CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013625698 BELLA iONNA n> j st-UOPI^ BY ROBERT HICHENS AUTHOt"*br "THE GARDEN Of ALLAH," "tHX CALL Or THE BLOOD," ETC PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1909 COPYMBHT, 1909 BY J. B. LlFFINCOTT COMPANY Published October, 1909 (o0\5 Printed by J. IS, Lippincoll Company , The WathSngton Square Press, Philadelphia, V. 8. A. BELLA DONNA Doctor Meyer Isaacson had got on as only a modern Jew whose home is London can get on, with a rapidity that was alarming. He seemed to have arrived as a bullet arrives in a body. He was not in the heart of success, and lo ! he was in the heart of success. And no one had marked his journey. Suddenly every one was speaking of him — was talking of the cures he had made, was advising every one else to go to him. For some mysterious reason his name — a name not easily to be forgotten once it had been heard?-*' began to pervade the conversations that were held in the smart drawing-rooms of London. Women who were well, but had not seen him, abruptly became sufficiently unwell to need a consultation. "Where does he live? In Harley Street, I suppose?" was a constant question. But he did not live in Harley Street. He was not the man to lose himself in an avenue oi brass plates of fellow practitioners. " Cleveland Square, St. James's," was the startling reply; and his house was detached, if you please, And marvellously furnished. The winged legend flew that he was rich, and that he had gone into practice as a doctor merely because he was intellectually interested in disease. His gift for diagnosis was so remarkable that he was morally forced to exercise it. And he had a greedy passion for studying humanity. And who has such opportunities for the study of humanity as the doctor and the priest? Patients who had been to him spoke enthusiastically of his observant eyes. His perr finality always made a great impression. ' ' There 's no One j<|st like him," was a frequent comment upon Doctor 5 6 BELLA DONNA Meyer Isaacson. And that phrase is a high compliment upon the lips of London, the city of parrots and of monkeys. His age was debated, and so was his origin. Most people thought he was "about forty"; a very safe age, young enough to allow of almost unlimited expectation, old enough to make results achieved not quite unnatural, though possibly startling. Yes, he must be "about forty.!' And his origin? "Meyer" suggested Germany. As to "Isaacson," it allowed the ardent imagination free play over denationalized Israel. Someone said that he "looked as if he came from the East," to which a cynic made answer, "The East End." There was, perhaps, a hint of both in the Doctor of Cleveland Square. Certain it is that in the course of a walk down Brick Lane, or the adjacent thoroughfares, one will encounter men of his type; men of middle height, of slight build, with thick, close-growing hair strongly curling, boldly curving lips, large nostrils, prominent cheek-bones, dark eyes almost fiercely shining; men who are startlingly un-English. Doctor Meyer Isaac- son was like these men. Yet he possessed something which set h,im apart from them. He looked intensely vital — almost unnaturally vital — when he was surrounded by English people, but he did not look fierce and hungry. One coul$ conceive of him doing something bizarre, but one could not conceive of him doing anything low. There was sometime^ a light in his eyes which suggested a moral distinction rarely to be found in those who dwell in and about Bricfc Lane. His slight, nervous hands, dark in colour, recalled the hands of high-bred Egyptians. Like so many of his nation, he was by nature artistic. An instinctive love oj{ what was best in the creations of man ran in his veins witjl* his blood. He cared for beautiful things, and he knew what things were beautiful and what were not. The second-rate never made any appeal to him. The first-rate found in him a welcoming enthusiast. He never wearied of looking at fine pictures, at noble statues, at bronzes, at old jewelled glass, at delicate carvings, at perfect jewels. He was gen^ BELLA DONNA 7 uinely moved by great architecture. And to music he was almost fanatically devoted, as are many Jews. It has been said of the Jew that he is nearly always possessed of a streak of femininity, not effeminacy. In Doctor Meyer Isaacson this streak certainly existed. His intuitions were feminine in their quickness, his sympa- thies and his antipathies almost feminine in their ardour. He understood women instinctively, as generally only other women understand them. Often he knew, without knowing why he knew. Such knowledge of women is, perhaps fortunately, rare in men. Where most men stumble in the dark, Doctor Meyer Isaacson walked in the light. He was unmarried. Bachelorhood is considered by many to detract from a doctor's value and to stand in the way of his career. Doctor Meyer Isaacson did not find this so. Although he was not a nerve specialist, his waiting-room was always full of patients. If he had been married, it could not have been fuller. Indeed, he often thought it would have been less full. Suddenly he became the fashion, and he went on being the fashion. He had no special peculiarity of manner. He did not attract the world of women by elaborate brutalities, or charm it by silly suavities. He seemed always very natural, intelligent, alive, and thoroughly interested in the person with whom he was. That he was a man of the world was certain. He was seen often at concerts, at the opera, at dinners, at receptions, occasionally even at a great ball. Early in the morning he rode in the Park. Once a week he gave a dinner in Cleveland Square. And people liked to go to his house. They knew they would not be bored and not be poisoned there. Men appreciated him as well as women, despite the reminiscence of Brick Lane dis- coverable in him. His directness, his cleverness, and his apparent good-will soon overcame any dawning instinct summoned up in John Bull by his exotic appearance. Only the unyielding Jew-hater hated him. And so the & BELLA DONNA lilies of the life of Doctor Meyer Isaacson seemed laid in pleasant places. And not a few thought him one of the fortunate of this world. One morning of June the doctor was returning to Cleveland Square from his early ride in the Park. He was alone. The lively bay horse he rode — an animal that seemed almost as full of nervous vitality as he was — had had a good gallop by the Serpentine, and now trotted gently towards Buckingham Palace, snuffing in the languid air through its sensitive nostrils. The day was going to be hot. This fact inclined the Doctor to idleness, made him suddenly realize the bondage of work. In a few minutes he would be in Cleveland Square ; and then, after a bath, a cup of coffee, a swift glance through the Times and the Daily Mail, there would start the procession that until evening would be passing steadily through his con- sulting-room. He sighed, and pulled in his horse to a walk. To-day he was reluctant to encounter that procession. And yet each day it brought interest into his life, this procession of his patients. Generally he was a keen man. He had no need to feign an ardour that he really felt. He had a passion for investigation, and his profession enabled him to gratify it. Very modern, as a rule, were those who came to him, one by one, admitted each in turn by his Jewish man-servant; complex, caught fast in the net of civilized life. He liked to sit alone with them in his quiet chamber, to seek out the hidden links which united the physical to the mental man in each, to watch the pull of soul on body, of body on soul. But to-day he recoiled from work. Deep down in his nature, hidden generally beneath his strong activity, there was something that longed to sit in the sunshine and dream away the hours, leaving all fates serenely, or perhaps indifferently, between the hands of God. "I will take a holiday some day," he said to himself "a long holiday. I will go far away from here, to the land where I am really at home, where I am in my own place." BELLA DONNA 9 As he thought this, he looked up, and his eyes rested upon the brown facade of the King's Palace, upon the gilded railings that separated it from the public way, upon the sentries who were on guard, fresh-faced, alert, staring upon London with their calmly British eyes. "In my own place," he repeated to himself. And now his lips and his eyes were smiling. And he saw the great drama of London as something that a school- boy could understand at a glance. Was it really idleness he longed for ? He did not know why, but abruptly his desire had changed. And he found himself wishing for events, tragic, tremendous, horrible even — anything, if they were unusual, were such as to set the man who was involved in them apart from his fellows. The foreign element in him woke up, called, perhaps, from repose by the unusually languid air, and London seemed meaningless to him, a city where a man of his type could neither dream, nor act, with all the languor, or all the energy, that was within him. And he imagined, as some- times clever children do, a distant country where all romances unwind their shining coils, where he would find the incentive which he needed to call all his secret powers — the powers whose exercise would make his life complete — into supreme activity. He gripped his horse with his knees. It understood his desire. It broke into a canter. He passed in front of the garden of Stafford House, turned to the left past St. James's Palace and Marlborough House, and was soon at his own door. "Please bring up the book with my coffee in twenty minutes, Henry," he said to his servant, as he went in. In half an hour he was seated in an arm-chair