“It was myself, not you, I thought of. You’ve got to know the whole thing now. Go and sit there in your old place and don’t look at me till I’ve finished.”
So Aymer at last reached the moment when he must break the seals of silence—that expected moment that had hung over him like some shadowy fate as a foretaste of judgment, when he must retrace the painful footsteps of his life across the black gulf from which he had climbed. But as he turned his face to the 314 darkness, there was light also on the other side, and he forgot he had feared.
“Peter and I were friends, as you know. He was five years my senior, but it did not make much difference. He was a worker, just as I was a player. He had tremendous capabilities and he put all his big brain into his work and when he wanted change he came to me. I represented to him the reverse side of his strenuous life and he was oddly fond of me. Before he was thirty he had well started his fortune as he raced to wealth. I raced to ruin and found every inch of the road made easy for me. Peter came into conflict with the socialistic party. There was a certain James Hibbault, who was a great power, and Peter, who was not so heavy a power in those days, employed the wisdom of the serpent to crush him. He came up to London and offered me a chance of new amusement in abetting his plans. The Hibbaults were middle class people without middle class virtues. They lived a scrambling, noisy life propagating their crude ideas and sowing broadcast the seeds of a greater power than they knew. They were, however, a real force to be reckoned with, they and their party, because of certain truths hidden in their wildest creeds—truths which did not suit Peter’s creed in the least. He made their acquaintance, and he introduced me to them. They were sufficiently new to amuse me, but I should have probably have tired of them soon had it not been for your mother.”
He paused a moment. “Do you remember her, Christopher?”
Christopher nodded.
“Elizabeth Hibbault,” went on Aymer slowly, “was extraordinarily beautiful, with the beauty of grace rather than of feature. She was as distinct from the rest of her clamorous family as a pearl from pebbles. She was an enthusiast, a dreamer, passionately 315 sincere, passionately pitiful. She recognised truth as a water diviner finds water. She was brought up in a labyrinth of theories, creeds of equality, in hatred for the rich, and out of all the jargon she gathered some eternal truths which she made her own. She did not live with her people: she had rooms of her own and she was a black-and-white artist. But she was often at the Hibbaults. Peter probably knew her accustomed days. She used to speak of her faiths. It was like one note of gold in the discordant babble. Men came and listened to her and she never knew it was not for her words but for her magnetic wonderful unknown self that they came. She might, and probably did, impress men who were dreamers or fanatics already, but those to whom all her beliefs were childish nonsense went just the same, Peter and I with them.”
He stopped a moment and shot a glance at Christopher, who never moved.
“I lost my interest in Peter’s schemes and he ceased to explain them to me, but I still visited Elizabeth at her own rooms when I was allowed. She was very anxious to convert Peter and myself, more especially Peter. I was not in love with her, Christopher, yet, but she fascinated me. I speculated as to how it would be with her if all the fire and devotion she brought to a mere Cause were turned into a more personal direction. She paid more attention to Peter than to myself, and she evidently considered him a more desirable convert. One evening we went together to call on her and they fell into the usual line of discussion, he answering her in a tolerant amused way as if she were a precocious child. I stayed behind when he left and she walked up and down in restless agitation, half forgetful of me. ‘The personality of the man!’ she cried fiercely, ‘he is too strong, he is ruthless! One cannot escape him. I cannot get him out 316 of my head.’ I told her she had much better tackle me. She told me plainly that I was a negative force in the world and my cousin an active. That was enough for me. I thought she despised me and I vowed she should recognise my possibilities as well as Peter’s. If any man were to turn the passionate stream of her nature back on herself, or to love—to see the woman rise above the fanatic—it should be I, not Peter. But I said nothing of this to him. I do not think he ever knew it at all. It began in pique on my side, then jealousy, lastly passion. Christopher, if I had loved her from the first beginning of things I should not be ashamed to meet your eyes now. Don’t look round yet. I laid deliberate siege to her heart and found she possessed my mind night and day. Soon it was not Peter who was my rival, but her own soul. I was confident I should win, though Peter, it was clear, was also wooing her persistently. He at least meant her well, Christopher. He loved her in his uncomprehending way, wanting her for the woman she was not—except in his mind. And I—I wanted her for the outward woman she was.”
He paused long enough for his listener to face clearly the portrait of the worn, broken woman he remembered, the outward woman that bore no likeness to the clear knowledge of the inner soul.
Aymer continued: