Bella Donna. Robert Hichens
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the country, and made a great many generous experiments—built model cottages, started rifle ranges, erected libraries, gymnasiums, swimming baths. In fact, he spent his money royally—too royally."
"And were they sick with gratitude?"
"Their thankfulness did not go so far as that. In fact, some of Armine's schemes for making people happy met with a good deal of opposition. Finally there was a tremendous row about a right of way. The tenants were in the wrong, and Armine was so disgusted at their trying to rob him of what was his, after he had showered benefits upon them, that he let his place and hasn't been there since."
"That's so like people, to ignore libraries and village halls, and shriek for the right to get over a certain stile, or go down a muddy path that leads from nothing to nowhere."
"The desire of the star for the moth!"
"You call humanity a star?"
"I think there is a great brightness burning in it; don't you?"
"There seems to be in Mr. Armine, certainly. What an enthusiastic look he has! How could he get wrong with his tenants?"
"It may have been his enthusiasm, his great expectations, his ideality. Perhaps he puzzled his people, asked too much imagination, too much sacred fire from them. And then he has immense ideas about honesty, and the rights of the individual; and, in fact, about a good many things that seldom bother the head of the average man."
"Don't tell me he has developed into a crank," said Mrs. Derringham. "There's something so underbred about crankiness; and the Harwich family have always been essentially aristocrats."
"I shouldn't think Armine was a crank, but I do think he is an idealist. He considers Watts's allegorical pictures the greatest things in Art that have been done since Botticelli enshrined Purity in paint. In modern music Elgar's his man; in modern literature, Tolstoy. He loves those with ideals, even if their ideals are not his. I do not say he is an artist. He is not. His motto is not 'Art for art's sake,' but 'Art for man's sake.'"
"He is a humanitarian?"
"And a great believer."
"In man?"
"In the good that is in man. I often think at the back of his mind, or heart, he believes that the act of belief is almost an act of creation."
"You mean, for instance, that if you believe in a man's truthfulness you make him a truthful man?"
"Yes."
"Oh, Doctor Isaacson," said Lady O'Ryan, "do introduce Mr. Armine to my husband, and make him believe my husband is a miser instead of a spendthrift. It would be such a mercy to the family. We might begin to pay off the mortgage on the castle."
The conversation took a frivolous turn, and died in laughter.
But towards the end of dinner Mrs. Derringham again spoke of Nigel Armine, asking:
"And what does Mr. Armine do now?"
"He went to Egypt after he let his place, bought some land there, in the Fayyūm, I believe, and has been living on it a good deal. I think he has been making some experiments in farming."
"And does he believe in the truth and honesty of the average donkey-boy?"
"I don't know. But I must confess I have heard him extol the merits of the Bedouins."
At this moment Lady Somerson sprang up, in her usual feverish manner, and the men in a moment were left to themselves. As the sliding doors closed behind Lady Somerson's active back, there was a hesitating movement among them, suggestive of a half-formed desire for rearrangement.
Then Armine came decisively away from his place on the far side of the long table, and joined Meyer Isaacson.
"I'm glad to meet you again, Isaacson," he said, grasping the Doctor's hand.
The Doctor returned his grip with a characteristic clasp, and they sat down side by side, while the other men began talking and lighting cigarettes.
"Have you only just come back?" asked the Doctor.
"I have been back for a week."
"So long! Where are you staying?"
"At the Savoy."
"The Savoy?"
"Are you surprised!"
The Doctor's brilliant eyes were fixed upon Armine with an expression half humorous, half affectionate.
"Any smart hotel would seem the wrong place for you," he said. "I can see you on the snows of the Alps, or your own moors at Etchingham, even at—where is it?"
"Sennoures."
"But at the Savoy, the Ritz, the Carlton—no. Their gilded banality isn't the cadre for you at all."
"I'm very happy at the Savoy," Armine replied.
As he spoke, he looked away from Meyer Isaacson across the table to the wall opposite to him. Upon it hung a large reproduction of Watts's picture, "Progress." He gazed at it, and his face became set in a strange calm, as if he had for a moment forgotten the place he was in, the people round about him. Meyer Isaacson watched him with a concentrated interest. There was something in this man—there always had been something—which roused in the Doctor an affection, an admiration, that were mingled with pity and even with a secret fear. Such a nature, the Doctor often thought, must surely be fore-ordained to suffering in a world that holds certainly many who cherish ideals and strive to mount upwards, but a majority that is greedy for the constant gratification of the fleshly appetites, that seldom listens to the dim appeal of the distant voices which sometimes speak, however faintly, to all who dwell on earth.
"What a splendid thing that is!" Armine said, at last, with a sigh. "You know the original?"
"I saw it the other day at the gallery in Compton."
"Progress—advance—going on irresistibly all the time, whether we see it, feel it, or not. How glorious!"
"You are always an optimist?"
"I do believe in the triumph of good. More and more every day I believe in that, the triumph of good in the world, and in the individual. And the more believers there are—true believers—in that triumph, the more surely, the more swiftly, it will be accomplished. You can help, Isaacson."
"By believing?"
"Yes, that's the way to help. But Lord! how few people take it! Suspicion is one of the most destructive agents at work in the world. Suspect a man, and you almost force him to give you cause for suspicion. Suspect a woman, and instantly you give her a push towards deceit. How I hate to hear men say they don't trust women."
"Women say that, too."
"Sex treachery! Despicable! They who say that are traitresses in their own camp."
"You value truth, don't you?"
"Above everything."
"Suppose women truly mistrust other women; are they to pretend the contrary?"
"They can be silent, and try to stamp out an unworthy, a destructive, feeling."
He said nothing for a moment. Then he looked up at Meyer Isaacson and continued:
"Are you going anywhere when you leave here?"
"I've accepted something in Chesham Place. Why?"
"Must you go to it?"
"No."
"Come and have supper with me at the Savoy."
"Supper! My dear Armine! You know nowadays we doctors are preaching, and rightly preaching, less eating and drinking to our patients. I can eat nothing till to-morrow after my morning ride."
"But you can sit at a supper-table, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, I can do that."