CHAPTER XVIII

THE PROBLEM TAKES SHAPE

There are certain mortals, I suppose, who take delight in “At Homes,” receptions, musicales, and the rest of the social devices which enable fashionable folk to meet of evenings and learn the latest scandal. Personally, I would pass an hour far more agreeably in a fever hospital, provided the resident doctor were a good fellow, and not too busy to smoke a pipe with me. Hence, because of the unusual transactions of that memorable night, the proceedings at Sandilands’ house stand out in my mind in quite cameo-like precision as contrasted with other similar gatherings I have attended. Nor was this result achieved by meeting notable personages. There was the same setting of tow-headed fiddlers and stout sopranos--judicious artistes who earn a bank manager’s annual salary in twenty minutes--the same well-bred insolence on the part of some, the same toadying by others, the same ruthless incivility in the supper rooms by all, that may be seen at any like festival in the West End of London any night during the season. But, as shall be revealed speedily, the unrehearsed incidents of this particular society comedy were such as cut notches in the memory.

I met a man with a grievance. He insisted on telling me why the Government had denied him the poet-laureateship. That was a safe topic. Politeness demanded an occasional “Dear me!” or “You don’t say so!” from me: he did the rest.

From the safe anchorage of his eloquence I was able, at leisure, to watch and, to a certain extent, sum up, Nora Cazenove. Her genealogy, briefly sketched by the older Grier, partly accounted for certain deficiencies in her. It was reasonable to assume that her mother was a beautiful woman, of extraordinary acuteness within a somewhat narrow sphere. Like the girl in the ballad, her face was her fortune, and she deemed herself well paid, I doubt not, when she bartered her good looks and faultless form for a title and a big annual rent-roll.

Lord Sandilands, whom I had never seen until that night, instantly reminded me of that scathing dictum of Swift’s: “A weak, diseased body, a meager countenance, and sallow complexion are the true marks of noble blood.” Gulliver, you will find, if you look the passage up, gave his horse friend an even more drastic explanation of an occasional lapse by the aristocracy into robustness of physique; but Lord Sandilands, judged by the Dean’s standard, was a genuine peer. Yet he was a harmless little creature. I fancy he received a mild shock every time his Juno-like daughter called him “father.”

At any rate, I amused myself by studying the girl, and I came to the conclusion that had Karl scoured the earth he could not have found a more exact antithesis to Maggie Hutchinson than her successful rival, the Honorable Nora Cazenove.

They had the common attributes of good looks, good style, and what passes current for good education among young ladies of twenty-three or thereabouts. In all else they differed. If I were seeking worthy tabernacles for merely intellectual concepts of what we mean when we speak of soul and body, I should choose those two girls as supplying the requisite shrines. Though my recollection of Maggie was not quite definite, I could recall her Madonna expression, the spirituality which diffused its mild beams over a grateful world from her brown eyes. Nora, on the other hand, was what her lineage proclaimed, a purchased standard of bodily excellence. Maggie could forget all, even life itself, in the exaltation of music, the passion of a song, the transient loveliness of a sunset, whereas Nora must be a fine equestrian, fond of good food and hearty exercise, a woman in whom the wonderful maternal instinct would be less divine than human. I am not blind to the lack of precision in that last distinction. Some day a man may be free to write as he thinks, provided always that he has honorable and useful intent, but that day is not yet.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I made a rather bad break with the would-be laureate.

“What would you have said,” he fiercely demanded, “if the Prime Minister told you that your latest volume of poems was a collection of turgid nonsense?”

“I would have said that he was quite right,” I answered blithely, for a man can always run down his own work with safety.

Then it dawned on me that the Prime Minister had expressed himself thus strongly, not on my book, but on the poet’s.

“Of course,” I added, “it was quite evident that he had not read a line of your verse.”

“Confound it, haven’t I just related to you how I found him in the summer-house, and compelled him to listen? yes, blocked up the only exit, until I recited to him the whole of my ode to ‘Eternity.’”

“The subject was too vast for his intelligence.”

“Not it. It is a shameful fact that no man of poetic tastes can gain a politician’s ear nowadays unless he titillates it with a patriotic jingle. As a forlorn hope I have written a threnody on the fleet. If I can find a good rhyme for ‘guns’ I am made. Can you help? ‘Buns,’ ‘duns,’ ‘nuns’ and ‘tuns,’ are hardly suitable. ‘Suns,’ ‘runs,’ and ‘shuns,’ I have used. Just come into this corner while I--”

Miss Cazenove rescued me.

“At last I have a moment,” she cried, showing her perfect teeth in a thoroughly good-natured smile. “You don’t mind my carrying him off, do you?” she went on sweetly, as she noted the look of disappointment on my companion’s face. “I have such a lot to say to him.”

We hurried away. She laughed merrily when I told her of my escape.

“He is a real terror,” she agreed. “One day he tackled dad after luncheon. Do you know my father? He says ‘Gad’ to everything he doesn’t understand, and most other things as well. But on that occasion he lost his temper and said ‘Rats!’”