in an upstairs sitting-room, sipping his coffee. The papers lay folded at his elbow. Upon his knee, open, lay the book in which were written down the names of the patients with whom he had made appointments that day. He looked at them, seeking for one that promised interest. The first patient was a man who would come in 10 BELLA DONNA on his way to the city. Then followed the names of three women, then the name of a boy. He was coming with his mother, a lady of an anxious mind. The Doctor had a sheaf of letters from her. And so the morning's task was over. He turned a page and came to the afternoon. "Two o'clock, Mrs. Lesueur; two-thirty, Miss Mendish; three, the Dean of Greystone; three-thirty, Lady Carle; four, Madame de Lys; four-thirty, Mrs. Harringby; five, Sir Henry Grebe; five-thirty, Mrs. Chepstow." The last name was that of the last patient. Doctor Meyer Isaacson's day's work was over at six, or was sup- posed to be over. Often, however, he gave a patient more than the fixed half -hour, and so prolonged his labours. But no one was admitted to his house for consultation after the patient whose name was against the time of five-thirty. And so Mrs. Chepstow would be the last patient he would see that day. He sat for a moment with the book open on his knee, looking at her name. It was a name very well known to him, very well known to the English-speaking world in general. Mrs. Chepstow was a great beauty in decline. Her day of glory had been fairly long, but now it seemed to be over. She was past forty. She said she was thirty-eight, but she was over forty. Goodness, some say, keeps women fresh. Mrs. Chepstow had tried a great many means of keeping fresh, but she had omitted that. The step between asthet- icism and asceticism was one which she had never taken, though she had taken many steps, some of them, unfortu- nately, false ones. She had been a well-born girl, the daughter of aristocratic but impecunious and extravagant parents. Her father, Everard Page, a son of Lord Cheam, had been very much at home in the Bankruptcy Court. Her mother, too, was reckless about money, saying, whenever it was mentioned, "Money is given us to spend, not to hoard. " So little did she hoard it, that eventually her husband pub- lished a notice in the principal papers, stating that he would not be responsible for her debts. It was a very long BELLA DONNA II time since he had been responsible for his own. Still, there was a certain dignity in the announcement, as of an honest man frankly declaring his position. Mrs. Chepstow's life was very possibly influenced by her parents' pecuniary troubles. When she was young she learnt to be frightened of poverty. She had known what it was to be "sold up" twice before she was twenty; and this probably led her to prefer the alternative of being sold. At any rate, when she was in her twenty-first year, sold she was to Mr. Wodehouse Chepstow, a rich brewer, to whom she had not even taken a fancy; and as Mrs. Chepstow she made a great fame in London society as a beauty. She was christened Bella Donna. She was photographed, writ- ten about, worshipped by important people, until her celebrity spread far over the world, as the celebrity even of a woman who is only beautiful and who does nothing can spread in the era of the paragraph. And then presently she was the heroine of a great divorce case. Mr. Chepstow, forgetting that among the duties required of the modern husband is the faculty of turning a blind eye upon the passing fancies of a lovely and a generally admired wife, suddenly proclaimed some ugly truths, and completely ruined Mrs. Chepstow's reputation. He won his case. He got heavy damages out of a well-known married man. The married man's wife was forced to divorce him. And Mrs. Chepstow was socially "done for." Then began the new period of her life, a period utterly different from all that had preceded it. She was at this time only twenty-six, and in the zenith of her beauty. Every one supposed that the man to whom she owed her ruin would marry her as soon as it was pos- sible. Unfortunately, he died before the decree nisi was made absolute. Mrs. Chepstow's future had been com- mitted to the Pates, and they had turned down their thumbs. Notorious, lovely, now badly off, still young, she was left to shift for herself in the world. 12 BELLA DONNA It was then that there came to the surface of her char- acter a trait that was not beautiful. She developed a love of money, a passion for material things. This definite greediness declared itself in her only now that she was poor and solitary. Probably it had always existed in her, but had been hidden. She hid it no longer. She tacitly pro- claimed it, and she ordered her life so that it might be satisfied. And it was satisfied, or at the least for many years ap- peased. She became the famous, or the infamous, Mrs. Chep- stow. She had no child to be good for. Her father was dead. Her mother lived in Brussels with some- foreign relations. For her English relations she took no thought. The divorce case had set them all against her. She put on the panoply of steel so often assumed by the woman who has got into trouble. She defied those who were "down upon her." She had made a failure of one life. She resolved that she would make a success of another. And for a long time she was very successful. Men were at her feet, and min- istered to her desires. She lived as she seemed to desire to live, magnificently. She was given more than most good women are given, and she seemed to revel in its possession. But though she loved money, her parents' traits were re- peated in her. She was a spendthrift, as they had been spendthrifts. She loved money because she loved spending, not hoarding it. And for years she scattered it with both hands. * Then, as she approached forty, the freshness of her beauty began to fade. She had been too well known, and had to endure the fate of those who have long been talked about. Men said of her, " Mrs. Chepstow— oh, she's been going a deuce of a time. She must be well over fifty." "Women — good women especially — pronounced her nearer sixty. Almost suddenly, as often happens in such cases as hers, the roseate hue faded from her life and a greyness began to fall over it. She was seen about with very young men, almost boys. People sneered when they spoke of her. It was said that BELLA DONNA IS she was not so well off as she had been. Some shoddy millionaire had put her into a speculation. It had gone wrong, and he had not thought it necessary to pay up her losses. She moved from her house in Park Lane to a flat in Victoria Street, then to a little house in Kensington. Then she gave that up, and took a small place in the country, and motored up and down, to and from town. Then she got sick of that, and went to live in a London hotel. She sold her yacht. She sold a quantity of diamonds. And people continued to say, "Mrs. Chepstow — oh, she must be well over fifty." Undoubtedly she was face to face with a very bad period. With every month that passed, loneliness stared at her more fixedly, looked at her in the eyes till she began to feel almost dazed, almost hypnotized. A dulness crept over her. Forty struck — forty-one — forty-two. And then, one morning of June, Doctor Meyer Isaacson sat sipping his coffee and looking at her name, written against the time, five-thirty, in his book of consultations. n Doctor Meter Isaacson did not know Mrs. Chepstow personally, but he had seen her occasionally, at supper in smart restaurants, at first nights, riding in the Park. Now, as he looked at her name, he realized that he had not even seen her for a long time, perhaps for a couple of years. He had heard the rumours of her decadence, and taken little heed of them, not being specially interested in her. Never- theless, this morning, as he shut up his book and got up to go downstairs to his work, he was aware of a desire to hear the clock strike the half-hour after five, and to see Henry opening the door to show Mrs. Chepstow into his consulting-room. A woman who had lived her life and won her renown — or infamy — could scarcely be uninteresting. As the day wore on, he was several times conscious of a 14 BELLA DONNA wish to quicken the passing of its moments, and when Sir Henry Grebe, the penultimate patient, proved to be an elderly malade imaginaire of dilatory habit, involved speech, and determined misery, he was obliged firmly to check a rising desire to write a hasty bread-pill prescription and fling him in the direction of Marlborough House. The half -hour chimed, and still Sir Henry explained the strange symptoms by which he was beset — the buzzings in the head, the twitchings in the extremities, the creepings, as of insects with iced legs, about the roots of the hair. His eyes shone with the ardour of the determined valetudinarian closeted with one paid to attend to his complaints. And Mrs. Chepstow ? Had she come ? "Was she sitting in the next room, looking inattentively at the newest books ? "The most extraordinary matter in my case," con- tinued Sir Henry, with uplifted finger, "is the cold sweat that " The doctor interrupted him. 