The Way of the Spirit | Page 2

ability. His small grey eyes, set beneath shaggy,
overhanging eyebrows that were sandy-coloured like his straight hair,
seemed to pierce to the heart of men and things, and his talk, when he
had anything to say upon a matter that moved him, was keen and
uncompromising. It was a very bitter face, and his words were often
very bitter words, which seems curious, as this man enjoyed good
health, was rich, powerful, and set by birth and fortune far above the
vast majority of other men.

Yet there were flies in his silver spoon of honey. For instance, he hated
his wife, as from the first she hated him; for instance, he who greatly
desired sons to carry on his wealth and line had no children; for
instance, his sharp, acrimonious intellect had broken through all beliefs
and overthrown all conventions, yet the ghost of dead belief still
haunted him, and convention still shackled his hands and feet. For he
could find no other rocks whereon to rest or cling as he was borne
forward by the universal tide which at last rips over the rough edges of
the world.
The woman, Clara, Lady Devene, was physically magnificent; tall,
with a regal-looking head, richly coloured, ivory-skinned, perfectly
developed in every part, except perhaps her brain. Good-natured,
courageous after a fashion, well-meaning, affectionate, tenacious of
what she had learned in youth, but impulsive and quite elementary in
her tendencies and outlook; one who would have wished to live her
own life and go her own way like an amiable, high-class savage,
worshipping the sun and stars, the thunder and the rain, principally
because she could not understand them, and at times they frightened
her. Such was Clara, Lady Devene. She was not imaginative, she lived
in the present for the present. She never heard the roll of the wheels of
Fate echoing, solemn and ceaseless, through the thin, fitful turmoil of
our lives, like the boom of distant battle-guns that shape the destinies of
empires discerned through the bray of brass bands upon an esplanade.
No; Clara was not imaginative, although she had a heart, although, for
example, from year to year she could grieve over the man whom once
she had jilted or been forced to jilt (and who afterwards died of drink),
in order to take her "chance in life" and marry Lord Devene whom she
cordially disliked; whom she knew, moreover, to be self-seeking and
cross-souled, as each in his or her degree were all his race from the first
remembered Ullershaw down to himself and his collaterals. Ultimately,
such primitive and unhappy women are apt to find some lover,
especially if he reminds them of their first. Lady Devene had done so at
any rate, and that lover, as it chanced, was scarcely more than a lad, her
husband's heir and cousin, a well-meaning but hot-hearted youth,
whom she had befooled with her flatteries and her beauty, and now

doted on in a fashion common enough under such circumstances.
Moreover, she had been found out, as she was bound to be, and the
thing had come to its inevitable issue. The birds were blind, and Lord
Devene was no man in spread his nets in vain.
Lady Devene was not imaginative--it has been said. Yet when her
husband, lifting a large glass of claret to his lips, suddenly let it fall, so
that the red wine ran over the white table-cloth like new-shed blood
upon snow, and the delicate glass was shattered, she shivered, she knew
not why; perhaps because instinct told her that this was no accident, but
a symbol of something which was to come. For once she heard the
boom of those battle-guns of Fate above the braying of the brass band
on her life's tawny esplanade. There rose in her mind, indeed, the words
of an old song that she used to sing--for she had a beautiful voice,
everything about her was beautiful--a melancholy old song, which
began:
"Broken is the bowl of life, spilled is its ruby wine; Behind us lie the
sins of earth, before, the doom Divine!"
It was a great favourite with that unlucky dead lover of hers who had
taken to drink, and whom she had jilted--before he took to drink. The
memory disturbed her. She rose from the table, saying that she was
going to her own sitting-room. Lord Devene answered that he would
come too, and she stared at him, for he was not in the habit of visiting
her apartments. In practice they had lived separate for years.
* * *
Husband and wife stood face to face in that darkened room, for the
lamps were not lit, and a cloud obscured the moon which till now had
shone through the open windows.
The truth was out.