Bird of Paradise Part 9

"Oh! Your pretty yellow teagown," he answered.

She could not go out in that, he was reflecting, and if he suddenly wanted to go for a walk----

"Very well, Nigel. Oh, dear Nigel! I don't mean to be disagreeable."

"I'm sure you don't," he answered, "let's leave it at that, my dear."

"All right," she said smiling, and went away, with a rather coquettish kiss of the hand to him.

He opened the door and shut it after her, with gallant attention. Then he threw up his arms with a despairing gesture.

"My G.o.d! What a woman! Why--why was I such a fool? ... How much longer _can_ I bear it?"

The Hilliers' relatives and intimate friends often said cheerfully about them: "Mary is very fond of Nigel, but she rather gets on his nerves."

No one seemed yet to have discovered that there was a large double tragedy in that simple, commonplace sentence.

CHAPTER VI

FUTURISM

It had long been Nigel's dream, since he had practically given up all hope of calm and peaceful happiness at home, to have, at least, a secret sorrow that everyone knew of and sympathised with. And certain people did feel for him, understanding the great worry of his wife's morbid jealousy. But the general public thought him extremely fortunate to have married a woman--or rather a young girl--whose enormous wealth was only equalled by her extraordinary devotion. Yet from the one person who mattered, the look of tacit sympathy was denied him. How it would have soothed him and made him absolutely happy! And Bertha was the only human being who must never be allowed to know of his domestic troubles. She was extremely proud, and it would have caused her great anger and pain to think that after throwing her over (as he really had, for worldly advantages), he should then want to come back, complain ungratefully of the benefactress he had chosen and philander and amuse himself again. So he had never referred to his unhappy life. His plan was deeper than that. It was to appear merely the amusing friend, until by some chance, he should feel his way to be more secure; to be, in fact, a kind of tame cat, a _camarade_, useful, and intellectually sympathetic, unselfishly devoted--until, perhaps, the time might come when she might find she could not do without him. His calculations happened to be completely wrong, but that, of course, he could not know. Like all collectors, whether of women or of any other works of art or nature, although a connoisseur, he did not quite recognise the exceptional when he met it--his rules of life were too general. And his love for Bertha--what word can one use but the word-of-all-work, love, which means so many variations and shades, and complications of pa.s.sion, sentiment, vanity and attraction?--his love had greatly increased, was growing stronger: sometimes he wondered whether it was the mere contradictory, defiant obstinacy of the discouraged admirer; and, certainly, there was in his devotion a strong infusion of a longing to score off his tyrannising wife and the fortunate, amiable Percy. Nigel's jealousy of Percy--and not of Percy only, but in a less degree of most men Bertha knew--was not very far behind his wife's jealousy of him. A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering. Nigel sometimes found himself positively imitating Mary in many little ways; watching, and listening and asking indirect questions to find things out: if he had dared he would have made Bertha a violent scene every time her husband came into the house! He tried to hide it and had made Percy like him. But Bertha could see perfectly well the tinge of jealousy for every other friend of hers, and an inclination to crab and run down and sit out, especially, any smart young man. This neither amused nor annoyed her. She did not think about it.

Nigel really felt, besides, that most cruel of all remorse--_selfish_ remorse, that he had cheated himself in having thrown over love for money. For his was not, after all, a mere smug, second-rate nature which gold, and what it meant, in however great quant.i.ties, could really ever satisfy. Putting aside the fact that his wife irritated him nearly to madness, even if he had been allowed to live alone, and perfectly free,--wealth and its gratifications would never have made him happy.

He had mistaken himself in a pa.s.sing fit of despair and cupidity, aided by the torturing agonies of being deeply in debt all round, and the ghastly fear of a social smash.

He had a longing to feel at ease; he had a love of pleasure, too, of freedom, of idleness; and the sort of talent that consists in brilliantly describing what one could do and what one would like to do: in sketching schemes, verbally--literary, financial, artistic, no matter what--with so much charm, such aplomb that everyone believed in him, and enjoyed to hear his projects, but he had not either the genius that compels its owner to work nor the steadiness, the determination of character that makes a man a successful drudge, who gets there in the end.

Nigel is being rather severely a.n.a.lysed. But let it be understood that with it all, besides having very great charm of look and manner, wit and high spirits, in certain ways he was quite a good fellow: he had no sneers for the more fortunate, no envy, nothing petty: he was warm-hearted, generous even--when it did not cross some desire of his; lavish with money, both on himself and on anyone who aided his pleasure, and quite kind and tender-hearted in that he couldn't bear to see anyone suffer--even Mary, with whom, as a matter of fact, he was very weak.

The saint thinks only of the claims of others: the criminal solely of his own. Between these extremes, there are, obviously, countless shades.