'My advice to you is this- "But I haven't explained to you about the cold sweat that " "My advice to you is this, Sir Henry. Don't think about yourself; walk for an hour every day before break- fast, eat only two meals a day, morning and evening, take at least eight hours' rest every night, give up lounging about in your club, occupy yourself — with work for others, if possible. I believe that to be,, the most tonic work there is — and I see no reason why you should not be a cen- tenarian." " I — a centenarian?" "Why not? There is nothing the matter with you, unless you think there is." "Nothing — you say there is nothing the matter with me!" "I have examined you, and that is my opinion." The face of the patient' flushed with indignation at this insult. ' ' I came to you to be told what was the matter. ' ' BELLA DONNA 15 "And I am glad to inform you nothing is the matter — with your body." "Do you mean to imply that my mind is diseased?" "No. But you don't give it enough to think about. You only give it yourself. And that isn't nearly enough." Sir Henry rose, and put a trembling finger into his waistcoat-pocket. "I believe I owe you ?" "Nothing. But if you care to put something into the box on my hall table, you will help some poor man to get away to the seaside after an operation, and find out what is the best medicine in the world." "And now for Mrs. Chepstow!" the Doctor murmured to himself, as the door closed behind the outraged back of an enemy. He sat still for a minute or two, expecting to see the door open again, the form of a woman framed in the door- way. But no one came. He began to feel restless. He was not accustomed to be kept waiting by his patients, although he often kept them waiting. There was a bell close to his elbow. He touched it, and his man-servant instantly appeared. " Mrs. Chepstow is down for five-thirty. It is now" — he pulled out his watch — " nearly ten minutes to six. Hasn't she come?" "No, si?» Two or three people have been, without appointments. ' ' "And you have sent them away, of course? Quite right. Well, I shan't stay in any longer." He got up from his chair. "And if Mrs. Chepstow should come, sir?" "Explain to her that I waited till ten minutes to six and then " He paused. The hall door-bell was ringing sharply. "If it is Mrs. Chepstow, shall I admit her now, sir?" The doctor hesitated, but only for a second. "Yes," he said. And he sat down again by his table. 16 BELLA DONNA He had been almost looking forward to tlie arrival of his last patient of that day, but now he felt irritated at being detained. For a moment he had believed his day's work to be over, and in that moment the humour for work had left him. Why had she not been up to time? He tapped his delicate fingers impatiently on the table, and drew down his thick brows over his sparkling eyes. But directly the door moved, his expression of serenity returned, and when a tall woman came in, he was standing up and gravely smiling. "I'm afraid I am late." The door shut on Henry. "You are twenty minutes late." "I'm so sorry." The rather dawdling tones of the voice denied the truth of the words, and the busy Doctor was conscious of a slight sensation of hostility. "Please sit down here," he said, "and tell me why you come to consult me." Mrs. Chepstow sat down in the chair he showed her. Her movements were rather slow and careless, like the movements of a person who is quite alone and has nothing to do. They suggested to the watching man vistas of empty hours — how different from his own ! She settled herself in her chair, leaning back. One of her hands rested on the handle of a parasol she carried. The other held lightly an arm of the chair. Her height was remarkable, and was made the more apparent by her small waist, and by the small size of her beautifully shaped head, which was poised on a long but exquisite neck. Her whole outline announced her gentle breeding. The most lovely woman of the people could never be shaped quite like that. As Doctor Isaacson realised this, he felt a sudden difficulty in connecting with the woman before him her notorious career. Surely pride must be a dweller in a body so expressive of race ! He thought of the very young men, almost boys, with whom Mrs. Chepstow was seen about. "Was it possible? Her eyes met his, and in her face he saw a subtle contra- BELLA DONNA 17 diction of the meaning her form seemed eloquently to indicate. It was possible. Almost before he had time to say this to himself, Mrs. Chepstow's face had changed, suddenly accorded more definitely with her body. "What a clever woman!" the Doctor thought. With an almost sharp movement he sat forward in his chair, braced up, alert, vital. His irritation was gone with the fatigue engendered by the day's work. Interest in life tingled through his veins. His day was not to be wholly dull. His thought of the morning, when he had looked at the patients' book, was not an error of the mind. " You came to consult me because ?" "I don't know that I am ill," Mrs. Chepstow said, very composedly. "Let us hope not." "Do you think I look ill ? " "Would you mind turning a little more towards the light?" She sat still for a minute, then she laughed. "I have always said that so long as one is with a doctor, qua doctor, one must never think of him as a man," she said; "but " "Don't think of me as a man." "Unfortunately, there is something about you which absolutely prevents me from regarding you as a machine. But — nevermind!*' " She turned to the light, lifted her thin veil, apd leaned towards him. "Do you think I look ill?" He gazed at her steadily, with a scrutiny that was almost cruel. The face presented to him in the bold light that flowed in through the large window near which their chairs were placed still preserved elements of the beauty of Which the world had heard too much. Its shape, like the shape of Mrs. Chepstow's head, was exquisite. The line of the features was not purely Greek, but it recalled things .'.2 18 BELLA DONNA Greek, profiles in marble seen in calm museums. The out- line of a thing can set a sensitive heart beating with the strange, the almost painful longing for an ideal life, with ideal surroundings, ideal loves, ideal realizations. It can call to the imagination that lies drowsing; yet full of life, far down in the secret recesses of the soul. The curve of Mrs. Chepstow's face, the modelling of her low brow, and the undulations of the hair that flowed away from it — although, alas! that hair was obviously, though very per- fectly, dyed — had this peculiar power of summons, sent forth silently this subtle call. The curve of a Dryad's face, seen dimly in the green wonder of a magic wood, might well have been like this, or of a nymph's bathing by moonlight in some very secret pool. But a Dryad would not have touched her lips with this vermilion, a nymph have painted beneath her laughing eyes these cloudy shadows, or drawn above them these artfully delicate lines. And the weariness that lay about these cheeks, and at the corners of this mouth, suggested no early world, no goddesses in the springtime of creation, but an existence to distress a moralist, and a lack of pleasure in it to dishearten an honest pagan. The ideality in Mrs. Chepstow's face was contradicted, was set almost at defiance, by something — it was difficult to say exactly what; perhaps by the faint wrinkles about the corners of her large and still luminous blue eyes, by a certain not yet harsh prominence of the cheek-bones, by a slight droop of the lips that hinted at passion linked with cynicism. There was a suggestion of baldness somewhere. Freshness iad left this face, but not becauseUf .age. There ^re~elderly, even old women who look almost girlish, fra- grant with a charm that has its root in innocence of life. Mrs. Chepstow did not certainly look old. Yet there was no youth in her, no sweetness of the girl she once had been. She was not young, nor old, nor definitely middle-aged. She was definitely a woman who had strung many experiences upon the chain of her life, yet who, in certain aspects, called up the thought of, even the desire for, things ideal, things very far away from all that is sordid, ugly, brutal, and defaced. BELLA DONNA 19 The look of pride, or perhaps of self-respect, which Doctor Isaacson had seen born as if in answer to his detri- mental thought of her, stayed in this face, which was turned towards the light. He realized that in this woman there was much will, perhaps much cunning, and that she was a past mistress in the art of reading men. "Well," she said, after a minute of silence, "what do you make of it ? " She had a very attractive voice, not caressingly but carelessly seductive ; a voice that suggested a creature both warm and lazy, that would, perhaps, leave many things to chance, but that might at a moment grip closely, and retain, what chance threw in her way. "Please tell me your symptoms," the Doctor replied. "But you tell me first— do I look ill?" She fixed her eyes steadily upon him. "What is the real reason why this woman has come tome?" The thought flashed through the Doctor's mind as his eyes met hers, and he seemed to divine some strange under- reason lurking far down in her shrewd mind, almost to catch a glimpse of it ere it sank away into complete obscurity. "Certain diseases," he said slowly, "stamp themselves unmistakably upon the faces of those who are suffering from them." "Is any one of them stamped upon mine?" "No." She moved, as if settling herself more comfortably in her chair. "Shall I put your parasol down?" he asked, stretching out his hand- "No, thanks. I like holding it." " I 'm afraid you must tell me what are your symptoms. ' ' "I feel a sort of general malaise." "Is it a physical malaise?" "Why not?" she said, almost sharply. SO BELLA DONNA She smiled, as if in pity at her own childishness, and added immediately: "I can't say that I suffer actual physical pain. But without that one may not feel particularly well." "Perhaps your nervous system is out of order." "I suppose every day you have silly women coming to you full of complaints but without the ghost of a malady?" "You must not ask me to condemn my patients. And not only women are silly in that way." He thought of Sir Henry Grebe, and of his own pre- scription. "I had better examine you. Then I can tell you more about yourself." While he spoke, he felt as if