CHAPTER XIV.

Expulsion from Eden.

You took my heart and made it beat, Then trampled it beneath your feet And watched its cracks and creases. Unless I make a great mistake, A heart thus hurt was bound to break; So say no more, for pity's sake, But sweep up all the pieces.

When the season was at its height it unfortunately happened that Isabel's evil genius made the suggestion that Paul was growing too headstrong and masterful, and prescribed a good dose of jealousy as a cure for this complaint. Of course Isabel should have known better than to listen to such dangerous promptings, and should forthwith have silenced the lying spirit by her faith in her lover and in his love for her. But no mortal is wise at all times--not even when the mortal happens to be a woman; and this was a time of unwisdom on Isabel's part.

"Paul is too sure of your love," whispered Isabel's evil genius, "now that you are always nice to him he takes your niceness as a matter of course."

"Paul is right to be sure of my love," replied Isabel's better self, "it is a poor trick to try to enhance the value of anything by pretending that its existence is precarious."

"There is no good in having power if you never use it," argued the evil genius.

"There is no good in having love if you ever abuse it," answered the better self.

"Paul is not nearly as fond of you as he was at first.

"Paul loves me as much as ever, and it is a shame to doubt him."

"If he is as fond of you as he was, why has he ceased to look black when you speak to another man?"

"Because he knows that I love him and he trusts me."

Then the evil genius whispered: "Do you think it would be possible to make him as jealous as he used to be?"

"I am sure it would, but nothing would induce me to try."

"Still it would be an interesting experiment--just to see for certain if he does love you as much as ever," suggested the evil genius.

This argument in Isabel's inner consciousness continued for several days; and the result of it was that--at a dance at the Gordons'--Isabel flirted outrageously with Mr. Madderley. Paul took it very well at first; he had perfect confidence in Isabel, and he knew that it does not do to pull the reins too tight. Isabel noticed that he took it very well, and put his endurance down to indifference; consequently she flirted harder than ever.

By an almost superhuman effort, Paul refrained from saying a word to Isabel on the subject, and succeeded in being quite kind and courteous when he bade her good-night, though he was in a fury of jealous misery underneath his calm exterior.

Isabel felt certain that such calmness showed that he did not care, and cried herself to sleep that night.

Paul argued that he owed it to Isabel to conceal his anguish.

Isabel argued that he owed it to her to reveal it.

Paul knew that you do not talk about a thing if it really hurts you.

Isabel knew that if a thing really hurts you, you cannot talk about anything else.

All through the following day this wretched state of things continued.

Paul was pale and quiet, and longed to throw himself into the Serpentine.

Isabel was flushed and brilliant, and talked to Lord Wrexham and Mr. Madderley in the Row.

Paul hoped that he might be kept from kicking Lord Wrexham and Mr. Madderley.

Isabel prayed that she might be kept from crying until she reached home.

Isabel thought that there was nothing in the world that mattered except love, but felt she would die sooner than let Paul see how much she cared for him.

Paul thought that there was nothing in the world that mattered except Isabel, but couldn't for the life of him imagine what had come to her.

Isabel decided that the only dignified course was to let Paul think she had ceased to love him.

Paul decided that the only honourable course was to give Isabel her freedom.

That night Isabel again cried herself to sleep, and Paul never went to sleep at all.

The next morning they both felt better, and repaired to Kensington Gardens on the chance of a meeting. Each was in a more reasonable and amiable frame of mind, and quite prepared to forgive the other if that other made an adequate show of penitence.

It was unfortunate, however, that neither had studied the part of the one to be forgiven.

Paul made up his mind that he would be patient with Isabel, and would not lose his temper however provoking she might be; so he began quite gently--after the customary greetings: "Look here, Isabel, I don't want to say anything nasty, because nasty words always leave a scar behind; but I wish you would not go on in the way you have done just lately. It isn't fair to me, but that is of small consequence; what really matters is that it isn't fair to yourself, for it makes people say horrid things about you; and that is the one thing that I cannot and will not bear."

Isabel looked surprised. This was a funny beginning for a penitential confession. "I don't know what you mean."

"Oh! yes, you do, dear," said Paul patiently.

Isabel was annoyed; she did not like being called over the coals as if she were a tiresome schoolgirl. "Oh! no, I don't. And anyhow I don't flirt worse than half the women in London."

"That is nothing to do with me, Isabel; I don't care a hang how much other women are talked about--I only care for what people say of you. Believe me, I am not blaming you, dear."

"Blaming me?--I should think not!" exclaimed Isabel angrily. How could any self-respecting woman forgive a man who talked about not blaming her?