Unfortunately, Nigel had this in common with the worst; that when he really wanted anything, everything had to go to the wall: all rights of others, principles and pity were forgotten, everything was thrown over--everyone pushed out of the way. He became unscrupulous. So when he had required money he threw over his first love who, he knew, adored him; now when he found out the mistake and was seriously in love with Bertha, he would have thrown over anything on earth to get her, and admired himself for doing it. He thought himself now n.o.ble-spirited and sporting. He would have run away with her at any moment, even if he thought they would have two or three hundred a year to live on, or nothing at all. Not only that, he would have been devoted to her and worshipped her and never reproached her--and been faithful to her too--until he fell in love with someone else, which might, or might not have happened.

Often he wondered why he cared so much more for Bertha now that she was twenty-eight than when she was eighteen. Perhaps she had really increased in charm: certainly she had in magnetism and in knowledge of the world, and she was just as attractive, a sweet little creature whom one wanted to protect and yet whom, in a way, one could lean on and rely on, too. She was so subtle, so strangely wise and sensible--she seemed to know everything while having the nave, unconscious air of a person who knows next to nothing. And all these gifts she used--for what? She made Percy happy, she was charming and kind, clear-sighted, indulgent (if a little cynical), and always amusing; full of dash and spirit, and yet with the most feminine softness, and above all that invaluable instinct, always, for doing and saying the right thing ... and (he knew instinctively) a genius for love. ...

Yes, he thought, she was an extraordinary woman! There was n.o.body like her: in his opinion she was thrown away on Percy. But _she_ did not think so, and he envied, hated the husband, with an absurd bitterness--envied him for several reasons, but chiefly because Nigel had now developed what had been in abeyance at the time of their youthful engagement--that real sensuous discrimination, which has comparatively little to do with taste for beauty, that power of weighing amorous values, given only to the authentic Sybarite.

On the day arranged for the Russian Ballet party, Nigel made an excuse for seeing Bertha to arrange tactics with regard to Rupert and Madeline.

She told him she was expecting the Futurist painter, the Italian, Semolini, but she received him first.

"About Rupert, now," said Nigel. "Isn't it odd?--I always think of Rupert with a rapier concealed somewhere about his person. Ruperts and rapiers are inseparably a.s.sociated in my mind. Well--shall I, after supper, drive back with Rupert and praise up Miss Irwin--or not?"

"Yes, if you think it is a good thing."

"_If_ I think it's a good thing! Nothing in the world has such a good effect on a man as the admiration of another man for the girl he admires."

"But don't do too much digging in the ribs--don't overdo it. Rupert, though he doesn't carry a rapier, isn't quite a modern cynical man, and with all his affectations I believe he has a very sweet nature. He'll be good to Madeline--I want her to be happy."

"Well, at any rate, if she likes him she may as well have her fling at him," said Nigel carelessly.

Bertha looked annoyed.

"That isn't the point only--silly! If she liked _you_ ever so much and you were free, do you suppose I would take her side--help her?"

"I hope not," said Nigel insinuatingly, suddenly changing his seat to one close to Bertha.

She looked calmly away, as if bored.

He saw it was the wrong tone and stood up, with his back to the mantelpiece, looking at her.

"I like your frock, Bertha."

She looked down at it.

"You have an extraordinary air of not knowing what you have got on. I never saw a woman look so unconscious of her dress. There's a good deal of the art that conceals art about it, I fancy. Your clothes are attractive--in an impressionist way!"

"The only thing I think of about my dresses, is that they should make people admire me--not my dressmaker," said Bertha candidly. "I don't care for much variety, and I leave real smartness to Madeline and the other tall, slim girls. My figure is so wrong! How dare I be short and tiny, and yet not thin, nowadays?"

"You're exquisite--at least in my opinion. I've never been an admirer of the lamp-post as the type of a woman's figure."

She looked bored again. "Oh, please don't! I don't care what you like--so long as you like Mary, who was very graceful and _chic_, I thought, the other night at the opera."

It was Nigel's turn to look bored.

"Yes. ... What is this chap like, this Semolini man?"

"He's not like anything. He's a nice little thing."

"Signor Semolini," announced the servant.

A very small, very brown young man came in, clean-shaven, with large bright blue eyes, black hair, and a single eyegla.s.s with a black ribbon.

They greeted him cordially, convinced him that he was welcome, made him feel at home, gave him tea. It was his first visit, but no one was ever shy long with Bertha. He soon began chattering very volubly in a sort of English, which, if not exactly broken, was decidedly cracked.

"I like those things of yours--at the gallery, I mean," said Nigel patronisingly. He was always patronising to all artists, even when he didn't know them, as in this case, to be cranks. "I think they're top-hole; simply _awfully_ good, I thought. I didn't quite understand them, though, I admit."

"But you saw ze idea?"

"What idea?"

"Why, the simultaneity of the plastic states of mind in the art? That is our intoxicating object, you know."