Among friends, parting for a lengthy spell has its disadvantages. They age in character and physique, and after the reconnoitre there is a pathetic consciousness of the grudging confessions which time has inscribed on the monumental palimpsest. My meeting with Bentham after a severance of years was bleak with this pathos. But he was gay as ever, and better dressed than he used to be in the old art school days, with a self-respecting adjustment of hat and necktie that had been unknown in Bohemia; for he was no longer a boy, but a man, and a noted one, and fortune had stroked him into sleekness. The gender of success must be feminine: she is so capricious. Hitherto her smiles have been for veterans grown hoary in doing; now she opens her arms for youngsters grown great merely by daring. Bentham, it must be owned, had dared uncommonly well, and success had pillowed his head in her lap while she twined the bay with her fingers. But lines round his mouth and fatigued cynicism on the eyelids betrayed the march of years, and, more, the thinker, who, like most thinkers, plumbs to exhaustion in a bottomless pit. For all that he was excellent company. On his walls hung innumerable trophies of foreign travel and unique specimens of his own art-bent and with these, by gesture or by anecdote, he gave an unconscious synopsis of the skipped pages in our friendship's volume.

"This," he said, "is the original of 'Earth's Fair Daughters,' the canvas that brought me to the front; and here"—handing an album—"is the presentment of my benefactress."

"Benefactress?" I queried.

"Yes. I don't attempt to pad you with the social tarra-diddle that genius finds nuggets on the surface of the diggings. Fame was due to myself, and fortune to Mrs Brune—a dear old creature who bought my pictures with a persistence worthy a better cause. She died, leaving me her sole heir."

"And hence these travels?"

"Yes. When I lost sight of you in Paris I hewed a new route to notice. I played at being successful, bought my own pictures through dealers—incog., of course—at enormous prices. That tickled the ears of the Press."

"But how about commission?"

"Oh, the dealers earned it, and my money was well invested. I became talked about. The public knew nothing of my talent, and people love to talk of what they understand least."

"You belittle yourself, Bentham. You felt your work was sound—that you were bound to become great."

"True; otherwise I could not have stooped to play the charlatan. Without it my work might as well have been rotten for all the public could judge. Charlatanism is the only 'open sesame' to the world's cave, once you get inside you may be as honest as you please. All is fair in love or art or war, and there is a consolation in knowing that one's aim is Jesuitical, and not merely base. Had it not been for Mrs Brune—good soul—and the gambling instinct, I might be still, like you and Grey's 'gem of purest ray serene,' flashing my facets in the desert."

From Mrs Brune's portrait he devolved on one or two others of persons distinguished in the art sphere, whose autographs, with cordial or extravagant expressions of devotion, scrambled octopus-wise over the card.

"And here," he said, handling an album bound in chicken skin, adorned with the grace of Watteau's rurality—"here are my Flower Martyrs."

"What does that mean?" asked I, knowing him for an eccentric of eccentrics.

"Don't you remember the quotation, 'Butchered to make a Roman holiday?' It struck me once I should like to make an index of the flower lives that had been sacrificed on the Altar of Selfishness."

"And this is the index?"

"No, not exactly. I soon tired of the experiment, for there was such wholesale murder it was impossible to keep pace with it. I then confined myself to the martyrs, the veritable martyrs broken on the rack of human emotion. Here are a few—with remarks and dates—they have each a little history of love or heroism or——" he shuffled for a term.

"Lunacy," I offered.

"Yes, that is the best word. They convey little histories of lunacy—my own and others."

"May I inspect them?"

"You may," he conceded, throwing himself into an arm-chair and looking over his elbow at the open page. "First," he said, "some rose leaves." He coughed slightly, and stirred the fire with caution, as though it shaped some panorama he feared to disarrange. Then he began his story:—

"First some rose leaves shaken into the finger-glass of a great actress—you know Lalage?—on the night when all Paris was intoxicated by her. It was my supper, and she honoured me. Many men would gladly have been that rose—to lay down its life for a touch of her finger-tips: several have parted with all that life holds dear for less than that."

He struck a match and lit a cigarette, throwing the case to me, and then proceeded:—

"The bowls were fragrant with attar, and those petals like fairy boats skimmed over the scented surface of the water. They seemed very red then, but they are faded enough now."

He again stared at the fire as though to assist his memory by its pictures.

"Lalage is a great artist, and like all great artists her contact brings completeness and a sense of fulfilment to everything—colour, purpose, expression. I had just heard her in the role of Chimene, in the wonderful scene when, not daring to avow her love for Rodrigue, she should have uttered 'Va-je ne te hais point,' and where she merely stood with moving lips—powerless to articulate from the suppressed immensity of her passion. We, of the audience, by one consent seemed to shiver—to shudder as though a polar breeze had swept over the tropic night—so tragic, so real, so ardent, this unspeakable, this unspoken confession."

"And what of Mons. Redan?" I questioned.