he were being examined by her. Never before had he experienced this curious sensa- tion, almost of self-consciousness, with any patient. "Oh, no," she said, "I don't want to be examined. I know my heart and my lungs and so on are sound enough." "At any rate, allow me to feel your pulse." "And look at my tongue, perhaps !" She laughed, but she pulled off her glove and extended her hand to him. He put his fingers on her wrist, and looked at his watch. Her skin was cool. Her pulse beat regularly and strongly. From her, a message to his lightly touching fingers, flowed surely determination, self-posses- sion, hardihood, even combativeness. As he felt her pulse he understood the defiance of her life. " Your pulse is good," he said, dropping her hand. During the short time he had touched her, he seemed to have learnt a great deal about her. And she — how much had she learnt about him? He found himself wondering in a fashion unorthodox in a doctor. "Mrs. Chepstow," he said, speaking rather brusquely, "I wish you would kindly explain to me exactly why you have come here to-day. If you don't feel ill, why waste your time with a doctor? I am sure you are not a woman to run about seeking what you have." BELLA DONNA 21 "You mean health! But — I don't feel as I used to feel. Formerly I was a very strong woman, so strong that I often felt as if I were safe from unhappiness, real unhap- piness. For Schopenhauer was right, I suppose, and if one's health is perfect, one rises above what are called mis- fortunes. And, you know, I have had great misfortunes." "Yes?" "You must know that." "Yes." "I didn't really mind them — not enormously. Even when I was what I suppose nice people called 'ruined' — after my divorce — I was quite able to enjoy life and its pleasures, eating and drinking, travelling, yachting, riding, motoring, theatre-going, gambling, and all that sort of thing. People who are being universally condemned, or pitied, are often having a quite splendid time, you know." "Just as people who are universally envied are often miserable. ' ' "Exactly. But of late I have begun to — well, to feel different." "In what way exactly?" "To feel that my health is no longer perfect enough to defend me against— I might call it ennui." "Yes?" "Or I might call it depression, melancholy, in fact. Now I don't want — I simply will not be the victim of depression, as so many women are. Do you realise how frightfully women — many women — suffer secretly from depression when they — when they begin to find out that they are not going to remain eternally young ? ' ' "I realize it, certainly." ' ' I will not be the victim of that depression, because it ruins one's appearance and destroys one's power. I am thirty-eight. ' ' Her large blue eyes met the Doctor's eyes steadily. "Yes?" "In England nowadays, that isn't considered anything. In England, if one has perfect health, one may pass for a 22 BELLA DONNA charming and attractive woman till one is at least fifty, or even more. But to seem young when one is getting on, one must feel young. Now, I no longer feel young. I am positive feeling young is a question of physical health. I believe almost everything one feels is a question of physical health. Mystics, people who believe in metempsychosis, in the progress upward and immortality of the soul, idealists — they would cry out against me as a rank materialist. But you are a doctor, and know the empire of the body. Am I not right? Isn't almost everything one feels an emanation from one's molecules, or whatever they are called? Isn't it an echo of the chorus of one's atoms?" "No doubt the state of the body affects the state of the mind." ' ' How cautious you are ! ' ' A rather contemptuous smile flickered over her too red lips. "And really you must be in absolute antagonism with the priests, the Christian Scientists, with all the cranks and the self-deceivers who put soul above matter, who pretend that soul is independent of matter. "Why, only the other day I was reading about the psychophysical investigations with the pneumograph and the galvanometer, and I'm certain that " Suddenly she checked herself. "But that's beside the question. I've told you what I mean, what I think, that health triumphs over nearly everything." "You seem to be very convinced, a very sincere materialist." "And you?" "Despite the discoveries of science, I think there are still depths of mystery in man." "Woman included?" "Oh, dear, yes! But to return to your condition." "Ah!" She glanced at a watch on her wrist. "Your day of work ends ?" "At six, as a rule." "I mustn't keep you. The truth is this. I am losing my zest for life, and because I am losing my zest, I am BELLA DONNA 23 losing my power over life. I am beginning to feel weary, melancholy, sometimes apprehensive." "Of what?" "Middle age, I suppose, and the ending of all things." "And you want me to prescribe against melancholy?" "Why not? What is a doctor for? I tell; you I am Gertain these feelings in me come from a bodily con- dition." "You think it quite impossible that they may proceed from a condition of the soul?" "Quite. I believe it all ends here on the day one dies. I feel as certain of that as of my being a woman. And this being my conviction, I think it of paramount importance to have a good time while I am here." "Naturally." "Now, a woman's good time depends on a woman's power over others, and that power depends on her thor- ough-going belief in herself. So long as she is perfectly well, she feels young, and so long as she feels young, she can give the impression that she is young — with the slight- est assistance from art. And so long as she can give that impression — of course I am speaking of a woman who is what is called ' attractive '- — it is all right with her. She will believe in herself, and she will have a good time. Now, Doctor Isaacson — remember that I consider all con- fidences made to a physician of your eminence, all that I tell you to-day, as inviolably secret " "Of course," he said. "Lately my belief in myself has been — well, shaken. ^ I attribute this to some failure in my health. So I have come to you. Try to find out if anything in my bodily condition is wrong." "Very well. But you must allow me to examine you, and I must put to you a number of purely medical ques- tions which you must answer truthfully." "En avant, monsieur!" She put her parasol down on the floor beside her. "I don't believe in subterfuge — with a doctor," she said. 24 BELLA DONNA III Mrs. Chepstow came out of the house in Cleveland Square as the clocks were striking seven, stepped into a taximeter cab, and was hurried off into the busy whirl of St. James's Street, while Doctor Meyer Isaacson went upstairs *to his bedroom to rest and dress for dinner. His clothes were already laid out, and he sent his valet away. As soon as the man was gone, the Doctor took off his coat and waistcoat, his collar and tie, sat down in an arm-chair by the open window, leaned his head againgt a cushion, shut his eyes, and deliberately relaxed all his muscles. Every day, sometimes at one time, sometimes at another, he did this for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour ; and in these moments, as he relaxed his muscles, he also relaxed his mind, banishing thoughts by an effort of the will. So often had he done this that generally he did it without difficulty ; and though he never fell asleep in daylight, he came out of this short rest-cure refreshed as after two hours of slumber. But to-day, though he could command his body, his mind was wilful. He could not clear it of the restless thoughts. Indeed, it seemed to him that he became all mind as he sat there, motionless, looking almost like a dead man, with his stretched-out legs, his hanging arms, his dropped jaw. His last patient was fighting against his desire for complete repose, was defying his will and con- quering it. After his examination of Mrs. Chepstow, his series of questions, he had said to her, "There is nothing the matter with you. ' ' A very ordinary phrase, but even as he spoke it, something within him cried to him, "You liar!" This woman suffered from no bodily disease. But to say to her, "There is nothing the matter with you," was, nevertheless, to tell her a lie. And he had added the qualifying state- ment, "that a doctor can do anything for." He could see her face before him now as it had looked for a moment after he had spoken. BELLA DONNA 25 Her exquisite hair was dyed a curious colour. Natu- rally a bright brown, it had been changed by art to a lighter, less warm hue, that was neither flaxen nor golden, but that held a strange pallor, distinctive, though scarcely beautiful. It had the merit of making her eyes look very vivid between the painted shadows and the painted brows, and this fact had been no doubt realized by the artist responsible for it. Apparently Mrs. Chepstow relied upon the fascination of a peculiar, almost anaemic fairness, in the midst of which eyes, lips, and brows stood forcibly out to sei^e the attention and engross it. There was in this fair- ness, this blanched delicacy, something almost pathetic, which assisted the completion, in the mind of a not too astute beholder, of the impression already* begun to. be made by the beautiful shape of the face. When Doctor Meyer Isaacson had finished speaking, that face had been a still but searching question; and almost immediately a question had come from the red lips. "Is there absolutely no unhealthy condition of body such as might be expected to produce low spirits? You see how medically I speak! " "None whatever. You are not even gouty, and three- quarters, at least, of my patients are gouty in some form or other." Mrs. Chepstow frowned. "Then what would you advise me to do?" she asked. "Shall I go to a priest? Shall I go to a philosopher? Shall I go to a Christian Science temple ? Or do you think a good dose of the 'New Theology' would benefit me?" She spoke satirically, yet Doctor Isaacson felt as if he heard, far off, faintly behind the satire, the despair of the materialist, against whom, in certain moments, all avenues of hope seem inexorably closed. He looked at Mrs. Chep- stow, and there was a dawning of pity in his eyes as he answered : "How can I advise you?" "How indeed? And yet — and that's a curious thing — you look as if you could." 