by George Moore
What did Mrs. Bentham mean by telling him (Lord Senton) that she did not like London, and would like to get back to the country? Did it mean that she liked the long-haired painter? Would it be advisable for him (Lord Senton) to ask her to go to the theatre with him, after having been refused half-a-dozen times? Would it be right for him to go on sending her bouquets? Up to now he had not missed a day; and what did Mr. Day think of the advisability of slipping a nice diamond ring into one and sending it anonymously.
Lord Senton’s want of success rendered him irritable, and he now reproached Day bitterly for not being able to tell him if the long-haired painter was or was not Mrs. Bentham’s lover. Day declared in many letters that, after having carefully examined the evidence for and against, he was inclined to think that Mr. Seymour was not Mrs. Bentham’s lover; but that it was impossible for him, under the circumstances, to speak definitely. Yet this did not satisfy Lord Senton, and he had, in his last letters, so strongly insisted on a personal interview, that Day no longer ventured to resist his chiefs commands, although he really did not know how he was going to question Mr. Seymour on the subject.
However, he was not a man to be embarrassed, and, armed with the picture of the favourite horse as an excuse, he tried to make friends with Lewis. Lewis told him, as he expected, that he could not undertake the commission, but thanked him very much for the offer.
“You paint figures, not animals?” said Day, as he examined a nymph and some cupids.
“I do anything I get an order to do, when I have time,” replied Lewis laughing.
Then farmer and painter walked round the great clear walls, and Mr. Day made many facetious remarks about the scantiness of the draperies, and suggested that Mrs. Bentham’s portrait should be painted on to one of the nymphs; Lewis did not like this, and resented the familiarity, which made Day prick up his ears.
“Heigh ho! you are so particular as that!” he said to himself. Nevertheless, the men made friends, lit cigarettes, and began to talk quite affably.
“Remarkably fine woman, Mrs. Bentham,” said Day; “I wonder she doesn’t get married.”
This was put out as a feeler, for Day was obliged to write something to Lord Senton.
Lewis looked at him, surprised, and said:
“But you know she is only separated from her husband; she is not a free woman.”
“You are sharper than I fancied you were,” thought Day, and then he said, aloud: “Yes, I know, but then she might easily get a divorce.”
“How?” asked Lewis innocently.
Day looked at him admiringly. “Capitally parried, my friend,” he said, to himself, and then a moment after continues, aloud: “Oh, very easily; if she ran away with anyone, then her husband would be entitled to a divorce; and I can tell you he’s a lucky man who gets her; she has seven thousand a year, if she has a penny.”
On the point of Mrs. Bentham’s fortune Lewis was quite satisfied; but as regarded Mrs. Bentham’s private character, he was anxious for information; so, hoping her name would be mentioned, he questioned Day on the morality of the county families. Day entered into the discussion with zest, but he looked at Lewis, as much as to say: “I’ll talk with you, and tell you what I know, because the subject interests me, but you don’t take me in with your innocence; a nice kind of young gentleman Senton has sent me down to pump; if I don’t take care it will be you who will pump me.”
After this discovery, Day seemed to see Lewis in quite a different light, and studiously tried to be civil to him.
He fancied he recognised in him a man of marvellous tact, and he came to the conclusion that of all the suitors, Lewis was by far the most likely to persuade Mrs. Bentham into marrying him. He admitted to himself that it was not a likely thing to happen, but it seemed to him to be distinctly on the cards; and as the possible owner of Claremont House, Lewis appeared to Mr. Day to be worth making up to, particularly as the doing so compromised him in no way with Lord Senton. Mr. Day made it a rule never to lose a chance; and there were plenty of farms to let on the Claremont House property that he would much rather have than the one he leased from Lord Senton; and as it is always worth taking a thousand to nothing, he asked Lewis to come over to his farm and lunch with him any day he liked, but just to drop a line. With this expression of goodwill, Mr. Day took his leave, and rode home to write a long account of the interview to Lord Senton.
