To Mamie, however, the afternoon when he sat sipping tea in her drawing-room, like an ordinary mortal, was the day of her life. She told him that she had once hoped to be an actress, and believed that the avowal would advance her in his esteem. He answered that he should not be astonished if she had the histrionic gift; and was secretly disenchanted a shade by what he felt to be banal. Then they discussed his own work, and he found her appreciation remarkably intelligent. To talk about himself to a woman, who listened with exquisite eyes fixed upon his face, was very gratifying to him. Field had rarely spent a pleasanter hour. It is not intimated that he was a vain puppy—he was not a puppy at all. He had half unconsciously felt the want of a sympathetic confidant for a long while, though, and albeit he did not instantaneously realise that Mrs. Heriot supplied the void, he walked back to his chambers with exhilaration.
He realised it by degrees. He had never married. He had avoided matrimony till he was thirty because he could not afford it; and during the last decade he had escaped it because he had not met a woman whom he desired sufficiently to pay such a price. When he had seen Mamie several times—and in the circumstances it was not difficult to invent reasons for seeing her—he wondered whether he would have proposed to her if she had been single.
Heriot was very pleased to have him dine with them; and he was not ignorant that during the next few months Field often dropped in about five o'clock. Mamie concealed nothing—knowingly—and the subject of her writing was revived now. She told George that Mr. Field thought she had ability. She repeated his criticisms; frankly admired his talent; confessed that she was proud to have him on her visiting list—and fell in love with him without either analysing her feelings, or perceiving her risk.
And while Mrs. Heriot fell in love with him, Lucas Field was not blind. He saw a great deal more than she saw herself—he saw, not only the influence he exercised over her, but that she had moped before he appeared. He did not misread her; he was conscious that she would never take a lover from caprice—that she was the last woman in the world to sin lightly, or under the rose. He saw that, if he yielded to the temptation that had begun to assail him, he must be prepared to ask her to live with him openly. But he asked himself whether it was impossible that he could prevail on her to do that, had he the mind to do so—whether she was so impregnable as she believed.
He was by this time fascinated by her. His happiest afternoons were spent in South Kensington, advancing his theories, and talking of his latest scenes; nor was it a lie when he averred that she assisted him. To be an artist it is not necessary to be able to produce, and if her own attempts had been infinitely more futile than they were, she might still have expressed opinions that were of service to another. Many of her views were impracticable, naturally. Psychological as his tendencies were, he was a dramatist, and he could not snap his fingers at the laws imposed by the footlights, though he might affect to deride them in his confidences. The only dramatist alive was Ibsen, he said; yet he did not model himself on Ibsen, albeit he was delighted when she exclaimed, "How Ibsenish that is!" Many of her views were impracticable, because she was ignorant about the stage; but many were intensely stimulating. The more he was with her, the less he doubted her worthiness of sinning for his sake. He was so different from the ordinary dramatic author! On the ordinary dramatic author, with no ideas beyond "curtains" and "fees," she would have been thrown away. He did not wish to be associated with a scandal—it would certainly be unpleasant—but she dominated him, there was no disguising the fact. And he would be very good to her; he would marry her. She was adorable!
His meditations had not progressed so far without the girl's eyes being opened to her weakness; and now she hated herself more bitterly than she had hated the tedium of her life. She knew that she loved him. She was wretched when he was not with her, and ashamed when he was there. She wandered about the flat in her solitude, frightened as she realised what an awful thing had come to her. But she was drunk—intoxicated by the force of the guilty love, and by the thought that such a man as Lucas Field could be in love with her. She revered him for not having told her of the feelings that she inspired. Her courage was sustained by the belief that he did not divine her own—that she would succeed in stamping them out without his dreaming of the danger she had run. Yet she was "drunk"; and one afternoon the climax was reached—he implored her to go away with him.
CHAPTER VIII
If a woman sins, and the chronicler of her sin desires to excuse the woman, her throes and her struggles, her pangs and her prayers always occupy at least three chapters. If one does not seek to excuse her, the fact of her fall may as well be stated in the fewest possible words. Mamie did struggle—she struggled for a long time—but in the end she was just as guilty as if she hadn't shed a tear. Field's pertinacity and passion wore her resistance out at last. Theirs was to be the ideal union, and of course he cited famous cases where the man and woman designed for each other by Heaven had met only after one of them had blundered. He did not explain why Heaven had permitted the blunders, after being at the pains to design kindred souls for each other's ecstasy; but there are things that even the youngest curate cannot explain. He insisted that she would never regret her step; he declared that, with himself for her husband, she would become celebrated. Art, love, joy, all might be hers at a word. And she spoke it.
When Heriot came in one evening, Mamie was not there, and he wondered what had become of her, for at this hour she was always at home. But he had not a suspicion of evil—he was as far from being prepared for the blow that was in store as if Field had never crossed their path. He had let himself in with his latch-key, and after a quarter of an hour it occurred to him that she might be already in the dining-room. When he entered it, he noted with surprise that the table was laid only for one.