Bella Donna. Robert Hichens

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      She smiled at him satirically.

      "I believe what you told me that day in my consulting-room, as thoroughly as I disbelieve what you told me, and Mr. Armine, the night we met you at supper."

      "And what are your grounds for your belief and disbelief?"

      "Suppose I said my instinct?"

      "I should answer, by all means trust it, if you like. Only do not expect every one to trust it, too."

      Her last words sounded almost like a half-laughing menace.

      "Why should I want others to trust it?" he asked, quietly.

      "I leave your instinct to tell you that, my dear Doctor," she answered gently, with a smile.

      "Well," he said, "I must say good-bye. I must leave you to your inner resources. You haven't told me what they are."

      "Can't you imagine?"

      "Spiritual, I suppose!"

      "You've guessed it—clever man!"

      "And your gospel of Materialism, which you preached to me so powerfully, gambling, yachting, racing, motoring, theatre-going, eating and drinking, in the 'for to-morrow we die' mood: those pleasures of the typical worldly life of to-day which you said you delighted in? You have replaced them all satisfactorily with 'inner resources'?"

      "With inner resources."

      Her smiling eyes did not shrink from his. He thought they looked hard as two blue and shining jewels under their painted brows.

      "Good-bye—and come again."

      While Isaacson walked slowly down the corridor, Mrs. Chepstow opened her writing-table drawer, and took from it a packet of letters which she had put there when the servant first knocked to announce the visitor.

      The letters were all from Nigel.

IX

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      Isaacson did not visit Mrs. Chepstow again before he left London for his annual holiday. More than once he thought of going. Something within him wanted to go, something that was perhaps intellectually curious. But something else rebelled. He felt that his finer side was completely ignored by her. Why should he care what she saw in him or what she thought about it? He asked himself the question. And when he answered it, he was obliged to acknowledge that she had made upon his nature a definite impression. This impression was unfavorable, but it was too distinct. Its distinctness gave a measure of her power. He was aware that, much as he disliked Mrs. Chepstow, much as he even shrank from her, with a sort of sensitive loathing, if he saw her very often he might come to wish to see her. Never had he felt like this towards any other woman. Does not hatred contain attraction? By the light of his dislike of Mrs. Chepstow, Isaacson saw clearly why she attracted Nigel. But during those August days, in the interior combat, his Jewishness conquered his intellectual curiosity, and he did not go again to the Savoy.

      His holiday was spent abroad on the Lake of Como, and quite alone. Each year he made a "retreat," which he needed after the labours of the year, labours which obliged him to be perpetually with people. He fished in the green lake, sketched in the lovely garden of the almost deserted hotel, and passed every day some hours in scientific study.

      This summer he was reading about the effects of certain little-known poisons. He spent strange hours with them. He had much imagination, and they became to him like living things, these agents of destruction. Sometimes, after long periods passed with them, he would raise his head from his books, or the paper on which he was taking notes, and, seeing the still green waters of the lake, the tall and delicate green mountains lifting their spires into the blue, he would return from his journey along the ways of terror, and, dazed, like a tired traveller, he would stare at the face of beauty. Or when he worked by night, after hours during which the swift action of the brain had rendered him deaf to the sounds without, suddenly he would become aware of the chime of bells, of bells in the quiet waters and on the dreaming shores. And he would lift his head and listen, till the strangeness of night, and of the world with its frightful crimes and soft enchantments, stirred and enthralled his soul. And he compared his two lives, this by the quiet lake, alone, filled with research and dreams, and that in the roar of London, with people streaming through his room. And he seemed to himself two men, perhaps more than two.

      Soon the four weeks by the lake were gone. Then followed two weeks of travel—Milan, Munich, Berlin, Paris. And then he was home again.

      He had heard nothing of Nigel, nothing of Mrs. Chepstow.

      September died away in the brown arms of October, and at last a letter came from Nigel. It was written from Stacke House, a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and spoke of his speedy return to the South.

      "I am shooting with Harwich," he wrote, "but must soon be thinking about my return to Egypt. I didn't write to you before, though I wanted to thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow. You can't think how she appreciated it. She was delighted by your brilliant talk and sense of humour, but still more delighted by your cordiality and kindness. Of late she hasn't had very much of the latter commodity, and she was quite bowled over. By Jove, Isaacson, if men realized what a little true kindness means to those who are down on their luck, they'd have to 'fork out,' if only to get the return of warm affection. But they don't realize.

      "I sometimes think the truest thing said since the Creation is that 'They know not what they do.' Add, 'and what they leave undone,' and you have an explanation of most of the world's miseries. Good-bye, old chap. I shall come to Cleveland Square directly I get to London. Thank you for that visit. Yours ever, Nigel Armine."

      Nigel's enthusiasm seemed almost visibly to exhale from the paper as Isaacson held the letter in his hands. "Your cordiality and kindness." So that had struck Mrs. Chepstow—the cordiality and kindness of his, Isaacson's manner! Of course she and Nigel were in correspondence. Isaacson remembered the occasional notes almost of triumph in her demeanour. She had had letters from Nigel during his absence from London. His letters—the hope in her face. Isaacson saw her on the balcony looking out over the river. Had she not looked out as the human soul looks out upon a prospect of release? In the remembrance of them her expression and her attitude became charged with more definite meaning. And he surely grasped that meaning, which he had wondered about before.

      Yet Nigel said nothing. And all this time he had been away from Mrs. Chepstow. Such an absence was strange, and seemed unlike him, quite foreign to his enthusiastic temperament, if Isaacson's surmise was correct. But perhaps it was not correct. That well-spring of human kindness which bubbled up in Nigel, might it not, perhaps, deceive?

      "Feeling is woman's knowledge." Isaacson had said that. Now mentally he added, "And sometimes it is man's." He felt too much about Nigel, but he strove to put his feeling away.

      Presently he would know. Till then it was useless to debate. And he had very much to do.

      Not till nearly the end of October did Nigel return to London. The leaves were falling in battalions from the trees. The autumn winds had come, and with them the autumn rain, that washes sadly away the last sweet traces of summer. Everywhere, through country and town, brooded that grievous atmosphere of finale which in England seldom or never fails to cloud the waning year.

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