Then some more uneventful days went by, and at last the welcome letter came, saying that Mr. Vicome was out of danger and that Mrs. Bentham expected to return home in a day or two.
At the news Lewis’s illusions awoke like a summer garden, when the first grey gleams chase the trembling shadows out of the thickets. He had now forgotten Lady Helen as he had forgotten Gwynnie Lloyd, and the present passion of his soul was centred in Mrs. Bentham. She had always appeared to him as the type of worldly enjoyment, but now, in his solitude, having no other image to distract his attention, he had tried to surround her with the halo of all the poetry his nature was capable of perceiving. He grew tired of his work, and spent his days dreaming. Like one under the influence of a narcotic, he saw deep into the future; saw himself in turn rich, poor, successful, unsuccessful, but always loving and being loved by Mrs. Bentham. His tepid nature warmed up to something like enthusiasm, and under the influence of his love he began to discriminate and draw nice distinctions between certain questions of right and wrong; he became noble-minded, and suffered from outbursts of generosity; he recognised how badly he had behaved to poor Gwynnie, and he resolved to make reparation. Then, in the evenings, he went in for long conversations with Mrs. Thorpe, and they discussed the necessity of doing one’s duty, and living up to a high and grand standard of morality.
These discussions interested him profoundly; and when he bade the old lady good-night, he would linger on the staircase annoyed that he had not made himself clearer on certain points.
The days that separated him from Mrs. Bentham passed slowly; but when he thought of how she had spoken of assisting him, and of the desire she had expressed to see him a great artist, he became tenderly sentimental, and mused long on the solicitude of woman’s nature. Then, suddenly remembering something Day had said, he grew indignant, and he asked himself if it would not be shameful for him to own any man as a friend who spoke of women as Day did; of course it would, and he resolved to see as little of him as possible in the future. These bursts of enthusiasm were often followed by fits of despondency; for when he remembered the women his mother had told him of — women who had flirted to the last with men, and then left them, laughing at their misery — he grew so angry that he frequently found himself borrowing from Mr. Day’s vocabulary, and had to pick himself up.
But Mrs. Bentham, he reassured himself, was not one of these monsters; the worst that could happen was that she, in her angelic goodness, might not consent to get a divorce from her husband and marry him. This was a serious consideration, and a cloud seemed to have tarnished the burnished mirror in which he had been lately viewing the immaculate virtue of the sex, and he was forced to admit that you could lay down no hard and steadfast rule of conduct. It was impossible, he thought, that Mrs. Bentham would, for the sake of a few miserable prejudices, willingly ruin everything they had to hope for of happiness in life. As for himself, he felt that death would be infinitely preferable to life without her, and his thoughts wandered insensibly to the question of suicide.
He remembered, with horror, how near he had been to drowning himself over Waterloo Bridge, but now, it would be different; he was no longer a homeless vagabond, but a young man of talent, adored by women, and to die for love would exalt him to the position of a modern Romeo; and he thought of all the paragraphs there would be in the newspapers, and how, probably, the novelists would use him as a type of youth, beauty, and love. “To-day or to-morrow, what matter, since we have to die?” he said to himself; “and who could wish a more poetic death?”
With such a strange mixture of doubts, desires, hopes, and f
ears, Lewis amused himself, until Mrs. Bentham’s return threw him from his dreamland into the more satisfactory country of reality.
Doctors, nurses, anxiety for her father’s recovery, and the thousand worries of a sick-room, had so occupied her mind during the past six weeks, that she came back to Lewis with almost the same thoughts as when she left him. Her intentions had not changed, and she hoped to be able to establish a sweet and lasting friendship between Lewis and herself, and it was with satisfaction she remembered that their parting words had been those of dear friends.