"I only want to save you from doing things in a moment of temper that I know you will regret afterwards," added Paul.

Isabel's face flushed. "I can take care of myself, thank you; I knew how to behave, even before I had the inestimable privilege of learning manners from Mr. Paul Seaton."

Still Paul kept his temper. "You know, darling, you have been awfully rough on me the last few days; but I'll forgive you like a shot, and never say another word about it, if you will promise not to go on like that again."

"Thank you," said Isabel pertly. "I notice that as long as a clever woman is content to sit at a man's feet and say, 'This is the only man in the whole world,' that man thinks he enjoys the society of clever women; but if the clever woman happens to indulge in an opinion not implanted by him, he calls her unwomanly, and he pines for amiable stupidity."

"That is not fair, Isabel; I detest amiable stupidity."

"No, you don't; you really like it."

"Isabel, this is absurd, and you know it is."

Isabel felt absolutely sure now that Paul did not really care; an ideal lover would have been in a frenzy of agony at her anger, she thought, instead of taking it in this calm, superior way.

"I suppose you'd like me to be shut up like a Turkish woman, and never speak to any man but you!"

"Certainly not; but, all the same, I am not going to have my promised wife flirting with a lot of other men, and I tell you so. As I have said before, there are some things which a man would sooner renounce than share."

Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "You really have got a most detestable temper."

"Isabel, don't, for pity's sake, go on like this. There is nothing in reason that I would not do or bear for you, but it is possible to try a man too far."

"It strikes me there is precious little that you would do or bear for me, in spite of all your talk."

Paul looked very stern. "Do you really mean that?"

By this time Isabel had lashed herself into a perfect fury. "Yes, I do mean it; you are so proud and self-centred that you only care for what enhances your own importance. You are pleased to be engaged to a smart woman, because it reflects credit on yourself; but for the feelings of the woman underneath her smartness, you don't care a rap."

"Isabel, be careful what you say."

"No, I shan't be careful. I am tired of being careful and of considering your feelings, when you never show the slightest consideration for mine. You are hard and cold and selfish--that is what you are--and it is time you knew it! You never really loved me; you admired me, because I was showy, and you thought that a showy wife would help you in your career; but you never loved me as a woman--only as one of the steps by which you could mount to success."

Paul's face was very white. "How dare you say such things to me?"

"Because I think them. You are precious careful, forsooth, for fear people should talk about me, because you think such talk is in some measure derogatory to you; but you are pretty careless as to what you say to me, as you know that whatever you say, it will be none the worse for yourself. You only care for me and my reputation as an adjunct to your own importance."

"If you were a man, I should say you lied."

"Oh! no, you wouldn't. You dare not say half the nasty things to a man that you say to me."

"If you had been a man I should have silenced you long ago."

By this time Isabel was very angry with herself, and consequently ten times angrier with Paul; so she continued recklessly: "As long as you only thought I liked the other men better than you, you didn't care; it was only when you began to think I was bringing discredit on you, that you thought it necessary to make such a fuss".

"Isabel, once for all listen to me." Paul's voice was so ominously quiet that a wiser woman--or even a foolish woman who was not in a temper--would have taken warning; but Isabel possessed the dangerous gift of a vivid imagination; and what was once humorously said of faith may be literally said of imagination, namely that "it makes people believe what they know to be false".

"I won't listen to you and I won't be dictated to by you," she retorted, goading herself to still further fury by her own words; "if you had your own way, you would make a perfect slave of me, and trample me under foot. But I won't stand it."

"Isabel, you are very cruel and very unjust; have you no consideration for my feelings?"

"Not I. Why should I, when you have none for mine? You seem to think that feelings are a sign of exquisite refinement peculiar to yourself, and you are so busy seeing that everybody fulfils their duty to you, that you have no time to think of your duty to other people."

"We have had enough of this," said Paul, rising from his seat.

"More than enough, I should say."

"Still I have one question to ask. Did you mean it when you said that I only cared for you as a stepping-stone to my own success?"

Isabel tossed her head. "Of course I meant it; you never care for anything or anybody that does not minister to your own pride."

Paul's face was white, and his voice shook. "Then I have only one thing to say before I go out of your life altogether. I will not profane my love for you by talking about it to a woman who would grow tired of any lover as soon as his novelty had worn off; but I wish you to understand that I will neither see you nor speak to you, nor hold any communication with you, till you ask my forgiveness for having so insulted me, and till you retract that cruel untruth which in your heart of hearts you know to be untrue as well as I do."

