"Faugh!" said Lady Jim, when shut up in her own room. There she read the communication from her legally deceased husband. It narrated a story similar to that detailed by Demetrius, but scarcely so concisely. Mr. Berring showed a disposition to ramble, and his excursions ended on every occasion in a command to send half the insurance money at once--the last two words being aggressively underlined. He was in the best of health, on his way to Buenos Ayres; thence would travel to Rosario--"where that woman lives," commented Leah, tearing off the address and carefully burning Jim's maunderings. "Half the money--eh? Fifteen thousand pounds! I think not, Mr. Berring. That captain, too, with his absurd charge, and after all my trouble! I wonder Demetrius does not claim his share, also."
It would have been cheaper had he done so, since she possessed the money and he intended to possess her. But he would refuse a cheque and claim her hand, as she reflected with impotent rage. What a pity she could not pay him off, and, along with Jim and Strange, dismiss him into Limbo! She did not exactly know what Limbo was, or where it was, save that once there these people could not bother her. But with all the will in the world she could not get out of the apparent cul-de-sac she had walked into.
"Demetrius wants me, and these other beasts my money," she raged inwardly. "What a mean advantage they all take! Pigs! As though I worked for nothing. What is to be done? What--what?"
This question was difficult to answer. Jim she could bamboozle with a small sum, since he could not well betray her without laying himself open to a charge of conspiracy. But the Russian and the skipper, both adventurers of the most reckless type, would assuredly demand their wages. "I shall have to pay that captain," she decided regretfully; "but Demetrius--insolent little creature!--he shall go to Siberia, even if I have to kiss him again. Faugh!"
Then she descended to tell the Duke how the sight of poor dear Jim's face had broken her up entirely. Yet people said that Leah Kaimes had no sense of humour.
[ CHAPTER XXII]
A sociable undertaker, lacking the indispensable humour of his brethren, bitterly complained that he rarely inquired after a friend's health without being suspected of business motives. Ex-lieutenant Harry Askew found himself in a similar predicament, since his desire to marry a widow precluded him from offering sympathy. That he should personally, or by letter, deplore the necessity of crape caps, would suggest waning affection; while a congratulatory address laid him open to the charge--which this especial widow would certainly make--of unseemly dancing on a newly-made grave. With laboured wisdom Askew dropped between the horns of this dilemma. Paying no visit, writing no letter, he compromised by leaving a card. In this dexterous avoidance of impalement Lady Jim read the untold story of his perplexity, and smiled at the diplomatic evasion.
There being an exception to every rule, the absence which should have made the Askew heart grow fonder produced an opposite effect. Debarred from the temple of his goddess, he began to ask himself why he worshipped, and thereby dug the grave of illicit passion. That such was now permissible, and even praiseworthy, considering its consolatory results, only made him a more ardent sexton. The votaries of Eros can begarland themselves with roses, but Hymen's celebrants wear chains of approved legal pattern. Was the cultus of the matrimonial god worth such encumbrances? Thus Askew inquired of his own pampered self, and, not knowing exactly what his selfishness desired, obtained but a doubtful response. What else could he expect? Two-faced Janus is the true god of oracles.
Lady Jim was witty, beautiful, chaste and brilliant--admirable qualities in a woman, but in a wife, unless informed with love, rather unattractive. Askew doubted if a composite mate of this glittering, unwarmed sort would satisfy his somewhat exacting requirements. Accepting too readily the world's definition, what he and it called love was actually selfishness, masquerading. He fancied, and with much reason, that Leah, openly devoted to herself, would not show devotion to him: that is, she being selfish, and he ditto, genuine happiness would not and could not spring from this union of like and like. Moreover, he ignorantly loved--in the world's sense--through his eyes, and with his lower nature; so it was probable that the legal possession of irresponsive beauty would pall. To limit a butterfly to one rose would bore the butterfly, and if the rose were sentient, she also might feel weary. In this way, and from surface feelings, argued Askew; but natural limitations prevented comprehension of the true reason which disinclined him to prosecute his now legal and therefore uninteresting wooing.
He was a better man than he knew, and this he would have known, had he paid heed to the intimations of his higher self, when it occasionally overcame the lower. When the god within overtopped the brute, he had beheld not so clearly the body as the soul of Lola Fajardo, and had, for one swift moment, recognised that conjunction with the spirit would best promote his happiness. A genuine marriage must be spiritual, and it is the souls, whom God hath joined, which man is forbidden to put asunder. Askew's introspective self knew that his allotted wife on this physical plane was Lola, and that to her alone should love be given. But the lust of the eye demanded Leah Kaimes' beauty, and feigned a spurious passion to gain possession. Absence from Lady Jim made him aware that he did not actually love her, and a feeble struggle of the soul bound in chains of selfishness revealed that he would do well to seek Lola once more. Hence came the war between light and darkness, wherein the light so far triumphed that the young man sought Curzon Street with more self-control than was desirable in an admitted lover--one, be it known, of the worldly, material type only. And may all such, for the well-being of the race, be anathema maranatha!