They were undisguisedly glad to see each other, but it was in doubt that she went to see him in the ball-room. “Why would he,” she asked herself, “insist on making love to her? why could he not be content with what she gave him? Yet, notwithstanding her apprehensions, he proved very tractable, and they had the longest and sweetest conversation possible, sitting side-by-side on the sofa. She had to tell him all about her stay in London: how she missed her drawing-lessons, how she had to nurse her father, and how Lord Senton bored her. And there were the decorations to examine; for, like every artist, he could not resist explaining his intentions and showing off his work, and this was especially delightful to do, as Mrs. Bentham was perfectly enchanted with all ho did.
Then they had to speak tenderly; to say how glad they were to see each other. Lewis took her hands, she let him do so, but soon withdrew them, and he, not anticipating another six weeks’ interruption to his courtship, did not try to press matters.
For nearly a week their flirtation flowed as softly as the sweetest summer stream, until one morning, and they never knew whose fault it was, one love word led to another, until Lewis told her how passionately he loved her, and that it was impossible for him to live without her.
Passing his arm around her waist, he drew her down towards him, and endeavoured to kiss her. She resisted formally for a while, and then, with the phrase, sublime in its simplicity, “I can’t help myself,” she surrendered herself to him, and for a moment allowed him to lay his soft, large lips upon hers. But it was only for a moment, disengaging herself from his arms she stood vacantly looking at him, apparently regretting what had passed. But he, thinking that there was no longer doubt as to his success, rapidly explained that they should run away together, and when her husband got a divorce, why that they would get married.
“Oh!” she said, looking at him tenderly as she held his hand, “you do not know what you ask me; it is impossible; you don’t know my husband; to punish me he would not ask for a divorce.”
Lewis argued with her vehemently, in short brief phrases, but without being able to alter her opinion. She listened almost as if she did not hear him, until, suddenly withdrawing her hands from his, she said, with the voice of a woman who has recovered herself, who has got the better of her weakness:
“No, no, what you propose is impossible; let us never speak on this subject again, otherwise we cannot remain friends.”
Lewis turned ghastly pale, and his lips twitched nervously; he looked at her fiercely, hating her for her cold words, and then, with a sense of having being vilely deceived, his rage overcame him. He looked round the room as if for a weapon; there was nothing within his reach but the tin palette knife, and so great was his passion that he only just saw in time the absurdity of his intention.
“Be friends!” he exclaimed, forgetful of everything; “you think that you can buy me with your money, but you are mistaken. I will leave you and your decorations to-night!”
Mrs. Bentham looked at him bewildered; but before she could reply he had rushed out of the room. The whole scene did not take five minutes; the explanation and the denouement came after each other with a rattle that would have delighted the heart of a modern stage manager.
Mrs. Bentham, like one who has received a blow on the head, looked round vacantly, her attention diffused. The wide, empty room, where she had spent so many charming hours, stared blankly at her; she looked at the great clear walls everywhere covered with nymphs, cupids, flowers, and tendrils; some were completed, some were barely indicated with a few black lines. Here a group of cupids quarrelled over some masks and arrows; some had disguised themselves with the former; some had wounded themselves with the latter. Forgetful of her grief, Mrs. Bentham tried to decipher the allegory. Each panel contained a picture illustrating an episode in the comedy of love. But there was little done, it was only a blurred and blotted dream, sad with the grievous grief of incompleted things.
Silently large tears rolled down her cheeks as she read all around her the story of her life, until at last, unable to restrain herself any longer, she sobbed passionately, hiding her face in her hands. She wept bitterly, but her tears brought neither counsel nor relief. She had won Lewis from Lady Helen, but how vain the victory now appeared; for with passionate despair she saw that she would have either to become his mistress, ruin herself in the eyes of the whole world, or give him up.
Give him up, oh, how the words burned in her soul! No, she could not do that, it would be worse than giving up her life; she had fought hard for him, and must keep him. But, oh! why had he put her in so difficult a position? why had he not been content to wait? Then she remembered that he said lie was going, and with eyes bright with excitement, she thought of what she should do to prevent his leaving her. No, it must not be; she would implore him, she would beg of him to stay; no, he must not go, anything but that; to lose him would be more cruel than death.