Isabel drew herself to her full height, and her eyes blazed. It showed how little Paul really loved her, she thought, that he could give her up so easily. "Then you will never see me nor speak to me again," she said; "for I am not the woman to come grovelling to a man for pardon, because I once dared to tell him the truth to his face."

Without another word Paul turned on his heel and left her, and never once looked back. As he strode out of Kensington Gardens he felt that to him in future the place would be a cemetery rather than a garden, for there he had buried the one love of his life.

So Paul and Isabel passed out of each other's ken, simply because the latter had been fool enough to think that a good man's love was a thing to be played with, rather than a gift for which to "thank heaven, fasting".

There is no doubt that the troubles sent by Providence are always beneficial if taken in a proper spirit; but the troubles brought on by our own or another's ill-doing are not necessarily salutary at all. Therefore both Paul and Isabel were the worse for their separation.

Paul threw himself heart and soul into his work, and turned his back upon all the amenities of life. He had lost his faith in love and in his old ideals, and the loss was not good for him; he became morose and hard and cynical, and inclined to sneer at higher things. His love for Isabel had been so bound up with all that was best in him, that when Isabel failed, much of his best went with her--at any rate for the time being, till the first bitterness of the disillusionment was past.

As for Isabel, she put on a brave face before the world, and spent her days in laughter and her nights in tears. While Paul hid his misery under a mask of stern moroseness, she concealed hers under an affectation of frivolity. She had never seemed so gay or so heartless or so worldly; and, after a while, her imagination almost persuaded her that she cared as little as she pretended to care. She never allowed herself time to think, and she nearly succeeded in believing that she was really forgetting Paul; nevertheless she grew thinner and paler, and there was a wan look underneath her restless brilliancy that Lady Farley did not care to see.

Isabel never had any news of Paul; he had completely passed out of her life. But Paul managed to glean tidings of Isabel; and the news that she was more amusing and more admired than ever did not in any way lessen his misery.

Paul wrote a curt letter to his own people saying that Isabel had broken off the engagement, but giving no reason; and he begged that her name might never again be mentioned in his hearing. The minister was sorry, but felt that it was according to the decree of Providence; Mrs. Seaton was grieved, but feared that it was owing to the pride of Paul; and Joanna was angry, and felt sure that it was because of the vanity of Isabel. All of which suppositions were not without a foundation of truth.

Lady Farley tried hard not to be glad that the engagement was broken off; but she only succeeded in hiding her gladness from her niece. And she comforted Isabel--according to her lights--by taking her into society more untiringly than ever.

One night, towards the end of the season, there was a party at the Marchioness of Wallingford's; and Isabel was, as usual, surrounded by a small court of men. She was looking particularly well in a yellow gown, which suited her dark hair to perfection. Mr. Madderley, on learning from her in the Row that morning that yellow was to be her "only wear" at this party, had sent her a spray of yellow roses. But Isabel hated yellow roses; she had worn one in her belt the day that Paul made her go for a walk with him, and therefore--like Ben Jonson's "rosy wreath"--such flowers thenceforward smelt not of themselves but Paul. So she threw away the artist's gift, and would not touch it again.

"I suppose you will shortly be going down to Elton Manor, Miss Carnaby, and thereby turning London into a desert," said Lord Wrexham.

"No," replied Isabel. "I am not going to Elton, but to Homburg instead. I am getting too old for the country, do you know?"

"I cannot allow that," remonstrated his lordship.

"Yes, I am. I consider the country is only suited to people who are young enough to go in for picnics and ideals and things of that kind. Up to five-and-twenty, sunsets excite your highest emotions, and make you yearn after the impossible; after five-and-twenty, they give you rheumatism and show up your wrinkles."

"I like the country," remarked Lord Robert Thistletown, "though I am at last in the proud position of being able to deny the soft impeachment of being under five-and-twenty; it always makes me feel good, and fills me with the desire to sing hymns and to write to my mother."

"I also like the country," murmured Mr. Madderley; "it gives me a peaceful, lotus-eating kind of feeling, which is most soothing."

Isabel shook her head. "I could stand a land where it was always afternoon, but what I cannot endure is a land where it is always Sunday evening."

"I thought you liked Sunday evenings and things of that kind," remarked Lord Robert.

"I used to, but I have outgrown them," replied Isabel.

"Dear lady, I understand," sighed Mr. Madderley. "I never cared for Sunday evenings myself, but I used to adore Holman Hunt. It is the same kind of sentiment, and indicates the state of mind which would revel in Wordsworth's 'Ode on the Intimations of Immortality'."

