Bella Donna. Robert Hichens
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a shudder.
"I don't look for a lesson; I don't want a lesson in it."
"But the composer forces it on one—a lesson of despair. Give it all up! No use to make your effort. The Immanent Will broods over you. You must go down in the end. That music is a great lie. It's splendid, it's superb, but it's a lie."
"Shall we go out? We've got ten minutes."
They made their way to the corridor and strolled slowly up and down, passing and repassing others who were discussing the music.
"Such music puts my back up," Nigel continued, with energy; "makes me feel I won't give in to it."
Isaacson could not help smiling.
"I can't look at Art from the moral plane."
"But surely Art often makes you think either morally or immorally. Surely it gives you impulses which connect themselves with life, with people."
Isaacson looked at him.
"I don't deny it. But these impulses are like the shadowy spectres of the Brocken, mere outlines which presently, very soon, dissolve into the darkness. Though great music is full of form, it often creates chaos in those who hear it."
"Then that music should call up in you a chaos of despair."
"It does."
"It makes me want to fight."
"What?"
"All the evil and the sorrow of the world. I hate despair."
Isaacson glanced at him again, and noticed how strong he was looking, and how joyous.
"Scotland has done you good," he said. "You look splendid to-night."
Secretly he gave a special meaning to the ordinary expression. To-night there was a splendour in his friend which seemed to be created by an inner strength radiating outward, informing, and expressing itself in his figure and his features.
"I'm looking forward to the winter."
Isaacson thought of the note of triumph in Mrs. Chepstow's voice when she said to him, "I don't feel such things this summer." Surely Nigel now echoed that note.
An electric bell sounded. They returned to the concert-room.
They stayed till the concert was over, and then walked away down Regent Street, which was moist and dreary, full of mist and of ugly noises.
"When do you start for Egypt?" said Meyer Isaacson.
"In about ten days, I think. Do you wish you were going there?"
"I cannot possibly escape."
"But do you wish to?"
For a moment Isaacson did not answer.
"I do and I don't," he said, after the pause. "Work holds one strangely, because, if one is worth anything as a worker, its grip is on the soul. Part of me wants to escape, often wants to escape."
He remembered a morning ride, his desire of his "own place."
"The whole of me wants to escape," Nigel replied.
He looked about him. People were seeking "pleasure" in the darkness. He saw them standing at street corners, watchfully staring lest they should miss the form of joy. Cabs containing couples rolled by, disappeared towards north and south, disappeared into the darkness.
"I want to get into the light."
"Well, there it is before us."
Isaacson pointed to the brilliant illumination of Piccadilly Circus.
"I want to get into the real light, the light of the sun, and I want every one else to get into it too."
"You carry your moral enthusiasm into all the details of your life," exclaimed Isaacson. "Would you carry the world to Egypt?"
Nigel took his arm.
"It seems so selfish to go alone."
"Are you going alone?"
The question was forced from Isaacson. His mind had held it all the evening, and now irresistibly expelled it into words.
Nigel's strong fingers closed more tightly on his arm.
"I don't want to go alone."
"I would far rather be alone than not have the exactly right companion—some one who could think and feel with me, and in the sort of way I feel. Any other companionship is destructive."
Isaacson spoke with less than his usual self-possession, and there were traces of heat in his manner.
"Don't you agree with me?" he added, as Nigel did not speak.
"People can learn to feel alike."
"You mean that when two natures come together, the stronger eventually dominates the weaker. I should not like to be dominated, nor should I like to dominate. I love mutual independence combined with perfect sympathy."
Even while he was speaking, he was struck by his own exigence, and laughed, almost ironically.
"But where to find it!" he exclaimed. "Those are right who put up with less. But you—I think you want more than I do, in a way."
He added that lessening clause, remembering, quite simply, how much more brilliant he was than Nigel.
"I like to give to people who don't expect it," Nigel said. "How hateful the Circus is!"
"Shall we take a cab to Cleveland Square?"
"Yes—I'll come in for a little."
When they were in the house, Nigel said:
"I want to thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow."
He spoke abruptly, as a man does who has been for some time intending to say a thing, and who suddenly, but not without some difficulty, obeys his resolution.
"Why on earth should you thank me?"
"Because I asked you to go."
"Is Mrs. Chepstow still in London?"
"Yes. I saw her to-day. She talks of coming to Egypt for the winter."
"Cairo, I suppose?"
"I think she is sick of towns."
"Then no doubt she'll go up the Nile."
There was a barrier between them. Both men felt it acutely.
"If she goes—it is not quite certain—I shall look after her," said Nigel.
Meyer Isaacson said nothing; and, after a silence that was awkward, Nigel changed the conversation, and not long after went away. When he was gone, Isaacson returned to his sitting-room upstairs and lit a nargeeleh pipe. He had turned out all the electric burners except one, and as he sat alone there in the small room, so dimly lighted, holding the long, snake-like pipe-stem in his thin, artistic hands, he looked like an Eastern Jew. With a fez upon his head, Europe would have dropped from him. Even his expression seemed to have become wholly Eastern, in its sombre, glittering intelligence, and in the patience of its craft.
"I shall look after her."
Said about a woman like Mrs. Chepstow by a man of Nigel's youth, and strength, and temperament, that could only mean one of two things, a liaison or a marriage. Which did it mean? Isaacson tried to infer from Nigel's tone and manner. His friend had seemed embarrassed, had certainly been embarrassed. But that might have been caused by something in his, Isaacson's, look or manner. Though Nigel was enthusiastic and determined, he was not insensitive to what was passing in the mind of one he admired and liked. He perhaps felt Isaacson's want of sympathy, even direct hostility. On the other hand, he might have been embarrassed by a sense of some obscure self-betrayal. Often men talk of uplifting others just before they fall down themselves. Was he going to embark on a liaison with