"The Count that turned actor? He played the part of Rodrigue, and he told me afterwards that there were times when a sob would choke him as he listened."

"And Redan loved her?"

"Loved? Oh, pale, anÆmic, wan-complexioned word to run in leash with Redan. He loved her so much that he was willing to barter name, possessions, career for the warmth of her lips."

"And she?"

"And she——" he said, suddenly disturbing his fire panorama with a dash of the poker. "Well, she took them."

There was silence for a moment or two as I turned the page—silence that was accentuated by the falling ash, which dropped white and weightless like the thousand lives that sink daily to dust exhausted with hope deferred. Then he eyed the vegetable mass that faced me.

"A camellia," he explained, "crushed and brown. It was plucked from the dead breast of a woman. It was the solitary witness of the last act of a tragedy. The Prince K. was more than a kind patron—an almost friend to me. He valued my apprehension of art, and shadowed me from the hour I first began to paint little Gretchen carrying her father's cobblings to their owners. He bought the picture, and ceaselessly employed me to make sketches of her in some way or another—as a queen—as a boy—as a danseuse. He loved to see her in all disguises, for she had the true model's faculty for lending herself to, and developing every pose. Then came the question of marriage—it is inevitable when a man meets a girl with eyes like altar lights, clear and holy beacons of God. Marriage, between a prince of the blood and the child of a shoemaker!"

Bentham gave vent to a low laugh, which was quite devoid of merriment. It is the trick of those who spend their lives in plumbing the unfathomable; it translates the meagreness and vacuity of their lore.

"Of course the family was outraged," he went on; "his mother appealed, grovelled on her knees, so it is said, and in the end he gave way. He agreed to part from his beloved. But he asked that she might sit for me, and would sometimes muse for hours over the latest travail of my brush. Then he became engaged to the Countess Dahlic—there is no accounting for the moral weakness of men under family pressure—and the wedding day was fixed. All this time he had kept his word. He had never spoken to or seen Gretchen, and she, poor child, was dying—yes, dying slowly—not as we die, but fading like twilight, imperceptibly, fainting like high purpose, blighted by the coarse breath of the million."

He knocked the end off his cigarette and stared for a while at the gas-smoked ceiling.

"Then—one day when the marriage was close at hand, when flags hung from the housetops and garlands across the streets, there was a stir in the house of the cobbler. Gretchen had been sitting to me as a Spanish maid in a mantilla, with a camellia in her hair and on her chest. Dressed so, she was found locked in the arms of the Prince. Both were dead—and the camellia was crushed to brown as you see. It came into my possession with the lace which belonged to me—an art property that is now too entangled with the human and with the divine ever to be used lightly again."

"A sad story," I sighed, turning the leaf. "Poor child, so young and pretty and——"

"Good," he added. "It is astonishing to calculate the amount of virtue which lurks about unlabelled by the wedding ring."

"That," he said, turning over a fresh page, "was once a bunch of violets; it should have belonged to Jacquaine."

"Who was Jacquaine?"

"She was a romantic creature, full of music and passionate inspiration; but she had one fault, that of inventing ideals. Don't you find that most women come to grief over this pastime?"

He scarcely demanded a reply, but went on as though thinking aloud.

"She made a deity of her husband, who was a clever 'cellist, but merely a man. When he became dazzled with a vulgar, opulent, overblown person, Jacquaine would not view it as a temporary fascination. Her soul was not adapted to the analysis of triviality. She ran away from him. Husband-like, he was too proud or pig-headed—I won't venture to decide which—to chase her. Meanwhile, with the perversity of woman, she pined for him, and haunted every concert room to hear the voice of his art. By degrees the very intensity of her soul's longing seemed to creep into his hands and sob its despair through his fingers. His technical skill came forth through a halo, as though crowned with the fire of her thought which surrounded and encompassed it. Of course, the world saw but the amplification of his artistic faculty, and his fortune was made. Then a beautiful charmer metaphorically wiped away his tears, for he had yearned for his wife in the enigmatical fashion of weak creatures who prefer to morally gamble and deplore their losses rather than save. Jacquaine became poor as well as sorrowful; she pined for her husband's love, but whenever she would have craved it, other women courted him. Her talent waned as his expanded. At this juncture Broton, the millionaire, who had always admired her, gave a big supper to Bohemia, leaving her husband out. The entertainment was mightily enjoyable, for Broton's wine was sound and his guests witty. When the fun was fast and furious I happened to cross a drawing-room in search of brandy and seltzer. Not a soul was there, but on the verandah I spotted our host and Jacquaine. The earnestness of his expression and pose were a contrast to his usual stolidity and to her apparently callous mood. He was offering to her what showed like a bunch of violets enfolded in a note. For the moment I fancied she had given acceptance, but suddenly she sprang from the chair, threw the bouquet and paper on the floor, and ruthlessly ground her heel into them. Then she stalked away—he following and remonstrating."

