed them to paper. Yet, late as it had grown, she copied it out afresh, put it in an envelope and directed it, and placed it on a small table by the head of her bed, so that when her tea was brought in the morning, it would be patent to the eyes of her maid. But, rather uncharacteristically, she thought over what she had said in it as she continued her undressing. Yet it was all for the good, likewise there was no word in it that was not true. And she slept with a conscience that was hard and clear and quite satisfied. For if one was doing one's best for people, nothing further could be demanded from one. And that she was doing her best she had no kind of doubt. Thus her mind was soon at leisure to observe that it was impossible to put out the electric light after getting into bed. It was necessary to light a candle first, and she made a mental note to refuse to pay for candles in case they were charged in the bill.

Lady Ellington's postponement of the settling of the train by which she and Madge should go up to town next day was due, as the reader will have guessed, to her desire to get Evelyn's answer to her note before she went. A glorious morning of flooding sunshine and a world washed and renewed by the torrents of the day before succeeded the storm, and at breakfast her plan of spending the morning in the forest, and going up to London after lunch was accepted by Madge if not with enthusiasm, at any rate with complete acquiescence. She of course must not know that her mother had written to Evelyn; it was wiser also, in case she was familiar with his handwriting, that there should be no risk run of her seeing the envelope addressed by him in reply. A very little strategy, however, would affect all this, and in obedience to orders, as soon as Lady Ellington and Madge had started on their ramble this morning, her maid took a cab to the Hermitage, bearing this note, the answer to which she would wait for, and give it to her mistress privately. This seemed to provide for all contingencies anyhow that could arise from this note itself. Indeed, though there were dangers and contingencies to be avoided or provided for before Madge would be safely Home--Lady Ellington thought this rather neat--she felt herself quite competent to tackle with them. Madge had declared she would take no step without the initiative on the part of Evelyn, and after the really very carefully worded note which he would receive this morning, it was not easy to see what he could do. Luck, of course, that blind goddess who upsets all our plans as a mischievous child upsets a chess-board on which the most delicate problem is in course of solution, might bring in the unforeseen to wreck everything, but Lady Ellington's experience was that Luck chiefly interfered with careless people who did not lay their plans well. She could not accuse herself of belonging to that class, nor in fact would her enemies, if, as was highly probable, she had enemies, have done so.

It was therefore in a state of reasonable calm and absence of apprehension that she came back from her long stroll in the forest with Madge just before lunch. She had had a really delightful walk, and they had talked over, without any allusion to the subject that really occupied them both, the gospel of the simple life, as practised by Merivale. Madge had not slept well; indeed, it would be truer to say she had scarcely slept at all, and her face bore traces of the weary hours of the night. But she too, like her mother, though for different reasons, had no temptation to re-open the subject, simply because she felt she could not stand any more just then, and it was something of a relief to devote even the superficial activity of her mind to other topics. Not for a moment did she doubt that Evelyn would write to her asking to see her; he must indeed do that for his own sake no less than hers, and though the waiting was hard enough, yet at the end of it there shone so bright a light that even the waiting had a sort of luminous rapture about it. So comforting herself thus, she responded to her mother's bright, agile talk, and indeed took her fair share of conversation.

The answer had arrived when Lady Ellington reached home, and her maid gave it her in her bedroom. It acknowledged the receipt of her note, as she had asked, and which indeed was all she had asked. She should, therefore, have been perfectly satisfied. Yet she was not quite; she did not feel as secure as she could have wished.

TENTH

It was some ten days after the events of the thunderstorm, and Evelyn, who had returned to London the day after, was in his studio working at the portrait of Philip. The last ten days had passed for him like an evil dream--a dream, too, unfortunately from which there was no prospect whatever of waking. Indeed, as the dream went on it seemed to gain in its ghastly vividness; every day that passed repeated the effect of it, and stamped its reality deeper. But with good sense that did him credit, instead of brooding desolately over his lot, or driving himself half-mad with the thought of Madge, he turned with a sort of demented fury to his work, and day after day painted till he could no longer see, not leaving off till his brain was dull and almost incapable of further thought. But though nervous, excitable and highly-strung, he was luckily also very strong, and believed that he was capable, at any rate, of going on at this frightful high pressure anyhow till the marriage had taken place. When that was accomplished, he felt that the tension of the suspense would be lightened; he might himself, it is true, drop like a stone in the sea, but the struggle would then be over, he would not battle any longer to try to keep afloat. In the inside pocket of his coat he kept the note that he had received from Lady Ellington; it was soiled and wilted with much handling and re-reading, and simple and straightforward (from a literary point of view) as it was, he had tried fifty interpretations on each of those very intelligible sentences. But not one contained a grain of comfort for him.