26 BELLA DONNA "If you are really a convinced materialist, an honest atheist " "I am." "Well, then it would be useless to advise you to seek priests or to go to Christian Science temples. I can only tell you that your complaint is not a complaint of the body." "Then is it a complaint of the soul? That's a bore, because I don't happen to believe in the soul, and I do believe very much in the body. ' ' "I wonder what exactly you mean when you say you don't believe in the soul." "I mean that I don't believe there is in human beings anything mysterious which can live unless the body is living, anything that doesn't die simultaneously with the body. Of course there is something that we call mental, that likes and dislikes, loves and hates, and so on. ' ' "And cannot that something be depressed by misfor- tune?" "I did not say I had had any misfortune." "Nor did I say so. Let us put it this way then — cannot that something be depressed?" "To a certain degree, of course. But keep your body in perfect health, and you ought to be immune from extreme depression. And I believe you are immune. Frankly, Doctor Meyer Isaacson, I don't think you are right. I am sure something is out of order in my body. There must be some pressure somewhere, some obscure derangement of the nerves, something radically wrong." "Try another doctor. Try a nerve specialist — a hyno- tist, if you like : Hinton Morris, Scalinger, or Powell Burn- ham; I fear I cannot help you." "So it seems." She got up slowly. And still her movements were care- less, but always full of a grace that, was very individual. "Remember," she said, "that I have spoken to you so frankly in your capacity as a physician." "AH I hear in this room I forget when I am oiit of it." BELLA DONNA 27 "Truly?" she said. "At any rate, I forget to speak of it," he said, rather curtly. "Good-bye," she rejoined. She left him with a strange sensation of the hopeless- ness that comes from greed and acute worldliness, uncom- bined with any, even subconscious, conception of other possibilities than purely material ones. What could such a woman have to look forward to at this period of her life ? Doctor Isaacson was thinking about this now. He re- mained always perfectly motionless in his arm-chair, but he had abandoned the attempt to discipline his mind. He knew that to-day his brain would not repose with his limbs, and he no longer desired his usual rest-cure. He preferred to think — about Mrs. Chepstow. She had made upon him a powerful impression. He recalled the look in her eyes when she had said that she was thirty-eight, a look that had seemed to command him to believe her. He had not believed her, yet he had no idea what her real age was. Only he knew that it was not thirty-eight. How determined she was not to suffer, to get through life — her one life, as she thought it— without dis- tress ! And she was suffering. He divined why. That was not difficult. She was "in low water. " The tides of pleas- ure were failing. And she had nothing to cling to, clever woman though she was. Why did he think her clever? He asked himself that question. He was not a man to take cleverness on trust. Mrs. Chepstow had not said any- thing specially brilliant. In her materialism she was surely short-sighted, if not blind. She had made a mess of her life. And yet he knew that she was a clever woman. She had been very frank with him. Why had she been so frank? More than once he asked himself that. His mind was full of questions to-day, questions to which he could not immediately supply answers. He felt as if in all she had 28 BELLA DONNA said Mrs. Chepstow had been prompted by some very definite purpose. She had made upon him the impression of a woman full of purpose, and often full of subtlety. He could not rid himself of the conviction that she had had some concealed reason for wishing to make his acquaint- ance, some reason unconnected with her health. He be- lieved she had wished honestly for his help as a doctor. But surely that was not her only object in coming to Cleveland Square. The clock on his chimney-piece struck. His time for repose was at an end. He shut his mouth with a snap, contracted his muscles sharply, and sprang up from his chair. Ten minutes later he was in a celd bath, and half an hour later he was dressed for dinner, and going down- stairs with the light, quick step of a man in excellent phys- ical condition and capital spirits. The passing depression he had caught from his last patient had vanished away, and he was in the mood to enjoy his well-earned recreation. He was dining in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, with Lady Somerson, a widow who was persistently hospitable because she could not bear to be alone. To-night she had a large party. When Doctor Isaacson came into the room on the ground floor where Lady Somerson always received her guests before a dinner, he found her dressed in rusty ^lack, with her grey hair done anyhow, managing and directing the conversation of quite a crowd of important and interesting persons, mp?* thing to her? He put up his hand to his lips, took away the cigar, and flung it out of the window violently. And this physical violence was the echo of his mental violence. She might allow such a thing. Often, if half of what was said of her was true, she had entered into a similar relation with other BELLA DONNA 75 men. He would not believe that "often." He put it differently. She had certainly entered into a similar rela- tion with some men — perhaps with two or three, multiplied by scandal — in the past. Would she enter into it with him, if he asked her ? And would he ever ask her ? He threw himself down again in his arm-chair, and stared at his bare feet planted firmly on the floor. But he saw, not his feet, but the ugly spectre of love, that hideous, damnable ghost, that most pretentious of all pretentions. She had lived with the ghost till she had become pale like a ghost. In the picture of "Progress," which he loved, there was a glow, a glory of light, raying out to a far horizon. It would be putting a shoulder to the wheel to set a glow in the cheeks of a woman, not a glow of shame but of joy. And to be — and then Nigel used to himself that expression of the laughing men in the clubs — "a bad last!" No, that sort of thing was intolerable. Suddenly the ghost faded away, and he saw his brown feet. They made him think at once of the sun, of work, of the good, real, glowing life. No, no; none of those intolerable beastlinesses for him. That thought, that imagination, it was utterly, finally done with. He drew a long breath, and stretched up his arms, till the loose sleeves of his night-suit fell down, exposing the strong, brown limbs. And as he had looked at his feet, he looked at them, then felt them, thumped them, and rejoiced in the glory of health. But the health of mind and heart was essential to the complete health of the body. He felt suddenly strong — strong for more than one, as surely a man should be — strong for himself, and his woman, for her who belongs to him, who trusts him, who has blotted out — it comes to that with a woman who loves — all other men for him. Was he really condemned to an eternal solitude because of the girl who had died so many years ago ? For his life was a solitude, as every loveless life is, however brilliant and strenuous. He realized that, and there came to him a ^thought that was natural and selfish. It was this : How good it must be to be exclusively loved by a woman, and 76 BELLA DONNA how a woman, whom men and the world have abandoned, must love the man who comes, like a knight through the forest, and carries her away, and takes her into his life, and gives her back self-respect, and a place among women, and, above all, the feeling that of all feelings a woman holds dearest, "Somebody wants me." It must be good to be loved as such a woman would love. His generosity, which instinctively went out to abandoned things, walked hand in hand with man's eternal, indestructible selfishness that night, as he thought of Mrs. Chepstow for the first time as married again to some man who cared not for the world's opinion, or who cared for it so much as to revel in defy- ing it. How would she love such a man? He began to wonder about that part of her nature dedi- cated to, designed for, love. With him she was always perfectly simple, and seemed extremely frank. But he felt now that in her simplicity she had always been reserved, almost strangely reserved for such a woman. Perhaps that reserve had been her answer to his plainly shown respect. Just because of her position, he had been even more respectful to her than he was to other women, following in this a dictate of his tem- perament. What would she be like in the unreserve of a great love ? And now a fire was kindled in Nigel, and began to burn up fiercely. He felt, very consciously and definitely, the fascination of this woman. Of course, he had always been more or less subject to it. Isaacson had known that when he saw Nigel draw his chair nearer to hers at the supper- table in the Savoy. But he had been subject to it without ever saying to himself, "I am in subjection." He had never supposed that he was in