"What happened?"

"Well, in my zest for flower history I leapt forward to rescue this little bouquet and found that which I imagined to be a note was in fact a cheque for £8000."

"Signed by him?"

"Yes; made payable to bearer."

"What did you do?"

"What I knew she would have desired. I enclosed it in an envelope addressed to him and left it before daybreak at his own house."

"Without a word?"

"Without a word."

"And this is the bouquet?"

"Yes. It is the only souvenir I have of one who was dear to me. Whether I loved because I pitied or pitied because I loved I cannot say. There are some riddles which no one can solve."

"You never tried?"

"No. She was a noble woman, and her husband, too, was a decent fellow, as far as men go. They were admirably fitted by nature for each other, but matrimony dislocated them. That is another of the riddles that frustrate us."

To avert further comment Bentham folded the page and lounged deeper into his chair, as though overcome by fatigue.

Presently he resumed.

"That is a pansy. It was pressed in a book. It marked the place. We read the poem together, she and I, that creature of warm wax pulsating with childish naivetes and provoking contrariety. We read it together in the orange gardens of the hotel looking out over a green transparency of Mediterranean. I wonder if the scent of orange blossom, warmed by the breath of the sea, is an intoxicant, if it soaks in at the pores and quickens the veins to madness? Mine never seemed so palpitating with delirium as in those days with her by my side, and the free heavens and ocean for her setting. Yet she was ready to leave me without changing the indefinitude which always accompanied her words and actions, to leave me on the morrow—for I was anchored to a studio and some commissions to which I was pledged. But though she had a certain prosaic flippancy of speech which spelt discouragement, my heart refused a literal translation of her idiom. On the last day I determined to sound her, and subtly contrived to wrest her attention with this poem. We read it together. Her soft cheek neared mine with a downy magnetism, and vagrant fibrils of tawny hair danced with the wind against my ear. After the second verse I placed this pansy as a mile-stone to colour our travels on the open page. She assisted me to flatten the curling leaves, and my huge hand extinguished her tiny one. Then I whispered—oh, never mind what I whispered—it was a line of nature that the artistic reserve of the poet had omitted. She closed the book and covered her face with her hands to hide the trouble and the tears which puckered it. I made a nest for her in my arms, but she fluttered free out into the orange orchards and so to the house. All day I wandered about sore and sulky. At night I tried to see her, and was informed she was ill. On the morrow I was startled to find she had gone with her friends by the early train."

"And did you not hear from her?"

"Yes, she left a letter behind; I should like to show it you—to see what you make of it."

He rose and from his bureau extracted a note; then he resumed his seat and tossed me the almost illegible scrawl:—

"And was that all?"

"Absolutely. I pressed the pansy in the poem, and vowed—such vows are cheap—never to trust a woman again. But, after all, what claim have we to view our love as a priceless gift when we invariably demand cent. per cent. in kind? I have argued this out with myself, and realise that I was her debtor, I was first an artist whom she had patronised and then—a man whom she had——"

"Well?"

"I was going to say—ennobled. Don't you think there are some women who, by power of faith, transmute even clay-footed idols into gold?"

I shook my head and prepared to turn over the leaf, but he made as though to remove the book.

"That last one is a marguerite. It tells a very bald narrative—just a common instance of man's blockheadedness and Fate's topsy-turvydom."

Bentham threw aside his cigarette and closed his eyes. He was looking worn and old.

"I think I have told you all," he continued presently, "except about these petals. They were gathered from the ground as her fingers shredded them to discover whether I loved her passionement or pas du tout."

"The same person?"

"No, another; she was what is called a coquette—an innocent girl baby, who played with men's hearts as children probe sawdust dolls—from a spirit of inquiry. For some silly wager she flirted with a man staying in the hotel, an uncouth provincial clown whom I ignored. But it maddened me. I started for the States to accept a commission that had been offered—that my love for her had held in the balance—and—and I never saw her alive again."

There was a long pause, during which the clock on the chimney ticked its forever—never—without remorse. Gradually the synopsis became more complete, for I could trace the outlines of the buried hours in Bentham's grey, impassive face. Then he went on as though soliloquising:—

"Now I return to it, England seems wider—its population smaller. It is as if we lived in a great silence like that in the rarified atmosphere of Swiss heights. Yet the streets are in a turmoil. Beaming girls and bedizened harridans flaunt in the Row, carriages roll, and polite and impolite jostle each other for gain or gaiety. There are great singers at the Opera, great pictures on the Line, great festivities everywhere. There is a frou-frou of silken skirts, with the scent and the laughter of happy women round and about me, from dawn till nightfall. Yet my soul shivers somewhere outside. Shivers"—he repeated, shrinking into his coat as though midsummer were March—"Why is it? I have lived and loved and—as you know—recovered, but now—oh, Louis, is there anything so mutely desolate as fresh spade prints on a grassless grave?"