That put us on good terms. I looked forward to an agreeable if not very soulful chat with my radiant hostess, but I was fated to learn, for the hundredth time, that every woman is a born actress. Even the angelic Maggie was a stage adept when it became necessary to cloak her emotions from the public ken.

“Are you hungry?” asked Miss Cazenove, guiding me skilfully through the crowded suite of rooms.

“No,” I said, flattering myself that the question was only prompted by hospitality.

“Then come this way.”

Before I well knew what was happening, I was whisked through a curtained door into a passage left purposely unlighted. Clinging to my arm, but really compelling me onward, the girl led me to another door. She entered, and switched on the electric light. Evidently this was her boudoir, but she left me little time to take stock of my surroundings.

“Sit down here,” she said. “I don’t care what people think. I _must_ talk with you about Karl. Of course I might have waited until to-morrow and asked you to call, but now that you are here I am consumed with impatience. No, sit just where you are, please. I want to see your face.”

“I am a most skilled prevaricator,” I said, for her maneuvering was of the Napoleonic order. I was to be attacked by horse, foot, and artillery, cross-examined and scrutinized at the same time. We sat on a roomy Chesterfield, an article of furniture which suggests insidious confidences; a cluster of lamps equipped with reading reflectors shot their rays directly at us. Moreover, she did not seem to heed the fact that she laid herself open to equally searching criticism on my part. The first shot fired in the encounter showed that my adversary scorned subterfuge.

“Who is she?”

“Really--” I protested.

“Oh, you know very well whom I mean. Karl is engaged to me now, and is going to marry me--I shall see to that. But I must know who the girl is with whom he has been in love since five years ago.”

I temporized.

“Five years ago! You can hardly expect me to recollect anything of serious importance concerning the love affairs of a young gentleman at college and a young lady who may have worn her hair in two plaits, tied at the ends with a big bow--”

“Please, please!” she insisted. “As if I did not know how some girl has entered his very life, until he regards all other women with unheeding eyes, and even conducts himself towards me in what he considers to be the correct attitude of an engaged man. What is the spell she has cast upon him? Is she more beautiful than I, more sympathetic, more capable of devotion? Why is his father so troubled about him? Why have you been brought from Heidelberg to help in dispelling the cloud which has settled on him?”

“Did Mr. Grier, senior, tell you that?”

“No. No one tells me anything. Won’t _you_ have pity on me? I have the wildest dreams, but I know some of them are true. And I dreamed of you. I even saw you. I would have known you anywhere. When you came up the stairs with Karl to-night I could have shrieked aloud, but I dug my nails into my hands and restrained myself. See, here are the gloves I wore. I have changed them for others, but I kept them to prove to you how truly I am speaking.”

She took from a pocket a crumpled pair of white gloves, _peau de chevreau_. The finger seams were burst, the palms cut in four half moons. So, though the words nearly choked me, I was forced to say soothingly:

“I imagine you are troubling your pretty head about a matter of little moment, Miss Cazenove. I am quite certain you have no serious rival. Karl is the soul of honor--”

She started to her feet and grasped my shoulder with a vehemence she was hardly conscious of.

“You men everlastingly prate of honor. Honor explains everything. Provided Karl is scrupulously attentive to me he can take another woman to his heart, kiss her lips, her eyes, her hair, breathe her breath, inhale her fragrance, mingle his very soul with hers--that may be honorable to me, but it is the madness of love for her.”

“Surely, Miss Cazenove, you are saying that which is not,” I cried, and I, too, facing her angrily, jumped up from the cushioned depths of the Chesterfield.

“Am I? Then you do not understand Karl, and still less do you understand Maggie Hutchinson. Ah! _touché_? Think me a jealous woman, if you choose. I am, and I glory in it. But I have a woman’s wits as well, and you know in your heart I am not mistaken.”

Something must be done to allay the tempest. I had to fling the sixth sense to the winds, and trust to the five of our common heritage to calm this excited beauty.

“I speak in all honesty and truth,” I said, “when I tell you that, to the best of my belief, Karl Grier has neither seen, nor spoken to, nor written to Maggie Hutchinson since he was an undergraduate at Oxford.”

She wrung her hands passionately.

“Heaven keep me from tears!” she wailed. “If I cry I shall yield utterly. Oh, dear, oh, dear! I so looked forward to meeting you and securing your help. Are you really so ignorant of Karl’s powers that you lay stress on what we call seeing and hearing? They mean nothing to him. I am not blind if others are. Oh, if only I did not love him so I might perhaps be more to him!”

I am free to admit that her words stirred me strangely. Could it be that while I was puzzling my brains with the formulæ of the least considered branches of science, this girl, unaided, almost untaught, had solved the mystery which enfolded the broken love story of Karl and Maggie? Did she share with the dead and gone Armenian the most disastrous attribute of a vector equation to the unmeasured force which united the spiritual existences of her rival and her lover? From the apparently secure foundation of physics and magnetic attraction I was projected into an astral shadow-land, whirled away on an unbridled steed into a kingdom of wild imaginings.

