Section 12

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the wickedness of the world was patent to her eyes. She saw things so vile that she screamed in terror, and she heard Oliver laugh in derision by her side. It was a scene of indescribable horror, and she put her hands to her eyes so that she might not see.
She felt Oliver Haddo take her hands. She would not let him drag them away. Then she heard him speak.
“You need not be afraid.”
His voice was quite natural once more, and she realised with a start that she was sitting quietly in the studio. She looked around her with frightened eyes. Everything was exactly as it had been. The early night of autumn was fallen, and the only light in the room came from the fire. There was still that vague, acrid scent of the substance which Haddo had burned.
“ Shall I light the candles?” he said.
He struck a match and lit those which were on the piano. They threw a singular light. Then Margaret suddenly remembered all that she had seen, and she remembered that Haddo had stood by her side. Shame seized her, intolerable shame, so that the colour, rising to her cheeks, seemed ac- tually to burn them. She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“Go away,” she said. “For God’s sake, go.”
He looked at her for a moment; and the smile came to his lips which Susie had seen after his tussle with Arthur, when last he was in the studio.
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“When you want me you will find me in the Rue de Vaugirard, number 209,” he said. “ Knock at the second door on the left, on the third floor.”
She did not answer. She could only think of her appalling shame.
“T’ll write it down for you in case you forget.”
He scribbled the address on a sheet of paper that he found on the table. Margaret took no notice, but sobbed as though her heart would break. Sud- denly, looking up with a start, she saw that he was gone. She had not heard him open the door or close it. She sank down on her knees and prayed desperately, as though some terrible danger threat- ened her.
But when she heard Susie’s key in the door, Margaret sprang to her feet. She stood with her back to the fireplace, her hands behind her, in the attitude of a prisoner protesting his innocence. Su- sie was too much annoyed to observe this agita- tion,
“Why on earth didn’t you come to tea?” shé asked. “I couldn’t make out what had become of you.”
“T had a dreadful headache,” answered Mar- garet, trying to control herself.
Susie flung herself down wearily in a chair. Mar- garet forced herself to speak.
“ Had Nancy anything particular to say to you?” she asked.
“ She never turned up,” answered Susie irritably.
is ye
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“T can’t understand it. I waited till the train came in, but there was no sign of her. Then I thought she might have hit upon that time by chance and was not coming from England, so I walked about the station for half an hour.”
She went to the chimneypiece, on which had been left the telegram that summoned her to the Gare du Nord, and read it again. She gave a little cry of surprise.
“How stupid of me! I never noticed the post- mark. It was sent from the Rue Littré.”
This was less than ten minutes’ walk from the studio. Susie looked at the message with perplex- ity.
“T wonder if someone has been playing a silly practical joke on me.” She shrugged her shoul- ders. “ But it’s too foolish. If I were a suspicious woman,” she smiled, “I should think you had sent it yourself to get me out of the way.”
The idea flashed through Margaret that Oliver Haddo was the author of it. He might easily have seen Nancy’s name on the photograph during his first visit to the studio. She had no time to think before she answered lightly.
“Tf I wanted to get rid of you I should have no hesitation in saying so.”
“‘T suppose no one has been here?” asked Susie.
“No one.”
The lie slipped from Margaret’s lips beforé she had made up her mind to tell it. Her heart gave a
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great beat against her chest. She felt herself red- den.
Susie got up to light a cigarette. She wished to rest her nerves. The box was on the table, and, as she helped herself, her eyes fell carelessly on the address that Haddo had left. She picked it up and read it aloud.
“Who on earth lives there?” she asked.
“T don’t know at all,” answered Margaret.
She braced herself for further questions, but Su- sie, without interest, put down the sheet of paper and struck a match.
Margaret was ashamed. Her nature was singu- larly truthful, and it troubled her extraordinarily that she had lied to her greatest friend. Something stronger than herself seemed to impel her. She would have given much to confess her two false- hoods, but had not the courage. She could not bear that Susie’s implicit trust in her straightfor- wardness should be destroyed; and the admission that Oliver Haddo had been there would entail a further acknowledgment of the nameless hor- rors she had witnessed. Susie would think her mad.