subjection. The abrupt con- sciousness of how it was with him excited him tremen- dously. After the long interval of years, was he to feel again the powerful fever, and for a woman how different from the woman he had loved? She stood, in her young purity, at one end of the chain of years, and Mrs. Chepstow — did she really stand at the other? BELLA DONNA 77 He seemed to see these two looking at each other across the space that was set by Time, and for a moment his face contracted. But he had changed while traversing that space. Then he was an eager boy, in the joy of his bound- ing youth. Now he was a vigorous man. And during the interval that separated boy from man had come up in him his strong love of humanity, his passion for the develop- ment of the good that lies everywhere, like the ore in gold-bearing earth. That love had perhaps been given to him to combine the two loves, the altruistic love, and the love for a woman bringing its quick return. The two faces of women surely softened as they gazed now upon each other. Such loves in combination might crown his life with splendour. Nigel thought that, with the enthusiasm which was his birthright, which set him so often apart from other men. And, moving beneath such a splendour, how absolutely he could defy the world's opinion! Its laughter would be music, its sneering word only the signal to a smile. But — he must think — he must think He sprang up, pulled up his loose sleeves to his shoulders, tucked them together, and with bared arms leaned out to the night, holding his hands against his cheeks. VIII Mrs. Chepstow had said to Nigel, "Bring Doctor Isaacson — if he '11 come. ' ' He had never gone, though Nigel had told him of her words, had told him more than once. Without seeming deliberately to avoid the visit, he had deliberately avoided it. He never had an hour to spare in the day, and Nigel knew it. But he might have gone on a Sunday. It happened that, at present, on Sundays he was always out of town. He had said to himself, " Cui bono?" He had the sensitive nature's dislike of mingling inti- mately in the affairs of others, and moreover he felt instinc- tively that if he tried to play a true friend 's part to Nigel, he might lose Nigel as a friend. His clear insight would 78 BELLA DONNA be antagonistic to Nigel's blind enthusiasm, his calm worldly knowledge would seem only frigid cruelty to Nigel's generosity and eagerness in pity. And, besides, Isaacson had a strong personal repulsion from Mrs. Chep- stow, a repulsion almost physical. The part of him that was Jewish understood the part of her that was greedy far too well. And he disliked, while he secretly acknowledged, his own Jewishness. He seldom showed this dislike, even subtly, to the world and never showed it crudely, as do many of Jewish blood, by a strange and hideous anti-Semitism. But it was always alive within him, always in conflict with something belonging to his nature's artistic side, a world-feeling to which race-feeling seemed stupid and very small. The triumphs of art aroused this world-feeling within him, and in his love of art he believed that he touched his highest point. As Isaacson's mental unconventionality put him en rapport with Nigel, his Jewishness, very differently, put him en rapport with her. There is a communion of repulsion as well as a communion of affection. Isaacson knew that Mrs. Chepstow and he could be linked by their dislike. His instinct was to avoid her, not to let this link be formed. Subsequent circumstances made him ask himself whether men do not often call things towards them with the voices of their fears. The season was waning fast, was nearly at an end, when one night, very late, Nigel called in Cleveland Square. Isaacson had just come back from dining with the Dean of Waynfieet when the bell rang. He feared a professional summons, and was relieved when a sleepy servant asked if he would see Mr. Armine. They met in a small, upstairs room where Isaacson sat at night, a room lined with books, cosy, but perhaps a little oppressive. As Nigel came in quickly with a light coat over his arm and a crush hat in his hand, a clock on the mantel piece struck one. "I caught sight of you just now in St. James's Street in your motor, or I wouldn't have come so late," Nigel said. "Were you going straight to bed? Tell me the truth. If you were, I'll be off." BELLA DONNA 79 "I don't think I was. I've been dining out, and should have had to read something. That's why you kept your coat?" "To demonstrate my good intention. 'Well!" He put the coat and hat on a chair. "Will you have anything?" "No, thanks."- Nigel sat down in an arm-chair. "I've seen so little of you, Isaacson. And I'm going away to-morrow." "You've had enough of it?" "More than enough." Isaacson was sitting by a table on which lay a number of books. Now and then he touched one with his long and sallow fingers, lifted its cover, then let it drop mechan- ically. "You are coming back in the autumn 1 " "For some days, in passing through. I'm going to Egypt again." "I envy you — I envy you." As he looked at Nigel's Northern fairness, and thought of his own darkness, it seemed to him that he should be going to the sun, Nigel remaining in the lands where the light is pale. Perhaps a somewhat similar thought occurred to Nigel, for he said: "You ought to go there some day. You'd be in your right place there. Have you ever been?" "Never. I've often wanted to go." "Why don't you go?" Isaacson's mind asked that question, and his Jewishness replied. He made money in London. Every day he spent out of London was a loss of so much money. "Some day," Nigel continued, "you must take a holi- day and see Egypt." "This winter?" said Isaacson. He lifted the cover of a book. His dark, shining, almost too intelligent eyes looked at Nigel, and looked away. "Not this winter," he added, quietly. 80 BELLA DONNA "But — why not this winter?" Nigel spoke with a slight embarrassment. "I couldn't get away. I have too much work. You'll be in the Fayyum? " Nigel was staring at the Oriental carpet. His strong hands lay palm downwards on the arms of his chair, press- ing them hard. "I shall go there," he replied. "And live under the tent? I met a man last night who knows you, an Egyptian army man on leave, Verreker. He told me you were reclaiming quite a lot of desert. ' ' "I should like to reclaim far more than I ever can. It's a good task." "Hard work?" "Deuced hard. That's why I like it." "I know; man's love of taming the proud spirit." "Is it that? I don't think I bother much about what prompts me to a thing. But — I say, Isaacson, sometimes it seems to me that you have a devilish long sight into things, an almost uncanny long sight." He leaned forward. ' ' But in you I don 't mind it. ' ' "I don't say I acknowledge it. But why should you mind it in any one?" Nigel quoted some words of Mrs. Chepstow, but Isaac- son did not know he quoted. "Hasn't the brain a tendency to overshadow, to brow- beat the heart?" he said. "Isn't it often arrogant in its strength?" "One must let both have an innings," said Isaacson, smiling at the slang which suited him so little and suited Nigel so well. "Yes, and I believe you do. That's why — but to go on with what we were saying. You've got a long sight into things. Now, living generally, as you do, here in London, don't you think that men and women living in crowds often get off the line of truth and kindness? Don't you think that being all together, backed up, as it were, by each BELLA DONNA 81 other — as a soldier is by his regiment when going into battle — they often become hard, brutal, almost get the blood-lust into them at times ? ' ' Isaacson did not reply for a moment. "Perhaps sometimes they do," he answered at last. "And don't you think they require sacrifices?" "Do you mean human sacrifices?" "Yes." ' ' Perhaps — sometimes. ' ' "Why have you never been to call on Mrs. Chepstow?" Again the sallow fingers began to play with the book- covers, passing from one to another, but always slowly and gently. "I haven't much time for seeing any one, except my patients, and the people I meet in society." "And of course you never meet Mrs. Chepstow in society." "Well— no, one doesn't." "She would have liked a visit from you, and she's very much alone." "Is she?" "Are you stopping on much longer in London?" "Till the twelfth or fifteenth of August." "She is stopping on, too." "Mrs. Chepstow! In the dog-days!" "She doesn't seem to have anywhere special to go to." "Oh!" Isaacson opened a book, and laid his hand upon a page. It happened to be a book on poisons and their treatment. He smoothed the page down mechanically and kept his hand there. "I say, Isaacson, you couldn't have the blood-lust?" "I hope not. I think not." "I believe you hate it as I do, hate and loathe it with all your soul. But I've always felt that you think for yourself, and don't care a rap what the world is thinking. I've looked in to-night to say good-bye, and to ask you, if you can get the time, just to give an eye to — to Mrs. 6 82 BELLA DONNA Chepstow naw and again. I know she would value a visit from you, and she really is infernally lonely. If you go, she won't bore you. She's a clever woman, and cares for things you care for. Will you look in on her now and then?" . Isaacson lifted his hand from the book. "I will call upon her," he said. "Good!" "But are you sure she wishes it?" "Quite sure — for she told me so." The simplicity of this answer made Isaacson's mind smile and something else in him sigh. "I have to go into the country," Nigel said. "I've got to see Harwich and Zoe, my sister-in-law you know, and my married sister " A sudden look of distress came into his eyes. He got up. The look of distress persisted, "Good-night, Isaacson, old