Bella Donna. Robert Hichens
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it brought upon me such an avalanche of scorn and arguments. I didn't much mind the scorn, but the arguments bored me."
"Did they convince you?"
"Mr. Armine! Now, did you ever know a woman convinced of anything by argument?"
He laughed.
"Then you still believe that you have an immortal soul?"
"More, far more, than ever."
She was laughing, too. But, quite suddenly, the laughter died out of her, and she said, with an earnest face:
"I wouldn't let any one—any one—take some of my beliefs from me."
The tone of her voice was almost fierce in its abrupt doggedness.
"I must have some coffee," she added, with a complete change of tone. "I sleep horribly badly, and that's why I take coffee. Mere perversity! Three black coffees, waiter."
"Not for me!" said Meyer Isaacson.
"You must, for once. I hate doing things alone. There is no pleasure in anything unless some one shares it. At least"—she looked at Armine—"that is what every woman thinks."
"Then how unhappy lots of women must be," he said.
"The lonely women. Ah! no man will ever know how unhappy."
There was a moment of silence. Something in the sound of Mrs. Chepstow's voice as she said the last words almost compelled a silence.
For the first time since he had been with her that night Meyer Isaacson felt that perhaps he had caught a glimpse of her true self, had drawn near to the essential woman.
The waiter brought their coffee, and Mrs. Chepstow added, with a little laugh:
"Even a meal eaten alone is no pleasure to a woman. To-night, till you came to take pity upon me, I should have been far happier with 'something on a tray' in my own room. But now I feel quite convivial. Isn't the coffee here good?"
Suddenly she looked cheerful, almost gay. Happiness seemed to blossom within her.
"Never mind if you lie awake for once, Doctor Isaacson," she continued, looking across at him. "You will have done a good action; you will have cheered up a human being who had been feeling down on her luck. That talk I had with a doctor had depressed me most horribly, although I told myself that I didn't believe a word he said."
Meyer Isaacson sipped his coffee and said nothing.
"I think one of the wickedest things one can do in the world is to try to take any comforting and genuine belief away from the believer," said Armine, with energy.
"Would you leave people even in their errors?" said the Doctor. "Suppose, for instance, you saw some one—some friend—believing in a person whom you knew to be unworthy, would you make no effort to enlighten him?"
He spoke very quietly—almost carelessly. Mrs. Chepstow fixed her big blue eyes on him and for a moment forgot her coffee.
"Perhaps I should. But you know my theory."
"Oh—to be sure!"
Meyer Isaacson smiled. Mrs. Chepstow looked from one man to the other quickly.
"What theory? Don't make me feel an outsider," she said.
"Mr. Armine thinks—may I, Armine?"
"Of course."
"Thinks that belief in the goodness, the genuineness of people helps them to become good, genuine, so that the unworthy might be made eventually worthy by a trust at first misplaced."
"Mr. Armine is—" She checked herself. "It is a pity the world isn't full of Mr. Armines," she said, softly.
Armine flushed, almost boyishly.
"I wish my doctor knew you, Mr. Armine. If you create by believing, I'm sure he destroys by disbelieving."
As she said the last words, her eyes met Meyer Isaacson's, and he saw in them, or thought he saw, a defiance that was threatening.
The lights winked. Mrs. Chepstow got up.
"They're going to turn us out. Let us anticipate them—by going. It's so dreadful to be turned out. It makes me feel like Eve at the critical moment of her career."
She led the way from the big room. As she passed among the tables, every man, and almost every woman, turned to stare at her as children stare at a show. She seemed quite unconscious of the attention she attracted. But when she bade good night to the two friends in the hall, she said:
"Aren't people horrible sometimes? They seem to think one is—" She checked herself. "I'm a fool!" she said. "Good night. Thank you both for coming. It has done me good."
"Don't mind those brutes!" Armine almost whispered to her, as he held her hand for a moment. "Don't think of them. Think of—the others."
She looked at him in silence, nodded, and went quietly away.
Directly she had gone Meyer Isaacson said to his friend:
"Well, good night, Armine. I am glad you're back. Let us see something of each other."
"Don't go yet. Come to my sitting-room and have a smoke."
"Better not. I have to be up early. I ride at half-past seven."
"I'll ride with you, then."
"To-morrow?"
"Yes, to-morrow."
"But have you got any horses up?"
"No; I'll hire from Simonds. Don't wait for me, but look out for me in the Row. Good night, old chap."
As they grasped hands for a moment, he added:
"Wasn't I right?"
"Right?"
"About her—Mrs. Chepstow? She may have been driven into the Devil's hands, but don't you see, don't you feel, the good in her, struggling up, longing for an opportunity to proclaim itself, to take the reins of her life and guide her to calm, to happiness, to peace? I pity that woman, Isaacson; I pity her."
"Pity her if you like," the Doctor said, with a strong emphasis, on the first word, "but—"
He hesitated. Something in his friend's face stopped him from saying more, told him that perhaps it would be much wiser to say nothing more. Opposition drives some natures blindly forward. Such natures should not be opposed.
"I pity Mrs. Chepstow, too," he concluded. "Poor woman!"
And in saying that he spoke the truth. But his pity for her was not of the kind that is akin to love.
The black coffee Mrs. Chepstow had persuaded Meyer Isaacson to take kept him awake that night. Like some evil potion, it banished sleep and peopled the night with a rushing crowd of thoughts. Presently he did not even try to sleep. He gave himself to the crowd with a sort of half-angry joy.
In the afternoon he had been secretly puzzled by Mrs. Chepstow. He had wondered what under-reason she had for seeking an interview with him. Now he surely knew that reason. Unless he was wrong, unless he misunderstood her completely, she had come to make a curiously audacious coup. She had seen Nigel Armine, she had read his strange nature rightly; she had divined that in him there was a man who, unlike most men, instinctively loved to go against the stream, who instinctively turned towards that which most men turned from. She had seen in him the born espouser of lost causes.
She was a lost cause. Armine was her opportunity.
Armine had talked to her four days ago of Meyer Isaacson. The Doctor guessed how, knowing the generous enthusiasm of his friend. And she, a clever woman, made distrustful by misfortune, had come to Cleveland Square, led by feminine instinct, to spy out this land of which she had heard so much. The Doctor's sensation of being examined, while he sat with Mrs. Chepstow in his consulting-room,