There was a knock at the door; and Margaret, her nerves shattered by all that she had endured, could hardly restrain a cry of terror. She feared that Haddo had returned. But it was Arthur Bur- don. She greeted him with a passionate relief that was unusual, for she was by nature a woman
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of great self-possession. She felt excessively weak, physically exhausted as though she had gone a long journey, and her mind was highly wrought. Margaret remembered that her state had been the same on her first arrival in Paris when, in her eagerness to get a preliminary glimpse of its mar- vels, she had hurried till her bones ached from one celebrated monument to another. They began to speak of trivial things. Margaret tried to join calmly in the conversation, but her voice sounded unnatural, and she fancied that more than once Ar- thur gave her a curious look. At length she could control herself no longer and burst into a sudden flood of tears. In a moment, uncomprehending but affectionate, he caught her in his arms. He asked tenderly what was the matter. He sought to comfort her. She wept ungovernably, clinging to him for protection.
“ Oh, it’s nothing,” she gasped. “I don’t know what is the matter with me. I’m only nervous and frightened.”
Arthur had an idea that women were often afflicted with what he described by the old-fashioned name of vapours, and was not disposed to pay much attention to this vehement distress. He soothed her as he would have done a child.
“Oh, take care of me, Arthur. I’m so afraid that some dreadful thing will happen to me. I want all your strength. Promise that you’ll never
forsake me.”
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He laughed, as he kissed away her tears, and she tried to smile.
“‘ Why can’t we be married at once?”’ she asked. “T don’t want to wait any longer. I shan’t feel safe till I’m actually your wife.”
He reasoned with her very gently. After all they were to be married in a few weeks. They could not easily hasten matters, for their house was not yet ready, and she needed time to get her clothes. The date had been fixed by her. She lis- tened sullenly to his words. Their wisdom was plain, and she did not see how she could possibly insist. Even if she told him all that had passed he would not believe her; he would think she was suf- fering from some trick of her morbid fancy.
“If anything happens to me,” she answered, with the dark, anguished eyes of a hunted beast, “you will be to blame.”
“T promise you that nothing will happen.”
ae
IX
MAarGARET’s night was disturbed, and next day she could not go about her work with her usual tran- quillity. She tried to reason herself into a natural explanation of the events that had happened. The telegram which Susie had received pointed to a definite scheme on Haddo’s part, and suggested that his sudden illness was but a device to get into the studio. Once there he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby to exercise his great hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the creation of his own libidinous fancy. But though she sought to persuade herself that, in playing a vile trick on her, he had taken a shame- ful advantage of her pity, she could not look upon him with anger. Her contempt for him, her utter loathing, had vanished before a feeling that aroused in her horror and dismay. She could not get the man out of her thoughts. All that he had said, all that she had seen, seemed as though it possessed a power of material growth, unaccountably to in- crease in her. It was as if a rank weed were planted in her heart and slid along poisonous tentacles down every artery, so that each part of her body was enmeshed. Work could not distract her, con- versation, exercise, art, left her still absorbed; and 149
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between her and all the actions of life stood the flamboyant, burly form of Oliver Haddo. She was terrified of him now as never before, but curi- ously had no longer the physical repulsion which hitherto had mastered all other feelings. Although she repeated to herself that she wanted never to see him again, Margaret could scarcely resist an over- whelming desire to go to him. Her will had been taken from her, and she was an automaton. She struggled, like a bird in the fowler’s net with use- less beating of the wings; but at the bottom of her heart she was dimly conscious that she did not want to resist. If he had given her that address it was because he knew she would use it. She did not know why she wanted to go to him; she had nothing to say to him; she knew only that it was necessary to go. But a few days before she had seen the Phédre of Racine, and she felt on a sud- den all the torments that wrung the heart of that unhappy queen; she, too, struggled aimlessly to escape from the poison that the immortal gods poured in her veins. She asked herself frantically whether a spell had been cast over her, for now she was willing to believe that Haddo’s power was all-embracing. Margaret knew that if she yielded to the horrible temptation nothing could save her from destruction. She would have cried for help to Arthur or to Susie, but something, she knew not what, utterly prevented her. At length, driven almost to distraction, she thought that Dr.
aed
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Porhoét might do something for her. He, at least, would understand her misery. There seemed not a moment to lose, and she hastened to his house. They told her he was out. Her heart sank, for it seemed that her last hope was gone. She was like a person drowning, who clings to a rock; and the waves dash against him, and beat upon his bleed- ing hands with human malice as if to tear them from their refuge.