fellow!" He grasped the Doctor's hand firmly, and his hand was warm and strong. "Good-night. I like to feel I know one man who thinks so entirely for himself as you do. For — I know you do. Good-bye." The look of distress had vanished, and his sincere eyes seemed to shine again with courage and 'with strength. "Good-bye." When he was gone, Isaacson stood by the mantel-piece for nearly five minutes, thinking and motionless. The sound of the little clock striking roused him. He lifted his head, looked around him, and was just going to switch off the light, when he noticed the open book on his table. He went to shut it up. "It must be ever remembered that digitalin is a cumu- lative poison, and that the :.ame dose, harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated becomes deadly; this pecu- liarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart." He stood looking at the page. "This peculiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart." BELLA DONNA 83 He moved his head as if in assent. Then he closed the book slowly and switched off the light. On the August Bank Holiday, one of the most dreadful days of London's year, he set out to call on Mrs. Chepstow. A stagnant heat pervaded London. There were but few people walking. Few vehicles drove by. Here and there small groups of persons, oddly dressed, and looking vacant in their rapture, stared, round-eyed, on the town. London- ers were in the country, staring, round-eyed, on fields and woods. The policemen looked dull and heavy, as if never again would any one be criminal, and as if they had come to know it. Bits of paper blew aimlessly about, wafted by a little, feverish breeze, which rose in spasms and died away. An old man, with a head that was strangely bald, stared out from a club window, rubbed his enquiring nose, looked back into the room behind him and then stared out again. An organ played "The Manola," resuscitated from a silence of many years. London was at its summer saddest. Could Mrs. Chepstow be in it? Soon Isaacson knew. In the entrance hall of the Savoy, where large and lonely porters were dozing, he learnt that she was at home. So be it. He stepped into the lift, and presently followed a servant to her door. The servant tapped. There was no answer. He tapped again more loudly, while Isaacson waited behind him. "Come in!" called out a voice. The servant opened the door, announcing: "Doctor Meyer Isaacson." Mrs. Chepstow had perhaps been sitting on her balcony, for when Isaacson went in she was in the opening of a window space, standing close to a writing-table, which had its drawers facing the window. Behind her, on the balcony, there was a small arm-chair. "Doctor Meyer Isaacson!" she said, with an intonation of surprise. The servant went out and shut the door. How quite amazing!" 84 BELLADONNA "But— why, Mrs. Chepstow?" He had taken and dropped her hand. As he touched her, he remembered holding her wrist in his consulting- room. The sensation she had communicated to him then she communicated again, this time perhaps more strongly. "Why? It is Bank Holiday! And you never come to see me. By the way, how clever of you to divine that I ^should be in on such a day of universal going out." "Even men have their intuitions." "Don't I know it, to my cost? But to-day I can only bless man's intuition. Where will you sit?" "Anywhere." "Here, then." He sat down on the sofa, and she in a chair, facing the light. She was without a hat. Isaacson wondered what she had been doing all the day, and why she was in London. That she had her definite reason he knew, as a woman knows when another woman is wearing a last year's gown. As their eyes met, he felt strongly the repulsion he con- cealed. Yet he realized that Mrs. Chepstow was looking less faded, younger, more beautiful than when last he had been with her. She was very simply dressed. It seemed to him that the colour of her hair was changed, was a little brighter. But of this he was not sure. He was sure, however, that a warmth, as of hope, subtly pervaded her whole person. And she had seemed hard, cold, and almost hopeless on the day of her visit to him. A woman lives in the thoughts of men about her. At this moment Mrs. Chepstow lived in Isaacson's thought that she looked younger, less faded, and more beautiful. Her vanity was awake. His thought of her had suddenly increased her value in her own eyes, made her think she could attract him. She had scarcely tried to attract him the first time that she had met him. But now he saw her go to her armoury to select the suitable weapon with which to strike him. And he began to understand why she had calmly faced the light. Never could such a man as Nigel get so near to Mrs. Chepstow as Doctor Meyer Isaacson, even though Nigel should love her and Isaacson BELLA DONNA 85 learn to hate her. At that moment Isaacson did not hate her, bat he almost hated his divination of her, the "Kab- bala," he carried within him and successfully applied to her. "What has kept you in this dreary city, Doctor Isaac- son," she said. "J thought I was absolutely alone in it." "People are still thinking they are ill." "And you are still telling them they are not?" "That depends!" "I believe you have adopted that idea, that no one is ill, as a curative method. And really there may be some- thing in it. I fancied I was ill. You told me I was well. Since that day something — your influence, I suppose — seems to have made me well. I think I believe in you — as a doctor." "Why spoil everything by concluding with a reserva- tion?" "Oh, but your career is you!" "You think I have sunk my humanity in ambition?" "Well, you are in town on Bank Holiday!" "In town to call on you!" "You were so sure of finding me on such a day?" She sent him a look which mocked him. "But, seriously," she continued, "does not the passion for science in you dominate every other passion? For science — and what science brings you?" With a sure hand she had touched his weak point. He had the passion to acquire, and through his science of medicine he acquired. "You cannot expect me to allow that I am dominated by anything," he answered. "A man will seldom make a confession of slavery even to himself, if he really is a man." "Oh, you really are a man, but you have in you some- thing of the woman." "How do you know that?" "I don't know it; I feel it." "Feeling is woman's knowledge." 86 BELLA DONNA "And what is man's?" "Do women think he has any?" "Some men have knowledge-Hiangerous men, like you." "In what way am I dangerous?" "If I tell you, you will be more so. I should be foolish to lead you to your weapons." "You want no leading to yours." It was, perhaps, almost an impertinence ; but he felt she would not think it so, and in this he accurately appraised her taste, or lack of taste. Delicacy, reverence, were not really what she wanted of any man. Nigel might pray to a pale Madonna ; Isaacson dealt with a definitely blunted woman of the world. And in his intercourse with people, unless indeed he loved them, he generally spoke to their characters, did not hold converse with his own, like a man who talks to himself in an unlighted room. She smiled. "Few women do, if they have any." "Is any woman without them?" "Yes, one." "Name her." "The absolutely good woman." For a moment he was silent, struck to silence by the fierceness of her cynicism, a fierceness which had leapt sud- denly out of her as a drawn sword leaps from its sheath. "I don't acknowledge that, Mrs. Chepstow," he said — and at this moment perhaps he was the man talking to himself in the dark, as Nigel often was. "Of course not. No man would." "Why not?" "Men seldom name, even to themselves, the weapons by which they are conquered. But women know what those weapons are." "The Madame Marneffes, but not the Baroness Hulots." "A Baroness Hulot never counts." "Is it really clever of you to generalize about men? Don't you differentiate among us at all?" BELLA DONNA 87 He spoke entirely without pique, of which he was quite unconscious. "I do differentiate," she replied. "But only some- times, not always. There are broad facts which apply to men, however different they may be from one another. There are certain things which all men feel, and feel in much the same way." "Nigel Armine and I, for instance?" A sudden light — was it a light of malice? — flashed in her brilliant eyes. "Yes, even Mr. Armine and you." "I shall not ask you what they are." "Perhaps the part of you which is woman has informed you." Before she said "woman" she had paused. He felt that the word she had thought of, and had wished to use, was "Jewish." Her knowledge of him, while he disliked it because he disliked her, stirred up the part of him which was mental into an activity which he enjoyed. And the enjoyment, which she felt, increased her sense of her own value. Conversation ran easily between them. He dis- covered, what he had already half suspected, that, though not strictly intellectual — often another name for boring — she was far more than merely shrewd. But her mentality seemed to him hard as bronze. And as bronze reflects the light, her mentality seemed to reflect all the cold lights in her nature. But he forgot the stagnant town, the bald- headed man at the club window, the organ and "The Manola." Despite her generalizing on men, with its unex- pressed avowal of her deep-seated belief in physical weapons, she had chosen aright in her armoury. His brain had to acknowledge it. There again was the link between them. When at last he got up to go, she said : "I suppose you will soon be leaving London?" "I expect to get away on the fifteenth. Are you stay- ing on?" "I dare say I shall. You wonder what I do here?" "Yes." 88 BELLA DONNA "lam out a great deal on my balcony. When you came I was there." She made a movement towards it. "Would you like to see my view?" "Thank you." As he followed her through the window space, he was suddenly very conscious of the physical charm that clung about her. All her movements were expressive, seemed very specially hers. They were like an integral part of a char- acter— her character. They had almost the individuality of an expression in the eyes. And in her character, in her indi- viduality, mingled with much he hated was there not some- thing that charmed? He asked himself the question as he stood near her on the balcony. And now, escaped from her room, even at this height there came upon him again the hot sluggishness of London. The sun was shining brightly, the air was warm and still, the view was large and unim- peded; but he felt a strange, almost tropical dreariness that seemed to him more dreadful than any dreariness of winter. "Do you spend much of your time here?" he said. "A great deal. I sit here and read a book. You don't like it?" She turned her bright eyes, with their dilated pupils, slowly away from his, and looked down over the river. "I do. But there's a frightful dreariness in London on such a day as this. Surely you feel it?" "No. I don't feel such things this summer." In saying the words her voice had altered. There was a note -of triumph in it. Or so Isaacson thought. And that warmth, as of hope, in her had surely strengthened, alter- ing her whole appearance. "One has one's inner resources," she added, quietly, but with a thrill in her voice. She turned to him again. Her tall figure — she was taller than he by at least three inches — was beautiful in its commanding, yet not vulgar, self-possession. Her thin and narrow hands held the balcony railing rather tightly. BELLA DONNA 89 Her long neck took a delicate curve when she turned her head towards him. And nothing that time had left of beauty to her escaped his eyes. He had eyes that were very just. "Did you think I had none?" Suddenly he resolved to speak to her more plainly. Till this moment she had kept their conversation at a cer- tain level of pretence. But now her eyes defied him, and he replied to their defiance. "Do you forget how much I know of you?" he said. "Do you mean — of the rumours about me?" "I mean what you told me of yourself." "When was that? Oh, do you mean in your consulting- room? And you believe all a woman tells you?" 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 dis- belief?" "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 — elever 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 90 BELLA DONNA 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 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 BELLA DONNA 91 quite alone. Each year he made a "retreat," whieh he needed after the labours of the year, labours whieh 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 dur- ing which the swift action of the brain had rendered hi™ 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 fol- lowed 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 92 BELLA DONNA 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 mean- ing, 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 per- haps it was not correct. That well-spring of human kind- ness 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 BELLA DONNA 93 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 Eng- land seldom or never fails to cloud the waning year. The depression that is characteristic of this season sent many people to doctors. Day after day Isaacson sat in his consulting-room, prescribing rather for the minds. of men than for their bodies, living rather with their mis- understood souls than with their physical symptoms. And this year his patients reacted on him far more than usual. He felt almost as if by removing he received their ills, as if their apprehensions were communicated to his mind, as germs are communicated to the body, and as if they stayed to do evil. He told himself that his holiday had not rested him enough. But he never thought for a moment of diminishing his work. Success swept him ever onward to more exertion. As his power grew, his appetite for it grew. And he enjoyed his increasing fortune. At last Nigel rang at his door. Isaacson could not see him, but sent out word to make an appointment for the evening. They were to meet at eight at an orchestral con- cert in Queen's Hall. Isaacson was a little late in keeping this engagement. He came in quickly and softly between two movements of Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic Symphony," found Nigel in his stall, and, with a word, sat down beside him. The con- ductor raised his baton. The next movement began. In the music there was a throbbing like the throbbing of a heart, that persisted and persisted with a beautiful yet terrible monotony. Often Isaacson had listened to this symphony, been overwhelmed by the two effects of this monotony, an effect of loveliness and an effect of terror 94> BELLA DONNA that were inextricably combined. To-night, either because he was very tired or for some other reason, the mystery of the sadness of this music, which floats through all its triumph, appealed to him more than usual, and in a strangely poignant way. The monotonous pulsation was like the pulse of life, that life in which he and the man beside him were for a time involved, from which presently they would be released, whether with or against their wills. The pulse of life! Suddenly from the general his mind passed to the particular. He thought of a woman's pulse, strong, regular, inexorable. He seemed to feel it beneath his fingers, the pulse of Mrs. Chepstow. And he knew that he had thought of her because Nigel Armine was thinking of her, that he connected her with this music because Nigel was doing the same. This secretly irritated Isaacson. He strove to detach his mind from this thought of Mrs. Chepstow. But his effort was in vain. Her pulse was beneath his fingers, and With every stroke of it he felt more keenly the mystery and cruelty of life. When the movement was finished, he did not speak a word. Nor did he look at Nigel. Even when the last note of the symphony seemed to fade and fall downwards into an abyss of misery and blackness, he did not speak or move. He felt crushed and overwhelmed, like one beaten and bruised. "Isaacson!" "Yes?" He turned a little in his seat. "Grand music! But it's all wrong." "Why?" "Wrong in its lesson." The artist in Isaacson could not conceal 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 Imma- nent 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." BELLA DONNA 95 They made their way to the corridor and strolled slowly up and down, passing and repassing others who were dis- cussing 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. Chep- stow'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 96 BELLA DONNA 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, bis 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 Picca- dilly 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 BELLA DONNA 97 right companion — some one who could think and feel with me, and in the sort of way I feel. Any other companion- ship 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 '11 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 bis 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 shell go up the Nile." There was a barrier between them. Both men felt it acutely. 7 98 BELLA DONNA "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 re- turned 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 insensi- tive 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 this woman whom he pitied ? And was he ashamed of the deed in advance ? A marriage would be such madness ! Yet something in Isaacson at this moment almost wished that Nigel con- templated marriage — his secret admiration of the virtue in his friend. Such an act would be of a piece with Nigel's character, whereas a liaison — and yet Nigel was no saint. Isaacson thought what the world would say, and sud- denly he knew the reality of his affection for Nigel. The BELLA DONNA 99 idea of the gossip pained, almost shocked him ; of the gossip and bitter truths. A liaison would bring forth almost dis- gusted and wholly ironical laughter at the animal passions of man, as blatantly shown by Nigel. And a marriage? Well, the verdict on that would be, "Cracky!" Isaacson's brain could not dispute the fact that there would be justice in that verdict. Yet who does not secretly love the fighter for lost causes? "I shall look after her." The expression fitted best the cruder, more sordid method of gaining possession of this woman. And men seem made for falling. The nargeeleh was finished, but still Isaacson sat there. "Whatever happened, he would never protest to Nigel. The feu sacre in the man would burn up protest. Isaacson knew that — in a way loved to know it. Yet what tears lay behind — the tears for what is inevitable, and what can only be sad! And he seemed to hear again the sym- phony which he had heard that night with Nigel, the unyielding pulse of life, beautiful, terrible, in its monotony ; to hear its persistent throbbing, like the beating of a sad heart — which cannot cease to beat. Upon the window suddenly there came a gust of wild autumn rain. He got up and went to bed. Very seldom did Meyer Isaacson allow his heart to fight against the dictates of his brain ; more seldom still did he, presiding over the battle, like some heathen god of mythol- ogy; give his conscious help to the heart. But all men at times betray themselves, and some betrayals, if scarcely clever, are not without nobility. Such a betrayal led him upon the following day to send a note to Mrs; Chepstow, asking for an appointment.