Bella Donna. Robert Hichens
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 cumulative poison, and that the same dose, harmless if taken once, yet frequently repeated becomes deadly; this peculiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart."
He stood looking at the page.
"This peculiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart."
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. Londoners 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!"
"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 concealed. 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 learn to hate her. At that moment Isaacson did not hate her, but he almost hated his divination of her, the "Kabala," he carried within him and successfully applied to her.
"What has kept you in this dreary city, Doctor Isaacson," she said. "I 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 something 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 reservation?"
"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 something of the woman."
"How do you know that?"
"I don't know it; I feel it."
"Feeling is woman's knowledge."
"And what is man's?"
"Do women think he has any?"
"Some men have knowledge—dangerous 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