Harassed by doubt, and irresolute from fear, she sat listening to the cold December wind and rain that beat against the window. She thought of him with infinite tenderness, mistaking his faults for good qualities, never for a moment suspecting that under no circumstances would he have the courage to turn his back on pleasure and comfortable ease. She did not know that he already bitterly regretted his folly, that in the solitude of his room his passion had rapidly cooled down, and that he was even now striving to mature some scheme wherewith to obtain her forgiveness.
His first impulse was to run downstairs and beg for pardon, but he remembered that he could always do that, and that it would be foolish to play his best card first. He cursed himself for having risked his all in one throw; she had offered him her friendship, he had refused it, like an idiot, and for no reason that he could see; for, after all, there was no hurry; he might have waited for months. Besides, even if she did refuse eventually, it would not make matters any better by quarrelling with her.
Shaking with fear, he walked about his room, trying to compose a definite plan of action; but Gwynnie and the garret in Waterloo Road so terrified him that he could think of nothing; his reason deserted him, and his instinct urged him to go down on his knees and beg forgiveness.
At last the lunch bell rang, and he went downstairs. The conversation turned on Mr. Vicome, and Mrs. Thorpe, not knowing that anything had happened, talked volubly of the old gentleman’s recovery. Lewis watched Mrs. Bentham, and when he saw that she had been crying, he plucked up courage, and tried to allude to the time when the decorations would be finished. But Mrs. Thorpe was interested in Mr. Vicome’s health, and it seemed impossible to speak of anything else. The meal seemed to him interminable, but when they got up from the table, he noticed with delight that Mrs. Thorpe stopped behind to put the wine away. This was the chance he wanted, and he followed Mrs. Bentham, who walked slowly down the passage.
Catching her up at the foot of the stairs, he called her softly by her name; she stopped, and took the hand he held to her, and it was made up in a look and a few words.
That afternoon the ladies went out to drive, and Lewis worked hard at his painting; he was in a high state of delight, for Mrs. Bentham had accepted the flag of truce which he had held out to her with such a show of gratitude, that he had not failed to perceive how indispensable his friendship was to her; and as he sat painting his cupids he carefully analysed the situation. He saw now that the mistake he had made was not in threatening, but in the way he threatened her; and having no longer anything
to fear, he determined to see what the effect of the announcement that he intended to go to Paris to study art as soon as he had finished the decorations, would produce.
Lewis was not wanting in cunning, and he took care not to speak of his trip to the continent until Mrs. Bentham had forgotten all about their little quarrel. He chose his time carefully; and one evening, in the drawing-room after dinner, when the conversation flagged, he spoke carelessly of going to France.
Mrs. Bentham started, and tried to murmur something to the effect that she hoped they would not lose him so soon. As for Mrs. Thorpe, she dropped her knitting into the grate; if a bombshell had exploded she could not have been more astonished.
Perceiving how his ruse had succeeded, he proceeded, with much feigned composure, to explain that he only intended to stay away a year, guessing that it would sound in their ears like a century. Mrs. Bentham dared not say anything, but Mrs. Thorpe opposed his plan vigorously. She warned him of the moral dangers of the French capital; she tried to prove to him that he would not be able to learn painting because he did not know French; and with slight interruptions the discussion occupied the evening.
Mrs. Thorpe appeared to take it so to heart that Mrs. Bentham, under pretext of consoling her, ventured to hint that it was quite possible that they might take a trip over there, and then they would see how he was getting on.
The old lady took very kindly to the idea; she had never seen Paris, and admitted that, if Mrs. Bentham were going there, she would not mind accompanying her.
For the next week, during the long morning hours in the ball-room, Lewis and Mrs. Bentham talked the matter over, and they agreed that if they could persuade Mrs. Thorpe into chaperoning them, they would spend six months in Paris together.
It would take him another month to finish the decorations; that would bring them into February, and Mrs. Bentham proposed that Lewis should accompany them to London, where she would introduce him to people who would be of use to him.
