A SAVING PHANTASM

When they parted they parted good friends. Gregory Cappleston was more than a gentleman. He was very affluent; and he refused to let Matilda Bryant suffer financially by his marriage. He was bound to marry to keep up the grand old name of Cappleston. Aunts, aged and dowager, expected him to marry if he was to expect anything from them. He was a rough-and-ready fellow, Gregory Cappleston. At the University he was called “Cobblestones.” He wanted to be kind, but he did not cause particularly smooth-going to those who came his way. He found it hard to leave the woman who had lived with him since Oxford days, but it was harder to find a wife and tie himself to her for the rest of his days. Matilda felt this turn in her life hardest, but she suppressed the sighs of her soul even when she read Gregory’s engagement in that column of marriages and engagements of the Morning Post which may far more truly be called one of agony.

Still, she ought to have been preparing for the wrench for years. Presumably she had known other men before, and should have experienced the circumstantial shock of a thoughtless man’s thought-out departure. Cappleston never imagined her pained for a moment. He was not insensitive, however, to her genuine grief when he cheerfully announced the settlement he had made on her. Nobody can live on a woman’s love for many years without responding to some of the myriad ripples of her inmost thought. True, that with tragedy they become confused and break off, and on the sand of hardship they are stayed and disappear. But in the spectroscope of Matilda’s mind a real love for the man, with whom she had contracted herself quarterly for the last three years, shone white. If the colours of her aura could have been analysed, there would have been found no red tinge of malice therein, no green line of jealousy, no purple splosh of hate. The white soul is rare even among good and virtuous women.

She loved Gregory sufficiently not to wish him to sacrifice his life to her. She was incapable of a scene. She loved him enough to love herself for her own self-suppression. She felt as though she were giving her soul an opiate with a steel needle. It was so like him to make over a lump sum to her without noticing the lump in her throat. He kissed her for the last time, and she wished him happiness in marriage as few mothers have wished their own beloved sons. As she walked out, he felt sorry, but not sorry in another way, that he would see her no more. That was in the letter and the spirit of their agreement. She had played the game, he reflected. And he was certain that he had, too. He was a Cappleston!

The marriage was a great success. How could it be otherwise? The pandemonium of an advertised social event, the honeymoon reflected in the Daily Mirror, the town house purchased from the dissolving partnership of the Plantagenet-Goldenburgs, their first country house party discreetly portrayed in the Sketch, the shower of pleasant, meaningless snippets which Press Agencies supplied from the Powder Puff, the Flapper and other recognised organs of fashion are still within the memory of Society. Gregory began nibbling at a political career with a good conscience. He had had his past like most men, but unlike most men he had shown a post-amorous generosity which satisfied him almost to feelings of virtue.

Domestic beatitude was his proper reward, and he passed into paternal tranquillity watching the race of Cappleston projected into yet another generation, and his children growing up like little dissected parts of his own youth. He watched them playing about the house and reflected on that wonderful measure of repayment he had been able to make to his wife. So many women had no children. He had been generous in his paternity. Generosity was his strong feature. That was why he felt women had always liked him, to use a mild expression. There had been Matilda, for instance—but he dismissed her from his mind.

He was quite disturbed when her name was announced by the butler. It was seven years since they had parted. It was unexpected and it was undesirable, this visit. He tore a preparatory blank cheque out of his book before she came in. He was always prepared to meet women with that astonishing generosity of his. “Mrs. Bryant,” said the footman. She showed no make-up to cover the difference of seven years. It was not a professional—hardly a predatory—visit, he reflected. Shabby clothes and daylight were not heart-overwhelming. He gave her a chair.

“I am glad to see you looking so well, Matilda,” he began chivalrously, “but you should have written to me through my lawyers if you wanted to see me.”

“I am not in need of anything that comes through lawyers, Gregory,” she answered. “I only wanted to see you again for the last time, you know.” Gregory was puzzled.

“But I am not leaving the country,” he said. “Why should you want to say good-bye to me?” “But I am,” she shot, and with a pause, “for another country, and I am taking the shortest and cheapest path possible. I am done with the half-world in which I live. You know that for me middle age must be what old age is to other folk. It is death, and I believe in taking death by the forelock. But I wanted to see you once again and to say that you were the best thing I found in this world, and I would always have lived with you even had you lost all your money. I rather hoped the chance would come to show you that. But it never did, and then you married and were happy, and your happiness made me happy in a sort of way. Good-bye.”

“You’re not going to kill yourself?” asked the astonished Cappleston. She nodded vacantly. Cappleston was immensely touched. She had confirmed the high opinion he had of himself. And she had come without an ulterior object just to say good-bye. It was amazing. He felt that something was required of him. He was inartistic and could not rise to the dramatic. But as a patron of several Church livings he admonished her gently as to the heinousness of self-destruction and how unpleasant coroners’ verdicts were liable to be for surviving friends. He was one of those men who live in dread of painful impressions in public.

She was not to be dissuaded of her purpose, but she agreed to see him before she committed the supreme act of bodily renunciation. He offered to increase her little income, but she smiled pathetically and passed out of his presence. She was content to have looked once again into his eyes. Her love had not failed. It was no mere memory. She would certainly keep the promise he had obtained from her.

Cappleston was left to reflect on his proffered generosity. He had never known a woman refuse money before. But it was a woman’s way to want what she wanted to the exclusion of all else for the moment. For the moment she wanted to see him. He felt suitably pleased. He was glad he was not a woman to be swayed by whims and fancies, to be utterly dependent on men’s good will and charity. He felt glad to be a man and to feel virtuous. He realised how much more generous he was than other men, and threw himself back in his chair with the easy content of a man who has always enjoyed life without making his conscience suffer. Then a whole year passed.

Gregory Cappleston, M.P., was sleeping alone in his dressing-room when he woke with a jerk and saw a figure standing at the foot of his bed. He looked and could not doubt, for he believed in his senses and in very little else in life. It was Matilda, and he was intensely annoyed that she should have been so ill-advised, not to say criminal, to penetrate into the sleeping-room. It was indiscreet, outrageous and very dangerous, and he hissed all this and more at her. He made more than the protest of the British householder and the patron of Church livings. He ordered her to leave the house instantly, and as quietly as she came—without waking his wife in the adjoining room. He was too sleepy to imagine how she could have entered without ringing or waking the servants. He faced her look of piercing sadness with an angry stare, but it never wilted. Then it faded away, and Cappleston rather angrily discovered he was alone. He felt as though he had been the victim of some clever conjuring trick. He switched on the electric light, and at that moment the voice of Big Ben rang through the London hemisphere—one! two! three! He confirmed the clock of Empire by his own watch, and perceived that he was not dreaming.

He rose and searched the room. It was locked, and nothing had been displaced. He suddenly developed a creepy and almost guilty feeling for no reason. It was not in consonance with the mind of a virtuous householder and a benefactor to his species. Then it struck him full. Perhaps he had seen a ghost! Perhaps, however, it was only a bad dream. Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps he ought to do something. What about Matilda? He fumbled for her address on the card he had kept in his pocket-case. It was a flat in Maida Vale, quite impossible for him to reach at this hour of the night. Nor respectable either, but he could send his valet to inquire early in the morning. He rang his night bell. His valet appeared, and hoped he was not ill. Cappleston gave him the card and told him to go to the address and find out what was happening to the lady whose name it bore.

Further, Cappleston ordered him to refuse to take no as an answer. He must find out how the lady in the second flat was, and return as soon as possible. If he had any trouble he could send a policeman in a cab to fetch himself.... An hour passed, and a second hour before a policeman rang at the door. Cappleston let him in. The policeman explained that a strange man had been found trying to force entrance in a flat at Maida Vale and excused himself by giving Mr. Cappleston’s name. He had been taken in charge, and the police would like to have evidence of his identity or sanity.

Cappleston, with a weary “It is all right,” swung himself out of his dressing-gown and dressed. He accompanied the policeman without a word to Maida Vale. He found his valet between the caretaker and a policeman on the second floor. He had never been there before, but he told the caretaker enough to show that he had a right to entry, in fact that he paid the rent of the flat in all probability. Besides, he had very bad news for the occupant and he demanded entrance. He was prepared to stand the financial damage of any breakages, also the remuneration necessary to their trouble. The police exchanged highly intelligent glances, and the caretaker said he was not the one to stand in the way of the law. Some panes of frosted glass were cut out of the door with a chisel, and the door opened from outside. The occupant, it appeared, had given strict orders that nobody was to disturb her till ten the next morning.

Cappleston entered and opened door after door. The farthest room of the suite was a bedroom. He switched on the light. Matilda was lying on the floor breathing heavily, while an empty bottle remained in her outstretched hand. Cappleston ordered a doctor to be brought, and a policeman saluted ... a precious half-hour passed before any revival was possible. But the doctor gradually brought her out of unconsciousness. When she caught sight of Cappleston’s worried face, she cried aloud: “Forgive me, forgive me. I did not keep my promise.”

“But I rather think you did,” he answered, “for that is how I happen to be here. You came into my room at three this morning, and it is now half-past five. How can you explain it?” She could not explain it. Women can explain anything, but they do not always need to. Strange powers are always at their aid. She confessed that she had taken a strong overdose; and the sympathetic police withdrew at this moment with several bank-notes of Cappleston to be shared, or to be used for the repainting of Scotland Yard, or whatever use gratuities to policemen are put to. “But,” she continued, “I remembered when it was too late my promise to you. I had passed over the border, and my last feeling was a bitter regret that for the first time I had broken my word to you, the very first time in my life. Will you ever forgive me?”

“You need no forgiveness,” said Cappleston, holding her hand while the doctor felt the pulse in the other, “for you came into my room and stood looking at me from the foot of my bed. I could guess then what had happened. I never knew you to fail me in any way. You always played the game, and your word was always better than any gentleman’s. Thank God, we were in the nick of time, for the doctor says you would have been dead by ten o’clock. Matilda, I have seen your ghost while you were yet alive. Or was it your soul? It was the whitest thing I have ever laid eyes upon!”