Instead of going to the sketch-class, which was held at six in the evening, she hurried to the ad- dress that Oliver Haddo had given. She went along the crowded street stealthily, as though afraid that someone would see her, and her heart was in a turmoil. She desired with all her might not to go, and sought vehemently to prevent herself, and yet withal she went. She ran up the stairs and knocked at the door. She remembered his direc- tions distinctly. In a moment Oliver Haddo stood before her. He did not seem astonished that she was there. As she stood on the landing it occurred to her suddenly that she had no reason to offer for her visit, but his words saved her from any need for explanation,
“T’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
Haddo led her into a sitting-room. He had an apartment in a maison meublée, and the heavy hangings, the solid vulgar furniture of that sort of house in Paris, was unexpected in connection with him. The surroundings were so commonplace that
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they seemed to emphasise his singularity. There was a peculiar lack of comfort, which showed that he was indifferent to material things. The room was large, but so cumbered that it gave a cramped impression. Haddo dwelt there as if he were apart from any habitation that might be his. He moved cautiously among the heavy furniture, and his great obesity was somehow more remarkable. There was the acrid perfume which Margaret re- membered a few days before in her vision of an Eastern city.
Asking her to sit down, he began to talk as if they were old acquaintance between whom nothing of moment had occurred. At last she took her courage in both hands.
“Why did you make me come here?” she asked suddenly.
“You give me credit now for very marvellous powers,” he smiled.
“You knew I should come.”
“T knew.”
“What have I done to you that you should make me so unhappy? I want you to leave me alone.”
“T shall not prevent you from going out if you choose to go. No harm has come to you. The door is open.”
Her heart beat quickly, painfully almost, and she remained silent. She knew that she did not want to go. There was something that drew her
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strangely to him, and she was ceasing to resist. A strange feeling began to take hold of her, creep- ing stealthily through her limbs; and she was ter- rified, but unaccountably elated.
He began to talk with that low voice of his that thrilled her with a curious magic. He spoke not of pictures now, nor of books, but of life. He told her of strange Eastern places where no infidel had been, and her sensitive fancy was aflame with the honeyed fervour of his phrase. He spoke of the dawn upon sleeping desolate cities, and the moonlit nights of the desert, of the sunsets with their splendour, and of the crowded streets at noon. The beauty of the East rose up before her. He told her of many- coloured webs and of silken carpets, the glittering steel of armour damascened, and of barbaric price- less gems. The splendour of the East blinded her eyes. He spoke of frankincense and myrrh and aloes, of heavy perfumes of the scent-merchants, and drowsy odours of the Syrian gardens. The fragrance of the East filled her nostrils. And all these things were transformed by the power of his words till life itself seemed offered to her, a life of infinite vivacity, a life of freedom, a life of su- pernatural knowledge. It seemed to her that a comparison was drawn for her attention between the narrow round which awaited her as Arthur’s wife and this fair full existence. She shuddered to think of the dull house in Harley Street and the insignificance of its humdrum duties. But it was
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possible for her also to enjoy the wonder of the world. Her soul yearned for a beauty that the commonalty of men did not know. And what devil suggested, a warp as it were in the woof of Oliver’s speech, that her exquisite loveliness gave her the right to devote herself to the great art of living? She felt a sudden desire for perilous adventures. As though fire passed through her, she sprang to her feet and stood with panting bosom, her flash- ing eyes bright with the multi-coloured pictures that his magic presented.
Oliver Haddo stood too, and they faced one another. Then, on a sudden, she knew what the passion was that consumed her. With a quick movement, his eyes more than ever strangely star- ing, he took her in his arms, and he kissed her lips. She surrendered herself to him voluptuously. Her whole body burned with the ecstasy of his embrace.
“T think I love you,” she said, hoarsely.
She looked at him. She did not feel ashamed.
“ Now you must go,” he said.
He opened the door, and, without another word, she went. She walked through the streets as if nothing at all had happened. She felt neither re- morse nor revulsion,
Then Margaret felt every day that uncontrollable desire to go to him; and, though she tried to per- suade herself not to yield, she knew that her effort was only a pretence: she did not want anything to
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prevent her. When it seemed that some accident would do so, she could scarcely control her irrita- tion. There was always that violent hunger of the soul which called her to him, and the only happy hours she had were those spent in his company. Day after day she felt that complete ecstasy when he took her in his huge arms, and kissed her with his heavy, sensual lips. But the ecstasy was ex- traordinarily mingled with loathing, and her physi- cal attraction was joined with physical abhorrence.
Yet when he looked at her with those pale blue eyes, and threw into his voice those troubling ac- cents, she forgot everything. He spoke of unhal- lowed things. Sometimes, as it were, he lifted a corner of the veil and she caught a glimpse of terrible secrets. She understood how men had bartered their souls for infinite knowledge. She seemed to stand upon a pinnacle of the temple, and spiritual kingdoms of darkness, principalities of the unknown, were spread before her eyes to lure her to destruction. But of Haddo himself she learned nothing. She did not know if he loved her. She did not know if he had ever loved. He appeared to stand apart from human kind. Mar- garet discovered by chance that his mother lived, but he would not speak of her.