The Paliser case Part 14

Margaret sank back. "But I am sorry you have been annoyed. It won't happen again. I will write to him."

Later, she did write.

Forgive me, dear Keith, if I cause you pain, but I feel that I am not suited to you. Forgive me therefore for not recognising it sooner. I have thought it all over and, though it wrings my heart to say it, I cannot see you again. Forgive me and forget.

MARGARET.

XII

h.e.l.l was supposed to be very hot, very red, full of pugnacious demons.

Educated people do not believe in it any more. It is curious how ignorant educated people have become. h.e.l.l is an actual plane, less vivid than was formerly imagined, not hot but cold, grey rather than red, but amply provided with demons, with the devils of self-accusation, with the fiends of insoluble queries. Very real and very actual, it is surprising how many educated people are there. The oddity of that is increased by the fact that they regard it as a private establishment.

They regard their h.e.l.l as unique. Perhaps the idea flatters them. Yet sooner or later everybody enters it. h.e.l.l may seem private. It is universal.

Headlong into it, Margaret's letter precipitated Lennox. Being a man, he struggled up. But not out. In h.e.l.l there are no signposts. It takes time to find one's way. It takes more, it takes resignation. When both have been acquired, the walls part of themselves. The aspect of life has altered, but you are free.

Lennox, in struggling up, encountered the demons of enigmatic riddles.

Each word of Margaret's letter they converted into a Why? They thrust it at him, demanding an answer. But the answer her heart alone possessed.

That heart had been his. It was his no longer. The heart that she had given him, she had taken away. Nothing could be simpler and nothing more mysterious. The mystification was complete, but not the suffering.

Suffering is never complete. However deep the h.e.l.l, there is always a deeper one.

From the letter he looked at the walls. They were dumb. There was no answer for the demons there, not anywhere, perhaps, except among werewolves, basilisks and Mrs. Austens. These monsters did not occur to him. The monstrous letter sufficed. But Margaret was still too near, her vows were too recent for him to credit it, and the fact that he could not disclosed itself in those words which all have uttered, all at least before whom the inexplicable has sprung.

"It is impossible!"

Yet there it was. Yet there too was something else. But what? At once he was back again in the issueless circle of infernal questions.

The day before he had known that something was amiss. The att.i.tude of Mrs. Austen had been too a.s.sured, too venomous, too smiling, for him to doubt it. But though he did not doubt that, not for a second did he doubt Margaret either. Always aware of the woman's hostility, he had been equally aware that it could not influence the girl. Not for a moment therefore had he accepted the statement that the engagement was broken. At the time he had thought that when next he had a word with Margaret it would all be explained. But all what? His life was as clean as his face. It was not that then. On the other hand he was not rich. By the same token, Margaret's only idea of money was to help others with it. It was not that then either. Nor was it that she had not loved him.

She had loved him. He could have sworn it and not out of vanity, for he had none, but because never could she have promised herself to him if she had not. None the less, she could not see him again. She had thought it over. She was not suited to him. He was told to forget her. Why?

That Why, repeating itself, forced him deeper into the circles of which h.e.l.l is made.

But even in h.e.l.l despair is brief. Unless it consume you utterly, and it would not be h.e.l.l if it did, it goads. It compels you to seek an issue.

Apart from time, which is very slow, and resignation, which is never prompt, there is another portal.

A poet, who discovered it, scrawled on it: "Lascia la donna e studia la matematica"--a cryptogram which subsequent pilgrims variously deciphered. To some, it spelled Thought; to others, Action. Action is thought put in motion.

Lennox, to whom time was too dilatory and resignation too remote, happened on the device which he translated after his manner.

But however you construe the hierograph, the door must be demolished before you get out. Across the door is written: Hope. It is a very hard door to crack. When you succeed you are covered with splinters. They cling to you and pierce you. Joiners, carpenters, pilgrims, poets and fiends have a name for them. They call the splinters Regrets. Though you have escaped, they accompany you. h.e.l.l encircles you still.

It was on the day following the conversation with Mrs. Austen that Lennox received Margaret's letter. In his dark rooms it was waiting. A moment previous he had intended to go to her. He had it all planned.

Mrs. Austen could say what she liked; the physician might interfere; he would submit to no one. He proposed to see her, to adjust it, to swing up and out from the circles which already were closing about him.

On leaving Mrs. Austen he had gone to dinner. He could not eat. He had gone to bed. He could not sleep. In the morning his face was flushed.

Always fit, hard as nails, these phenomena perplexed. Yet he knew it was not illness that produced them. What he did not know was that poison had. The poison was anger, an unphilosophic emotion which disturbs the circulation, the stomach and social intercourse. He could have wrung Mrs. Austen's neck.

In that murderous mood he went to Wall Street and in that mood returned.