"Have you outgrown it too?"

"I have not outgrown my appreciation of the art and the poetry thus embodied; but I have ceased to have any feeling excited thereby save admiration."

"I suppose the real explanation is that as we grow older we lose in imagination what we gain in experience," said Lord Wrexham.

Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "I think it rather lies in the fact that in drinking the draught of life we soon get through the white froth on the top and come to the small beer underneath."

"Well, I like Sunday evenings and hymns and things in that line," persisted Lord Bobby. "I even go to the length of liking Christmas Day."

"A man who can like Christmas Day will drink sweet champagne and enjoy it," remarked Madderley.

Lord Bobby shook his head. "Oh! I won't go that far."

"Now I, on the contrary," said Isabel, "cannot bear Christmas Day; it is neither one thing nor another."

"Yes, it is," argued Lord Bobby. "It is both; it is a delicious compound of Sunday morning and Saturday afternoon."

"Just so," replied Isabel, "it wears a silk blouse with a serge skirt, and so is neither Sunday nor week-day. Now, sweet champagne I do like; and if people give their guests dry champagne, I think sugar and cream ought to be handed round with it, as they are with tea. But Christmas Day is another thing. To the young it brings unqualified bliss, I admit; but to the mature it brings passive depression followed by active indigestion."

"But you used to be awfully keen on goodness and all that sort of thing," objected Lord Robert. "I never met such a girl for ideals as you were at one time."

"My dear Bobby, I was once awfully keen on dolls and blind man's buff. As I told you, I am growing old."

Lord Robert looked puzzled and disappointed. "But you still believe in good people, don't you, Miss Carnaby?"

"Oh, yes; but they bore me. I believe in quinine as a drug, but I think it is very nasty as a flavour."

Lord Wrexham smiled indulgently. "The fact is that you have such a gay and sunny nature yourself that too much seriousness oppresses you and overpowers you. Ethereal beings cannot exist in a heavy atmosphere."

"I cannot endure the sort of good people who have their biographies written," exclaimed Isabel.

"Nevertheless, biography is the style of fiction I most affect," said Mr. Madderley, "especially the biographies of people I have met. It is so interesting to learn that what one had despised as dulness was in reality genius; and that what one had regretted as rudeness was in reality the scorn of a great soul for conventions."

"While what one condemned as bad temper was actually a noble struggle against evil," added Isabel.

"A saint in crape is twice a saint in print," murmured the artist.

"You shall write our biographies, Mr. Madderley, and show how I was wise, Lord Bobby was profound, and Lord Wrexham was--I don't know what Lord Wrexham had better be."

"Amusing, perhaps," suggested his lordship quietly.

"I should like to see you with a really serious-minded man, and hear how you got on with him," said Mr. Madderley. "I mean one of the sort of men who go in for duties and responsibilities and queer fads of that sort, and always keep a tame conscience in full work on the premises."

"Isn't it funny," remarked Isabel thoughtfully, "that if a woman talks to a man about his soul, other women call her a saint; while if she talks to him about his heart, they call her a flirt? They have not the sense to know that the flirtiness consists in talking to the man about himself at all."

All the men laughed.

"There is really nothing to talk about but ourselves," continued Isabel, "just as there is really nothing for breakfast but bacon. People try all sorts of fancy subjects and dishes, but they come back to where they started from, like boomerangs."

"You are a very clever young lady," said Lord Wrexham appreciatively. "You combine such keen powers of perception with such a great facility of expression."

"Thank you. I have devoted a considerable time to 'the proper study of mankind,' and I consider myself a proficient in the subject."

"It is a subject which repays careful study, my dear lady," remarked Madderley. "I know only one that excels it in interest, and that one--being composed entirely of brilliant exceptions ungoverned by any guiding rules--I should describe as a dangerous recreation rather than as a proper study."

"I don't believe you understand men as well as you think you do," exclaimed Lord Bobby bluntly.

Isabel raised her pretty eyebrows. "Don't I, though?"

"Pardon me, Thistletown," said Mr. Madderley; "you are surely mistaken. Miss Carnaby's knowledge of this subject is experimental as well as profound, and her treatment of it is beyond--sometimes considerably beyond--all praise."

An angry spot burned on Isabel's cheek. "You are pleased to be very witty this evening, Mr. Madderley."

"Once upon a time," added the artist, "there was a rose who imagined she knew how to make beeswax, because there were always some bees buzzing round her. It amused the bees."

"And what was the end of the story?" asked Isabel.

"The end, dear lady? There is but one end to all stories. The rose faded."