On a sudden in the midst of men and day, And while I walk’d and talk’d as heretofore, I seemed to move among a world of ghosts And feel myself the shadow of a dream.

Yet it was no mystic but a real woman who faced me in that delightful room, with its Louis Seize furniture, its charming little Corots and water-colors by David Cox, its fragrant perfume of Provençal flowers, and all that air of subtle refinement which clings to the abode of a young and beautiful girl as a well-made gown clings to the contour of her body, never obtrusive, always in exquisite taste, and ever revealing fresh harmonies of line and tint.

Her actress-mother dowered her with the trick of speech, of impassioned gesture. She flung an accusing hand towards me.

“Why do you stand silent?” she demanded. “Is it because of a wayward phantasy that I should have revealed my torturing thoughts to you, a mere stranger? Why are you here to-night? To help Karl, you may say. Then help me, also, or you may go through the rest of your life haunted by most unpleasing specters.”

“I will gladly do all in my power to help Karl, my dear young lady, and it will be an added joy if the counsel and assistance I can lend to my friend prove equally beneficial to you. But surely you must see that I am moving in a maze. You speak of that which I do not comprehend. If, indeed, you and others are subject to unexplained manifestations, it is all-important that we should discuss them fully, rationally, and in an environment more suitable than the present time and place. Then, and only by such means, can we reach anything in the nature of a logical conclusion.”

I felt that my speech was stilted, but I was vainly searching for a more equable base of action than her wild statements afforded. Her lips curved into a bitter smile, but there was no softening in the gleaming eyes.

“Leave me to judge of conventions which appeal so powerfully to you, a writer, a Bohemian, a man who stood on a Liverpool quay while Paul Constantine was drowning!” she cried, and each word formed a crescendo of scornful negation of my right to dictate to her.

Nor did she pay heed to the positive start of alarm with which I marked her utterance of the Armenian’s name. Her mood changed in an instant. She caught my arm again in pitiful entreaty.

“Forgive me if I say that which may sound outrageous in your ears,” she said. “I am so unstrung, so much in need of one who will sympathize rather than chide, believe rather than question.”

“I take you at your word, Miss Cazenove. Now, let me recant my momentary lapse into smug propriety. I admit my belief. I am convinced that Karl possesses some dreadful force which is quite demoralizing when it meets resistance. It is not his fault, nor Miss Hutchinson’s, nor yours, nor was its influence wholly condemnable in the man whose name you have just mentioned. It is something outside and beyond our ordered senses. Very well, we can only deal with it by the use of those same senses. The first requisite is candor, the second, critical analysis. But, however distraught you may be, you must admit that midnight, in your boudoir, in a house overrun with your guests, gives us no opportunity of sanely examining a disturbing problem. Come now, be guided by me; I have a son nearly your age, and you may trust me to take a calm view of these things which excite you so terribly.”

“And you will not deem me mad when I tell you that when Karl marries me it will kill me if I still feel that his soul belongs to another woman?”

“Indeed I shall not hold any such vain thought. Don’t you see that marriage, under such conditions, is not to be thought of? But there! Let us not commence our inquiry now. I am even resisting the temptation to ask you how you knew of Constantine’s death. No! please begin by being patient. I shall perhaps ask for a little obedience, standing, as I do, _in loco parentis_. Let us arrange a meeting to-morrow. What do you say to a stroll in the Park after luncheon? Or, if the weather is wet, shall I call here if you can count on being alone?”

Tacitly, we ignored both Lord Sandilands and Mrs. Grundy. They were estimable persons, doubtless, but they would need electrocution ere they understood telegnomy.

She was about to answer when a light knock on the half-open door announced a visitor. It was Karl. He smiled wistfully. He had the semblance of one who knows that a catastrophe has occurred, a catastrophe foreseen yet unpreventable.

“I expected to find you here, Nora,” he said. “In fact, I followed you here in my mind, and I agree that it will be better for you, and possibly for others, if certain explanations are given. Let you two meet to-morrow, by all means. Then, you must send for me and tell me what has to be done.”

He spoke with a weariness which the tender inflection of his voice did not disguise from me. He knew already _what was to be done_. It came upon me with a shuddering dread that the only way to destroy his inexplicable power was to destroy its origin. Had he the right to live, and, whether conscious or not, inflict mental suffering and ultimate death on certain unfortunate human beings who strove helplessly to check the overpowering force of the magnetism which flowed from him? That was an affrighting problem. Nor was it made easier by Nora Cazenove’s present amazing attitude.

The fiery anguish which convulsed her lithe frame and blazed up in her eyes while she poured forth her woes to me had gone with the mere sight of him. The change was miraculous, as wonderful in its way as the conversion of Pygmalion’s marble goddess into flesh and blood.

A moment ago she was the central figure of a tragedy; now she was just a girl hopelessly in love, and she clung to Karl’s arm and gazed up into his face, as they passed before me along the corridor, for all the world as any smitten Phyllis might fondle and adore her Corydon. And then, an astounding thing happened.