Already h.e.l.l was gaping. Headlong into it the letter threw him. Being a man he sought and found the door, smashed it and pa.s.sed out. Not at once however. It took him many a sleepless hour before he deciphered the device Lascia la donna. Leave the lady? Certainly. Since she so wished, what else in decency could he do? Go and badger her with complaints and questions? Not he. But how do you translate: Studia la matematica? The dictionary that is in every man, who is a man, told him. Then he knew.

Meanwhile the flush in departing left him grey.

In every affection there is the germ of hate. Margaret, confronted by the unawaited, hated Lennox. Lennox, confronted by the inexplicable, hated Margaret. Hatred is love turned inside out. Love is perhaps a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. In that case so also is hate. Of all things mystery disturbs the imagination most. Margaret could not understand how Lennox could have acted as he had. Lennox could not understand how Margaret could act as she did. Dual misunderstanding, in which the imagination fermented. Hence the hate. Yet each, in hating, loved the other. Each felt the splinters which, as Browning somewhere noted, kept fresh and fine. Only a touch and the splinters would have joined.

Mrs. Austen, for all her horrible shrewdness, could not have prevented that. But pride, that gives so many of us a fall, was more potent than she. Margaret, insulted, could but turn away. Lennox, dismissed, could but let her go.

Any emotion is unbecoming. Pride is merely ridiculous. It resides in the youthful-minded, however old. In residing in these young people, it resisted the touch that would have combined them and, through its opposition, made one of them ill and the other grey. To be proud! How splendid it seems and how stupid it is. h.e.l.l is paved with just such imbecilities.

It is said of Dante that children peered at him and whispered: "That man has been in h.e.l.l."

None of the children that clubmen are, pointed at Lennox, though two of them whispered. The others did not know, not yet at least. But Verelst knew and Jones guessed. The guess was due to the romantic profession that endows a novelist with the wonderful faculty of putting two and two together.

Hitherto, that is since the engagement was announced and, for that matter, long previously, Lennox had pa.s.sed the evening in Park Avenue.

Where else would he have pa.s.sed it? After the rupture he sat about and read all the papers. When a man is down and out that is just what he does do, though not necessarily in the Athenaeum Club.

Jones, noticing it, rapidly divined the reason which Verelst confirmed.

"Yes, her mother told me."

It was in a club window, of an afternoon. Before them was Fifth Avenue which, in the Aprils of not so long ago, used to be a horse-show of fair faces, ravishing hats, discreet liveries, folded arms and yards of yodeling bra.s.s.

Verelst, eyeing the usurping motors, added: "It is because of some girl I believe, or rather I don't believe it."

Jones sat back. Instantly the motors were replaced by the picture of a girl whose face was n.o.ble and reserved. He had seen the face at the Bazaar. He had seen Lennox talking to it. Afterward Lennox had told him that the girl was Portuguese. The picture was attractive but unconvincing. In agreement with Verelst he was about to say so. But behind him he heard a voice that he knew and he switched and said:

"What a remarkable country Portugal is! Born dumb, she spoke twice: once when she gave Asia to Europe, again when she presented the Lusiades to the world. Her history is resumed in two miracles, a discovery and a masterpiece. But when the Cape of Good Hope was succeeded by Camoens, once more she relapsed into a silence that was broken only when she shouted her defiance at the Huns."

Now though that voice was addressing them. Both turned and Lennox asked: "What are you talking about--war?"

"Sit down," said Verelst, who gave him a hand.

Jones gave him another. "What else is there to talk about? It will be talked of forever. So will that scrofulous Kaiser. Unfortunately he knows it and that pleases him. Last year or the year before he called for the death and destruction of all who opposed him. With singular modesty he added: 'G.o.d who speaks through my mouth so orders!' Loti claims that what spoke through him was a hyena. Loti is lacking in literary sobriety. When a hyena has eaten he is at peace with the world.

But when was b.e.s.t.i.a.lity ever filled? It is insatiable and so is this thug whom G.o.d, at most, may have permitted to look in the mirror without vomiting. Meanwhile we stand by. A generation ago we fought for Cuba.

What is Hecuba to us in comparison to the Anima Mundi?"

Verelst turned on the novelist. "And what is literary sobriety? You are hurling words in ma.s.sed formation."

Jones smiled at him. "Where is my harp?"

"You mean your megaphone," Lennox put in. "You are always rehearsing copy. One of these days I may give you some."

"From the front?" Jones asked.

"Yes, though I don't see how you knew. The President has asked for war.

Why aren't we up and at 'em? If Congress hems and haws over it much longer, I'll get my gun and join the Foreign Legion."

Jones nodded. He had guessed that also and he said: "Wait and join the legions here. At present, the country is alarmingly apathetic. The man in the subway is muddled. The call to arms does not stir him. The issues, clear enough to us, seem to him mixed as macaroni. He does not understand a war that is three thousand miles away. But in a year, every man in the country--a country that has never been beaten!--will be in it body and soul. Undividedly, shoulder to shoulder, we will be in it as we have never been in anything before."