But though the whole fibre of his spiritual being was in so great and agonising a state of unrest, he found that his eye and his hand had lost not one particle of their powers of vision and execution. Sometimes, it is true, it was rather hard to get to work; it seemed scarcely worth while putting in a light or a shadow, but when once he had begun there was no abatement in the brilliance of his skill, and though he only felt a vague, far-away satisfaction in what he was doing, he brought all his keenness of observation, all his dexterity of handling to his work. Again, when his sitters were there, there was the same merciful necessity of normal behaviour, and probably there was only one person who saw him during these days who suspected that there was anything wrong. This was Philip. But of what was wrong he had not the faintest inkling.

Philip himself, so said the world in general, had become wonderfully softened since his engagement. He had gained enormously in geniality, a quality of which the world had not considered him particularly lavish before, and he did not in these new days take himself quite so seriously as he had been used to. Why he had fallen in love with Madge originally nobody quite knew, for there was no very obvious common ground between them. But the ways of love are past finding out, and even as when two tiny carbon poles of an electric battery are brought near to each other a light altogether disproportionate to their size illuminates the night, so it was with Philip. And certainly now the miracle was easier of explanation; there apparently had been in him the germ of a quite different Philip to that which he showed the world--a Philip admirably kind and gentle, the very man who would so easily fall in love with anyone possessed of half Madge's perfectly obvious attractions. All this was said in general talk, but in whispers it had begun to be said that Madge was not so desperately in love with him, and for this Gladys Ellington was not, as a matter of fact, directly responsible, though no doubt she would have been if she had thought she would not be found out. It was rather Madge's own manner which suggested it. She too, like Philip, had been much humanised, coincidentally anyhow, with their engagement; but later, during these last ten days in fact, she really seemed to have hired a snail-shell and curled herself up in it. Her trousseau--this alone was immaterial--did not seem to give her the smallest pleasure, and yet her indifference to that was not the indifference which might have been the fruit of her private intense happiness, which could conceivably have made even these confections seem tasteless. In fact, it was not only the trousseau that she appeared to find tasteless; she found everything tasteless, and really, to judge from her mode of behaviour when she was with Philip, you would have thought that she was an icicle just being introduced to an eligible snowflake.

Philip on this particular day had sat for Evelyn for nearly a couple of hours, grumbling at the length of his detention, but in a manner that did not suggest active discontent. He intended, in fact, to give Madge the picture on their wedding day, if it could be finished, and to further that desirable object he was willing really to sit for as long as Evelyn required. The latter, various and numerous as were the moods to which he usually treated his sitters, seemed to-day to have gone through them all; he was, in fact, more like himself than Philip had lately seen him.

"Until one really looks at a man's face," he had been saying, "one never knows how ugly he is. I always used to think you passably good-looking. But you are awful, do you know? Men's faces generally are like chests of drawers--square, don't you know, and covered with knobs that suggest handles. And you are balder than when I began to paint you."

"I am sure I apologise. And do you really think you can finish it by the twenty-eighth? I shall be immensely grateful if you can."

"The twenty-eighth? Ah! yes, the happy day."

Thereat another mood came over him, and for the spate of surprising remarks which he had been pouring forth there was exchanged a frowning, brush-biting silence. This lasted another twenty minutes, and Philip, as thanks for his offerings on the altar of conversation, got only grunts, and once a laboriously polite request to stand still. But eventually he hit on a subject that produced a response.

"And Madge's portrait?" he said. "Have you decided to yield to our ignorance perhaps, but anyhow our desire, and consider it finished?"

Evelyn stopped dead in the middle of a stroke, and a new and frightfully disconcerting mood suddenly appeared to possess him.

"How can you ask me if I yield," he said hotly, "when you have told me I can't have any more sittings? I yield as a man yields who is pinioned and hung. I only yield to force. As for the portrait, it is there, face to the wall. I will not send it to you, but you may fetch it away without opposition on my part. I never want to see it again. Oh! I make one condition--it must never be exhibited."

"Ah! my dear fellow," said Philip, "I cannot take it if you feel like that about it."

"Leave it then."

Philip was very deeply hurt somehow by this. Evelyn's absolute insistence on his taking it as a present from him had much touched him, though he had tried to combat it. But this ending of the affair was intolerable. He could not leave matters like this. And now while he was debating what to do, Evelyn spoke again, resuming his painting with rapid, unerring strokes.

"I must say this, too," he said. "I had an inspiration for that portrait quite unlike any I have ever had before. It is, even as it stands, my masterpiece, but you--you and Miss Ellington anyhow--have prevented me from completing what is my best, and would have been far better. Far better? It would have been on a different plane altogether. I am sorry if this hurts you, but it is only right you should know. I don't say it is your fault; I don't say it is anybody's fault. But there the picture stands; I give it you with all the completeness with which I originally gave it you, and with all--all the best wishes."

He paused a moment.

"But I won't send it you," he said, "since I don't think it ought to be sent. Yet take it with my love, my best love, Philip. And I should be obliged if you would say no more at all about it. Turn your face a bit more to the left, there's a good fellow; you have shifted slightly."